Oliver didn’t know the bandits were attacking until he heard the soft hum of an arrow, half a moment before it thumped into one of Hugo’s young employees, a round-faced boy around the same age as him. Oliver had never even learned his name.
The boy didn’t get the chance to cry out before his body fell backwards to land limply on the bed of the wagon he had been sitting in, the arrow jutting from either end of his neck. Then shouts filled the air and more than a dozen figuresran from the woodline, weapons bared.
“What?” Oliver looked around wildly. “Bandits? Where did they come from!?” Despite having expected an attack, he still felt shocked by the sudden violence, and heard a hysterical edge in his own voice.
By comparison, Cadence’s voice was calm and even. “It doesn’t matter,” they said, drawing that odd blade, the one that looked like it was made from jagged obsidian. “We need to move. Now.”
Rose suddenly gasped, and Oliver spun around, worried she had taken an arrow as well. But the animist’s eyes were fixed on a distant point, somewhere in the direction of the front of the caravan. As if prompted by her gaze, a ghastly wail carried back to them from the frontmost wagon.
“It’s another specter,” she said, cloak flaring as she jumped over Beryl and the driver’s bench of their wagon to land next to Oliver and Cadence. “I can sense it attacking up front.”
Oliver cursed. “They’re working with the undead?”
“Apparently.” Rose turned to him. “I have to go up there. I’m the only one who can counter it.”
Oliver blinked, trying to get his thoughts together. This was all happening too fast. The bandits had struck more suddenly, more violently, than any monster. They were moving with purpose, and he needed to to do the same, to act, to do something!
“I’m going too,” he heard Beryl say.
“No–”
“Yes! If you’re fighting the ghost, you won’t be able to defend yourself against the bandits! Someone needs to protect you!”
“Fine, then go! Now!” Cadence shouted. The two girls did so, Beryl jumping out of the wagon and joining Rose, sprinting for the front of the caravan, while the celestial turned back to Oliver. “Those big guys are fighting at the second wagon already, I’ll go help them. Oliver, you-” Cadence must’ve noticed the vacant look on his face, and they called his name more loudly. “Oliver! Focus!”
He blinked, trying to pull himself together–then he heard a cry of pain in the distance, before it suddenly cut off. Another member of Hugo’s company was dead.
Oliver’s thoughts collected around that cry, and he suddenly shook himself and focused on Cadence. “Right. Sorry. I just…”
The celestial gave him a fleeting grin. “It’s fine. There’s more coming from behind, can you cover the rear?”
“Yes.” He nodded decisively, feeling like himself again.
“Good luck then!” Without another word, Cadence turned and ran towards the second wagon and the trio of outlaws engaging Derrik, one of Hugo’s burly laborers.
Oliver drew his own sword and turned away, running for the back of the wagon, his blood racing as he ran through the late afternoon sunlight.
Cadence must’ve had some sort of awareness boon, as they were right about the outlaws approaching from behind–even if they hadn’t bothered to mention the numbers. There were four of the scruffy outlaws less than a dozen yards away, rushing forward with weapons drawn, and another four farther back, observing the attack with wary eyes. Three of those held bows, all of which were promptly aimed at him.
They must’ve been a flanking force, Oliver realized, driving in to finish the job now that the caravan was occupied by the undead and the first wave of attackers. But the squire didn’t have any more time to think about their organization. It was time to act.
Time to be a silver knight.
He quickly pulled his Mantle of Wind around him, hoping the swirling gale would be enough to divert any of the arrows, and then the four forward outlaws were on him. Bolstered by their superior numbers, they didn’t try anything fancy, attempting to bury him in a barrage of attacks.
Oliver was reminded of one of his earliest fights after he received his gifts, a trio of kobolds. He had only survived that fight with Adeline’s help, and even then, it had been close. In the aftermath, she had scolded him for his lack of confidence. He hadn’t possessed the boldness required to use his blessings efficiently.
It had been three very long months since that fight, and Oliver was a very different person than he had been on that day.
The first outlaw to reach him was a skinny, ragged young man, perhaps the same age as Oliver, who swung at him with a nicked shortsword. Oliver’s off-hand flashed up, and he trusted his cloth-of-steel tunic, reinforced further by his gift, to block the attack. The bandit clearly didn’t expect his sword to simply stop when it hit Oliver's lightly armored arm, and he couldn’t recover before Oliver’s sword stabbed in and took him under the ribs.
There was a flicker of motion to one side, and Oliver’s reactions, long since drilled into him by his childhood tutors, had him take a quick hop back as a stout man’s cudgel swung through the space he had been occupying and slammed into the ground. Based on the cloud of dust and the small crater made by the attack, it had some measure of potency behind it.
As Oliver recalled, the gift of the bandit, granted by the Outlaw archetype, allowed a very basic, if costly, special attack. It did not, however, grant any defensive abilities, as the bandit in question must’ve realized the instant before Oliver stepped back in and brought his sword down in a brutal chop at the man’s back, leaving him bleeding and prone on the ground.
