As Shayn rode into the camp, Walter and Kyler were ready, swords in hand. Kyler had trained with an adapted stance that used a thinner, lighter blade that he could wield while leaning on one of his crutches. It was remarkable he could fight at all, but he was a determined young man and willing to put in whatever efforts it took to not be considered lesser than others.
Shayn reined in his mount, and Simone's. The woman looked disheveled and… irritated? That was odd, but he discarded the thought.
"Stay here," He told the horse more than her. He had gained enough of a lead on the bandits to whirl around and head back towards them. Combat on horseback was tricky, and he didn't have a lot of practice at it. He wasn't even sure whether this particular horse was trained for it; it was one of the wagon-pulling horses and not a regular mount.
His horse had run ahead back to camp, being faster by virtue of having no load to carry. It walked closer and Shayn moved himself over from the unsaddled, untrained animal to the trusted one.
Just in time, too, as the two pursuing bandits broke through the trees into the camp.
Shayn drew his sword and charged with a battle roar taught to him by Riley. The man on the right blanched. His horse shied and he was thrown to the ground. Shayn would let Walter take care of him.
He focused on the still-mounted bandit, who was frozen in surprise. Shayn swung his sword and the man came to himself and ducked, drawing a short knife from his side. The younger man corrected for the change in positioning and caught the back of the man's head with the flat of the blade.
"Gah!" The second bandit cried, crumpling forward on his saddle. His horse stopped in confusion, sidestepping and turning its head to try and figure out what was happening. A buzzing noise on the air caught Shayn's attention, but he focused on the dangerous men.
Shayn spurred his horse around, wanting to hit the mounted man a second time to knock him down, but hopefully not kill him. They needed to know where Victoria was, and it was possible that only these men knew. The man's horse suddenly reared violently as something landed on its face.
"YOU STUPID ANIMAL!" The bandit roared, trying to get it under control. Shayn pulled back, alarmed by the unpredictable behavior, and sudden appearance of a suspiciously large insect.
The man swung his knife fruitlessly at the buzzing thing, and proceeded to be stung on the hand by it. He cried out in horror, falling to the ground and hitting the thing on the way.
The horse furiously stamped at it, wounding its master in the process. The bandit was screaming in pain, lending the entire scene a surreal quality that caused Shayn pause.
The bandit's horse calmed somewhat and moved away, and Shayn dismounted. The man on the ground was disabled for the moment, writhing and scrambling, and Shayn was anxious to get some rope to fully subdue both men.
The second bandit was cowering at the end of Walter's blade, looking as if he might try to get up and run any second.
"Who are you?" Walter was demanding as Shayn searched the wagon for rope. He hoped there was some left in the wagon; he hadn't taken a thorough inventory of what had been taken and what was left before racing off.
"J-Jerry," The man stuttered. "That's Omar."
Finding two lengths of cord, Shayn breathed a sigh of relief and went to the writhing man first, since Walter had the other under control.
Omar was thrashing wildly, like an insane man.
"Hold still," Shayn commanded, but the man was screaming like one possessed. His wails filled the air to the point where everything else fell silent. Was it an act? Surely an insect's sting and horse's stomp couldn't hurt badly enough to cause this sort of scene.
The other people stared, waiting in morbid curiosity to see how long he would keep up the fervency of his disproportionately furious cries, but the intensity only increased.
Shayn moved away as the man rolled and lunged for him.
"Stay back!" He pulled his sword forward.
"KILL ME!" The man screamed pitifully. "KILL ME PLEASE!"
"Is he always this dramatic?" Kyler asked the second man.
"No… Omar's the toughest man I know," Jerry looked white as a ghost watching his friend suffer.
"KILL ME!" Omar demanded a third time, his roving eyes spotting the knife he'd dropped. He pounced on it, not even hesitating before he plunged it into his chest. His cries grew softer for several seconds before they fell silent forever.
Shayn heard a thump behind him, and whirled. Simone had half-jumped, half-fallen from her saddleless mount. She was on her knees on the ground, and he ran to make sure she wasn't badly hurt. In the heat of subduing her captors, he hadn't had a chance to check on her well-being.
She rose unsteadily to her feet and stumbled, rejecting his hand in her urgency. Leaning against a tree, she emptied the contents of her stomach behind it, desperately trying to hold back her hair.
Shayn leaned forward to help with the task, shocked by how soft the lengths were despite their tangled and disheveled state.
He had only seen her hair carefully braided or done up before. The loosest he had seen it had been for his party, where she had left the back of it to flow over her shoulders. Some time between the kidnapping, the rescue, and the wild ride back to their camp, it had come completely loose.
When she finished vomiting, he offered her a waterskin to wash out her mouth. She did so, and then drank a little, gratefully.
"I'm sorry," She whispered, glancing in the direction of the dead bandit as she handed the water back to him. "It has been a difficult day so far."
So far? Was she expecting it to get better, or worse? He tried to gauge her exact age. Younger than him, certainly. She would have been too young, and likely sequestered, during the last war. It was possible she'd never seen anyone die before. No wonder she got sick. He felt the same when he'd first seen death.
Granted, he had been on a battlefield at fourteen facing down goblins, which was much scarier than a man killing himself from pain–-Shayn moved closer to a strange-looking spot near him and saw that there was something squashed into the dirt. It was damaged, but bore distinct resemblance to the creature Simone had described as coming through the portal.
Shayn's eyes widened. If such a small creature could put a man in pain intense enough for him to want to end his life, what other things might come through the next portal that they came across? It was an unpleasant thought, and quickly, he retrieved a jar meant for soil samples and scooped the squashed creature into it and placed it in the wagon for future examination. There were more important things to consider right this moment.
"Did you rescue Victoria already?" Simone's gaze had been roving the camp hopefully before her worried eyes came back to his. Shayn's heart sank, and he walked back towards the woman.
"I found you. Do you know where she is?" He asked softly.
"Someone took her." Simone blinked.
"They took both of you," Shayn corrected, a little confused, "didn't they?" Perhaps she hit her head.
Simone gave him a look that somehow conveyed frustration and profound exhaustion under the fear and worry she clearly felt.
Shayn tried to soften his expression when he wanted to demand answers instead. He pulled a kerchief from his pocket and poured a little water onto it, tipping Simone's chin up with one finger to dab at the blood from her cheek. She flinched, but he couldn't tell whether it was from pain of having the cut brushed or distaste at his touch on her skin.
Of the two options, he intensely preferred the former, though he didn't know why. He shouldn't prefer her being in pain.
"Who cut you?" He whispered, showing her the blood. She frowned, ignoring the new question and answering the one before.
"They took both of us, but they had a partner. When you found me, they had just finished dividing half the loot, including Victoria. It wasn't in sunlight." She closed her eyes as if that would bring the memory into focus.
"The copse of trees you had just left? Victoria was in there?" Shayn could kick himself, but he'd had no way to find out both women weren't in the cart until he'd climbed into it. He had no idea Victoria had been so close!
"Who was the partner?" Shayn turned to Jerry, who was still slack-jawed with shock as his eyes stuck on the dead man. "Who has Victoria?"
"What?" Jerry asked vaguely.
"Where. Is. Victoria?" Kyler glared at Jerry.
"Oh, Boss gave her to the halfling. Dunno where he went."
The little group looked at each other with startled expressions.
"Halfling?"