3.
I finished my healing with a spell in my left hand and my mace in my right. I took a few steadying breaths to calm myself and cautiously peeked around the gate. No one. No one that I could see anyway. One more breath then I broke around the gate in a sprint to the stacked stone corner of the Sabrecat. I listened for running footsteps for cries of alarm but there was only the wind blowing through the nearby trees. Only three bandits? Unlikely. I walked cautiously to the door and quietly pushed it open.
Inside the fire was lit and it was warm and inviting. Maybe the bandits hadn’t yet made it inside before I happened upon them! But then I noticed a chair turned on its side and a small splatter of what could only be blood on the floor.
I quietly shut the door and just stood there, listening. I could just hear muffled voices and a rustling sound. I moved as quietly as my scaled boots would allow and inched towards the ladder to the cellar. I was almost there when a loud creak rang out from a wooden floor board beneath my feet.
“Did you hear that?” a mail voice whispered.
“Aww it’s just Sven. Get back outside! You’ll get your cut after we’ve counted everything just like everyone else!” a female voice called.
Hmm what to do!?! “Uh yeah, alright” I croaked in my deepest Nord voice. Stupid!
Now the noises from the cellar were no longer furtive, they were the loud sounds of weapons being drawn and of armored boots running. Not good. Close quarters fighting wearing a mage robe and wielding a healing spell and a mace against two bandits would not end in my favor. The ladder!
I took two no longer quiet steps to the ladder and crouched next to the railing. I grabbed the baluster with my left hand and swung my steel mace with all my strength and using my whole body. My mace scribed a wide arch that would have been easily blocked, if my opponent was not rushing up a ladder. My mace hit the male bandit in the face with such force that I actually lost my grip. I haven’t dropped my weapon since I was a girl! The bandit flew back and down as if he were on springs. The surprised cry from the owner of the female voice was cut short as they both hit the stone floor of the cellar. The Stumbling Sabrecat was quiet again.
4.
I made my way down the ladder carefully. It was wet with blood. The male bandit was another Nord but not lean like the beauty outside had been. This man was big, very big. And he was wearing an almost full set of banded iron armor, except for the helm. A big mistake on his part.
The female voice had belonged to a small Breton woman wearing furs. She was twisted beneath the Nord and was obviously dead. But the big man was still breathing. If you could call the ragged gurgle issuing from his ruined face a breath. Nothing to do now but apply a little of Stendarr’s Mercy to this brute and send him to whatever afterlife awaits bandits.
I stood then and surveyed the rest of the cellar. Blood. There was blood everywhere and not just from my work. Poor Baral was mostly on the bed but also on the floor and the walls. There were bottles of ale with bloody hand prints upon them. Even the gold coins they had been counting were covered in the blood of murder. I then regretted my mercy and wished the bastards had suffered as long as Baral obviously had.
There was nothing I could do for him other than cover his body with furs. I left the bandits as there were and stepped over them to return upstairs to rest and recover. The bolt on the door was broken so I braced the door shut with a chair under the handle and sat heavily at the nearest table. I drank the bottle of mead I found there in one long pull then just sat. I’m not sure how long.
I’ve had plenty of battles in my life as a Vigilant but never alone and never like this.
Despite the possibility that I may still be in danger, I suddenly felt terribly tired. I knew it was not safe in the Sabrecat but I just could not go on. Not today. I popped a few jazbay grapes in my mouth from the wooden plate on the table and moved chewing to the bed. “I’ll deal with any more bandits tomorrow,” I hazily thought as I fell into the fur covered hay and slept.