Before Oliver could finish off either of his foes, the remaining bandits–a scarred girl missing half a head of hair and a rangy, pinch-faced man–reached him. The girl fought with a rusty shortsword of her own, while the man favored a shortspear. The combination was effective, but the two clearly lacked any trained teamwork.
Oliver calmly parried a pair of cuts from the girl, sidestepped a spear thrust, then flicked an arm up in time for an arrow to shatter against his cloth-of-steel tunic. He took a couple quick steps to one side to avoid another arrow, then lifted his free hand and released a blast of wind, kicking up enough dirt with the sudden gust to make both of the remaining close-quarters combatants flinch. As a handy side effect, the cloud of dust made it that much harder for the archers to get a bead on him.
A momentary pause was all Oliver needed to lunge in and take the swordswoman in the throat, then whirl around to face the spearman. The pinch-faced man had apparently seen enough, as he threw down his spear and ran back towards his remaining allies.
Oliver didn’t bother to give chase, taking a moment to catch his breath while he waited for the cloud of dust to settle. Luckily, his Mantle of Wind had the handy side effect of keeping the airborne dirt away from him, giving him clean air to breath. Finally, as the cloud fell away, Oliver began walking forward, sword lifted and ready for whatever was waiting on the other side.
#
As Rose approached Hugo’s wagon at the head of the caravan, she spent a pittance of quintessence to send a gust of wind flowing through her new cloak. Enchanted to respond to the elemental energy, the garment allowed Rose to leap fully over the wagon, Mantle of Wind slowing her fall on the farside of her arc as she took in the situation.
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Five bandits had charged at the frontmost wagon behind the ghostly presence of the specter she had sensed. As in her previous encounter, the undead looked like a massive, inhuman skull, semitransparent, with two disembodied bone hands, a blot of rancid death magic to her life-attuned senses. Hugo had responded with a monstrous heavy crossbow she had never seen the merchant wield before, and had apparently managed to wound one bandit and kill another, but his weapon proved useless against the incorporeal undead. Hugo’s second assistant lay dead already, withered by the life-draining touch of the ghost, and the master merchant himself looked to only still be alive thanks to his higher level.
Rose released a Gust Blast as she approached the ground, kicking up enough dust to blind the bandits for a few moments, then followed it up with a second gale, this one infused with life-aspected magic.
[Healing Wind] - Animist, Wind - Active, Healing - Create a gust of wind empowered with life magic. Range and shape is the same as Gust Blast. Grants a minor healing effect to all targets within the area, regardless of allegiance. Lesser mana cost.
Hugo sagged in relief as the healing magic helped him recover from the enervation of the specter’s touch, while the ghostly undead itself was forced back, the life-aspected magic as harmful to it as its death magic was to humans.
Rose dismissed her Mantle of Wind just a couple feet above the ground, falling the remaining distance. Her birch branch staff twirled in her hands as she placed herself between the undead and the caravan.
Behind the undead, the dust kicked up by her entry had begun to settle, exposing her to the four remaining bandits in the treeline–but before they could make good on their advantage, a pair of fist-sized rocks came humming at them, announcing Beryl’s own arrival to the struggle.
#
Oliver emerged from his cover just in time to see the cowardly spearman collapse to the road, still choking from the pair of arrows lodged in his throat. One of the archers was nowhere to be seen, but that still left two bowmen standing to either side of a tall, slender woman, whose confident stance marked her as the leader of the bandit troop. Apparently, the bandits had little approval for cowardice.
Oliver didn’t even slow his stride, swinging his sword several times as he walked, each motion sending a Wind Slash at his remaining foes. As he had hoped, the simple ranged attacks disabled the enemy archers, knocking one to his knees and breaking the other’s bow. Unfortunately, the bandit leader seemed unimpressed by them. Her own sword flashed twice and ably parried each projectile he sent at her.
Now that made Oliver’s steps falter. The only person he had ever seen parry his Wind Slashes was Adeline. If he was facing off against an Adept, there was every chance he was going to die in the next few moments. Unfortunately, there wasn’t really much he could do about that at this point.
“Wasn’t there one more of you?” he called to her, trying to seem calm and casual. “Or did he get scared enough that you had to kill him, too?”
The taunt didn’t get the reaction he was hoping for. Instead, she smirked and began to walk towards him. She kept her sword low to the ground, but the way she held it, at a precise angle away from her body, told him that it was a ready stance, if one he was unfamiliar with. Whoever this woman was, she had some measure of formal training. She was different from the crude, cowardly bandits she ran with.
“No,” the woman called back, her smoky voice amused, “he went to kill the rest of your friends.”
Oliver’s blood went cold at the woman’s blunt tone. She hadn’t said the words like a threat, but as a simple fact, as if she had been discussing the weather.
“I doubt he’ll find it as easy as that,” Oliver shot back.
“Then I’ll just need to go through you and help him, won’t I?” The woman came to a stop just ten feet from Oliver, holding the same menacing stance.
