“I packed a crossbow,” the dwarf said with a shrug. “Got about thirty bolts. I’m a decent shot; maybe we both make our stand up here?”
“You don’t need to die for us,” I smiled at her.
“By the Shadow I do. You risked your life for me. I’m not a warrior, but I’m a damn dwarf. We stand beside our friends.”
“Okay. Here is the plan,” I said after a few more moments of consideration. “You all are going in the back; I’m going to drive the ponies. They will catch up, and I’ll try to talk them down. Maybe I can convince them I’m not who they think I am.” I laughed at the thought and recalled the almost perfect drawing of me on the wanted poster. “I’ll try to attack them first. They might not think that I’m a threat because they will outnumber me, and probably be on horseback. Gratia, as soon as I start fighting, you take as many out with your crossbow as you can.”
“If I’m in the back, I won’t be able to hit anyone besides the idiots that come poking their faces in here.”
“So I might wait until a few decide to check in the back. I dunno for sure, this isn’t a great plan, but it is the best I can come up with. Just take as many as you can out, but try to stay behind some of our traveling boxes so they can’t get a good shot off on you.”
“Got it.” The dwarf nodded at me.
“What should I do?” Artus asked.
“Just hide, and don’t let Allurie do anything—.”
“I want to help!” the elf girl called out from behind me.
“No, just hide, okay? Can you both move back quickly and get ready?” They nodded to me, and then Artus handed me the reins.
“Slow them a bit so we can get in,” Artus instructed as he jumped from his seat. I pulled a bit on the reins, and then flicked the ponies again once I heard both of my friends begin moving boxes around in the back of the wagon.
I decided not to push the ponies as hard as Artus was earlier. The guards had to know that we were in the distance ahead of them, and there was no way that the wagon would outpace a horse. If there was a chance that we did somehow win this upcoming battle, I wanted to make sure that we could continue without injured animals.
“Call out when they are within crossbow range, but don’t attack until they try to get into the wagon, or until you hear a battle up here,” I called back.
“Understood,” Gratia growled.
A few agonizing minutes passed, and I reviewed the locations of my weapons on my belt. Each of my blades were ready to be pulled, and I closed my eyes for a bit so that I could force myself to relax. It had been a long time since I could recall being this nervous for a battle, and I found a smile creep its way onto my lips. I hadn’t even been this nervous for my last championship bout. This was how good Ohlavar Quest was. I was terrified about losing this battle, losing my friends, and losing the progress I had made. The odds here seemed impossible, but I was going to do my best to overcome them.
I had to overcome them because the consequences were astronomical.
This was one of the major differences that was now apparent to me. Astafar Unlimited had no consequences to death. The respawn would be instant, and then everyone could just go back to whatever task they were on. If I died now I wouldn’t return for a day, and my NPC friends didn’t have anything close to that luxury. If they died, it would be forever. They were relying on me to save them, and it added another layer to the realism of this game that made me love it even more.
“They are close, Leo. I count five,” Gratia called out from behind me.
“That is better than eight I suppose,” I said with a laugh.
I heard the hooves of the horses a few seconds later, and then the group of five riders wrapped around me. They drove their steeds ahead a few paces and one of the end soldiers shouted for me to stop my wagon. I followed his order, and the group turned their horses around. Three of the men stopped some ten feet beside my seat on the left side of the wagon, and the remaining two took up a similar position on the opposite side. The men all wore dusty chainmail, had swords on their hips, and crossbows strapped to the back parts of their saddle. All of their Cutno Guard Patrol titles were colored in green, so I guessed that they weren’t totally hostile.
“Hello sirs, how can I help you?” I forced a smile to my face even though it was probably a futile exercise. These assholes must have known who I was, and I hadn’t done anything to hide the weapons strapped to my belt.
“We are looking for three wanted criminals,” the first man said.
“Ahh. That sounds like a worthwhile activity. How can I help?” I asked as I tried to keep the smirk off of my face.
