by RG Long
He hushed her with a hand and pointed forward.
"Bandits," he replied. "And someone else."
"He's not a guard," she said.
"He's not a bandit, either."
The two outlaws stood with their target in the middle. With their movements ceased, the man became more visible as he stood still and tensed his face into a forced gruff expression like he wasn't used to being angry unless he was being insulted.
"Must be valuable," the one, fatter, bandit said. He pointed to the bag in the robed man's hands. "More than your life, though?"
"Nothing's more valuable than your life, mate," the other bandit, who was taller and thinner, said behind him.
He reached his hands up and lightly touched the robed man's shoulders, causing his target to shudder and jerk away, a hop, and step toward the fat man who pushed him and forced him to stumble away until he finally lost his footing and fell. The bandits stood over him, laughing, hands on their hips, nowhere near the weapons tied down over their shoulders.
"It's clear to me," the robed man said, in a dignified and frazzled voice, "you two were raised without manners. I thought even a bandit may yet be a mother's son, but even a sow would see you too filthy and muddy to be called a son!"
"What's he mean by that?" the fat bandit asked, sarcastically.
"I think a sow is like a royal," the other bandit said. "He's saying we're very princely and proper."
"Oh!" he replied sarcastically.
The robed man backed himself along the ground until he was half-risen and sitting up. He moved the bag behind himself and started rolling up his wide, floppy sleeves.
"Thank you kindly, good sir," the fat bandit mocked. They approached him again, with far worse intent in their sinister cackles.
"Stay back," the robed man said. He sounded not pleading, but warning, and fearful of his own intentions. "I beseech you to stay back! You know not what power I have!"
They didn't respond and simply descended on him. Darrion drew his armor breaker and ran out of his cover. Rosha followed with her spear down. They gritted their teeth and steeled their hearts in preparation to do the unthinkable for a greater good, to save a life, and to dispatch the bandits on the vacant forest road.
Then, from the robed man's hands, a bright orange burst of color erupted out. Instantly the standing four were blasted back. The bandits were charred with a burst of fire and cinders that clung to them and charred their armor and cast a cloud of soot over their faces. They flew back further, into the tree line, while Darrion and Rosha tumbled backward. The contents of the bundle spilled out onto the grass, and Rosha rolled with her spear far away as it shifted and snagged into the grass.
The robed man slowly stood up and shook his right hand while he coughed into the other.
"You knew not," the man said. "And now, you never will."
He huffed an angry sigh and wiped his palms down. Darrion sat up and met eyes with the robed man with wonder. The man looked on with fear. A tense moment passed through the woods as a breeze blew the smoke away and sent a puff of warning up into the sky. An alert to all present, in the know or not, that a wandering Magician was lost in the woods.
Chapter 9
THE GUARDS FROM OLDRUM patrolled around the perimeter of the old outpost forest hill, searching for the lost path that was supposed to lead uphill to the outpost they were directed towards. All potential signs pointed to the thief who stole the Royal Scepter, leaving for the wilds of the forest where bandits made their camps. They were acknowledged as a threat only in potential, and never made raids on the outlying Oldrum lands for so long they were mostly forgotten. The guards were skeptical that anything could have infiltrated so deep into the distant woods and lived there without supply lines or pilfered food.
Then, suddenly, they heard a loud crack that rang loud across the air and into the sky, like the sound of wooden planks being smashed together from a great drop. The sound startled the rear horses briefly until their riders calmed them down.
"What in the Realm was that!?" one of them asked.
"It came from the forest," another guard said. "I'm sure of it."
"Look!"
The guards all turned to face up the hill where they saw a plume of smoke rising high up. In the distance, it was insignificant, but they could tell from the treetops it rose from that it was a large and potent kind of fire.
"The bandits must have some kind of blasting powder," the leader of the royal guards said. "It won't be safe to pursue them if they've trapped the forest."
