Chapter Two: Bandits
"You struggle to keep your footing atop the mast of the flying frigate," Grant read softly, "As you simultaneously dodge the flailing tails of three Scorpion Pirates beside you, and the shuriken thrown by the Zebra Warriors from the deck below."
It was a passage from, "A Perilous Adventure, Bronze Edition", the first of three volumes from the wildly popular Pick Your Own Destiny series of gamebooks that allowed its readers to imagine themselves in the shoes of the fictitious hero, Perilous Spandex. Grant had acquired the book and its companion volumes from Southcliff's bookstore, along with an especially rare edition of "The Hero of Oakvale" and the "Book of Spells".
Knowing the ride to Bowerstone would be long and boring, Lucy had asked Grant to read one of his new books to her to help pass the time. Grant was happy to satisfy her request. The carriage's bench seat was among the most uncomfortable that Grant had ever had the displeasure to sit in; but thanks to the combination of a good book, and the feeling of Lucy's head resting on his shoulder, Grant was able to push the discomfort so far out of his mind that he no longer cared.
"You now regret eating that sixth helping of honey-dipped Troll rinds (lose 4 dexterity points). Will you: Try to catch one of the scorpion tails as it swings towards you, and use it to spray poison on to the Zebra Warriors? (Turn to page 121); Use one of your Will powers? (Turn to page 362); Continue fighting the Scorpion Pirates with your Whining Sword of Hopelessness? (Turn to page 11)"
Lucy shifted in her seat.
"You do know that book is complete rubbish, don't you?" she asked.
Grant placed a finger between the pages before closing the book and setting it down on his lap.
"It is not," he protested, "Books like these are the closest that either of us will ever come to knowing what it's like to be a hero."
She teased him with a mocking expression.
"With a Whining Sword of Hopelessness?" she asked pointedly.
"Especially with a Whining Sword of Hopelessness," He refuted with all sincerity. "No hero would be complete without their very own legendary weapon. William Black and the Hero of Oakvale had the Sword of Aeons, Thunder had his Thunderblade, Scarlet Robe the Murren Greataxe, Twinblade had his Twinblades, and Briar Rose had her Blaster, etcetera. So we can't forget the most important part of the tale."
Lucy conceded the point with a roll of her eyes. Leaning back against the seat to recompose himself, Grant reopened the book. "So," he continued, "Do we try to catch one of the scorpion tails? Use one of our Will powers? Or continue fighting with the Whining Sword of Hopelessness?"
Lucy shook her head in resignation.
"Oh, Grant," she said with a slight smile, "What am I going to do with you?"
While Grant and Lucy contemplated what Perilous Spandex would do next in his adventure, the road took their coach into a small patch of woods. Unbeknownst to them, they were being watched. Leaning from his perch atop the tree's highest branches, Tom hooded his eyes with his free hand and squinted towards the edge of the woods. A satisfied smile slowly spread across his sagging jowls as he spotted the coach in the distance. It was heading right towards him.
"Nyuk nyuk nyuk," Tom laughed to himself.
"What're you laughing at, ya numbskull?!"
Tom jumped at the sound and scrambled to hold his footing. After regaining his balance, he glanced down irritably at the two bandits standing near the tree's base. The first bandit, Dick, was a short, hard man with a bowl cut, a mean pair of dark eyes, and a hard-looking mouth that was always frowning.
"Tom! You'd better not be screwin' round up there!" Dick warned with an upraised fist, "Or you'll be sorry!"
"Yeah!" said the man beside him, "No screwing around!"
"What're you yellin' at him for?!" Dick whirled on the second man, slapping him hard across the face, "Bleeding smartarse! When the boss ain't round, I give the orders round here!"
The second bandit, Harry, took a step back and gingerly rubbed the side of his face. He was average in both height and build, with an unruly mop of thick curly brown hair that grew from the sides of his bald head like the branches of a tree. He also had heavy bags under his nervous brown eyes. "What did I do?"