“We are looking for a human that fits your description, a male fenia, and a female elf,” the mailed rider said. His eyes glanced at my swords and then back at my face.
“You will unhook your belt, and then stand slowly from your seat with your hands upon your head.”
“Do you see a fenia or an elf here?” I gestured to the seat next to me.
“Unhook your belt, and stand slowly with your hand on your head,” the man repeated with an eye roll. I glanced to the guards on the other side of the wagon, and then back to the group of three closer to me. All five of their crossbows were still tied to their saddles, and only one of the men, who appeared to be the youngest member of the posse, had his hand on his sword. These guards didn’t think I was going to fight back, and why would they? It would be suicide for one man to fight five others that were on horseback.
I sprung from my seat and leapt the distance between the head guard and my wagon. The five men’s names turned red, and they shouted a warning as I was in mid-air, but my target didn’t have time to do anything before I landed on his horse in front of him.
I’d gotten one of my daggers out before I plowed into him, and the point of my blade dug into the man’s neck where he didn’t have any chainmail cover. He croaked out a death gasp as his throat opened up, and warm blood cascaded over my hand as if I’d just turned on a bath spigot.
I yanked my blade out of his neck and then chucked the weapon at the guard sitting on his horse to my right. He was only about ten feet away, but his horse had danced back a few paces, and the man was twisting in his saddle to yank the rest of his blade out. I was fortunate though, and my dagger made a single horizontal rotation before its point found his right shoulder. The man let out a scream of agony as the blade sank in all the way to the hilt, and he fumbled to draw the weapon with his now injured arm.
The man on my left yanked his sword out, and he kicked his horse toward me with a practiced movement. His weapon was probably about as thick as my broadsword, but the blade was curved a bit like a traditional riding saber. I was facing the wrong direction on the back of the horse, sandwiched between the dead man and the horse’s neck, so I couldn’t really pull my own broadsword out with my right hand. I thought about drawing my short sword that was sheathed next to my longer blade, but I guessed that it would have taken me too much time, and it would have been too awkward to use for parrying.
“Shield,” I said as I raised my arm to block the attack from the horseman. His saber bounced off of the magic shield that my bracelet had produced, and the man growled with surprise.
The horse I sat upon realized that there was a battle going on, and it kind of shuffled to the side to get away from the man who had just attacked me. The sudden movement probably wouldn’t have been a big deal if I had been sitting on the saddle correctly, and had my feet in the stirrups, but I didn’t, so I tumbled to the ground like a sack of dropped potatoes.
I managed to get my feet under me when I landed on the dry road, but the man with the saber came at me again, and he pushed his horse into me as he struck from above. I managed to block his first and second attacks with my magic bracelet, and get one of my short swords out, but the face of the horse was keeping me from making any other sort of counter attack without hitting the animal.
I heard a twang of crossbow bolts from the other side of the wagon, and I sp
un toward them as I raised my left arm. I didn’t really know exactly where the other two guards were, but I felt the two bolts bounce off of my magic shield as if they were light stones.
I jumped back to my feet and then slashed the short sword in my right hand across the flank of my attacker’s horse. I hated to injure an innocent animal, but it wasn’t as if this game was real, and if I didn’t do something about the horse this asshole was going to end me. The side of the beast opened up like a red zipper, and it screamed with agony. Then it kicked its front feet into the air, jumped to buck on its rear hooves, and threw the man from the saddle.
I rolled on the ground away from the frantic horse, and then sprinted the five steps to the edge of my wagon. A half a second later I flipped back on top of the bench, and I was running across the platform toward the other side of the wagon.
The two guards with the crossbows were busy loading their next bolts, but one of them caught my movement out of the corner of his eye, and he shouted a warning when I jumped over the edge of my ponies. My leap carried me into the two men like a bowling ball, and I knocked the first one off of his horse when my shoulder hit him. I grabbed the second man’s left bicep with my left hand as I fell from the first man’s horse, and I yanked hard on his arm while I slashed up with my short sword. The weapon connected with the man’s neck as we both fell, and I felt the blade cleave his spine in half when it passed through. His head didn’t completely come off of his body, but I knew he was dead before we both landed in the long grass because his life bar became empty.
