Chapter Forty-Eight - Bandit Camping

Bit iffy on this one? I don't want to say why because that poisons the responses, and sometimes a chapter I'm iffy on turns out to be fine. Ah, just let me know what you think?

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Some people might, wrongfully, accuse Cricket of being unobservant.

Cricket would like to beat those people over the head with an oversized mallet. 

She was exceptionally very observant! The thing was, she mostly observed things that mattered to her. Like pretty ladies.

Right now, she was observing two, patiently eyeing them both as they handled the situation.

Lucky was taking her first real bit of dangerous combat well. She had certainly fought a few monsters here and there as they travelled, but those fights had been relatively quick things, with Rosario standing nearby. Really, they were about as safe as a fight against a monster could be. Tame, almost.

This had been a lot more frantic. 

Cricket had sweated a little too. If she were caught out in this ambush on her own she would... well, she’d be dead. That bolt at the start had been flying straight towards her pretty little button nose, with enough speed behind it that it would have turned her into one of those zombies.

Could she fight nearly ten zombies on her own? Maybe. Having them distracted by Lucky had helped a lot. She could have, she suspected. She could definitely have run.

Could she had done it with [Bandits] firing bolts into her back? That she was less sure about.

In any case, it was over now. The bodies were lit up, and the remaining, living bandits were being trussed up with expert ease by Lucky.

Cricket knew what had to be done with them. They were too far from any city to bring them back alive. 

But... Rosario had acted rather strangely after she killed that one. The elven woman was more... different? Reserved? Stoic? Yes, that might be the one. More stoic. 

Cricket didn’t like that. She liked it when pretty ladies were smiling and laughing and happy. Oh, sure, a smouldering glare or two would spin her waterwheel but this was different. 

Had Rosario never killed anyone? No, that was impossible. Hundreds of years old, with three titles, and the reputation of a Great General. There was no way.

But maybe she had changed? There was a very long blank in Rosario’s past, between the time of the Demon Lord--long before Cricket was born--and now. Maybe the woman had changed in that time? Become more of a pacifist? 

“Now what, boss?” Cricket asked. 

That snapped Rosario out of it, at least for the moment.

Cricket would sneak into her tent and give her lots of hugs and whatever later, to distract her from her woes. Truly, she was the best bug.

“Let’s distribute the loot first,” Rosario said. When one of the bandits complained that it was their stuff, Rosario glared, and once again the world seemed to still, the air growing warm and thick, though it was nowhere near as bad as it had been.

Was that Rosario’s killing intent earlier? Spooky! Cricket wondered if there were other sorts of intents that the elven lady could use...

“Once we’ve gone through it, we can see about finding their camp. Something about this feels a little strange. Is banditry common in these parts?” Rosario asked.

“Bandits are common wherever the guards don’t act against it,” Cricket replied with a shrug. “This area had a long, dangerous, unguarded road. It wouldn’t surprise me at all to discover that there are people trying to make a profit from it.”

Rosario frowned some more. “I don’t like that.”

“Lawful people rarely like lawless things,” Cricket said. Then she sighed theatrically. “Oh, where oh where is the pretty lawful paladin who will sweep me off mine feet and tie me to a wall and punish me for all of my many, many sins?”

“Okay,” Rosario said. “We’re going to continue, and possibly find these bandit’s camp.”

Cricket straightened herself, taking the moment more seriously. “And then what?” she asked. “Dearest Rose, I thought you were in a hurry. We’re more than a day’s walk from the city, and further still from our destination. Whatever shall we do with this lot?”

“We’ll bring them with us,” Rosario said.

The loot was fun to kick around and look at, but it wasn’t anything that interested them too much. Cricket pocketed the spare knives. None were balanced for throwing, and they felt and looked rather cheap, but sometimes she needed a cheap but sharp hunk of metal to throw around. 

Lucky picked up a velvet and leather jerkin. It was a little too large on her frame, but the sleeveless coat did fit. It was not much when it came to protection, but it was better than nothing, and being sleeveless, it wouldn’t interfere with her swordsmanship. 

“We’ll tailor that on the road,” Rosario said. “It looks like it has straps for adjustments already.”

“Thank you,” Lucky said.

There was a bit of coin. The bandits mostly had bronze bits, but there were a few silver crows. Interestingly, most were from Aerie. Cricket didn’t mention it. It could be nothing.

They left much of the loot behind. Someone would stumble upon it and find themselves lucky, but they didn’t have the room or inclination to carry so much stuff so far.

The bandits had a camp.

That much was obvious, they had to sleep somewhere, and it probably wouldn’t be so close to a bunch of wild zombies. Cricket expected the camp to be, at most, a small palisade tucked in next to a bit of cover, with a couple of tents.

