Chapter 1.22

Karson

We left the armory just as dusk was approaching, and headed back down the alley. My Vanguard watched every growing shadow with suspicion. We were carrying a fortune in drachmas now, so we had reason to worry. After we made it around the first bend and lost sight of the armory, I was gripped by the same worry my Vanguard had. I loosened my sword in its sheath and made sure my mage armor spell was enabled. Zahra carried her bow in hand, an arrow ready in the other. All of us felt the unease.

Then I realized; the alley was too empty. It had few people when we traversed it before. Now it was completely empty.

“We’re walking into an ambush,” I hissed as I drew my blade. “Ready yourselves.”

We made it to the next bend, only to find it blocked by a wagon with a big cage on the back. It had a half-dozen people chained inside it. The drover for the wagon walked around nonchalantly.

“Apologies, milord. We’ve broken our traces, just need to replace them and we’ll get out your way.”

“On the roof!” shouted one of my Vanguard.

Zahra spun and fired an arrow in a blink, catching an archer in the throat. Then arrows were falling down on us. But all of us wore enchanted clothing. Zahra threw her fur cloak over her head before firing arrow after arrow.

A dozen men burst out of one of the buildings, wearing mismatched armor and carrying a variety of large shields. Some of the shields were round, others square, but all of the men wielding those shields knew how to carry them. A large man in the middle was wearing the best armor of the bunch.

“Bandits,” hissed one of Zahra’s bodyguard. “Scum!”

I threw an acid spell at the bandit leader, but he casually swatted it with his shield. His shield must have been warded against magic.

“Hah! We’ve tangled with magi before. You won’t aren’t the first I’ve captured, and won’t be the last!”

Finally, an opponent. After weeks of running, hiding, and building, I finally had a target to vent some of my fury. Bandits and slavers were standing right in front of me. Well, one was behind me. “Thank you,” I told him.

“Huh?” said the bandit leader, confused. He didn’t understand why we weren’t acting scared to be outnumbered and surrounded.

I threw my shadow trap spell behind me, and it grabbed the driver of the slave wagon.

“For the practice.” The slaver screamed as his own shadows ripped off his arms. His wails reverberated through the alley. “Vanguard! Attack!”

Zahra began firing arrows again, ducking behind the wagon for cover. I ignored the arrows that headed my way as my mage armor shrugged off. Instead, I concentrated on stepping to a place right behind the archer that had Zahra pinned down. I blinked behind him, and with a swift move, drove my sword into his unprotected back. Then I blinked back down to Zahra.

“Thanks,” she said, spinning in place to target the other archers.

My Vanguard was engaging the bandits, but despite the strength and speed difference, the bandits were holding their line. This was where skill and experience weighed against us. The sword blows from my Vanguard were powerful, but being deflected or dodged. Zahra’s bodyguard were actually faring better than the Vanguard, but they didn’t have the strength to bash through the shield wall.

“Bastards are strong!” groaned one of the bandits.

I had to do something. I targeted one of the shield carriers next to the bandit leader with a new spell I’d devised. It was the reverse of a healing spell, causing the target to wither as their life essence drained away. The man began to scream as his flesh corrupted and aged. Then, just as he was about to die, I snatched his soul and consumed it. I gained a small temporary boost of strength.

“Cursed Erebrus! What in Tartarus was that?!” shouted one of the bandits.

“Leave the cursed guards and get the magi!” shouted the bandit leader. At once, the archers stopped exchanging fire with Zahra and began peppering me with arrows. I fired an acid spell, catching another of the shield carriers in the face. The bandit leader charged at me, giving me no more time to cast offensive spells. I hoped that the removal of the two shield carriers and the bandit leader from the line would help my Vanguard deal with the remaining bandits.

Then the bandit leader was on me. His sword blew right through my mage armor and scratched across my cuirass. I stabbed at his face with my sword, but he easily blocked the blow with his shield. I drew my dagger in my off hand as he stabbed at me again. I slammed my own blade against his, knocking the blow away. But he was far more experienced with melee combat than I was. As I deflected his blow, he slammed his shield into my face.

The shield clanged off my helmet, rattling me and making me stumble backwards. He pressed the attack, making me flail desperately to fend off his blows. He was herding me to the wall, to hem me in and stop my retreat, and I couldn’t do anything about it.

“I’m going to gut you slowly for what you did to my men,” growled the bandit leader.

“Good luck,” I said, before blinking behind him. I drove my dagger down to stab him in the neck, but he turned too swiftly. The dagger caught in his shield arm, instead. He growled at the wound and aimed a sword swipe intended to take my head off. I blinked a half-dozen yards back.