I rolled to my side to avoid another flurry of horse stamping, and then rose to my feet at the same time as the guard I’d just knocked off of his horse. He was standing only six feet away from me with a full life bar, but he seemed to have lost his bolt in the confusion of our melee. Our eyes met and the man threw his crossbow at me with a snarl.
I raised my left arm and batted the hunk of wood away with my magical shield, then I stepped toward him with a drive of my short sword. He was fast though, and managed to shuffle back a few feet and meet my advance with a sweeping parry of the curved saber he ripped clear of its sheath.
Our blades clanged together with the sound of two trash can lids colliding, and I had to raise my left arm to block his counter swing. This attack came in with a little too much power, and my enemy hadn’t expected my arm to magically block the attack. He gasped when his sword bounced off of the barrier that the bracelet had made, and I was able to punch the tip of my blade into his unprotected chest. Well, it wasn’t exactly unprotected. The man was wearing armor, but my thrust cut through the metal as if it was cheap cotton, and I felt the edges of the sword scrape across the man’s ribs before the point found his heart.
He gasped again with pain, and surprise, and I watched the life fade from his wide blue eyes. His health bar turned gray, and then I yanked my blade free with a bloody sucking sound while I pushed his chest with my left hand.
Two more assholes to go.
I saw a flash on my UI and read the brief warning message that my shield had fifteen seconds left. There was a little icon on the top right that I had kind of noticed during the battle with the ogres, but now I could see that it was an ethereal looking shield flashing. It was cool that the UI would help me keep track of the buffs that my items had given me, but I kind of wanted the alerts to be a bit more obvious. Then again, Jennifer had told me that Zarra wanted people playing the game, and not the UI, so I supposed that I should be grateful that they had any alert at all.
The ponies had been surprisingly calm during the battle, and they seemed to be perfectly content to relax in the middle of the road while chaos battled around them. I didn’t know exactly where the remaining two men were located on the other side of the wagon, but I knew that the guy who was still on the horse probably wouldn’t be using his crossbow because of the dagger I’d thrown into his shoulder, and the second man didn’t have his crossbow because he’d been thrown from the horse that I’d injured.
But I had two crossbows near me.
I sheathed my bloody short sword, scooped up the crossbow that had been thrown at me, and then pulled a bolt from the quiver of the man I had just killed. I wasn’t too familiar with the weapons, but I had spent a few hours training with one at the range three years ago when Garf had gotten into the hobby. I hadn’t been as good of a shot as my Asian friend, but I imagined that I could hit a target at forty feet. The loading process was easy enough, and I had a bolt pulled behind the firing mechanism by the time my shield buff had worn off.
I grabbed a few more bolts and pinched them in my left fingers as I held the front stock of the weapon, then I moved around the front of the docile ponies. The men on the other side had been silent, and as soon as I circled the ponies I saw why.
They’d escaped.
Or at least, they were trying to escape. The two men were both on a single horse, and I saw them riding after the animal I had cut along the flank. They had gone off the road, and I probably hadn’t heard their departure because of the softness of the grass. The two men were a good seventy yards away, and I didn’t think that I could hit them with my crossbow at the distance, especially while they were moving.
I watched them for a few seconds and felt relief flood my body. I was somehow alive after facing the five armed men. Yeah, two of them were escaping, but I’d managed to come out on top. My friends were safe, and we would be able to continue our journey to Arnicoal.
“Ahh shit,” I moaned as I thought about the journey ahead. Those two men would be able to get back to Cutno in a day, and then they would send more guards. Artus said it would take us four or five days to reach his home.
I couldn’t let these two assholes escape.
