A number of different thoughts rushed through my head, each a fully fledged concept quickly considered and discarded in turn. The first was acceptance. I was pinned by a crazy woman with a knife to my throat, and all I had to do to not get my throat opened was have sex with her, which I wasn't super comfortable with, but it was better than being murdered. The second consisted of logic, as I swiftly pointed out to my confused, just-woken-up-in-a-stressful-situation brain that I was (somewhat) knifeproof at the moment, that in general, having sex with random crazy women who want to rape you is probably not a good idea, and that it'd probably cause some friction between my party members and me.
The remaining thoughts were a combination of anger, visceral rage, and vindictiveness. I wanted to tear her throat out with my teeth for this, not even for the threat, which simply annoyed and mildly confused me, but from outrage at the attitude, that 'I get to do what I want, and you should be privileged to sit there and take it' worldview that just made me want to take her down a peg, rather than just lie back and accept that she could do what she wanted to me and there wasn't anything I could do about it.
I wasn't quite sure where that feeling came from, if it was something repressed from a life of not really being able to deliver consequences to people, or if I'd just gone mad with power and decided to lash out with it, but fuck it, it wasn't like she wasn't a deserving target.
The bandit had taken my frozen silence, as I ran through things in my head, as acceptance, and the hand not holding the knife slipped towards my crotch. Her grin widened as she whispered "Good boy." in a way I'm sure she thought was sultry, but in fact came across more as desperate.
I'd, like an idiot, stripped all of my gear off before getting in my tent, and that had included my belt with the attached daggers. Given that I'd chucked my chain and gambeson into the tent, and I was using the gambeson as a pillow, the knives (thankfully sheathed) were probably floating somewhere around my head, which would be slightly more useful if I knew exactly where, and didn't have my arms pinned to my sides by the bandit. She was only just not lying on me by virtue of propping herself up with an elbow, using it to help keep the knife at my throat steady, although I could feel the blade press into my neck as she shifted, her free hand scrabbling at my belt, trying to undo it in the cramped space by feel alone.
Right, weapons are out due to me being a fuckin' idiot, and engaging what was probably an experienced fighter with my bare hands when she was pinning me down and was armed was probably a particularly stupid idea. That left me firebreath as an option, and I was inside my tent. Although, I considered as my breath hitched, due to the armoured bitch starting to slowly dry hump me and basically slamming the solid edge of her leather armour into my ribs, which while not properly painful was quite uncomfortable, I was explicitly immune to the fire, so time to see if there was a volume minimum on command words, I guess.
Once I started something, everything was going to escalate rapidly, so I took a quick moment to steel myself. A large part of me was still leary to start something, but it wasn't like the consequences of letting this nutjob do what she wanted was better, so I forced that vindictive rage up to the surface. If I was going to do this, I needed to commit. A snarl formed on my face as I let myself revel in the thought of setting this fucking psycho on fire, and with her sweaty face inches from mine, even in the darkness, I could make out her eyes widening.
Under my breath, I muttered the command word for the tent, and the whole tent vanished, the top shrinking at an almost impossible speed as the fabric I was lying on turned back into a cloak. The sudden change caused the bitch lying on top of me to rear back slightly, and in that moment of surprise I breathed in, and breathed fire back out, a pillar of orangey-red flame bellowing into the sky, catching her face in the flames. She staggered backwards, pushing herself to her feet, her head aflame as she attempted to put her burning hair out. The knife scraped across my throat as she moved, but without the necessary pressure to cut through my skin I barely felt it.
I heard the twanging of bowstrings as I rolled to my feet, my back scraping across the twigs and other debris that littered the ground, my hand grabbing the first thing I could as I came up from my prone position. A semi-familiar hammer ended up in my hands from where it'd been lying at the entrance to my tent, and I chanced a quick look around the clearing. My darkvision pierced through the gloom, and I made out a number of different bow-wielding bandits around the edge of the campsite, a large number of them staggering slightly as the sudden brightness of the fire vastly outshone the dim light of the moon, wrecking their night vision. Most of the arrows that they'd fired in a panic had uselessly buried themselves into the ground, although as the rest of my party, woken by the disturbance, fought their way out of their bedrolls and up to their feet, I was that Lidda had an arrow shaft sticking out of one of her arms, proving that at least one shot had hit its mark.
