by Bruce Sentar
He turned back to Sky “You okay?”
She nodded and leaned in closer to Ajax “It was horrible. First I had to watch you get shot full of arrows. Then, the bandits seemed to spill out from everywhere around the camp. It was chaos. The guards were completely overwhelmed then… then…” She started to break down again and Ajax pulled her close rubbing her back.
“Then Richard showed up and he… he kidnapped her.” Sky finished after a moment.
“Wait, Richard from the starting town?” He pushed Sky’s shoulders to get her to look up at him.
“Yeah, he was with the bandits. Seemed really friendly with the leader.” Sky was trying to read Ajax’s face.
He was shocked. Death had been in his thoughts for the game. Kidnapping? That could end so much worse. He couldn’t help but imagine what Richard would do with Missy. From their last interaction, he could tell the man was deranged at best. He was pointedly fixated on Missy. If he kidnapped her he’d…
Sky pulled him from the dark place he was going “Don’t. He won’t be able to do that much to her. If this game allowed rape, imagine what would happen. One video of it and the whole game would burn in the pyrrhic fires of public opinion. There are safeguards against that, us girls checked. She’d have to agree first.”
Ajax calmed down at that, Missy would never agree. It made Ajax smile at the frustration that Richard was probably going through right now at being denied. They had time, but they needed to get her back.
“Well let's go, they can’t be far, right?” Ajax didn’t care about anything else they needed to go get Missy.
Ajax found Remblaar and Boris arguing when he got close.
“… cost of lost goods.” Borris squared himself after the statement seeming to expect it to fuel the argument.
Remblaar emotionless as ever stared him down. “The guild will see us whole per the contract, I have the utmost faith that…” Remblaar noticed us approaching. Turning back to Borris he quickly said “this is finished, for now.”
Borris looked at the approaching Ajax and started off the conversation like any good merchant “Don’t come looking for your payment; you are now liable for the cost of our losses. You now owe me money.”
Ajax blinked several times not entirely sure what reaction to have. He almost felt sorry for Remblaar. “Uh, No.” He didn’t put any room for argument there, but Borris started to talk. He wasn’t going to have any of that now. “No, there is and will be no part of our agreement that says we pay for lost goods. I died last night. It hurt. If anything you owe me hazard pay.”
Hazard pay must not be a thing because Borris looked confused, or maybe merchants in LR could only do the math when it was in their benefit. Ajax thought he saw Remblaar’s face shift ever so slightly towards a smile, but then it was gone.
“We want to go after the bandits. They took our friend and we don’t want to leave her behind.” Ajax said.
This got Borris’ attention. “Of course, see Captain. They are going to get the goods back. Right?” The last bit was more of a demand than a question. Ajax saw a quest forming though and wanted to strike while the iron was hot.
“Of course we can recover what we find. However, it does warrant Hazard pay for going to retrieve anything.” Ajax said.
Borris let out a greedy laugh and rubbed his hands. “Of course, Hazard pay. It’s one gold for retrieval of the locked box.”
Sky who’d kept quiet the whole conversation piped up “What locked box?”
He scoffed like she was an idiot “The whole reason they raided us was because of it. It’s a small box wrapped in chains of enchanted steel.” Borris held out his hands demonstrating that it was about a foot and a half long and half as tall.
“What’s in it?” Sky asked the obvious question. Though it didn’t go as she’d like.
“None of your business! Return it to our shop in Tyren and we’ll pay you your ‘Hazard Pay’” Borris said.
Ajax didn’t miss the whole return it to Tyren part of it. “You won’t wait for us to get back?”
Remblaar shook his head “It will be hard to get anyone to sit still after just being attacked. It will take some time to tend to the wounded and get going, but we won’t want to linger.”
Ajax nodded to that, it made sense. He didn’t want to waste any more time arguing over it; he needed to go save Missy.
After Ajax and Sky left camp in the direction the bandits had left they stopped. “By chance do you know how to track?”
Sky gave him a look “Just because I have a bow, I must know how to track, huh?”
He shrugged, yes that was exactly what he was thinking. However, her response made Ajax grin. Sky was back, not the weak vulnerable Sky that had been here when he got back. He was glad to have Sky getting back to herself, even if she didn’t really open up to him.
She continued without him. Forcing him to chase after her. “Do you know where you are going?”
“Of course, follow the footprints right?” She pointed to the obvious trail of footprints in the soft ground.
“Oh” Ajax saw them and scratched his head. “See, you can track.”
He got a glare for that and followed quietly as the two wound their way through the hills. The rolling plains they had been attacked in slowly turned into harder hills that supported a growing number of trees. The weathered grey stones that protruded from the soil were making it harder to follow the tracks.
They had been at it for a few hours, with tracks getting harder to follow. A few times they had to stop and circle the area to regain the path.