Dick grabbed a handful of Harry's hair and yanked it hard. Harry yelped as Dick pulled him close and slapped him again across the other side of his face.
"Plenty!" Dick barked in Harry's face before shoving him back. "You just keep yer mouth shut!"
It was then that Tom, laughing hysterically at Harry's misfortune, suddenly lost his footing and came crashing through the branches to land on top of Dick. Harry chewed at his fingernails when he saw Tom lying on top of Dick with the latter's face firmly planted in the earth. Realizing how perilous the situation was, Harry quickly yanked Tom onto his feet, and together they picked Dick off the ground and brushed the dirt from his face and soiled clothing.
"Gee, Dick," Harry said nervously, "You all right?"
"Oy!" said Tom, "He looks all right to me."
Tom was a pudgy man with a shaven head, sagging jowls, and bulging eyes that had an unhealthy sallow to them. He had an annoyingly high-pitched voice and an odd accent that made him sound innocent, comical, and daft all at once.
Dick abruptly brushed his companions aside. Tom and Harry took a step back, readying themselves for the inevitable burst of anger, but it didn't come. At least not right away. After taking a few moments to wipe his face clean with the bandana around his neck, Dick suddenly punched Tom and Harry in the eye. Tom's head snapped back, and Harry doubled over in pain.
"Ow!" Tom squealed, "That smarts!"
"Yeah? Well, it's gonna smart even more if you don't shut it!" Dick reeled his fist back to strike Tom again, but just then a hand reached out, grasped Dick's balled fist, and yanked him right off his feet.
"Hey!" Dick shouted as he dangled in the air like a ragdoll, "What's the big…"
Dick's eyes widened, and his blood ran cold at the sight of the face in front of him. It was long and lean, with bushy eyebrows, hollow cheeks, a square chin that thrust forward, and the coldest and most maniacal pair of eyes that Dick had ever seen in another bandit.
"Uh, uh, uh…" Dick's captor chided, "I'll have none of that chaps. We may be a merry old band of outlaws, but I won't have my men quarreling amongst themselves when they have work to do."
A grin spread across the bandit's face, revealing an enormous mouth full of yellow teeth that had been filed into sharp points. A cold drop of sweat ran down the side of Dick's face as he stared into that awful grin, which had given his boss his infamous moniker.
"O'course," Dick said, forcing a smile on his face, "Whatever you say, Grinner."
The bandit leader's grin widened.
"Very good." Grinner said with approval, "Just what I like to see. A nice … BIG … smile."
Grinner let go of Dick's hand, letting him collapse to the ground in a heap. Dick quickly jumped onto his feet and stood with Tom and Harry, making sure that he was still smiling as he rubbed at the pain in his wrist. Privately Dick fumed over Tom and Harry's uselessness and promised himself that when the time was right he was going to make them sorry.
"Now tell me," Grinner said, crossing his arms over his chest, "What did you see?"
He was looking at Tom when he asked the question, but even that was enough to make Harry step behind Dick and shiver in fear. Dick elbowed Harry and quietly reminded him to smile out of the corner of his mouth. Harry complied, smiling broadly even though his legs were shaking and his knees were knocking. Tom offered his boss a sincere grin as he excitedly made his report. Dick couldn't decide if the pudgy man was too innocent, or too stupid to fear Grinner.
"There's a coach comin' boss!" He pointed towards the east, "Just entered the woods up the road over there."
Grinner eyed his lieutenants for a long moment. Tom, Dick, and Harry were a bunch of bumbling idiots and the most incompetent and pathetic excuses for bandits that he had ever seen. Tired of their clumsy antics, he had entertained the notion of killing them on more than one occasion. Yet somehow, for some reason he could never fathom, he never got around to it. No matter how stupid or clumsy they may be, Tom, Dick, and Harry were the luckiest bastards he had ever met. On at least a dozen occasions he had witnessed them escape from what should have been certain death with barely a scratch between them. That kind of luck was rare and hard to come by.