Oliver looked her over quickly. This close, she was younger than Oliver had expected, maybe only a couple years older than him. Her height and confidence had just made her seem older than she was. While as dirty and ragged as the rest of the bandits, there was something different about her, a poise the others lacked. Her skin was a deep, golden tan that almost precisely matched the dark blonde of her close-cropped hair. That coloring was rare these days–only gold-bloods, pure-blooded Arsiletians, had that combination of hair and skin tone.
Her sword spoke volumes as well. Far cry from the low quality weapons the other bandits held, it was a gleaming, well-maintained, gracefully curved blade. It was a saber, a type of weapon preferred by fencers. Oliver had spent most of his youth practicing with and against very similar weapons. Another sign indicting the girl as some sort of fallen noble.
“I’d ask what brought someone like you to this low station, but I suspect it would be a waste of time,” Oliver said.
Those words provoked more reaction from her than anything else he had said or done, far more than his feeble taunts or the deaths of her band. Her golden face twisted with anger, and she spat back, “I’m sure you’d know plenty about wasted time, noble pup.”
How did everyone keep figuring out he was a noble? Was it really that obvious?
“I prefer Oliver,” he replied, still trying for an infuriating calmness.
“And I’d prefer you dead, pup.” Without warning, the woman darted forward, and nearly killed Oliver in a single strike. It was fast, efficient, and perfectly aimed, a textbook perfect attack.
The only reason Oliver survived it at all was that he had read the same textbook.
His own sword flashed up with a speed born of muscle memory, ingrained in his arms over the course of years, and his body dipped even as he caught the blade and lifted it overhead. Still moving automatically, he reversed his sword into a lightning quick riposte, but the girl was already moving, and his counter missed by mere inches.
In barely a breath, the two had engaged and split apart, now occupying the positions the other had started in.
The Arsiletian woman’s anger had vanished behind an expression of pure shock. “How?”
“That was a clever lunge,” Oliver told her, “but you didn’t use a gift at all. I drilled against the same technique.”
“I suppose you’re better than I thought, pup.”
Oliver rolled his eyes. “I really prefer Oliver.”
“I still don’t care.” The woman’s mouth twitched in an expression that had very nearly been a smile. “But you can call me Aton.”
“Aton?” Oliver asked, surprised at the lunar name.
The woman didn’t answer, instead lifting her sword into that same low stance again.
Oliver did the same, raising his longsword straight ahead until it was parallel to the ground. Then they moved again.
#
Cadence found herself possessed of the same serene, crystalline rage she had first felt in Kellister, when she had seen the damage the gnolls had inflicted on a village for no greater reason than a thirst for violence. She had feared that her first time fighting other humans–rather than monsters or outsiders–in true, lethal combat would leave her frozen, but the celestial had quickly come to the conclusion that their actions had declared the bandits to be just as monstrous as the gnolls she had cut down.
If anything, she found their performance disappointing compared to those rangy outsiders. Most of them only had the gift of the bandit, another one she was familiar with from her studies with Storyteller, even if she hadn’t gotten the chance to reflect it yet. Granted by the Outlaw archetype, it offered a suite of basic benefits for those who sought to abuse and bully others. Speed and strength boons, a simple special attack, and Menacing Glare, a mental ability capable of cowing their foes. Overall, they should’ve been significantly more dangerous than the gnolls, but they proved lacking in both the skill and ferocity of the bestial outsiders.
A Soul Surge to her will was enough to allow Cadence to ignore their mental attacks, and Cadence had only needed to kill a few of the dozen or so that had charged the middle wagon before the rest broke. She suspected that any real battle-gifted would’ve fared similarly well against the rabble.
Unfortunately, none of Hugo’s employees counted as battle-gifted. One laborer, Paul, lay dead, killed in the opening moments of the fight as the bulk of the bandits surged at the center of the caravan. Derrik was covered in wounds of varying severity, while Harriet sat on the driver’s bench, trying not to move. Thankfully, the arrow in her gut hadn’t kept the teamster from provoking one of her draft goats into breaking free of its harness and charging the treeline, scattering the remaining bandit archers.
Cadence’s skills, honed to a razor’s edge by Ryme and Storyteller, had allowed her to avoid any notable injuries of her own, and she took a quick swig from the flask Storyteller had left her to keep up her energy levels. Oliver’s Reinforced Defense had proven invaluable, buying her critical protection from the few arrows lucky enough to reach her, but she could already anticipate the incoming focus headache.
That was a concern for later. Survival was all that mattered at the moment.
A quick survey revealed that the few remaining bandits from the initial charge were fully occupied by the overpowering strength of the enraged draft goat. That left the attack at the front, that Rose and Beryl had gone to handle, and the flankers coming from behind. Oli was skilled, but by himself…
Cadence nodded decisively to herself. “Can you handle it from here?” she asked Derrik.
The big man was still leaking from numerous holes and cuts, but he grunted gamely and lifted a heavy, workman’s hammer up to his shoulder. “We’ve got it. Go.”
