Bruce saw Melissa coming down the street toward him, and thanked the gods that she had the sense to be at least modestly armed. True, it was with a bow, but if they should run into trouble in the wilds, it was better than nothing. Could be she even handles things before they get into my range, he thought, peering through the grille visor of his helmet. Melissa stopped a few feet away and nodded at him.
"You Jacob," she asked aloud, sticking to script. Good girl, he thought. "From Ko's?"
"I am," he answered, popping the heel of his right hand on his sword's pommel. "Melissa, isn't it? Where are we heading, then?"
"Well, just to Denkirit for now," she said, starting to saunter eastward from the town square, leading the way. "I haven't much experience travelling outside of a large group, or by train from one of the larger cities in the Kingdom," she said. "And I'd like to take one of the wander roads, not the trade road."
"You sure? Trade road's safer," Bruce said.
"Safe is why I have the bow, and why I'm paying you," Melissa said, careful to let herself be heard by nearby folk, but not to force it. Together, the duo marched clear out of town along the trade road, tacking slightly south through middling grass fields toward the same wander road Azira had traveled once they were a couple of miles out of town. Bruce looked back toward Bronze Pot, and seeing nobody they knew or anyone ahead on their path, he lifted the face guard on his helm and took a deep breath.
"I think that went well," he said with a sigh. "The bow, you really know how to use it?"
"Well enough, I should think," Melissa answered. "So, how've you been, Bruce?"
"Anxious, until I got Az's note," the retired constable said with a light chuckle. "You should read it." He produced from a pouch a crumpled envelope, from which Melissa pulled a folded sheet of paper which read, "This foul little goblin fellow just flipped you off, and has given me no name to write down, Constable Swinton. My apologies, signed Jerome Arkar, Clerk, Denkirit Postmen". Melissa laughed aloud, handing it back. Bruce ripped the letter and envelope into dozens of tiny pieces and buried it into some loose soil along the side of the road.
"He certainly knows how to make an impression," Melissa commented. The pair traveled in companionable quiet for a brief while, until Bruce put out one hand on her shoulder to hold them up, his eyes narrowing as he stared down the wending side road they were on. "What is it," she asked softly, drawing her bow and a single arrow from her quiver. Bruce already had his blade in hand; when he'd drawn it, she had no idea.
"No idea," the retired constable said, lowering his face visor into position and creeping up past her, keeping a half-slouched ready stance as he moved. "Something coming at us through the tall grass." Melissa trained her eyes on the top layer of grasses flanking each side of the road, and sure enough, she spied a single flicker of motion, coming at them at high speed. Heavily armored as he was, Bruce would surely be able to handle whatever came at them. But why wait and take that chance, she thought. Melissa drew back on her arrow, trained her eye on the movement, lined the head of her arrow with it, and released.
There came from the thick shoots of verdant green a bestial snarl, the movement abruptly halting in its tracks. Bruce snapped a look back at her, nodded, then muscled his way out of sight into the grasses. Melissa waited, panting, heart racing, as she drew out and notched another arrow, but refrained from pulling back. For his own part, Bruce felt the tingle of trepidation that always ran through him when his weapon was in hand. A few yards in front of him, there came a sudden rustle of movement, and some kind of low groaning.
Pushing ahead, he came upon a small section of trampled grass, and the long, broad pinkish-brown body of a scaly, reptilian beast. It was the size of a horse, easily, and writhed with its short forelegs at its blunted snout, trying to dislodge the arrow that had penetrated deep into its throat, just below its chin. The creature, known as a stamprous, appeared to be a wild one, unlike those domesticated by the civilized peoples of the realms. When trained, the beasts could serve as sturdy and sure-footed mounts, capable of running at nearly the same clip as a thoroughbred horse, but with the powerful jaws and claws of a battle-ready predator.