"We'd have to go up on foot anyway," another guard mentioned. "There's no path, up or down, onto that mountain!"
"We'll return home for the day," the leader said. "The worst may yet come that we may have to send someone out to the royal city and request aid of a bandit hunter."
"The Prince won't like to see us returning empty-handed," another guard said ominously.
The captain turned his horse around, and the rest of the horses followed its lead automatically.
"The Prince would like less if he had no royal guards at all," he replied with a tone of finality.
The company rode off, in the same direction they came, to Oldrum over the hills and plains. They stormed past a fencing of trees that they had not noticed, which stood out curiously for being so precisely level and aligned with one another as if they were not grown there naturally but planted instead as a zig-zagged row. Further in was a trail, the remnants of an old but unused path that led up the slightest grade of the mountainside to the top where the outpost was.
Halfway up that slope, or so, was a gathering of five. Two of them were unconscious and silently suffering a traumatic and explosive defeat. Whether they would wake up, or want to be awake afterward, was yet to be seen. The other three were very much awake, and one of them was gleefully celebrating. The red-robed mage took a piece of slightly seared dried mutton, wiped it off to clean the dirt, and dipped it in the half-broken remains of a preserves jar.
Darrion and Rosha watched him eat it with grimaces. They both recovered from the massive blowback of his surprising retaliation against his would-be muggers but were still mentally transfixed to the stranger for the power he possessed. It was unlike anything they'd seen, and only barely like something they'd heard of, of a powder that could ignite and explore the capital lands used for mining stone and metals.
"Ahem," the man said, clearing his throat as he stretched up his neck to help force the food down, "It's very fine of you to offer your stock of wares to me, sir and lady. Though, I suppose this only indebts me further to you beyond mere apology for, uh, catching you in the unplanned radius of my magic."
"Magic?" Rosha whispered.
She turned to Darrion and mouthed the words again with wider eyes. He nodded at her with a grin.
"Are you truly a wizard?" Darrion asked. "Of the sanctioned schools from the royal city?"
The man stopped eating once the question was posed. An awkward look came over him. He finished clearing the remnants of food from his teeth and swallowed them down before he sat up to speak.
"My name," he began, "is Aladorn. I am a wizard in training attuned to the spirits of fire, and a well-traveled explorer of many lands in search of knowledge."
"I've heard of the wizards," Darrion began. "The few empowered souls strong enough and accepted to use their powers by the Great Houses!"
Aladorn looked pensive about Darrion's apparently brimming pride and wonder. He cleared his throat once more and nodded.
"Indeed," he said. "I am, as you see, a traveling student of the House of Devilknoll. Though I am quite far from home, it is necessary in my studies to explore the many reaches of the world for secrets to the arts of magic and the ways in which my powers may grow."
"It's fortunate we met you, then," Darrion said. "Though, less so as to how, exactly."
"Yes, that," Aladorn said. "I, uh, there's nothing to do about it, I'm afraid. I'd already decided to dispatch the men when I saw you two rushin
g in with weapons drawn and, well, that didn't look very good for me."
"You're an explorer of these lands," Rosha said, "so then do you know of the outpost at the peak of this hill?"
"The outpost?" he said. "Full of bandits and outlaws from all over. There's evil energy to that place and a wicked host of woeful souls living there. Turncoats and savages who've abandoned their posts from their own homes and disparage the service to the Great Houses. Frauds, and fools, all of them!"
"One of them stole the Royal Scepter of the Prince of Oldrum," Darrion said. "Our aim is to retrieve it before his royal guard can do so."
Aladorn stood up quickly and brushed himself off.
"Well, good luck to you on that."
"Please," Darrion said, "We could use your help."
"Hmm," Aladorn hummed.
He reached down to pick up his satchel and hung it over his shoulder with care.
"So you feed me, act fealty to me, and yet you make demands of me?"