“Sky, lets stop for a minute.” While their bodies don’t tire, Ajax was getting mentally exhausted from focusing on the tracks in silence.
Sky joined him on his rock of choice, staying focused on the last bit of footprints they had been following. Ajax felt like he needed to talk about last night.
He wasn’t sure how to start. Hi, sorry I thought you were a jealous bitch that stabbed me in the back. Yeah, I know, I mistook you to be bat-shit insane. Yeah, girls loved being called crazy. No Ajax didn’t think he’d be able to say the right thing. The age-old maxim might be the correct way to go here ‘actions speak louder than words’.
He reached out and held her hand. Sky stiffened but accepted the hand and pulled it close.
“You know I wasn’t really jealous, just worried.” Sky started.
Ajax smiled encouragingly. She had broken the ice and spared Ajax the hole that he would have dug himself into.
“I was worried you and Missy were going to leave me behind. Then you told me you were worried I’d leave the party. I just wanted to be accepted into whatever this was becoming.” Sky smiled back.
“You want to join us? Like… Like a relationship?” Ajax voice wavered. First time asking a girl to be in a harem.
“I want to keep my options open. I know Missy, and well I do like her.” Sky blushed “You still have some work to do, but that you first think of me as a teammate in this game means something. I’m willing to stick around and see what happens.” She finally tore her eyes away from the trail to give Ajax a probing stare.
Giving her hand a reassuring squeeze, he quickly replied “You are always welcome to stay in our party. Relationship not required, but I’m sure Missy would be happy. She said as much.”
Sky let a smile slip before clearing her throat and looking away. “Let's get going. I’d hate to lose the trail before it gets dark.”
The two stuck to the trail but the sun was setting quickly, and it was getting harder to see the trail.
They both lost the trail and stopped. “Let's circle out again and see if we can’t pick it back up.” Sky said.
Ajax knew it was the right thing to do, but it was getting so hard to see. “We could stop and rest, pick it up in the morning?”
Sky wasn’t a fan. Her hard stare told Ajax as much. “No, we need to get this done tonight.”
Surrendering the potential argument, Ajax set out circling the last of t
he trail. He crouched to get closer to the ground every few steps, looking for the footprints on the softer soil. As the ground had turned rocky, the patches of soil that left footprints had been getting more scarce.
After a few minutes, they both had come up short. The sun was fading fast, leaving them without a trail.
Ajax looked to Sky, but her shoulders were still set with determination to finish this tonight.
“Sky, we don’t have any light to track by.” Ajax left out their lack of preparation. They should have brought a torch. Instead, he gestured towards the orange glow in the distance to prove his point.
Sky looked that direction and froze. “Ajax, the sun was that direction.” She pointed off in another direction.
Confused Ajax paid more attention to the orange light and noticed it wavered much like the light from a fire. Sky must have noticed the same thing because she let out a small chuckle and smiled. “That’s a big fire for us to see it out here. I’ll bet you that’s a bandit’s bonfire.”
Ajax knew she was right. Time for them to find some bandits.
CHAPTER 24
Ajax and Sky had followed the bandit trail away to find a small outpost in the hills a few miles off.
Creeping up through the dark woods, they saw the place was lined with a wooden wall barely taller than Ajax with only one entrance. Through the entrance, they could just barely make out two large buildings and an oval area with packed dirt, which was currently occupied with a bonfire surrounded by revelry.
The night had come, but the camp was anything but quiet. Ajax couldn’t help asking himself if the game would have changed how the camp operated for the quest or if they always had big bonfire parties.
“Ajax, think you can take out the guy on the left without making any noise?” Sky whispered she was crouched next to him in a way that made her rear incredibly tight in those pants. Not that Ajax was staring.
He could see them now; two guards leaned against the wall in the shadows cast by the bonfire. Both looked like they were struggling to stay standing. The bandits must have been pretty confident in themselves to still drink on guard duty after a heist like that.
“Yeah, I got the one on the left.” Ajax sighted down his fingers carefully to bring the guard down with one well placed critical.
“3…2…1…Now” Sky said under her breath.
Both bandits dropped to the ground together. Ajax lifted up his hand to pause Sky, and held his breath for someone to come running. Ajax couldn’t help but worry about what they would do if the bandits suddenly flooded out of the camp to meet them.
However no one came. The two hurried out to drag them into the woods before they were noticed. Someone would eventually notice, but the absence might cause more delay on the bandits setting off the alarm. Well, at least more of a delay than two bleeding corpses.
The guards had been fully equipped with basic gear. Though not much by the standards of end game, the two corpses felt like a treasure trove for Ajax right now. The two were busy examining their new gear as soon as they were hidden from the bandit camp again.