The bandit had managed to put her hair out from where it'd been smouldering by this point, and she glared at me, knife in hand, as I hefted her own hammer. "Fuck capturing them, kill them all!" she snarled, and lunged at me.
Things escalated fairly quickly after that.
At first glance, we were fucked. Neither myself nor Lidda were wearing armour, with Julie and Zahri only wearing the padded jacks they'd gone to sleep in. We were outnumbered quite considerably, our enemies had got the drop on us, and the bandit leader was quite considerably skilled, for a colossal cunt.
Fortunately for us, most of their advantages had been fucked in turn. Their surprise had been wasted by the sudden burst of light effectively blinding them briefly, Sabrina helped to deal with the numbers issue by, before even getting out of her bedroll, catching around half of them in a Colour Spray that knocked a good few on their arses, and the leader was fighting me.
If this had been a fair fight, I'd have probably died within the first ten seconds. She was skilled with the knife she was wielding, certainly compared to my skill with the stolen hammer. Unfortunately for her, I'd picked feats that stopped exactly this kind of behaviour, which meant that the knife bounced off of my skin more often than not, and even when she actually managed to cut me, they were long, thin scratches rather than deep cuts.
I'd been tempted to just set the fucker on fire again, but she was taking up enough of my attention that I wasn't really sure where my allies were, and I'd rather not catch them in the crossfire, and I wasn't sure if I'd set the forest on fire either. That just left melee, an area that she was trouncing me in, although to not nearly as much effect as I'm sure she would have liked. It didn't help her case that she kept getting distracted by staring at my bare chest at points.
Fighting for your life is something that is both incredibly quick and seems to go on forever. The adrenaline and other hormones my body produced kicked my mind into overdrive, and I lost myself in the combat, hyperfocusing on trying to kill the bitch in front of me without getting killed myself. There was a visceral satisfaction to it, the knowledge that every action that I took here mattered combined with the rush of victory every time I dodged or blocked the dagger, all mixed in with the sheer physical pleasure of pushing my body right to its limits.
Eventually I managed to get the upper hand, ducking in and sacrificing my back, taking a long cut across my left shoulder blade to be able to land a blow with the hammer on her left arm with a solid 'thunk'ing sound. As she staggered from the hit, blade flailing at me uselessly, I brought the hammer back around on the other side, driving it into her ribs with enough force that I felt them crack and splinter under the head of the hammer.
I was forced to back off as she brought the knife down in a double-fisted strike that would have lodged the blade somewhere in my spine. She spat a gobbet of blood onto the floor in response, wincing at the motion. Taking the moment to quickly glance around the glade, it looked like things were going reasonably well for us, especially given we'd been ambushed. Admittedly, we'd all picked up a wound or two, Sabrina having an arrow buried in one of her shoulders, Zahri with a gash across her face, and judging from the slowly growing dark patch across the bottom of her gambeson, Julie had taken quite a nasty blow to the leg.
The bandits on the other hand were doing a lot worse. Most of them had had to discard their bows when the party had moved close to them, and there was a sluggishness to their actions that spoke of a long day and a lack of sleep. The (mostly) headless bodies on the floor made it clear that Sabrina had pulped the skulls of the ones she'd knocked unconscious, and the bandit slowly bleeding out on the floor from having a foot bitten off was a good sign her summoned fire beetle was equally vicious. Julie and Zahri were almost back to back, focusing more on drawing attention and keeping the bandits from hitting them, although they had at least one body on the floor by them, and another was in the process of being added as Lidda drove a dagger into the kidney of a bandit swinging at Julie, causing her to scream as she sank to ground, her body folding over in pain as blood pissed out of the wound.
The bandit leader also caught all of this, and her face darkened at the sight of the bandits on the floor. Spitting out another globule of blood, she growled. "Fuck this for a game of soldiers." She turned, and legged it away from me, my hammer swing in response missing wildly. Sabrina stepped into the way to stop her, but the cunt almost negligently dodged the wizard's staff swing, and lashed out with a knife blow, catching Sabrina across the face as she ran. Sabrina keeled over backwards, clutching her face as the bandit leader ran off.
