“Right.” I drew a deep breath to sigh, and immediately regretted it. The camp and the surrounding countryside reeked of burned wood and rotten meat. “What way do I follow the river?”
“Nor’east,” the guard replied. “But you better have papers wiv you. You got a good sword hand?”
“Decent spear hand.”
“Not bad. The boys at Lyrensgrove could probably do with some help, if you catch up with them. There’s a modest reward in it for militia and mercenaries that jump in against these swinefucker rebels.”
New Quest: Assist the Soldiers at Lyrensgrove
An expeditionary force of soldiers want to fortify the village of Lyrensgrove, which occupies a strategic position near one of the few remaining bridges over the Ourthe River.
Reward: EXP, 100 Florin bounty, Warden’s Militia Mark, Bonebreak Poultice x 10
“Sure.” I was desperate for real EXP and cash, and the quest seemed straightforward enough. I accepted and put the quest to the top of the queue in my HUD. “Thanks.”
“Here- I’ll mark your map. Now you should be set to go, aye? ’Ave fun.” The guard nodded curtly, and his communication marker faded out as he resumed his watch.
Lyrensgrove was eleven miles northeast from the Riverbank Guard Camp. On the map, it was represented as a village node with tall palisade walls surrounded by forest. Cutthroat rounded the road and we saw plumes of smoke streaming off into the air through what trees were left. Screams filled the air. I could smell burning wood and flesh.
"Shit! Come on, girl! Let’s go!" I kicked Cutthroat in the ribs and slapped the reins down, which was basically pointless because the dinosaur was charging toward the carnage anyway.
As we got closer, I heard the clash of steel on steel and more screams, women and children as well as men. Animals bellowed. We loped down the road, passing dead animals not dissimilar to small triceratopses. They were full of arrows, their bellies torn by swords.
The first people I saw were kids. Young peasant boys no older than ten, sobbing with terror as they ran from adult men brandishing a motley of weapons – clubs, swords, axes, even a lance. None of the three men were wearing uniforms or real armor. They were dressed in leather, and shabby homespun cloth, with cloth hoods and boots. My HUD read them as [Marauders].
Before I could even get my spear properly braced, Cutthroat screeched in challenge and took off at a sprint. I hauled back on the reins, but this only seemed to enrage her more. I had a second to realize that my Ride skill still wasn't enough. Maybe it would never be enough. Maybe this was Hell, and Cutthroat had been sent to torment me, forever.
The trainwreck seemed to happen in slow motion. We ran one man down, my spear slicing his neck clean through and sending him tumbling to the ground in an arc of arterial blood. Cutthroat trampled the next, bowling him onto his back and running over him with razor sharp claws. But the one with the lance knew enough about what he was doing to set it against the ground as she charged him and jumped, heeding her instincts to leap and slash with her hind claws.
"What is love?! Baby don’t hurt me, don’t-FUCK!" I wasn't sure what threw me from the saddle: the jump that she made, or the horrible, shuddering impact of her body against the lance.
The hookwing screamed like a demon as her momentum skewered her through the shoulder. It wasn’t a fatal blow, but the man holding the weapon couldn’t say the same. Frothing in rage, Cutthroat pushed along the lance and plunged both of her front arm sickle claws into his shoulder and chest, her head darting forward. I’d taken the muzzle off earlier in the day, and now I understood why the Ilian Castle Guards had put it on. With hardly any effort at all, Cutthroat crushed the man’s head and tore it from his shoulders, then tossed it aside to roll across the ground.
I ran to her, and while the raptor worried the twitching corpse, I seized the lance and pulled it free of her flesh. Cutthroat hissed and turned on me, claws raised. As she brought them down, I caught her by the reins, only to be nearly pulled off my feet as four more children ran past us into the forest, crying hysterically.
Cutthroat lunged for them, jaws agape, only to shriek and then moan when I yanked on her reins and punched her in her injured, bleeding shoulder at the same time. Dodging her snapping teeth, I pulled her forward by the nose to the nearest tree, where I tied her by all four reins. “No! Bad dinosaur! Bad! No biscuit!”