He turned and slid his fingers down the front hem of his robe. Then he moved his hands with a flair and flashing movement of his fingers between then and ended with a framing motion around his face.
"If you wanted to demand my cooperation, you should have fed me second, not first."
"You've been up to where the bandits are," Rosha said as she stood, "but yet they were driving you out and tried to steal your bag."
"That's right," he said.
"Why did the bandits let you get away the first time?" she asked. "What are you carrying, if I might ask?"
He became protective very suddenly.
"That is not your concern," he demanded.
Darrion looked to Rosha. She seemed to have a plan. He judged the look in her eyes and understood it, and immediately made his move to join her.
"It very well may be," Darrion said. "We are looking to retrieve the Royal Scepter from the bandit camp."
He started walking and made a slow, wide circle around Aladorn with the intention to get behind him. Rosha, meanwhile, held her spear propped onto her shoulder and stared him down. Aladorn quickly realized that he was being surrounded again.
"A scepter that size," Aladorn said, "wouldn't possibly fit into a container this small. It holds all the unfulfilled ego and ruined dreams of royalty, after all."
"We know that," Rosha said. "We've seen it."
"And so have you," Darrion pointed out. "Otherwise, you wouldn't know how big it was."
"Of - of course, I would," he objected, nervously. "The royals always have things too large to handle."
"But that doesn't answer," Rosha said, "what those bandits were so willing to take from you that your life was on the line."
She assumed a position to line up with Darrion and force Aladorn into an awkward position walled between them both.
"Something bandits would value even when they have a royal ransom on their hands."
"It's gotten us curious," Darrion said.
He was behind Aladorn and striding to keep himself at his flank. Aladorn started to roll up his sleeves. Rosha saw him making his maneuver and tilted her spear forward. She moved in a blur, thrusting it forward, pushing with all of her body, and jabbed the blunt butt of the spear down into his robe, just between his legs and under anything worth stabbing. Aladorn looked up with shock and saw her smile. She jerked her body up and slid the butt just up enough that it glanced a blow against his tender spot.
"Gah!" Aladorn exclaimed.
It was just enough of a blow, barely a touch, but still hard and sudden enough that it stunned him. While he was stunned, Darrion unsheathed his armor breaker and ran the metal edge against the cover intentionally so the wizard could distinctly hear the sound of metal scraping leather. He then poked him, very gently, in the back, which caused Aladorn to trip and fall down, but not before Darrion snagged the strap of the bag and pulled it off his shoulder.
"Damn you!" Aladorn exclaimed as he rolled away.
He recovered, putting one hand instinctively down in the dirt, and held the other one up. Darrion guarded himself with the bag, smugly, knowing Aladorn wouldn't dare to emit a flame against whatever was inside of it.
He was right, and Aladorn scorned him for his assumption and turned his open palm to Rosha instead. She retreated back to what she considered out of range and widened her stance in preparation to endure the explosion to come. Aladorn strained greatly to the point where he shouted and let loose from his palm a small plume of fire, about a foot long, which fizzled out and reduced down to a flame across his palm that stuck close to, but off of, his skin. Like a palm-side glove that was lit and carefully burned away.
"Seems like you can't do that too often," Rosha said. "Or maybe all that jam has gunked up your pipes inside."
"Shut up," Aladorn said, half-whining from how exhausted he'd just become. He heard a light thud on the ground and saw Darrion had dropped his bag, but also that the contents were in Darrion's hands. They were papers and a small metal draught that was half emptied. Darrion pocketed the container and scanned through the letters.
"No, wait, please! You - you can't even read, can you? You... you country bumpkin farmer's boy!"
"I'm an Innkeeper in training," Darrion asserted. "Reading is my duty."
"What's it say?" Rosha asked.
"Please, no," Aladorn pleaded. "It's beyond your understanding. It pertains to matters of the Houses, the Schools, the very Lords of the Realm who I journey at the request of..."