I started to run towards the bandit, but hesitated. If that blow dropped Sabrina, I needed to help her out, and make sure she didn't die. I knew fuck all about how to help with a knife wound to the face, though, so what the fuck was I going to do to help? With gritted teeth, I turned towards where Zahri was fighting. I needed to free her up so she could heal.
My job was made somewhat easier by a number of the bandits, having spotted their leader legging it, deciding that discretion was the better part of valour and making a break for it themselves. A sword swing by Julie caught one in the back, and they made it another few steps before slumping to their knees and onto the floor.
I moved in quickly, basically charging into the fight and slamming the hammer into the back of the skull of one of the bandits attacking Zahri, dropping them to the ground with their brain dribbling out of their ears.
"Sabrina's down!" I gasped out as I turned to the remaining couple of bandits. I caught Zahri nodding and moving off out of the corner of my eye as the bandit started. A quick look between themselves and they turned to leg it as well, both mine and Julie's attacks missing as they bolted off into the woods. I pushed down the temptation to burn their miserable hides into a crisp as they ran. There was a lot of woodland just behind them, and a forest fire was not what I needed about now.
A gasp echoed from behind me, and I spun around to see Zahri helping Sabrina to sit up, the latter touching her now unmarked face. The cleric stood up and started to walk towards me, and it took me a moment to figure out why.
"I'm fine, heal the others first." I said, as I waved her off. At her sceptical look, I reassured her. "Really, they're mostly scratches." Admittedly, some of the cuts were surprisingly deep and painful, but it wasn't life threatening, and the large dark splotch soaked into Julie's gambeson concerned me. With a tilt of her head, Zahri shrugged and moved over to Julie, starting to chant in Celestial as she did so.
For my part, I moved back over to my pile of stuff, and started to dress myself, using my ring to clean off the blood and other mess off of me first. Part of me wanted to help fix up the injuries, but I knew that I had basically no first aid training or skill, and I didn't really have any idea what to do with an open wound aside from 'apply pressure to it'. At the very least, if the bandits came back for a second go, it was worth me getting my armour on. Fishing out my shirt from the pile, I pulled it on, followed by the gambeson and chain shirt, although my hands were mildly uncooperative for some reason. Belting on my daggers and throwing my cloak over my shoulders completed the act of getting dressed, leaving a handaxe on the floor where my stuff had been. I recognised it as the one that the bandit leader had been using alongside the hammer, and scooped it up. It was a well made axe, and I was glad that she hadn't had the time to grab it before the fight, otherwise things would have gone a lot worse for me.
By the time I'd finished getting dressed and armoured up, Zahri had gone around and healed everyone. There were still definite injuries on people, though. The only one who seemed hale now was Lidda, who'd somehow come out of the fight with just that initial arrow wound, and was now gleefully digging around in the pockets of the dead, looking for loose change.
I took a moment to look at the bodies on the floor, including the one of the woman I killed. I don't know exactly what I was expecting to feel, but there wasn't really much of anything. The gore wasn't particularly worse than anything I'd seen in movies or video games (or certain fucked up parts of the internet I'd wandered into as a teenager when I was too dumb to know better), and it wasn't like I actually gave a shite about the people trying to kill us.
My introspection as I stared at the caved in skull of the woman I killed was interrupted by a cough from my side. I looked up at Zahri, who was looking at me with a concerned expression on her face, the gash on it having been healed, although the drying blood did give her a menacing air. With an absent mutter, I cleaned it off, although that just made her look even more concerned.
"You alright?" she asked.
"Yeah, I'm fine, just a little scratched, how are the others?" The words came out a little faster than I'd intended, the sentences blurring together.
Ignoring my question, she just gave me a funny look. "You're shaking."
Bringing a hand up to my face, I saw that I was indeed shaking, my hand practically twitching in place as I tried to keep it steady. Huh. "I'm probably just crashing from the fight." I told her.
