NOVEL NEXT Chapter 182: Attack
The rain stops immediately when Carol stops casting, leaving the entire area damp.
“Okay, before we go in, I just have one question.” Sam raises her hand. “And I should probably have asked that before. But how are we not going to get electrocuted?”
Carol smirks. “That’s because I can guide the current for as long as I’m casting it, guiding it like if it were my own fingers. The dampness will just help me with my reach and it’s effectiveness.”
“Oh, cool.” Sam smiles and then looks over to me. “Ami, are you ready to go in?”
I nod. “Ready when you are.” I then cast my shield of faith on my left arm so I can hold my staff one-handed and still protect myself.
“So we just go in and keep our squishies safe?” Max asks.
“We are both more squishy than Ami, but let’s try to not get anyone near them, yes.”
“Alright.” She chuckles softly.
“Well, after you, you’ve got the big axe after all.”
Max grins, stands up and takes her axe at the ready. After pumping herself up for a second or two she charges in, her wolf following her in with an aggressive look on its face.
As for Sam, she goes wide with her bow drawn, already loosing two arrows behind some tents. Her direwolf follows her as well.
Carol and I decide to follow Max as she’s the one who will need the most support. Our two direwolves stay closeby, assuming a more defensive position.
The chaos inside the camp quickly mounts as people start yelling and the sounds of angry direwolfs rings through the forest.
The first couple of bandits really didn't stand any kind of chance against our surprise attack, two already laid dead before we even got past the first tent, shot by a couple of arrows. Even the first ones who got alerted by sounds of murder and mayhem, clearly not ready for a sudden assault. Max her axe makes short work of two bandits who try to get to their weapons. And Carol fries two others who tried to approach us from the right. Her lightning looking incredibly dangerous, but also rather beautiful at the same time. I am happy the light it emits isn’t nearly as intense as a ‘real’ lightning bolt, because I’d probably have blinded myself by looking at it for too long.
The guy trying to sneak up from behind hadn’t really taken into account that direwolves have a rather good sense of smell and some darn good hearing too. Mine and Carol’s wolf sniff him out of his hiding place and just start tearing the man apart. I don’t look at it because his screams are already gruesome enough. If anything, the wolves really didn’t make this fight any prettier. But to keep the people from the surrounding villages and cities safe, it just needs to be done.
Max just keeps tearing through the camp, it’s almost as if she doesn’t even notice the couple of blows that hit her. It must be some kind of skill a barbarian like her has, that even her skin seems to be quite a bit tougher than usual. A blow of a bandit’s sword does leave a bit of a mark on her arm, but it’s not really deep and very easily healed by my spells.
In the meantime, with Sam on the flank, she clears out anyone who tries to go around.
It doesn’t take long at all before we reach the wooden cabin Sam had pointed out to us, together with the last couple of bandits. As Sam said, these bandits do look more experienced. Instead of the ragtag leather armour the rest was wearing, these are actually wearing steel helmets and chest armour ranging from chain mail to chained together plates.
Their defensive formation is even managing to keep our wolves at bay. It causes a bit of a lul in the combat, with a stand-off between us and them. They do look very nervous though.
Because of this rather peculiar stand-off, Max also really doesn’t know what to do. And because it doesn’t look like the bandits in front of us are going to go on the offensive any time soon, Carol also holds off on attacking them.
“Are you guys going to surrender or do we need to kill you all?” Max asks while resting her axe against her shoulder. “We can take them prisoner right?” She looks over to me.
“I guess.” I shrug. “I can always teleport them back to Ribaquen to put them in prison.”
“We are not surrendering!” The bandit in the middle yells out. “You won’t get past us!”
“Wait, I do think they’ve got a point.” The bandit to his left lowers his weapons a bit. “They killed all the others already, I don’t know about you but I don’t really want to die yet.”
“You should’ve thought about that before taking the job, Burt!” The other ones sneers back.
“Hey, easy now, Burt’s got a point.” Now the bandit on the far left also joins in on the discussion. In the meantime I take a quick look at my watch, but this entire deal hasn’t really made the watch shift in any direction.
The bickering of the bandits grows in volume until the door of the wooden cabin they are guarding smashes open. Outside of it steps another bandit, presumably the leader if you look at his full plate armour, he looks quite annoyed.
“Just attack them you fools! Or I will kill you myself!!” The guy raises his steel shield and longswords and starts marching towards us.
The bandits look unsure what they need to do for a second before they all raise their weapons for a charge against us.
Little did they notice that while they had been fighting, Carol had been casting some water magic and had put them in a puddle of water. One electric shock later and they are all smoldering dead on the floor.
“Should have let them surrender.” Carol shakes her head with disappointment and aims her arm at the bandit leader.
The man looks utterly shocked, figuratively, not yet literally, but Max stops Carol before she casts another spell. “Sam wanted to capture this one.”
Just as Max says that, one arrow flies from behind us and pierces the plate armour at the left shoulder, sending the captain flying back against the wall, and pinning him against it.
Despite the pain he quickly tries to pull the arrow out with his other hand, but a second arrow, this time in the right shoulder, secures him down completely.
Sam and her wolf rejoin us from the shadows as she beholds her handiwork with her bow still drawn. “Next one is going into your head if you are not going to behave.” She then looks at me and lowers her voice enough so that the guy doesn’t hear. “Could you make sure that he doesn’t bleed out?”
I give her a nod and step closer to the guy. A quick peek inside of the cabin reveals that he was alone in there, apparently with a rather big wartable in the center of the room. While I’m next to him I cast a minor heal on him so that he doesn’t die.
Max stays with me to guard the captain while Sam and Carol go inside to look around for a bit.
After five minutes or so, Sam walks back out. “So, what’s the map all about?” She asks.
“And why would I tell you?” The man snaps back.
“Looks to me like you marked quite a lot of spots in the neighboring forests. Other bandit camps perhaps?” She then moves to his other side. While she moves around, the bandit captain keeps tracking her with his eyes. “And the sword icons are clearly meant to resemble targets. But what I’m most curious about is the castle markers that are placed on top of it.”
The bandit captain spits, which lands right in front of Sam’s feet.
“Hmm.” She then takes a vial out of her back pocket. “Do you know what this is?”
The bandit captain’s face doesn’t even twitch. He just looks in disgust at my girlfriend.
“Well, you see, this is a poison I cover my arrows with. A quite nasty one at that. You must be starting to feel it right now. A burning sensation coming from your shoulders. Making its way towards your chest.”
The bandit captain swallows painfully.
I squint my eyes at my girlfriend. Poison isn’t really Sam’s thing. But a quick look inside the cabin kind of hints what Sam is up to. I see Carol standing right behind the wall, her eyes closed, and channeling some kind of spell.
“The poison is eating you from the inside. Slowly melting away your flesh. It won’t take long until you are going to start puking up your insides. But before we get there, it will get a lot more painful. Quite a lot more.”
I feel a pulse of energy emanating from Carol as the bandit bites down on his teeth rather hard.
“If you want it to stop, we do have a healer specialized in curing poison. But you know the prize you will have to pay for it.”
“P-please… Stop… I’ll talk.”
Sam grins while Max just looks on with a look of amazement and surprise in her eyes. Sam’s theater was definitely convincing.