Bruce took no pleasure in killing, or in fighting generally, but he had trained to do battle, and when necessary, to kill. He raised his blade on high, and with both hands, brought it down through the stamprous's neck, cleanly decapitating it and putting its painful demise to an abrupt conclusion. He stood over the corpse, keeping still as thick, warm blood began pooling into the divet in the ground the beast had made when it fell, listening for any sounds to indicate more unknowns. When he heard nothing for a full sixty count, he took out a clean rag from the back of his belt, and wiped down his blade. Satisfied, he sheathed his blade and called out, "I'm coming back to you, Mel!" He tromped back to the young woman, who had an arrow notched but un-pulled. Smart girl, he thought.
"What was it," she asked.
"Wild stamprous. You took it in the throat, I just finished it off."
"It was on its own? In the wilds?"
"The older ones do that," Bruce explained, leading the way east once again. "They sense their time is coming, so they leave the herds so as not to slow them down. Predators are more likely to hunt down the old ones on their own. It's a protective instinct." Melissa nodded, watching as Bruce tucked a bloody rag through his belt on his left hip. "You okay?" The young woman felt a little twist in her guts, but she held it in check, grimacing and pushing through the feeling until it eased.
"I'll be fine," she said. "Let's go." With Bruce pacing seven or eight strides ahead, Melissa was free to look off through the thick grass toward the fallen beast, hoping that the next time, her shot would be a lethal one right away.
**
Azira waited until dark had fully fallen to head back into the town of Denkirit proper. He would have to be out here again first thing in the morning, just to ensure that his 'ambush' took place in public view, but on the outskirts, so he could quickly make a clean getaway.
When he got back to his rented room, Steve cracked open one eye from where he lay on one of the fluffy pillows. The rat lifted his head and muzzily asked, "You want the good word?" Azira 9just nodded, undoing his weapons belt and unslinging his travel bag from his back. "Talk around town about you is pretty much on point; most folks don't want you here, don't trust you."
"Good. And the town guards?" Azira eased down onto the bed, which was nowhere near so comfy as his own back in Bronze Pot.
"Eight on duty at any given time, but they're bringing on an extra two men until such time as you leave," said Steve.
"How do you know that?"
"I went into the constabulary, went through the commander's duty roster," replied the rodent with a grin. "Most folks don't pay much attention to a smaller rat like me unless they find me in the kitchen or pantry. Then, I'd like a pair of earplugs, because oh, the yelping they do."
"Anything else I need to know about the constabulary," Azira asked, closing his eyes.
"Two of them are mages, a gnome fellow and a rakah woman," said Steve. The wereravens, rakah, always made Azira a little uneasy. If the goblin skirmisher could squarely identify one thing about them as a race that unnerved him, it was their almost universal fascination and attachment to death and necromancy. Rakah were all, to a man and woman, gifted magically, which also lent them an air of mystery and danger. "They've been specifically tasked with being ready to take you down if you should cause a ruckus."
"Less than ideal," Azira said. "They know I'm staying here, yes?"
"Yes, and it doesn't do them much. They expect you're biding your time, and that whatever you're planning to do, you'll be scarpering east once you've done it. They've doubled the rotations on that end of town." Azira smirked; it required him skulking clear across town come morning, but this simple misdirection would help keep the worst potential trouble off of him.
"All to the good. We sleep," the goblin said, and within minutes, he was snoring softly. Steve, meanwhile, hoped the skirmisher knew what he was doing.
**
"I don't understand why we're waiting here," Melissa grumbled, rubbing sleep from her eyes. "We're still miles from Denkirit."
"We have to be," Bruce commented, pouring her a measure of coffee from the travel kettle. He offered her the powdered creamer and sugar containers, both of which she took gladly, stirring slowly. "We'll start toward the town once the sun's been up about an hour. Street vendors and wagoneers will already be set up, but by the time we draw near, there will be actual townsfolk milling about, some with a clear view of the outskirts. I expect Azira will be up about now, making his own final preparations." Melissa sipped at her coffee, considering the retired constable for a moment.