Zahri nodded, reached out, grabbed me by the elbow, and slowly pulled me away from the corpse. Not really having any reason to stop her, I let her lead me over to the others, Julie and Sabrina keeping a watch on the treeline as Lidda looted.
"...must have pushed through the night, actively following our trail, otherwise there's no way for them to know where we went off of the road." Lidda was saying, as she stripped the armour and weapons off of the corpse of a bandit, sliding their armour over the gooey remains of what was left of their head. She seemed mildly squeamish about the whole thing, flinching slightly whenever she touched one of the pieces of grey matter, but as she noticed me approaching she did her best to look unconcerned. "We're not that far away from dawn, I think, so they basically spent the entire night hunting us down. Explains why they were so tired when they got to us."
"Next time, we're having a watch." replied Julie, who was rubbing at her leg, seemingly trying to avoid scratching the large scab that had formed over the cut that she'd had, the magical healing having shrunk it and sped up the scabbing process. "Even if it's cold and uncomfortable, and we're tired, I think it's worth it. Yes, they went incredibly far out of their way to find us, and yes, it wasn't a reasonable thing for them to do, but I'd rather that not happen again."
"Fine, but exchange, you have to not tempt fate again. So much for 'there's basically no chance of running into bandits' and 'these roads are regularly patrolled'. You even mentioned you'd heard of these bandits yesterday."
Julie held up the hand that had been rubbing her leg placatingly. "Last I'd heard of this band, it was a report that said they were over a week's travel away from Turrford. How was I supposed to know they'd come here?"
"How long ago was that report?" Sabrina asked, one hand holding her gore splattered staff and the other absently touching her face where the knife had caught her.
Julie shrugged, and blushed slightly. "A couple of weeks ago, maybe? Still, they could have gone anywhere from there!" was her defensive reply.
The conversation died a little bit at that, so I took the opportunity to cast Prestidigitation and clean everybody up. The action caught their attention, and both Julie and Sabrina swung around look at me. I took care to clean their wounds with the spell, which caused them to hiss slightly. Magical healing probably dealt with infections, but this seemed like one of those 'better safe than sorry' kind of things.
"Are you ok, Mahz?" Julie asked. There was a weird tone to her voice that I couldn't quite place, and both Lidda and Sabrina were staring at me.
"Yeah. I'm fine. Just a few scratches." I focused on slowing my words down to a more reasonable tone and speed than I'd used with Zahri, although the concerned looks on the faces of the adventurers didn't go away.
"Did... did she... do anything to you?" A hesitant note crept into Julie's words, and I decided to nip that one in the bud. Letting them know what happened seemed more trouble than it was worth.
"She cut me several times. I buried a hammer in her ribs." I waved the hammer for emphasis. "It was a fight."
"You were shirtless." Sabrina pointed out.
"I sleep shirtless. They took us by surprise, I didn't have time to put my armour on." Both true statements, and an accurate response to the question she asked, although not the implied one. "Seriously, I'm fine." Shaking notwithstanding. "Are you all?"
Zahri chipped in to answer that. "Still some damage. It's dawn soon. I'll pray then. Heal afterwards."
Lidda didn't look that pleased at the thought. "We shouldn't stay here for that, though. They know where we are, and I'd rather they not come back with reinforcements. Best to make as much distance as we can before you need to pray."
Nodding her assent, Julie shifted in place. "If you finish looting the bodies soon, we can bundle up everything with the spare armour and move quickly. A quick breakfast on the way and we should be able to get to Turrford before noon, and I can report this to the guards, and get them to hunt down the remains of the bandits, if they haven't moved off by then."
"If the bandits go back to their camp and sleep, and the guards move with an uncommon alacrity, then there's a chance they'll find the camp before the bandits up and move." Sabrina opined. "Given what I've seen, however, that seems unlikely."
"Better than nothing. Are you happy to stay on guard while Zahri and I get armoured up?"
Sabrina nodded, and kept an eye towards the woodline while Julie and Zahri moved towards the area they'd left their armour in. For my part, I wandered towards the sack containing the armour I'd been carrying with me. I had the distinct feeling that it was about to get somewhat heavier.