Grinner chuckled softly as he turned towards the rest of his men. There were more than a dozen present, and each was among the toughest, meanest, dirtiest, and most foul-smelling bandits that Grinner could find. The gang was known far and wide as the "Smiling Bandits", a name which they had earned thanks to Grinner's insistence that all of his men not only be smart, capable, and able-bodied thieves and cutthroats, but that they must also possess a smile that was as wide and handsome has his own. Especially whenever the gang went pillaging, plundering, and murdering.
"All right boys!" Grinner declared as he raised his rusty cleaver high over his head, "Up into the trees!"
The bandits smiled in unison as their boss gave the command. It was a familiar routine: Whenever one of the scouts spotted a coach on the road, they would climb the trees and wait for their unsuspecting prey to come close enough for them to jump aboard, kill the driver, and then steer the coach into an off-road clearing. Once in the clearing, the bandits would then ambush the passengers and kill them, thereby leaving no witnesses while at the same time allowing them to loot their corpses with impunity. Unless of course one or more of the passengers turned out to be a pretty girl. In which case, Grinner and the gang would be enjoying other forms of entertainment.
"And don't forget to smile! Because it's show time!"
The forest echoed with the sounds of Grinner's maniacal laughter.
"So, what do we do now?"
"Let's see…" Lucy trailed off as she considered her options: Try to catch one of the scorpion tails as it swings towards you, and use it to spray poison on to the Zebra Warriors? Use one of your Will powers? Or continue fighting the Scorpion Pirates with your Whining Sword of Hopelessness?
"How about we…" Lucy was suddenly interrupted by a loud thud. Everyone inside the coach looked up towards the sound. It seemed to have come from the driver's seat. Sensing something was amiss, Lucy sat up straight in her seat. Grant closed his book and replaced it in his satchel.
"What was that?" Asked one of the other passengers, a middle-aged merchant traveling with his young wife.
"I'm not sure," Grant answered.
"It's probably nothing," scoffed the second passenger. The words were barely out of his mouth when there was a loud crack, followed by a dull thud.
"That sounded like it came from the driver." Said the merchant's wife.
With a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach, Lucy reached for her pistol and checked to see if it was loaded.
"What's wrong?" Grant asked.
"I don't know, but I've got a bad feeling about this." She replied as she calmly loaded her pistol. There was a second thud, followed by the sound of something falling from the coach. Lucy quickly pulled the curtain back and caught a glimpse of the driver's body crashing into the ditch beside the road.
"That was the driver!" The merchant's wife said as she peered out the window.
The coach suddenly veered to the left, slamming the passengers against the cabin's interior. Grant twisted his body to catch Lucy and felt the air being driven out of him as they were slammed against the cabin wall. Lucy collapsed on top of him but quickly got back up. The other passengers screamed in fear.
"What's happening?!"
"I'll tell you what's happening," Lucy bit back, "The coach is being hijacked!"
"Nyuk nyuk nyuk," Tom sniggered as he watched the driver's body fly through the air and land in the ditch with a satisfying crunch. He loved that sound almost as much as he loved the sound of the driver's skull caving in from the blow of his rusty mace, and the sounds of terrified screams coming from the passengers.
Ahhh! This is the life! Tom sighed happily. He was so lost in his reverie that he didn't realize that Harry was hanging from the back of the coach screaming for help. Dick smacked the back of his head.
"What're ya standing round for?!" Dick barked at Tom, "Get Harry up ere and be quick about it!"
Tom grunted indignantly at Dick's backside but did as he was commanded.
Harry, forever the victim of a nervous disposition, had second-guessed himself at the last moment and misjudged his timing when he, Dick, and Tom leaped from the trees and onto the coach as it passed below. Dick landed in the driver's seat, with Tom landing just behind the driver shortly after him. Harry, on the other hand, nearly missed the coach altogether. It was only by a stroke of luck that he managed to grab hold of the luggage rack and hang on, but now he found himself dangling helplessly from the back of the coach.
"Tom! Dick! Somebody help me up!" Harry cried out, kicking his legs helplessly through the air. Tom's head suddenly popped up above him.