“So now that we are here… How are we going to take a camp of bandits?” Ajax stopped evaluating the guard’s boots long enough to look up and gauge Sky’s reaction.
“I had hoped that we could pull away small groups and whittle them down… but…” Sky looked hesitant, and Ajax knew it wasn’t just the big group at the campfire.
Ajax finished for her “It’s too real right? That’s something we do in games to clear a large camp, but here… No, probably anything that doesn’t go down in a few seconds will call an alarm.”
Sky nodded in agreement “Two strategies for that. One, we kill them before they can call for help, or we let them chase us far enough away that they can’t be heard.” Sky said.
Ajax nodded at the options. He thought the first would be the lowest risk, but could they really down every bandit before they could call out? No, they got lucky that neither of them missed the guards at the front gate.
Ajax needed a better idea, so he went back to looting. He always thought better when his hands were busy. As he was pulling off a coin pouch he’d found under the man’s leather armor, he remembered looting the goblins and the vial of goblin poison he’d found. That was it, that was how they were going to clear this camp.
“We need something larger… what if we poisoned the beer?” Ajax looked at Sky for confirmation.
Her face was hidden in the shadows, but he thought he saw a bit of a feral grin flash through her expression. “Yeah, that’ll do more than we could by picking off targets. We need to get to the beer.” Her voice cold, she almsot sounded feral as she said in a quiet whisper “I hope Richard is drinking the beer.”
Ajax shuddered and tried to hide it by coughing into his hand. Right, He definitely didn’t want to piss Sky off.
They gathered up the rest of the loot to split later as they snuck around the edge of the fence to the shadows of the first building. Ajax peered around the corner to scan the campfire. On the far side of the fire he could make out a person slumped on the ground. Two of Richard’s contract slaves were standing guard.
Ajax couldn’t find Richard though. The man was absent, but there was a bandit that appeared to be the leader. He wasn’t a huge man, but his presence carried over the revelry as he sat trying to look bored and playing with a cup in his hands. He had two women teasing his dreadlocks and massaging his back.
When Ajax turned back to Sky’s questioning gaze, he explained what he saw. She chewed her lip, looking to him for a plan.
He was spared from having one when the crowd at the bonfire erupted with cheers. Sky took a look this time before turning back to Ajax. “I think we have a plan.”
Ajax’s raised brow got him an answer “The cheers were for a guy coming out of this building with a keg and another guy with a big plate of food.” Sky said.
“Well, let's see if there is a back door and get in there,” Ajax said.
Sky wasted no time and went around to the other side of the building, but no such luck. It seemed bandits didn’t build to fire code and only had one entrance facing the bonfire.
The two had thought there might be a need for a disguise, which was why they’d left the two guards naked in the bushes. Dressed with the leathers from the bandits, they made their way into the kitchen.
Peering inside it was an open area with messy tables and a counter that had a kitchen behind it, like a medieval version of a college dining hall. If that’s what this building was, then the larger one was probably the bandit dorms or more properly, the barracks.
Looking around, Ajax didn’t see anyone. They needed to get this done so they could hurry up and rescue Missy. Something didn’t feel right.
Ajax had been ready to barge into the kitchen when he heard the clang of pots back behind the counter and a voice swearing up a storm. Sky hesitated, with her hand on the door. A nod from Ajax and she cracked it open for the two to slip in.
A large red-faced man with a comical stained apron stating ‘never trust a thin chef’ was in the back ordering around a few younger men. They looked like they were preparing a meal getting big pots set up and starting to fill a few with water. Ajax didn’t miss that all of them had bleary red eyes and a few still swayed from the night of heavy drinking.
The ones doing the cooking seemed to be the new recruits. Maybe they could use this.
Ajax stepped forward, Sky following suit. She had tied up her hair in the helmet she’d looted from one of the guards. She’d also managed to somehow to hide her breasts, which was a feat Ajax couldn’t wrap his head around.
“Who ‘da fook are you!” The red-faced man pointed with a cleaver and roared while the rest of the staff gave mixed reactions of dismissal and curiosity at the sudden intrusion.
CHAPTER 25
Ajax froze at the man’s shout. He put his hand at his side forming a gun with his fingers.
Sky, however, had other ideas and grabbed his hand befor
e he started shooting. Luckily none of the bandits in the kitchen seemed to notice.
He now noticed the large man was squinting at them as he addressed them. Sky spoke first “I’m Sky..ler, Skyler, came a few days ago. Don’t you remember me?” She said, trying to make her voice rough.
“Ah yeah, I ‘members you. Help Sid wit’ the stew.” He nudged his chin over to a young man wrestling ingredients into a large pot.
Ajax for his part was completely ignored. He was starting to think Chef here couldn’t see his fingers in front of his face as the man scanned the room squinting hard enough to pop his eyes out.
