As they left the road behind them. Kyle couldn't help but wonder where exactly the crazy scout was taking him. After all, there was not quicker route to the capital than by the main road, everyone knew that!
Yet as much as he wanted to say something, there was a odd confidence about Kitt that seemingly demanded silence and obedience. He couldn't quite put his finger on it, but it was there.
"Oh well, might as well see what he has planned" he grumbled to himself.
The pair continued into the woods for about twenty more paces. Just as the road fell out of sight, Kitt hit the deck in the blink of an eye.
"What the-" Kyle remarked with a surprised gasp. Before he could finish his question, he found himself falling to the ground as well.
"Shut up!" Kitt hissed back at him. "Do you want to die?"
Puzzled by the scout's words, but unwilling to risk his wrath by quizzing him about them, Kyle opted instead to remain silent.
"Well at least you are smart enough to know when to listen." The scout pointed towards the bushes of to their left. Seconds later, six armed bandits walked past.
Kyle had to restrain himself from letting out a gasp. There was no sign that they had been being tailed. Yet, somehow Kitt had sensed that very thing. Without his inhuman senses, things could have ended up very differently.
"Where did they go?" the man closest to them asked his cohorts. "I could swear that they were right around here.
"Well, they hardly could have disappeared. They have to be around here somewhere" the second bandit replied. "Fan out, and search for tracks. Scottius won't be happy if we lose the trail here"
"If he wanted to be so sure that there were no loose ends, then he should be out here himself tearing through these blasted bushes. I have cuts and bruises in places that have no business being damaged" a third voice chimed in to the conversation.
"Yeah, yeah, I know. You just want to be kicking back at camp while the advance teams do their work. We all would rather be in front of a warm fire than out here in the cold looking for pests" the second man replied. "Let's just get this over with. Once we find them, slit their throats and hide the bodies."
Kyle's eyes went wide in horror. While he was confident in his ability with his weapon, after nearly dying yesterday, he wasn't eager for an encore preformance. If there was anyway to avoid a fight with a group three times their numbers, it would be best to take that option.
A glance over towards where Kitt lay hidden, he realized that the scout was missing. Damn it! Did he abandon me to my fate? Kyle wondered, silently cursing his luck. He never asked for this. Why should he have to die because someone had convinced him that rushing around in the woods in the middle of nowhere to combat common criminals was a good idea?
However, before he could try and come up with his own escape plan, Kyle found himself surrounded by the enemy. Half of the vagrants' patrol was headed right towards him! In mere seconds they would be ontop of him. There was no way that he could try and sneak away now. The moment that he even flinched they would hear him. All that was left was to sit tight and hope that they didn't notice him.
As the enemy drew closer, Kyle mentally prepared for the moment when he would be discovered and he would have to fight his way out of the situation. When the nearest enemy was only five paces away a loud scream echoed throughout the forest causing all the bandits to turn towards it. In that moment, he knew it was now or never.
Jumping to his feet with one fluid motion, Kyle struck out at the nearest enemy with his unsheathed sword. The forward strike sent his scabbard flying into the face of another of the trio in front of him. With one down and another stunned, the battlefield was starting to look a little more even.
"Heh, not so tough now, are we?" He joked surveying the results of his actions. While speaking though, Kyle continued his forward progression. Even if he did have the upperhand at the moment, the tides of battle are ever ebbing and flowing. You could be ahead one moment and without yours the next if you weren't careful.
"Damn you, brat!" the third member of the trio shouted. Who was this jerk that he thought he could taunt them while fighting? His entrails would surely look pretty spilt out all over the ground.
"Woah there, you're liable to put someone's eye out with that..." Kyle replied, parrying the bandit's sword strike. "Why don't you set that down before you hurt yourself?"
"You are going to die a very bloody death. I am going to enjoy every moment of rending your guts out of your body" the last bandit cursed back at him.
"Not if I have anything to say about it" the brigand that Kyle had previously stunned interjected. "I owe that bastard a few good licks before I let him bite the dust." The brigand sideswiped him with a heavy mace in the attempt to break a few of his ribs.
"Boys, boys, there is plenty of me to go around" Kyle joked, trying to relax some of the nerves that were building deep within his chest. Hitting the enemy with a pair of well timed counters, he was able to gain some valuable breathing room. A one on one fight was all well and good, but 2v1 was not something that he particularly wanted to test his luck with.