"You're not going to actually try to kill him, right," she asked. The pair had been set upon the previous afternoon by a couple of highwaymen, a lizardman and human tough, brandishing cutlasses and dressed in simple leather armor. Before they could levy a demand of money or goods or life from Bruce and Melissa, the retired constable had drawn steel and transformed into a lethal whirlwind of hacks, slashes and thrusts, butchering the brutes before she could even draw a single arrow into hand. Now, she sat wondering if Azira might be slaughtered out of hand, their whole scheme ruined by Bruce's trained instincts.
"No, I'm not going to kill him," Bruce assured her. "He might take a scrape or two, but that goblin's got guts. I just have to hope he can put on a convincing performance to best me in a tilt." Melissa seriously doubted that; for starters, Az had already said he wasn't going to use his blades, but rather, batons of some sort. What good are those going to be against Bruce's plate armor, she thought.
When the sun came up, and they had packed up most of the gear, Bruce having one more cup of coffee, she put the question to him bluntly. "How's he supposed to make a dent in your armor? I mean, how is a lone goblin supposed to convincingly take you down in a singular combat?" The retired constable swiftly chugged his coffee, put the cup away, and donned his helmet, clapping the visor grille into place.
"Not sure," he said. "But Azira's hardly your typical goblin."
**
He'd been careful to let himself be seen heading out of Denkirit by a couple of night watchmen and a few merchants setting up in the pre-dawn hours, going east toward the Kingdom's border with Ja-Wen city-state, before wrapping unseen around the town and back west. Now, Azira watched the duo approaching the town from the west through his collapsible farsight, gauging his time for final preparations. Not long now, he thought.
In order to be authentic, Azira would give no warning of any kind, relying on the tried-and-true skirmisher's ambush to gain the advantage. He'd seen Bruce's helm, thinking it a clever move to use one with a face-concealing visor grille to make himself less recognizable. It wouldn't fool him; Azira had long since memorized the retired constable's gait. Additionally, he knew well how to deal with Bruce's form of swordsmanship from fighting soldiers trained in the same form. The X factor here would be Melissa and her bow.
Readily dealt with, though, he mused, shifting himself into position. In his left hand, he held one of the batons, while in his right, he held a kind of squeeze bottle, in which he carried a measure of devil sauce. The dressing was one of the spiciest flavorings he'd ever enjoyed, and had a reputation the realms over for being unbearable to most.
As soon as Bruce and Melissa stepped into range, Azira sprang from his concealment in the waist-high grasses to their left, thrusting the bottle toward the constable's face visor and squeezing. A thin jet of the reddish sauce splashed all over his helm, and Bruce immediately started howling as droplets slipped through into his eyes and mouth, his hands flying up toward his helm in a desperate bid to block off more. Melissa yelped, starting to reach for her bow out of instinct, but Azira was on her in an instant, snap-rolling toward her side and swinging his baton hard against the back of her right knee. With a cry of agony her leg hinged, and she dropped the bow uselessly to the ground.
Azira spritzed her with the sauce for good measure.
The goblin skirmisher tossed the bottle aside then, drawing the second baton, and began hammering on Bruce's right arm, as the bigger man began trying to draw steel. Concentrating on the elbow and wrist joints of Bruce's armor, Azira rained brutality down on him. For the space of a ten count in his head, Azira thought Bruce might not mount any kind of counter, but the old man had tenacity to go round; giving up pulling his sword for a bad job, Bruce thrust up to his feet, throwing what would have been a vicious uppercut at Azira if it had landed. Still partially blinded by the devil sauce, though, he'd misjudged his positioning, succeding only in forcing Azira backward.
But this is my opportunity, the goblin skirmisher thought. His backpedal had brought him right next to Melissa; he threw his own punch at her as she tried blinking free of the splash he'd given her, knocking her cold to the ground. Sheathing a baton and reaching out, he snatched her travel bag from her shoulders with a hard yank and began running west as fast as he could, back down the secondary road between Bronze Pot and Denkirit.
Azira heard shouts at his back, but they were already weak and fading ever faster as he hustled away. It was time now for the good folk of Denkirit to do their part, unbeknownst to them, in chipping away at the reputation of Ko Protection Professionals.