Cutthroat didn’t notice or care that I was yelling at her. The children were long forgotten. She was now too busy trying to disembowel the tree trunk.
There were at least fifteen other men fighting beyond the village palisade. I bellowed a Tuun warcry and charged through the gate, jumping over the corpse of the now-headless bandit. Dead peasants lay sprawled in front of burning houses, while others faced off against the bandits. There were no sign of any Ilian soldiers – no plate armor, not even chain, and no flags or identifying markers to show they’d even been here. The ones closest to the gate glanced at me as I came rushing in, their eyes widening at the sudden appearance of an adventurer joining the rabble that was trying to fight them off. One of them got his sword up, but I activated Lunge. The maneuver closed the distance between us before he could get his guard up in this new direction, and my spear took him in the chest. I pulled it out, swung it around, and took the next marauder in the throat, knocking him back to kick his life out in the dirt.
"Quick! They locked up the alderman and the girls in the granary!" The man closest to me shouted. He was older, worn in the face, with dirt-speckled cheeks, rough hands, a crude shield, and a plain garden hoe that he was using to fight the bandits. "They'll burn the whole thing down and kill them all!"
"Fight with everything you've got! Form a line!" I dashed forward, uttering a cry as I used Power Attack, then Doubletap to cleave another bandit through the shoulder to the middle of his chest. Compared to the NPCs, my abilities were terrifying, executed with a power that none of them had. The marauders were Level 4, and after I dispatched a couple more of them, so was I.
My appearance rallied the peasants. Male and female, brandishing whatever weapons they could find, they tried to heed what I'd said and form a defensive line to avoid being surrounded and picked off by the bandits. I heard and saw them fall, but the bandits were spooked. I took a blow from a sword that slid across the front of my Jack of Plates and ripped the quilted fabric to bare the metal beneath. It took a quarter inch of my health, hurting enough to gain back adrenaline points and drive my next power attack. As he lunged for me again – snarling, eyes wild with hatred – I ducked and spun beneath his swing and rammed my spear up through his belly, punching through his rusty chain mail and lifting him up a good half foot before throwing him off the blade with a shout.
"Hyahh!" I was furious, driven by the sight of dead civilians sprawled in postures of agony around the well in the center of the village. Lyrensgrove was fairly large for a village, but out of the eighty or so people that had lived here, perhaps twenty were dead. The older man who had called to me back near the gate ran past me, heaving for breath as he headed toward the tallest building: the granary.
"My daughter is in there!" he cried, and the anguish and his voice was palpable. "Kira!"
The bandits fell back toward that same building, and as we closed in as a mob, me and the old man at the front, I heard someone shout: "Torch it! Torch it!"
"Well, shit." I followed him at a hard sprint.
Chapter 20
There were more of them than I’d thought. The remaining marauders, about twenty men, were gathered around the granary in a defensive group. Even as we closed in, a pair of them swung torches onto the thatched roofs of the outbuildings. The straw immediately began to smolder and then burn as the wave of angry peasants closed in and the lines clashed.
I was barely even aware of where I was: hacking, spinning, dodging, and thrusting, I took a solid blow to my back that knocked me forward and dealt critical damage. I turned to find my attacker wheeling around as a woman leapt on him, stabbing at
his face and shoulders with a crude kitchen knife. I struck him across the back of his head with the butt of the Spear and he sunk to his knees. The woman stumbled back, and I saw that she had taken his sword all the way through her right shoulder. She went to the ground, pale with shock. Another man ran up behind her, sword raised.
"Down!" I kicked her away, before she had time to react, and lunged over her to parry the sword that was coming for her head. The edge of the blade struck my spear and slid down the haft, biting deep into my glove and the back of my hand before I could throw it off and close in. I headbutted the marauder, kneed him hard in the groin, and nearly took a dagger to the ribs as he pulled one from his belt and swung it toward my side. I saw it just in time, dodged it, and the old man with the hoe spun in from the side and slashed the tip across his throat. Gurgling, the marauder sunk to his knees, clawing at his throat. He fell on top of the woman, who began screaming as she tried to crawl out from under the bloody corpse.