"Tom! Pull me up!" Harry pleaded.
"Soytenly! Nyuk nyuk nyuk." Tom sniggered as he grabbed Harry by the scruff of the neck and deposited him onto the roof.
"Thanks, Tom." Harry said, slapping Tom on the shoulder in thanks, "You're a real pal."
"Gee, thanks, Harry," Tom said with a crooked half-smile.
Harry bounded across the roof and sat down next to Dick. The two bandits took the reins in their hands and steered the carriage onto a side road that took them deeper into the woods. With nothing else left to do but wait, Tom decided to have a look at the passengers inside. If they were lucky, maybe one or two of them would be girls. If there were any girls, Tom silently prayed they would be young and pretty. And if they weren't; well, a girl was still a girl whether she was pretty or not, and he could still have some … fun … with her.
Squatting down on his hands and knees, Tom leaned over the edge and peered inside. There were five passengers in total: three male and two female. The two men to his left were merchants. The ridiculously long twisted mustaches on their faces made that plain as day. The third man was younger, with unkempt brown hair, a light beard, and clothing that belonged to Bowerstone's middle-class. That made Tom happy because middle-class villagers and wandering merchants usually carried a lot of gold with them.
The woman to his left stared at him wide-eyed, then suddenly recoiled with terror at the sight of him. Though fear had drained most of the color from her face, she still had a very clean and healthy look to her that Tom liked. When Tom looked to the right his eyes went wide, stunned by what he saw: short bronze hair, brilliant green eyes, and a snug little riding outfit that complemented every curve of the young woman's body. Tom couldn't recall ever seeing a woman this pretty before. He grinned stupidly as his imagination was filled with images of all the things he wanted to do to her.
The bronze-haired beauty lifted something towards him, and suddenly Tom found himself staring straight down the multiple barrels of a turreted pistol. The stupid grin vanished from his face. He snapped his head back just as she pulled the trigger. The window exploded into a shower of glass shards. The passengers screamed at the top of their lungs, and the horses reared and plunged ahead wildly, frightened out of their wits by the sound of the gunshot.
"Woah! WOAH!" Dick and Harry both cried as they were nearly thrown from their seats. They tightened their grip on the reins and pulled. It wasn't enough, so they dug their heels in and leaned back in their seats, pulling with all of their strength to bring the terrified horses under control. It was no use. The coach rocked on its great leather springs, bucking Tom into the air and slamming him belly-first onto the roof. He rolled onto his side and groaned. This proved to be a very fortunate move on his part because as soon as he did so a pair of holes were blown through the roof where his head and chest had been. Tom's eyes widened when he saw how close he had come to biting the big one. He scrambled to one knee just as Harry jerked his head around.
"What was that?!" Harry asked. His eyes widened when he saw the holes in the roof. He knew bullet holes when he saw them.
"Dick," Harry said urgently as he grabbed Dick's shoulder and shook him earnestly, "We've got a problem!"
"What'd you mean we've got a…?"
Suddenly the seat between him and Harry exploded into wood splinters, tattered pieces of leather, and dusty clouds of seat padding.
"What was that?!" Dick asked between coughs.
"It sounded like a cannon!" cried Harry.
"There's a goyl in there, and she's got a gun!" Tom said, taking a step towards them, "A really BIG gun!"
Another bullet blasted through the roof and pelted the bandits with a hail of wooden shrapnel. The bullet grazed the skin of Tom's round belly, leaving a vertical burn in its wake. Dick and Harry were left dumbstruck by the near-miss, but Tom simply unsheathed his rusty mace.
"Nyuk nyuk nyuk," Tom laughed mockingly as he raised the weapon over his head, "You missed me! You missed me!"
He was just about to bring the weapon down upon the roof when it suddenly got caught in the arms of a low-hanging branch. Tom yelped in surprise as he was hoisted off the coach and left dangling in the air. The pudgy bandit kicked his legs wildly in the air but refused to let go of the weapon.
"Hey!" Tom called out as the coach rolled on without him, "What's the big idea?"
