On the Road
The man seems glad to have company on the road and you spend nearly a week as you peacefully walk first small and than ever larger roads on the way to Ironrath. Most nights were spend outside at a fire, the ever present snow melting and making nearly ever camping ground warm but muddy and wet...you were really grateful for your constitution and the resistance to infections and illness it afforded you.
Harre seemed to be of equal hardiness, hardly noticing the cold always surrounding you...at least it seemed that way to you most of the time. On the eights day you stop suddenly, Harre halting at your side as you look at the road winding through the forest ahead of you. Mentally you are cursing viciously as you all but know that there were enemies ahead, waiting to kill whoever moved around the next bend.
It would have been too much to have one peaceful journey, would it? Mentally grumbling you turn to Harre and…
There is something wrong", you tell Harre, "Stay here…I will go ahead and see what awaits us."
"Are you sure, my friend?", the man asks as he grips the pommel of his sword, carefully looking at the surrounding greenery. You chuckle and loosen your swords slightly in their sheaths, "Do not worry, this is far from the first time something like this happened to me."
Harre reluctantly agrees and sets up a small camp in a small clearing a little off the road while you go on ahead. You continue for a few minutes longer before a man wielding an wicked looking axe bars your way as the woods close in on both sides until only a thin road remains. He takes one look at your plate and smiles.
"Well met, stranger! This roads are ours to tax and you will have to pay for the passage. A single golden dragon is all that is required for you to continue in peace.", he stats with supreme confidence.
You just look at the man for a long moment before sighing. "And if I do not wish to do so? You do not look like you are beholden to Lord Forrester, who owns these lands if I am not mistaken."
The bandit, for that is what he obviously was, laughed roughly and spit onto the ground. "I am just a concerned citizen looking out for the good of the realm. The forest lord holds little sway in the realms matter."
"You are a bandit, good man, and I will not be robbed", you finally growl and stare him down. H grunts, half in amusement and half in joy, "As you wish, little lordling. We will just take it off your corpse!"
4,5,5,6,5
6,5
Four other men break through the shrubbery to your sides, swinging an assortment of weapons ranging from spears over maces to vicious looking knifes. They wear boiled leather and in one case a rusty chainmail to protect themselves. Their leader, the man wielding half plate who you had been speaking to, also exploded into motion.
To you all five seemed slow.
Before the lead bandit could complete his swing he was already coming apart into four parts, your blurring fast draw having cut off both of his arms and his head in one fell swoop. The corpse goes down, still pumping blood out of the stumps where his head and arms had been a second before. You see the other four men's eyes widen and their charge slow but it was already far too late for them to stop their attack.
It proved to be their doom.
The first two you simply mow down as you use their own charge against them, the men impaling themselves onto your blades without much need to move on your side. Groans of pain grow into shrieks of agony as you rip out the blades sideways in a shower of blood and gore. Continuing the move you twirl around your own axis once, ducking at the same time to avoid the attacks seeking to pierce the seemingly vulnerable place of your armour close to your neck. The spin adds even more speed to your movements and you literally lay the men low as you cut them off at the knees, their shrieking turning to abrupt silence a moment later as you viciously kick them unconscious.
Looking around you shake your head. What a waste…
Glancing down at the last two men you see them quickly bleeding out through their severed legs and frown.
For a long moment you watch the blood pumping out of the stumps before you force yourself to act, knowing that neither man had much time left. Moving quickly you rip apart the trousers of the other dead bandits and use them to slow the bleeding enough that death was no longer an immediate concern. Both were still knocked out through the bloodloss and you had no problem dragging them back to the campsite Harre had set up.
Harre stares at you, armour splattered with blood and dragging two equally dirty men missing their feet, for a long moment before closing his eyes and taking a deep breath. Opening them again he moves to his mule and takes out one of the captured ironborn axes before laying it into the fire, the metal heating quickly. "I will burn their wounds shut, they won´t see sunrise otherwise.", he states flatly. "Bandits, I take it?", he asks and grunts at your nod. "Have become a right plague lately, these pests. Why did you leave them alive?"