"Your ejection from the House Devilknoll," Darrion read aloud, "is instated in perpetuity for the offenses caused and resulting in the failures compiled in the issue of the warrant here out. Henceforth, and therefore, all practice of magic in any classification by the former wizard Aladorn is prohibited by the order of King Andrer Devilknoll and his Royal Magician and Advisor."
Darrion rolled up the letter and clicked his tongue while Aladorn looked up with grief.
"The bounty for the scepter is two-hundred gold coins," Darrion said.
He took a habit from his aunt Gertie and tapped the paper against his open palm, a maneuver she'd done many times to threaten him with a rod or a stick should his studies or errands slip. Holding that power, and seeing someone in the position he had hated being in so many times, made him feel good.
"Remind this country bum, what the price is for handing over an unsanctioned wizard to a crown of a Royal House?"
Chapter 10
DUSK WAS APPROACHING. The royal guards of Oldrum had returned to the castle gates, unsuccessful and unprepared, to re-negotiate their plans and try to resume their search in the light of the next day. The leader was certain some map or blueprint somewhere would show the way into the forest if they could only find it. Garis saw them back from his patrol guard at the very edge of the territory.
"Hail, guardsman," the royal captain said as his men rode ahead of him.
"Hail, sir knight," Garis said.
"Have any troubles come through this way while we were gone?" he asked.
"None, sir," Garis proudly said.
"Good man," he replied. "I'll rotate you out with someone else from the town watch. We don't need such keen eyes getting lost, staring out into the wilderness."
"I'll respect any appointment given to me," Garis said.
The captain nodded and trotted on, leaving Garis behind to stew in his lie. He stared back out, just like before, to the wilds where his trusted charges disappeared to with all the ambition their young arms could carry weighing them down. He didn't know what became of them, but he knew if the guards didn't find them, they had to still be out there. He believed and hoped, but that was all he could do.
Meanwhile, far away, beyond the sight of the farmstead at the foot of the hill, and just barely visible from the castle keep high above, up the side of a rolling mountain in the distance, under cover of a sunset forest that was aglow with many bright oranges and distant pinks of the setting sun at their backs, Darrion and Rosha followed Aladorn up a steep but climbable w
all of forest roughage. It was just steep enough that trees still grew out of the soil, but smaller and thinner ones that never matured past saplings.
"It's just up here," Aladorn strained. "I believe."
"None of us will benefit from getting lost in the woods," Darrion replied. "So, you'd better lead us properly."
"You already threatened me once," Aladorn complained. "You ought to at least consider that I'm smart enough to know when I'm beaten."
"When will your powers recover?" Rosha asked.
She was further behind, using her spear as a crutch to dig into the ground and hoist herself up, without caring for the sharpness of the blade.
"If I told you, how would you use that against me?" he asked.
"I heard wizards must rest between their powers returning," Darrion said.
Then he held himself steady with a sapling trunk as his handhold and tapped on his side pocket.
"Or they must consume a certain noxious tonic only magically-blessed can digest without sickness."
"Both are true," Aladorn sighed.
He carefully lowered himself forward onto the ground and crawled up to the crest of the nearly vertical dirty wall. He crawled further forward to the trunk of a tree and hung an arm around it to hold himself up.
"The explosion spell I made before was equal to running the length of three courts without resting."
"What's a court?" Rosha asked.
Aladorn groaned with audible disappointment.
"Of course, you've probably never even seen a court before. It's like, uh, oh, what would you know."
"Try leagues," Darrion said as he finished his climb, "or lengths, or some other measurements the entire Realm uses, in cities and out."
"Oh, how could I know?" Aladorn replied, utterly frustrated. "I've never been this far from civilization, and so close to its ideological opposition."
Darrion sat across from him. Aladorn naturally turned away, but Darrion took out the clear, bulbous bottle and held it out. Aladorn simply glared at it and looked up to Darrion to read his intention.
"We can trade for this," he said.
