With our future finally looking bright, I could allow myself to relax a little. One day, I was at the school and considering taking the day off and tinker in the workshop, when a soldier ran up to me, with alarm written on his face. He was dragging along a boy drenched in sweat.
"My lord! This is Tito, one of the boys you had ordered to patrol the Triangle route. He says his friends were kidnapped."
The boy was breathing hard, his clothes clinging to him with sweat. We waited for him to catch his breath, before he blurted out as fast as he could, his voice trembling.
"We ran into some strange men with weapons in the forest beyond East Gate, milord. They took Max and Yar, but I ran away. I'm sorry, milord."
"Strange men, huh?" I met his eyes. "You did the right thing, Tito. If you had been taken as well, we would've never known about them, and then they could've caught us unawares." I said, reassuring the boy.
I shifted my attention to the soldier. "Lothar?"
"I sent someone to fetch him."
Lothar arrived moments later and we confirmed from Tito that the men, more than twenty, didn't look like a part of an organized military.
"You've done well, Tito. Go get some rest," I told the boy gently.
"Probably the brigands who had a hideout here," Lothar mused.
"Yeah. If they scatter in the valley, it will be a nightmare to find them. The civilians will have to be accompanied any time they leave the settlement. We can't have that. Let's take care of it, then." I said, getting up. "Get the soldiers ready. We march in fifteen minutes."
Lothar nodded sharply and ran off to gather our meager military force.
I turned to the soldier. "Sound the general alarm. All non combatants behind the palisade and the reservists on the walls."
A short while later, I looked at the small but determined crowd in front of me: thirty fully equipped soldiers; men armed with goedendags, Legolas bows and crossbows.
"Some bastards have kidnapped two of our boys." I told the men, raising my voice. "Let's go get them back!"
They answered with roars.
"Jack!" Aprilia came running, breathless, her curly hair wild from the sprint. I caught her in my embrace.
"Come back safe!" she whispered in my ear and kissed me without abandon, to the cheers of the men.
I watched her walk towards our castle, before turning towards the East Gate. "Let's move!"
On the way, we came across one of our men, running towards us.
"Soldier! Are you from one of the hidden outposts?" Lothar called to him.
"Yes, General," He replied between breaths. "From East Gate's mountainside post."
"What happened?"
"I don't know, Sir. We saw a boy running like the wind towards Cradle and didn't think much of it at first, then my partner remembered that there are usually three of them who patrol the route regularly. We went to the edge of the forest but didn't find anything. I didn't want to leave my partner alone, but the boy had looked scared even from a distance, so I came to investigate."
"You didn't see anyone emerging from the forest? No footprints?" I inquired.
"None except the boy's, Sir."
"The boys went deep into the forest where some brigands kidnapped his friends." I told him. "Come on. We'll get them back."
The other guy at the outpost hadn't seen anyone coming out of the forest afterwards either, so we carefully entered it.
The Hunters had taught me how to tread quietly in the woods, so I didn't completely embarrass myself. Still, I wasn't even half as good as the rest of them, so I stayed at the back as we advanced deeper.
As we crept forward, the air was thick with tension. Neither the cool breeze coming from the sea, nor the melodious chirping of the birds brought us relief.
Suddenly, the soldiers halted and Lothar beckoned me forward.
As I skulked through the shrubbery, a clearing came into view, with two tents set up in it's center. Twenty or so men with rather unkempt features, wearing a mishmash of well used armor, were sitting around them. Lucky for us, their horses were tied at the other side, or the beasts might have made some noise upon our approach, alerting the men.
Judging by the tents' size, I surmised there might be a dozen or so men inside the tents. With the element of surprise on our side, we could easily handle that many. Certain that they were clearly brigands, I gave the signal to attack. I waited with baited breath, as Lothar had the soldiers fan out to surround the camp from three sides. At his signal, the Hunters and the crossbowmen let loose a storm of arrows.
---
"Get ready." Miran told his men.
He had been pursuing these thrice damned brigands for almost a fortnight. He had told the client that it would take a fortnight to capture his prize, just to be safe, but had expected to have their heads far earlier. But no, they had to have healthy well-bred horses and a route mapped out for quickly traveling through the Bog.
He would finally pay the bastards back for making him chase them for this long. Most of his men weren't exactly experts at stealth, but the tired brigands hadn't noticed them catching up and likewise shouldn't notice as his men fall upon them.
He was about to order an attack, when he noticed some movement within the forest, on the other side of clearing. Before he could investigate the disturbance, numerous arrows tore into the unsuspecting brigands.
---
Amon had been in a foul mood for weeks. His band had made a big haul when they had come across some bigshot's caravan. Unfortunately everything had gone downhill ever since then. They were chased down by some soldiers, who had then been replaced by a persistent group of knights, forcing them to cross the Bog. Luckily, his men knew how to shoot the bow from the saddle and had mapped out a route. That kept his men ahead of his pursuers and the gap only widened with time.
He reached their hideout, only to find it ransacked, and the men he had left behind dead. His anger threatened to boil over, when his men captured two boys, curiously wandering from the other side of the forest. It didn't take much to get the boys talking. They were refugees, thousands of whom had crossed the Bog and the forest to settle in the valley beyond. There was a third boy with them who managed to flee, but what could a ragtag bunch of starving refugees do? It's not like they could have made proper weapons and armor within a few months.
This could be an opportunity of a lifetime, he thought, as his mouth filled with saliva. Thousands of defenseless people, who would be in desperate need of a protector and leader. He could fill that role, and there must be some comely maidens among them. He was getting a little too old to be running around anyway, and there were no old brigands for a reason. Yes... it was time to settle down.
He was ruminating on his plans when there was a commotion outside and screams of men in pain filled the air. He took out his sword with practiced ease and nimbly came out of his tent, only to be struck by an arrow in the chest. Anger filled his mind as he staggered. Anger at his scummy parents, anger at the men who had raised and abused him and anger at the world in general, before another arrow ended his life.
---
The jungle was filled with cries of men and the whirring of bowstrings. Some brigands managed to dodge the arrows and charged forward like angry bulls, but not a single one of them reached us. The ridiculously high rate of fire of our bows made each Hunter as effective as three archers. They skewered the brigands with multiple arrows before they could even comprehend what was happening.
"Nice hunting," I whispered to Lothar as we advanced cautiously toward the now silent camp.
Then, a man came out of one of the tents, pushing one of the kidnapped boys ahead of him like a shield, with a dagger pressed to the boy's neck.
"Stop or I will cut your boy's throat!" He tried to threaten us, but his shaky voice gave away how scared he was.
"Let him go and we will let you go." I told him flatly.
"If I go the other way they'll kill me. I'm fucked either way!" The increasingly hysterical man almost cried.
There was more to this situation, but I didn't have the time to puzzle it out. That unstable man needed to be separated from the boy.
"Theo?" I asked loudly without looking back.
"Yes," he answered from the forest.
"Let go." I told both to Theo and the brigand.
A sharp thwip cut the air, and an arrow sprouted from the man's wrist, making him lose his grip on his weapon, which fell to the ground.
"Duck!" I shouted at the boy, who thankfully complied immediately.
Several arrows soon speared the brigand, ending his life.
"That was scary." I said, as we took a collective breath of relief and approached the camp.
"Halt!" an authoritative voice bellowed from deep within the forest. A middle-aged man stepped into view, flanked by several hard-eyed warriors.