“Get back here, you coward!” he shouted. I fired off three acid spells at him. As he ducked behind his shield, I turned to see my Vanguards taking the advantage in the battle. Three more bandits were down, while only one of my Vanguard was sporting a wound. I fired a weakness spell at one of the bandits at random. It was a mistake on my part, for I’d not paid close enough attention to the bandit leader.

The leader smashed into me in a charge that sent me flying. My helmet flew off as I rolled across the ground, before skittering to my feet just in time to get my sword up in front of me. Blood dripped from my forehead from where I’d scraped it on the pavement. The bandit leader bashed my blade aside with contemptuous ease, sending it flying across the alley and breaking my fingers. He punched me in the face with his sword hand, knocking me to the ground.

“Now you die!” he screamed, raising his sword. An arrow flew across the alley, hitting him in the back. Snarling, he whirled to see Zahra drawing back another arrow. “Fine, bitch, I’ll kill you first, then your pansy little mage.”

A second arrow flew at him, but he cut it right out of the air as he charged her. Zahra drew her own sword. But this time it was the bandit leader that made the mistake. He turned his back on a mage. I cast my shadow trap, and his own shadow reached up to grab his arms. Howling in anger, the bandit wrestled against the spell. I wouldn’t be tearing this one apart; he was too powerful. But that didn’t mean I was helpless.

I stood and began casting. I couldn’t fire off my acid spell without risking Zahra, and the weakness spell didn’t seem likely to stop this one. I cast the wither spell once again, pouring a huge amount of mana into it. The spell struck the bandit leader right in the back.

“I’m going to enjoy eating your soul,” I said evilly as the bandit leader’s flesh began to corrupt. He screamed in agony before collapsing to his knees. The shadow trap spell began to strangle him and pull his limbs even tighter to the ground.

When he was almost to the point of death, I grabbed his soul and pulled it from him. I was infused with a rush of strength. Unlike previous times I’d stolen essence from a soul, something about the power of this one was too strong to disperse. Instinctively I understood that I had absorbed it into my own soul.

Newly empowered, I charged at the remaining bandits. I began to blink randomly around the battle, never slowing or staying in one place for long. Zahra took out the final archer, while the Vanguard cut down the leaderless and disorganized bandits.

When it was down to just one, the bandit dropped his sword.

“Mercy, I beg you,” he said, falling to his knees. “Please don’t eat my soul!”

“Why did you attack us?” I asked as two of my Vanguard grabbed the bandit by the arms.

“We got tipped off that you had a big payday coming,” said the bandit, frantic to give us information and be helpful. “We’ve been waiting for days.”

“How’d you know we’d be coming?”

“We bribed the scribe to give you directions, so you wouldn’t take the road.”

I scowled. We’d been played for fools. We’d made an enemy somewhere, but for the life of me I couldn’t guess who. If Dadaces was going to double-cross us, he’d have done it at the armory, when we were trapped inside his walls with all his troops around him. He gained nothing by angering mages who were about to leave. No, an attack from him would be direct or it would be political. It wouldn’t be bandits in an alleyway ambush.

“Who tipped you off?”

“Some noble, I don’t know. Friendly guy, just the kind to stab you in the back when you ain’t lookin. Poecas was only one who knew him, but you ate his soul!” The bandit was starting to panic.

“What is the punishment for banditry in Assos?” I asked.

“Whipping, for the first offense,” offered one of the Vanguard, “so long as no one was slain.”

“Well, we are hail and mostly uninjured,” I said. “Keep him restrained, we’ll turn him over to Dadaces.”

The bandit sagged in relief. A whipping was painful, but not fatal.

I turned to the bandit leader, and began to go through the items on his belt. I tossed the sword and shield onto our cart, then found a pouch full of coin and a key. A key for what, I wondered? Then I facepalmed. The slave wagon behind us, of course. I tossed the bag of coin to my Vanguard.

“I’m taking the bandit leaders’ sword and shield. The rest of the loot is to be divided up amongst you all as spoils,” I said.

“I need claim none of it,” said Zahra.

The Vanguard were efficient; one pulled out one of my enchanted storage bags, the others began stripping swords, knives, belt pouches and even boots and cloaks, stuffing them into the bag to sort later. They ignored the armor, instead stacking the shields on the wagon. It was then that I heard the deep horns blaring from the town watchtowers.