"Kill these mangy dogs, you idiots! They’re just sodding peasants!" The man in charge of the marauders was a tall, muscular, sharp-nosed thug with stringy, dark, shoulder length hair. He had a bow, and was shooting into the pack of the village defenders. I burned a healing poultice, jacking my HP back up into the green, and felt the surge of energy rush through me.
“Tarn takhrah, assholes!” I bellowed and made a beeline for him – the commander.
"Whoever you are, this is none of your business!" The man snarled at me, nocking an arrow and aiming it at my head as I ran toward him. He tracked me as I dove and rolled, and I felt the point skim across my back. It took off a few HP, but it didn't penetrate my armor. When I rolled up, I sprang toward him, only to have the spear turned aside by the bow as he struck it.
"You know what's my business? People who murder children." I slashed back with bladed edge of the spear, and this time, the strange metal – shoddy as it was – snapped his bowstring and bit deeply into the wood. He pulled me forward with it, nearly jerking my weapon out of my hands, but I managed to hang on to it. As smoke filled the air, we spun. I freed my spear, and then plunged it underneath the edge of his helmet and into his neck.
[Critical hit! You do 56 damage!]
[Raid Commander is bleeding!]
"AAARRGH!" He clamped a hand down, and with blood pumping between his fingers, drew his sword with the other hand. "I'LL GUT YOU!"
Spear fighting had the advantage and disadvantage of reach. The raid commander seemed to know this, because he charged in at top speed, trying to get inside my guard. I turned his blade aside with a spinning parry, putting all of my upper body strength into it, but he continued his charge and drove his shoulder into my chest. I staggered, the breath driven out of me, and then barked a cry of pain as he rammed the hilt of his sword into the side of my face.
Stunned, I reeled away with a debuff flashing at the corner of my eye. He pressed the attack, sensing weakness. I felt the sword hit me in the chest, slide over the torn fabric and interlocked steel plates underneath, and bite deeply into my armpit. It hurt, and the strike ate up a fifth of my HP, which continued to drain as I clutched at it and clumsily dodged the next swipe.
[You are Stunned!]
[You are Bleeding!]
"Well at least I'm not fucking poisoned this time!" The next sword blows landed with bruising force, but my adrenaline points were full, driven up by the damage. I used the lunge maneuver, moving past him with superhuman speed. As the raid commander tried to follow my speed, I got a firm grip on the Spear and pivoted around in a low arc, stretching out in a wide, low stance that put me under his desperate roundhouse swipe. That took his leg off at the knee.
The raid commander screamed and toppled to the ground with his leg bleeding out in pumping spurts. He dropped the sword and blindly groped at it, rapidly draining of color and passing out before his HP bar turned black and he collapsed.
With the death of their leader, the remaining marauders began to run: five or six men, who were chased beyond the walls by the furious mob. I fought the urge to sink down from exhaustion, and spammed healing poultices. The bonebreak poultices each healed twenty HP, and three of them brought me back to half health. In combat, the items worked instantly, like potions. Outside of combat, I had to pull them from my pack and slap them against the wound for them to take effect. Dizzy from combat, my world narrowed down to a dark tunnel. I was only vaguely aware of the heat on my back, but then the maelstrom of noise resolved into voices and words, and the details clicked.
The granary was burning, and the faint wailing I could hear were the people trapped inside. Worse, the peasants were losing.
“Fuck this fucking-!” I got to my feet, weaving drunkenly, and was promptly knocked down by a marauder. He hit me sword-first, driving his weapon into my arm.
“That hurt!” I snarled at him. I grabbed him by his shirt and headbutted him before shoving him back. He stumbled a few steps away, recovering just in time to take a Doubletap to the face. A couple more slashes and he was down, and I was sprinting for the granary.
The old man with the hoe and a couple of the other villagers were beating on the walls and doors with their tools. The bronze and iron tools were heavily damaged, dented and broken from contact with real sharpened steel. They weren't strong enough to break down the doors or crack the gigantic padlock that held them closed. I had a brief look at the durability of the Spear of Nine Spheres. It was still at 36%, not having degraded at all since I began using it in combat.