"For every bandit you see there are usually five hiding somewhere.", you answer easily while turning around to clean up the road of the corpses and take whatever of value they might have left. "They are like rats in that way...and I intend to find their warren before more people are hurt."
You roll your eyes at the muttered "You don´t look hurt to me" from Harre and quickly return to the area the skirmish had taken place. Going through the mens belongings you find little coin and jewlery but nothing else of true value but their weapons and armour. These you strip of the bodies before throwing them in a ditch next to the road, knowing that the local wildlife would take care of them soon enough. You also find some food on them but refrain from taking it, the bandits hadn´t been looking like you should eat anything of theirs to you.
You return to the campsite fully loaded down and throw everything in a heap next to the mule, who looks very unimpressed at the additional load it would have to bear. Sometimes you admire the simple anmials for their way to look at the world and shrug.
Turning to the captured bandits you find them bound, alive...and awake on different sides of the fire, Harre never letting them leave his sight even from across the campsite. They look at you with fear in their eyes, pain replacing it every time they move and jar their wounds. The smell of roasted port hanging around the campsite tells you everything you need, as do the fresh rags bound tightly around their stumps.
"Well", you start in a friendly voice so obviously fake that a deaf person would have noticed as you kneel down in front of one of them, the man leaning back in fear, "my name is Hadrian Rutheen and I will be asking some questions. After that I will ask your friend over there the same questions and hope that he also has the same answers. If not...well, I will get creative as I really do not like being lied to. Do you understand?"
He nods vigorously and you smile.
You do not have to kill one of the men as an example as both are to frightened to lie by far. They readily tell you that they are part of a larger group, roughly thirty men strong, which a camp a dozen miles into the wilderness to your east. Their leader goes by the name of White, with no other name ever having been mentioned. He was also the only member to wield castle forged steel even though neither man could tell you where he had gotten his hands onto it. Every second week White send out four groups of five with the last ten staying behind to guard the main camp on a rotating basis, with the group you killed being expected back in three days time. Twice one of the groups hadn´t shown up and the main camp had been relocated to avoid being discovered. Their current campsite had been consistent for three month with ever bit of loot that had been gained through banditry being gathered there. The five you had killed didn´t have a good week, you being the first person they had seen and tried to rob...which turned out far less easy than they had anticipated.
Going over their stories you do not find any deviations and nod to yourself before offering them the choice of a quick death now or to be turned over to Lord Forrester.
"There is no use in this world for a man without feet, I chose a quick end.", the first answers and you swiftly break his neck with a loud crack, ending his life in an instant.
The second considers a while longer but finally shakes his head. "I have made many mistakes in my lifetime and will do what I can to atone. Bring me to Lord Forrester."
You nod and consider what to do next. You could go after the bandits before they relocated or move on to Ironrath...either way you would have to take care of your new prisoner now that you agreed to get him to Ironrath.
Harre stares at you for a long moment at your statement on how easy it would be for you to stamp out the bandits once and for all. Finally shrugging he agrees to remain with the prisoner until you returned, as long as you didn´t take longer than a week. He obviously didn´t think that you would be able to make it to the campsite, route out the bandits, and get back within the few hours you specified.
You make a short joke of his lack of faith into your being disturbing, electing a disbelieving snort and an eye roll, before vanishing into the night and leaving your companion and the prisoner alone. You quickly reach the site of your battle and backtrack the traces they left from there, your darkvision easily able to pick out the details that might have escaped others even in bright sunlight.
While tracking you never slow down below a light jog, quickly covering the distance and frightening more than one dear...and a disgruntled looking bear…as you pass by. The terrain does not allow you to go all out, so you take until shortly after midnight to reach the bandit camp, finally stopping at the edge of a large clearing with a broken tower standing in the middle.