Instead, the snivelling bandits they were leading at swordpoint brought them around a slight bend in the gorge and into the woods off to one side.

The camp was nestled there, behind a stand of trees and bushes thick enough to conceal it from the road. Stones had been shifted and moved and piled up to form an enclosing wall behind which a palisade had been erected.

The camp had a dozen tents, some only big enough for one, others were more like small pavilion tents. 

More concerning was the fact that there were three proper, stone buildings and the walls of the gorge were dug into at the rear, giving the camp more room and creating a small cave for storage.

There were no guards on duty, but there were several bandits wandering around, looking like busy little bees. 

“This is a whole operation,” Lucky said. “Um, what is it you said in our lessons, about armies needing logistics?”

“Armies live on their bellies,” Rosario said. “And this is almost an army. I count...” Her adorable elf ears twitched. “Seventeen people in this camp. Counting with the four we fought, that’s twenty-one members.”

“A dozen tents and three buildings,” Cricket said. “They could house a lot more.”

Rosario hummed, then grabbed the [Highwayman] by the collar. “How many are you?” she asked.

“I’m not telling you s-shit, hag!”

The man screamed as he was launched over the walls of the camp and came down, crashing through a small handcart in the middle of it.

“Cricket,” Rosario said.

“Yes, your non-hagishness?” Cricket asked. She had to refrain from giggling at the gimlet-eye look Rosario gave her.

“I’m going to clear this camp. Stay here with these two. Lucky, you as well. I know that this could be precious experience for you, but let’s not push it.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Lucky said.

They sat back and watched as Rosario did her thing. The woman was holding back. She landed in the camp, swiped her sword, and took off the rooftops of all three buildings as well as the topmost section of every tent.

That turned things rather chaotic as bandits had to deal with her and the fact that their buildings were falling apart.

Lucky gasped, and it wasn’t because Rosario was showing off... probably. It was certainly doing something for Cricket, seeing the elf cut apart entire buildings with casual ease. No, the gasp was because someone stomped out of one of the ruins. A man, tall, covered in muscles, and wearing armour that was several tiers better than what the other bandits wore. 

[Hidden]

The Dirty Hand

[Bandit Lord] - level 8

A Titled? 

The presence of someone like that, just out here in the middle of nowhere, was impossibly strange. A titled bandit on top of that...

The man roared, then launched a punch toward Rosario.

And then there were several parts of him flying away.

Ah, yes, right. 

Cricket licked her lips. That man was a little baby Titled. Her elf was a big-name proper Titled.

And to think that just a week or so ago, Cricket wouldn’t have believed there to be any real difference. Titled were at the top. How could she even dare to imagine that not all of them were built of the same stuff. Some of them were built of stuff like long shapely elf ears and legs and...

The camp took all of three minutes to clear, then Rosario was there, casually kicking some of the bandits out towards the centre.

“Cricket, Lucky, it’s safe,” she called out while wiping the end of her sword clean with a cloth. She had a... look on her face.

Cricket and Lucky entered the camp properly, pushing their injured prisoners ahead.

Things moved surprisingly fast from there. They checked on the rooms and buildings of the camp, discovering plenty of stolen goods, crates, bags, but not very much that they could do anything with.

Then it came time to decide what to do. 

Cricket had a simple solution, but first, she insisted that they loot what they could. Which meant grabbing loose coins mostly, and emptying the coffers they found in the Titled’s roofless office. There was, concerningly, a good bit of paperwork there which Rosario took with her. 

“I’ll send a signal to the Adventurer’s Guild,” Cricket said with a nod. “You two head on out.”

“We could stay with you,” Lucky said.

“No. Shoo shoo. Let big sister Cricket take care of everything... Actually, no, don’t call me that, it’s weird. Especially with the things I intend to do.”

Rosario stared at her, then at the bandits trussed up and partially bandaged in a rough line in the centre of the camp.

“Are you... certain?” she asked.

“Yep! Don’t worry, Cricket has it handled!”

She waited until they were gone, then another five minutes.

And then Cricket removed one of her sharpest knives from her inventory.

She didn’t know why Rosario couldn’t take care of things, but that was fine. She’d do it, with a joke. She stepped up behind the first of the bandits, grabbing him by the shoulder. “Say... what do sea monsters eat for dinner?” she asked.

The man said something, but his mouth was muffled over.

“Fish and ships!” Cricket said. 

She cut.

She moved on to the next. It was hard to deliver a joke when the man was screaming and squirming so much, but she did what she had to do. Maybe the humour wouldn’t reach them, but the best way to go out was as a punchline, wasn’t it?

Whatever Rosario had going on was fine. Cricket could look past it, and do that part for her. That was what good friends were for, wasn’t it?

***