"Get out of the way!" I shouted, steeling myself, and then ran at the door. The peasants scattered out of the way. With a roar, I triggered a power attack and struck the heavy, old iron lock with the enchanted weapon.
The padlock didn't give way, but the fittings that held it to the door did. I split them off, along with a good chunk of wood, and kicked the door in. Smoke poured out, along with a wave of women, some of them elderly, some of them barely toddlers carried by their older sisters. They fled into the open air, dragging the wounded and unconscious fellow prisoners. The last to come out was a teenage girl and an older woman who were supporting a coughing, red-faced man who had to hop. His other leg was a bloody ruin, the arrow that had taken him in the thigh still protruding from his clothing.
"Kira!" The old man with the hoe helped them out, taking over from the old woman so that she could sit on the ground and cough. “Bernard! Thank the gods!”
Exhausted and more than a little stunned, I fell back as the heat of the burning granary beat against my face. The entire roof was on fire now, and it wasn't long until all the grain inside would be gone. A moan went up along some of the survivors as they watched the year’s harvest go up in flames.
"Thank the Lord and Lady you came, stranger. Owen here tells me we’d be dead if not for you." Bernard, the old man with the arrow in his thigh, limped over to me and sat down. He was tall and stooped, with a scraggly beard and big ears. His eyes were very green.
“No worries. But we better fight these fires before shit burns down.” I gave him a flippant salute. Owen the Hoe Guy gave a curt nod to me in reply.
Bernard waved a hand, sinking down against the nearest wall. “Aye to that. Go, Kira. Owen. Go put the fires out with the others. This wound of mine will have to wait.”
“It can’t, Alderman,” Kira replied quickly. “A puncture wound like that will fester. Go with the adventurer, Dad – he’ll do the work of two men.”
“Ten men.” I almost started flexing, but we didn’t have time for shenanigans. “Come on!”
There was really no time to lose. The granary could not be saved, but several of the thatched houses were not burning as hard as that building. I joined the bucket line without question, hauling water as fast as my enhanced strength allowed for, passing it over. We managed to douse two of the four that were on fire, but the others were beyond hope. All we could do was watch as the roofs caved in and the contents of the houses went up in flames, while the families that had lived in them wept.
Quest updated: Assist the Soldiers at Lyrensgrove
You arrived at Lyrensgrove to find it under attack by unmarked assailants. After joining the villagers, you have repelled the marauders and spared most of the townspeople.
Reward: EXP, +200 renown, new friendly faction: Lyrensgrove (Bernalt, Alderman).
“Shit.” I spat into the dirt, frustrated, and went to find Cutthroat before she killed somebody.
Chapter 21
I found the huge black hookwing roaming loose. She was ripping apart one of the dead triceratops-looking herd animals, snarling at the corpse as she tore pieces off it. She’d pulled the tree down on top of herself and bitten through her reins to get free.
“Well, at least it’s not one of the villagers.” I sighed, pulling the broken rein straps off the trunk. “C’mere, girl.”
Cutthroat eyed me balefully as I approached her, but food was enough of a distraction that I was able to tie the broken reins together without getting mauled. I slung them up on her neck and left her to finish off lunch, then walked back to loot the sacks left behind by the bandits.
The bandits carried no money, but they had decent gear. I frowned as I collected a bundle of [Steel Swords]. They were all of similar make, stacking together in my Inventory, with the disclaimer that vendors would buy them for a fair price – 75 florints each. It was common for mobs assigned to a single area to have the same kind of trash so that you could grind the area and stack the items for selling, but in light of the Camp Guard’s quest, I couldn’t help but notice that these guys were uniformly and unusually well-equipped for bandits. Part of me wondered if these were the soldiers… but that didn’t make much sense to me, either.
I looted swords and their [Leather Armor] components, which could be broken down for crafting. Once that was done, I equipped Cutthroat’s muzzle back on her in her sub-menu. She squawked with indignation as the heavy iron materialized back on her face, shaking her head and prancing away from the remains of the herd beast.
Dragon Seed: A LitRPG Dragonrider Adventure (The Archemi Online Chronicles Book 1) Page 17