Next to the ruined building you see two big tents and a campfire, which what being tended to by two tired looking bandits obviously being on guard duty. You also notice light coming from within the tower but do not see any movement beyond the two men standing close to the fire, their dark vision thoroughly ruined by the close proximity to the flames.
Obersiving a few minutes longer you do not notice anything more of interest that can be seen from your current vantage point.
The bandit leader only known as "White" chuckled to himself as he stashed yet another purse filled with coin into his personal chest. His benefactor had stayed true to his word, despite the rather..shady..reputation of the house. Still, who was he to complain? He had a full stomach, lot of coin and a whore whenever he needed it because of it. His men might be a depraved lot but they did their part.
Leaning back into the ornate chair one of his men had stolen a few weeks back he looked into the fire, deep in though. How had he ended up a bandit again, bastard born as he might be? Ah, yes...his father, the trice damned idiot. Couldn´t reach his goals by legal means and turned to him instead. Sometimes he didn´t quite know if he was the white (heh…) or black sheep in the family.
A sudden but muted set of cracks causes him to look up but his weariness disappears again as nothing more happens within the next few seconds. No shouts of alarm or pain, no sudden battlecries...just the usual sounds of the night. Even if there was an attacker somewhere around...who would be able to spot his second group of guards in the pitch black darkness outside? Listening a few seconds more White finally shrugs and returns to the spoils his group had dragged in, drawing a leather bound book from the pile of miscellaneous items. One could never learn enough, after all.
Ten minutes later White is startled out of his reading as he was puzzling over a particularly bad attempt of writing down a word in high valyrian by a loud knock at his door. Why he had ever bothered to learn the language he didn´t know. Annoyed he closes his book with a clapping sound and walks to the door leading to the camp outside of his tower. This better be important...his men knew the danger of disturbing his peace without good reason.
Swinging the door open his growls, "Who dares to dis…."
A blood stained and metal plated fist is the last thing White sees before darkness claims everything.
You shake your fist, grimacing at the phantom pain of having hit a head far harder than the norm, as the leader of the bandits goes limb and hits the ground like a sack of bricks. Fifteen men including the leader you had put down within the last half an hour, sneaking through the camp. Four of them you had to kill as you could not get close enough to knock them out, their blood straining your armour and swords. One of them had gotten lucky and you could still feel the area a dagger had found its way past your armour and into your side. Only your magic had allowed you to continue on in silence afterwards, otherwise the groans of pain that kept escaping you would have blown your cover for sure.
You quickly bind the leader of the group, and what a disappointment he had been, and place him with the others. Most are unconscious but a few more or less concussed eyes blink blearily at you as you throw White in their middle before turning around again and looking through the camp, which turns out to be a treasure trove.
Looking at the sorry lot still mostly busy being knocked out at your feet you frown, the darkness of the night still holding your surrounding in its iron grip.
You have to kill three men before being able to move on. Two as you could not shake them awake despite your best efforts, another one as he managed to get free of his bonds and tried to flee. You cut him down swiftly not five steps after the beginning of his attempt, also putting a stop to further tries in the immediate future.
Stumbling through the night the men are ill equipped to talk to you, their full concentration being consumed by placing one foot before the last without tripping on the uneven ground of the forest. You soon give it up, having underestimated the pure advantage your darkside offered you. To you there was little difference between day and night, only the vibrancy of the colours surrounding you and the temperature telling the difference. Sometimes you just...forgot..that not everybody was blessed to see the world as you did.
The speed of your caravan picks up noticeably as the sun peeks over the horizon, turning the pitch black of the night into the gloom of dawn. You reach Harre as the sun reaches its zenith, the man taking a long look at you as you step out of the woods followed by obviously defeated bandits and their accumulated loot.
Glancing up he snorts dryly, "Where have you been? I expected you before sunrise?"
You couldn´t help a certain feeling of dejavu.