"You numbskull!" Dick growled as Tom shrank into the distance, "Where d'you think you're going?"
"Look out!" Harry cried as he shoved Dick down just in time to avoid being struck by a low-hanging branch.
"What the?! Get off me!" Dick growled.
Harry scrambled unto his hands and knees just as a sixth gunshot ripped through the carriage roof and grazed the side of Harry's head, leaving a scorching hole in his thick mop of curly hair. Harry jerked back and yelped in fright, and was suddenly hoisted into the air by another low-hanging-branch.
"Help! Help!" Harry screamed as he dangled helplessly in mid-air.
"Hey!" Dick called after him, "Where d'you think you're going?"
The bandit heard a familiar clicking sound beneath him. He glanced down through the hole in the driver's seat and saw a young woman with short bronze hair and green eyes. She finished reloading the pistol in her hand and raised the weapon to point squarely at him.
The girl pulled the trigger.
Dick twisted away just in the nick of time, but the bullet took most of his left ear with it, spraying blood across his shoulder and neck. He could hear nothing beyond the ringing in his ears as he gingerly touched the left side of his face and felt something wet and warm. He pulled back his fingers and saw that they were slick with blood.
That was close! Too close for comfort!
Dick searched the woods around him for familiar landmarks to get his bearings. By his own reckoning, they were close to Grinner's clearing, but not close enough. He would be dead long before he reached the clearing. Especially with all the gunfire coming from inside the coach.
Time to fly the coop!
He leaped into the trees just as a second and third gunshot destroyed what little remained of the driver's seat. The coach sped off, leaving the sour-faced bandit to hang from the branches. Dick pulled himself up. He was just about to swing a leg over the branch when it suddenly snapped at its base, swinging the hapless bandit hard into the side of the tree.
"OOF!" Dick grunted with the impact. Stars danced across his vision as he slid down the tree. He seemed to hit every branch on the way down, until he came to an abrupt halt, landing hard with the last branch between his legs. A long and high-pitched squeal of agony escaped his lips. Dick's eyes rolled into the back of his skull, his mind overwhelmed by the pain in his crotch. When he finally regained consciousness, he found himself lying in the mud at the tree's base. He gingerly rolled onto his back and stared up at the rays of sunlight penetrating the canopy above for a long time.
As he lay there in the mud, Dick promised himself that when the pain finally stopped, he was going to find Tom and Harry, and together they were going to make that lass with the gun sorry for what she had done to them.
The road from Bower Lake to Bowerstone was a long and well-beaten path that climbed over a landscape dotted by small ponds, shallow streams, rolling hills, and craggy valleys. From time to time the road cut through small patches of woods that were the last remnants of Greatwood, the once majestic forest that spanned almost the whole of Albion's interior in the days when heroes still roamed the land.
In the centuries following the destruction of the Heroes' Guild, the forest was steadily cut down to accommodate Bowerstone's growing population. The few patches of woods that remained proved to be ideal places for outlaws to hide from the law, and to ambush unsuspecting travelers. Consequently, they became the favorite haunts of bandits and highwaymen alike. Without heroes to patrol the roadways, and with no central government to unite the many regions of Albion, there was no one to stop the bandits from seizing control of the roads and byways of the land.
Despite their valor and dedication to maintaining law and order, the town guards were simply too few and too thinly spread to stem the tide of lawlessness rising in Albion's interior. To make up for the shortage in manpower, they hired adventurers and bounty hunters to seek out the worst of these outlaws and bring them to justice.
Connor was one such adventurer.
Three days had passed since Connor had taken the bounty for Grinner and his gang of Smiling Bandits, and over those three days, his search had taken him along Bower Lake's western shore and into the woods north of the lake. There he found a group of bandits who, after some aggressive persuasion, informed him that Grinner and his gang had moved their operations to a very particular patch of woods on the road leading west towards the city. Connor thanked the bandits by giving them a swift death before setting out.