I ran around the ponies again to the two horses on the other side of the wagon. The animals were skittish from the struggle that had knocked their owners off of their saddles, but these seemed like mounts that were accustomed to combat, and they hadn’t moved more than a few dozen yards from the corpses of their owners. I approached the first one and tried to say some soothing words to calm the beast. I’d never been on a horse before, but I’d seen it enough in the movies to know that I just had to sit on top of the beast with both of my feet in the stirrups, grab the reins, and yell “Ha!” to make it run fast. The beast tried to shy away from me as I approached it, but I managed to get my left boot in the stirrup and then swing myself in the saddle while still keeping a hold of the newly acquired crossbow.
“Leo? What is happening?” I heard Artus cry out from inside of the covered wagon.
“Two are getting away! I’m going to chase them down!” I yelled over my shoulder.
The reins were in my left hand with my crossbow bolts, and the weapon was in my right. I flipped the reins a bit, leaned forward, and kind of thrust forward with my hips into the saddle.
“Ha!” I shouted at the animal.
It didn’t move.
“Get going!” I tapped my heels against its flank.
The horse didn’t move.
“Let’s go!” I yelled as I kind of whipped its mane with the leather rein. Nothing was happening, and I knew that my quarry was getting harder to catch with each passing second.
“Fucking move!” I shouted and smacked the ass of the beast with the grip of my crossbow.
The horse bolted like lightning, and I felt my head tip over my body instantly. I hadn’t been ready for the movement, and I was suddenly weightless.
Then I landed flat on my back on the road.
“Shit.” I coughed out dirt and sat up. My ass had taken most of the impact, and I wished I’d remembered to turn on my Rwunidar’s Might stance while I was in mid-fall.
“Oh no! Leo, are you okay!” Allurie was at my side immediately, and her hands were rubbing my shoulders.
“I’m fine. I just fell.”
“It looked like you landed on your nice butt. Can I rub it for you?” Her turquoise eyes pleaded with me.
“No. I need to catch
them, or they will go back to the city, and get back to us before we reach Arnicoal.” I got up to my feet, and exhaled as the blood seemed to rush to my head. I hadn’t felt injured by the fall, but my adrenaline was probably helping manage the pain. I’d probably feel sore later tonight.
“Leo, wait,” Artus raised his hands and stepped between me and the second horse. “Do you know how to ride a horse?”
“No.”
“Grrr. I thought so. How do you plan on catching two trained riders?”
“But if I don’t—”
“I have another idea, but we need to get that last horse,” Artus said as he pointed at the one that was running away. It was about a hundred yards in the field ahead, but the creature seemed to have realized that I wasn’t on its back anymore, and he appeared to be slowing.
“What is your plan?”
“The harness that Gratia’s people gave me can expand to fit horses. We let the ponies rest, while the horses pull, then we switch them out. We can probably reach my home in two days. We’ll all be exhausted, but I think it will work.”
I sighed and then stepped up onto the bench of the wagon. When I stood on top of the seat I could see over the cover on the back. I couldn’t even see the two guards anymore, but I could see the trail that their horses had left in the long grass. Artus was correct, of course. There was no way I could catch those guys.
“Alright. Let’s figure out how to get the horse back, and then attach them to the wagon.”
My three friends nodded at me, and we began our walk toward the escaped animal.
Chapter 9
“There she is. Awww, Leo, I am so happy I get to witness you see it for the first time,” Artus purred as he pointed down the crest of the hill.
“Damn.” Was all I could say, and then I let out a long whistle of amazement.
Arnicoal was absolutely stunning.
The city was enormous, and it spread out from the dark blue waters of the bay it hugged like a white beach. But instead of specks of sand, they were homes, the lines were streets, and the stones were large buildings that seemed to be temples. I had to turn my head to take in all of the city, and I saw that the north side looked to have been built on the edges of the cliffs. Those houses seemed to be larger in size, but it was hard to tell from the distance.
Lion's Quest: Dual Wield: A LitRPG Saga Page 9