I exchanged a look with Zahra. We were out of time. I blinked up to the tallest roof around us, which was high enough to see over the town walls. The town around us was in chaos as people panicked and ran to barricade themselves in their homes, while militiamen from all over the city were running for the gates. I could see men running into the armory to gear up, and Dadaces was mounted on his horse shouting orders. The grizzled veteran that I assumed was his Loxargos was at the armory gates, shouting just as many orders.

I turned from the armory and looked out across the walls to see what was coming, and nearly fell off the roof in shock. In the distance I could see what I had been fearing; what we had known was coming. An army of gigantes was approaching, larger than the previous attack, along with two cohorts of cynocephali archers. But what I wasn’t expecting was a company of centaurs in bronze armor, armed with swords and shields. And I really wasn’t expecting the massive, forty-foot tall Titan striding in the midst of the army, harpies circling his massive armored head. They were perhaps a mile or two away, heading towards the main gate on the side of town opposite our encampment.

It was late afternoon, and at the pace the army was crawling forward, I estimated they’d be here in thirty, perhaps forty minutes. I could only hope that they would camp for the night, allowing us to slip away under cover of darkness. We couldn’t afford to get bogged down in this fight. We were far stronger than we had been upon arrival, but we had many non-combatants, men, women and children that would get hurt or killed.

As I watched, the Titan bent over and scooped a massive rock the size of a sedan from the ground. He took a few running steps before flinging it the entire distance into the town. I watched in horror as it flew over the wall, smashing through buildings and crushing several townspeople. A deep, horrible laugh echoed over the field, barely audible in the distance. It was time to go.

I blinked back down to the ground, to see Zahra’s bodyguards pouring the contents of the money chest into another of my enchanted bags. How many of those things did they bring with us? I shot Zahra a questioning look as she was unhooking the horse from the wagon, before slapping it on its rump to send it running off. “What is it you call this? Plan Beta?” she asked rhetorically. Of course. We’d never be able to get our wagon through the town. She was freeing the horse so that it had a chance to survive; it was certainly more likely now that it wasn’t tied to a cart.

Two of the Vanguard still held onto the bandit.

“Give me a sword,” I commanded. One of the female Vanguard pulled out a bandit sword from the bag and handed it to me. I walked over to the bandit, and he began to tremble in fear. I reversed the blade and held it out toward him, hilt first. “Release him. An enemy army approaches. We have no time to mete out justice.”

Unbelievingly, the bandit took the blade from my hands, not rising from his knees. “Th-thank you, milord, for your mercy.”

I waved him off and turned to the slaver wagon, fishing the key that I had found on the bandit leader from my belt pouch.

“Y-you need to disable the spell first,” said the bandit.

I turned back. “What now?”

“There is an explosive ward on the wagon, enough to kill all the slaves, if it isn’t turned off first. May I?”

I eyed the bandit for a long moment.

“He’s one of the kind ones, milord,” called one of the women in the cage. “He stopped the others what was wantin’ to abuse us, he did.”

“Your name, bandit?”

“Exadius, milord.”

“Alright, Exadius, I’ll trust you. But if this is a trick…”

“No trick, milord. Mercy begets mercy, my mum always said.”

I nodded, and handed him the key. Instead of going to the lock, he went to the wagon wheel and fiddled for a moment. The door of the cage swung open, the obvious padlock still hanging from the handle. None of the slaves moved. Exadius went back around and reached in with the key, unlocking a chain that ran from the wagon bottom and through the collars around their necks.

“I’m sorry, milord, I don’t know the words to unlock the collars. But the chain should slip right out, at least.”

I motioned for the slaves to climb out. “Stay close, and you may come with us. We will protect you as best we can.”

The Vanguard and Zahra’s bodyguards fell in around me and Zahra, and we started to move, the slaves following behind. I was about to order two of my Vanguard to take the rear, when Exadius spoke once more.

“Wh-what about me, milord?”

The sheer gall was astounding. He’d been trying to kill us less than ten minutes ago. I turned to look at him once again, disbelief written all over my face. The slaves seemed surprised as well, but none of them appeared outraged.

“It’s up to you,” I finally said, looking at the rescued slaves. “He was your captor.”

The slaves looked at each other for a moment, none willing to speak up. Then a dirty looking man in what was once a nice chiton spoke up.

“As Iphis said, he was one of the kind ones. He could have left us to die in the wagon when you showed him mercy. Should we leave him to die now?”

“Alright, we’ve wasted enough time. Exadius, take the rear, make sure none of these people get lost or seperated.” I also motioned for two of the Vanguard to the rear as well.

“Let’s go.”