Thanks to his experience in tracking and hunting in the woods, and his dog's keen sense of smell, it didn't take him long to find the gang's camp. The camp was a dingy collection of hastily-constructed shelters made from the strewn remains of a half dozen carriages, coaches, and wagons. The shelters were arranged in a half-circle against a rock outcropping with a large communal fire blazing in the center of the camp, with a large black kettle hanging over the fire from a crude wooden tripod.
Two bandits lay dead around the kettle, and a third was just barely clinging onto life. The first bandit had fallen to a crossbow bolt in the lung, and the second to a blow that split his skull in half like an overripe melon. The third bandit was down on the ground with quarrels lodged deep in the back of his left shoulder and thigh, desperately crawling towards the rifle that was leaning against the shelter.
It was no use.
Connor's dog was a large and fearsome-looking male Alsatian with shaggy black/brown fur, large triangular ears, a pair of amber eyes that burned like molten steel, and an enormous black muzzle that was filled with needle-sharp teeth. The dog had the bandit's right upper arm clenched tightly in its jaws. The dog growled as it sank its teeth deeper into the bandit's flesh. Blood oozed from the wound, and the bandit squealed in pain. Connor felt no pity for the man. He was a bandit, and all bandits were scum that deserved no less. He would have loved nothing more than to take his head off and be done with it, but he needed to find Grinner and the rest of the gang.
"Where's your boss?" Connor asked in a low, gruff tone that was laced with menace. The bandit looked up at him.
"You'll pay for this!" He spat out between gasps of pain. "You just wait! When Grinner finds you…"
The bandit's threats were cut short by Connor's boot stomping down on his left wrist. There was a loud crunch, and the bandit cried out as pain shot up through his arm like lightning. Connor ground the boot into the bandit's wrist, drawing out more groans of pain from the wretched scumbag.
"Where's your boss?" he repeated, angrier than before. He hated having to repeat himself.
The bandit clenched his teeth and remained silent. Connor's patience began to wear thin.
"Beast … Release." The dog obeyed, releasing his grip on the bandit's arm.
The bandit let out a breath that he didn't know he had been holding. Connor gave him a swift kick to the ribs, rolling the hapless outlaw onto his side. The bandit curled into the fetal position and coughed up blood and saliva. Connor reached over his shoulder and unsheathed his weapon of choice, an axe of the kind often used by villagers to split logs for firewood. It was a plain and unremarkable weapon with a simple oak handle that had been polished smooth by long years of use, and a heavy wedge-shaped blade that was as lusterless as it was sharp. He dropped the axe head onto the ground directly in front of the bandit's face. Bits of blood, brain, and flesh from the bandit's compatriot were still clinging to the axe's edge.
"Tell me where your boss is … Or else I start taking pieces off. Starting with…"
Suddenly, the quiet stillness of the woods was shattered by the distant sound of gunfire.
Connor froze in place and listened intently as a total of nine gunshots rang out from deep within the woods, echoed by the crunch of splintering wood, the wild neighing of horses, and the terrified screams of men and women. Beast pricked up his ears, cocked his head to the side, and listened intently. Then suddenly there was a tremendous crash, followed by the sounds of men hooting and jeering in triumph. The dog began to growl.
A corner of Connor's mouth twisted upwards. There was no mistaking it. That was the sound of a carriage crashing in the woods, which meant his quarry were up to their old tricks. If that was so, then their attention would be focused on their prize instead of watching their backs. It was as good of an opportunity as any to catch them unawares.
"Beast!" he commanded. "Come!"
The dog bounded to his master's side and barked in excitement. Connor scratched the dog behind the ears. A derisive chuckle escaped from the bandit's lips between coughs.
"Heh, heh, heh. You just wait 'til Grinner gets hold of you. He'll flay you alive and use your skin…"
Connor put an end to the bandit's life with a swift downward blow of his axe. The terms of the bounty were clear. Grinner and his men were "Wanted: Dead or Mortally Wounded". Connor preferred to leave them dead. He wiped the blood from the axe's head, sheathed the weapon, and headed out into the darkness of the woods with Beast at his side.