It was starting to look like it was time to find an exit strategy. While his initial rush had thrown the enemy off balance and had ended up leading to the elimination of a third of their force, he wasn't confident in his stamina holding out against two enemies. Especially since he was still regainning his strength after yesterday's brush with death.
"Alright, so which one of you wanted to go first again?" he asked, taunting the enemy in the hope that his words would keep them off balance long enough to find an opening to escape.
"We'll take him together, Kent" the second man replied.
"Sounds good to me." The bandit with the mace smiled with a knowing grin. The taunt had failed. The enemy wasn't going to allow themselves to be divided by mere sophistry. "You take the right, I'll hit him on the left."
Oh, crap. This is not going to be pretty. I just have to keep myself from getting flanked while I figure out someway to get out of this mess.
Between the two, dealing with the swordsman first would probably be the best play. I'll stay to the right and force them to keep getting in each other's way. Eventually they will get frustrated with each other and have words or I will get a chance to take one of them out.
"You don't know what you're messing with, brat!" the second bandit warned him. "If you only knew who you were going against right now you would be quaking in your boots and begging for a quick, painless death. We're fresh out of mercy though, so I hope that you are ready for the most drawn out, painful death imaginable."
"I don't care who you freaks are" Kyle replied, making sure that he wasn't distracted by the man's words. All it would take would be one slip up to spell his doom. "You mess with the kingdom and you mess with all the Knights. You are the ones in trouble. You're boss better be real good at running because I am coming for him. He will answer for his crimes against the country."
"That's precious" the mace wielding bandit laughed. The absurdity of this whelp's words were overwhelming. He actually thought that he had a chance of surviving passed the next couple of seconds.
However, in the next moment his laughter evaporated. A jolt of pain caused him to stare down in shock. Sticking out of his chest was a sword. Blood erupted from his mouth as his windpipe was pierced. Unable to comprehend what was going on, the brigand's weapon slipped from his hand as he tried hopelessly to stay conscious.
The mace ended up barely beating out the man's body in the end. The light was completely faded from his pupils by the time that he settled on the ground. He was dead before anyone knew what had happened.
"What in the seven frozen hells is going on?" His remaining compatriot demanded to know. One moment he had been cornering this young brat, preparing to have some fun torturing him until he died. But now he was seemingly the one that was being cornered. How had his fortuned changed so dramatically? It wasn't fair!
While the bandit was distracted, Kyle used the opening to disarm him. With his followthrough strike it was all over. The last remaining brigand collapsed with his blade buried deep into the man's side. Or rather that was the plan.
Instead of having feeling the pressure of a body slumped into his sword's hilt, Kyle found his sword being blocked by a knife. Glancing up to see who had stopped him, he was stunned to see Kitt standing there with a disappointed look on his face.
"What was that? Why did you stop me?" he demanded.
"We need him alive" Kitt replied. In the next breath the inhuman scout sent his other hand flying out to knock the man unconscious. "I guess I should have guessed that this plan would be beyond your comprehension. The other five are dead. I don't know about you, but I doubt that a dead man can tell us where his master is hidding."
"What plan? You didn't tell me anything. All you did was disappear when I was about to be captured. I had to fight them by myself. Where were you?"
"Apparently you didn't hear the part where I said that the other five were dead. You only killed one of your three opponents. Where do you think the other three went? You're welcome."
"That's scream was because of you?" Kyle realized. "Then you didn't disappear. You snuck away to ambush them."
"Glad to see they didn[t have a chance to use that mace on you. Of course, would anyone be able to tell the difference, if they had?" Kitt chuckled at his own joke.
"Nice to know some things haven't changed" Kyle said. Annoyed by how the scout didn't seem in the least bit startled by the enemy's sudden apperance.
"I knew they were coming" the scout answered his unspoken question. "I got the feeling last night that we were about to be overtaken. Figured that it would be better to ambush them rather than have them run us into the ground. Perhaps if you paid more attention to the world around you, you would have noticed before they were on top of us."
"Well not everyone can have superhuman sensory abilities" Kyle grumbled. Next time he would be better. That battle had really caused him to start to doubt his own ablilities. He had to get stronger. The Kingdom's fate depended on it.