You banter back and forth for a while, much to the consternation of the captives. Feeling oddly at ease you throw your first prisoner on one of the mules and set out again for Ironrath, the other captured bandits following behind.
The road remains empty and you make camp again three days out from your goal, never leaving the prisoners out of your sight. Your vigilance repays itself as you run down two that manage to get loose during the night, killing them swiftly and kicking their corpses into a convenient ditch. The others, their leader chief among them, remain docile afterwards.
You also finally get the chance to interrogate the men but none knows much of importance but their leader and "White" stoically refuses to say even one word, seemingly content to glare at your hatefully whenever you weren´t quite looking into his direction. The death of his men had done little to calm his ire and you suspected that he would become a problem at some point...likely before you reached Ironrath.
He was also the only one you considered to be likely to know more than the bare essentials of the bandits exploits...and their backers. Sadly he was also the only one not to bow to threats, even as shallow cut along his neck doing little to encourage him to talk. You suspected that you would have to become...creative...to loosen his tongue.
The bandit leader only grunts as you break his leg while calmly telling him, and the other prisoners, why you were doing so. His glare gained another layer of hate on top as you do so but you also see the sullen acceptance that he could do nothing about his situation….for now.
Having grown even more fearful of you at your casual display of practicality the other bandits turn into frightened rabbits in human form, jumping at your every command and their absolute best not to be noticed in a negative way. The only exception turned out to be the bandit already missing both of his feet. Not that surprising, you supposed...what did he have to loose after all? He also had the misfortune of having to share a mule with the "broken" bandit leader while you took off most of the loot the animal had been carrying.
You are less than one day from your goal as you suddenly hesitate not far from yet another bent in the road, the hairs on your neck rising as you feel a shiver race up your back. Recognizing the feeling of immediate danger you stop your column and lead everybody off the path into a thick cove of trees, where you leave Harre to guard the prisoners while you ghost through the foliage parallel to the road.
It does only take you ten minutes to spot the men hiding in the trees to both sides off the road in carefully hidden positions. You count no less than twenty men wearing good quality chainmail and leather armour, sword and shield. Everyone of them also had a crossbow and a quiver of bolts close at hand. Unseen you watch them for nearly an hour, catching up snippets of the rare conversation that strung up every now and than. You caught the words "White", "Higher", "Bolton", "Embarrassment" and the general sentiment that the men where send to "clean up the mess", whatever that might mean. You could not spot any sort of sigil upon the clothes or armour of the men, nor could you make out anything else that might have pointed at their leader or overlord.
Frowning you continue to stay in your hiding place, mulling over your options.
You sneak through the thick forest, using the foliage to cover your approach as long as possible. The first group of men you sneak up to is located furthest from the road, playing dice on a long past fallen tree. They only notice you as one of the dice rolls off their platform, coming to a stop at your feet. Their incredulous gazes turn empty as you cut down all four in half as many seconds, the rattling exhale of their last breaths and the thumping echo of bodies hitting the ground being the only sounds to announce your deed.
2
2,2,4,2,2
6,2
Crouching low you wait a few seconds before reassuring yourself that you remained undetected and seek out the next group of four men hiding on your side of the road right next to the well trodden path behind thick trees. Again you are a ghost in the wood, slitting throats and stabbing your sword into the neck of three before the last one manages to scream out a warning before drowning in his blood a moment later.
You immediately duck as half a dozen crossbow bolts flash across the road, thumping heavily into the heavy trees around you in a staccato of hard impacts. One, more by luck than design, manages to find your right shoulder, punching right through your heavy plate and digging deeply into the flesh below. (Take a wound)
Grunting in pain you roll behind the biggest tree you can find, the grunt turning into a hiss as you jostle the bolt still stuck deeply in your body. You hand moves to the bolt before hesitating. You could your magic to heal the wound right quick...but using it still took time. Time you would be distracted if the other men tried to rush you or sneak around to put you full of crossbow bolts...which would also be a risk if you rushed across the road, where you would have no cover to speak of.