“Do you have a plan?” Hilesia asked Chance.

Snarl cackle-laughed in reply. “Since when have we ever done that before?”

“We may need to this time,” Chance noted slowly. “What else can you tell us of them?”

“All told there are at least four hundred of them around, spread between the various bands. Maybe even more. That is little more than a rough estimate though,” she added.

“There are still a lot of them, no matter how you look at it.”

“Yes,” she agreed. “If there is any good news to be had from the situation, they do not work together, and are even hostile to each other. There is not enough to go around and so they compete for spoils. If they were to ever unify, though, it would be even worse for us than it is already.” Hilesia pointed to a spot on the map, off to the east of the town, where one of the red marks was located, along the road to the east beside the river. “This here is where one of the largest of the bands is, with well over one hundred men in it. They are led by a particularly nasty piece of work, named Vesaria. She has a reputation for cruelty and can not be reasoned with or bargained with."

Chance frowned at Hilesia’s words. It narrowed his options severely. If talking was of no use, there was not much the four of them could do against so many. “That is a lot of bandits,” he noted.

“She started out with only a few,” Hilesia went on, “But has been slowly growing in power, taking over other bands and adding their numbers to her own. She is our main threat, and it will only continue to grow. She styles herself as the Queen of Yereshalaz, which should give you some idea as to the extent of her ambitions.”

“You would almost need an army to take her on,” Snarl mused.

“Which we don’t have,” Chance responded. “And even if we did, it would lead to far too many deaths.”

“There will be death, no matter what happens,” Hilesia told them. “It was her men that were involved in the attack yesterday, and they have been carrying out more and more attacks like that of late.”

“And the other bands?” Chance asked.

“They number anywhere between a dozen men and fifty. They are not as much of a threat as Vesaria, and are almost as wary of her as we are. If she were not around, it might even be possible to handle them, or at least reason with them. Many are just poor folk who lost everything and saw no other options but to take up banditry. Not Vesaria though. She sought out the life, and many of those who were with her initially were also the same."

“Can we borrow the map?” Chance asked.

Hilesia nodded and handed it over to Chance. “If you are able to handle this, we will never be able to thank you enough.”

Chance smiled wryly. “We have to actually deal with them first, and that is no easy task. We shall have to think, and make plans, before we are able to do anything.” He folded up the map and put it in a pocket. “Hopefully we will be able to give you some good news before too long.”

“Hopefully, or it may be to Vesaria that you end up reporting to.”

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They left the mayor’s office, heading back out of the building and returned to the town square.

This one may be beyond just us, Shags noted once they were back outside. We were lucky last time, and I would not count on that against this Vesaria, or we shall end up dead.

“You might be right,” Chance responded. He looked around the square, at the desperation on display. The purse of gold coins that Maedryn had given him weighed heavy in his pocket. He had come to the town to use it for trade, but that couldn’t be anymore. The people had nothing to trade, and even if they did, they needed it far more than he did. “We can’t do nothing though,” he announced, a certain determination creeping into his voice.

No, we can not.

Chance started through the crowds, returning to Elmesu’s compound, his thoughts churning as they walked. There was only one way ahead that he could see, and that was one he was reluctant to take. “You stay here,” he told the others when they were back in their corner of the courtyard.

“Not planning anything crazy without us, are you?” Snarl grinned.

“Hardly. I want to take a look at the places where the bandits are lairing, to judge just what it is we are facing, and I can do that best from up in the air, where they will not notice me.”

“And what do you want us to do in the meantime?” Yrip asked.

“It's probably best that you stayed here, I think,” Chance responded. “If you head out into the town, there might be some misunderstandings, and that is the last thing that we want.”

Snarl grinned even wider at that. “It would be their last misunderstanding,” he observed. “But we will stay here. There might be something we can do to help out.”

“I am sure Elmesu can find something to keep you out of trouble,” Chance said as he picked up his staff. He focused on the task at hand and whispered the word that triggered the change, shifting into the familiar form of the wedge-tail eagle. He lifted up from the courtyard and soared into the air, to spiral up above the town, rising up on the thermals that came from it. The crowds in the courtyard had reacted with a startled surprise at the appearance of so large an eagle, and no doubt they would talk about it, but they knew what he was already.

He continued rising and drifting along, headed towards the east, his sharp eyed sight studying the land below as he went. He could see the river running along, an the main road that led from the town following it. There were small villages spread around the town out upon the plains, but they looked, for the most part, abandoned, as did the fields around them. The one that were not held bandits that had taken them over, those that had once lived their having fled.

Going by what he had seen on the map that Hilesia had provided, he flew towards where Vesaria was said to be, as she was the main and biggest threat to the town. The more that he could learn of her, the better.

While it was some distance to her camp, it was easy flying, as the day was bright and clear and the weather calm. A village lay along the river, straddling the road, and there it was that Vesaria had established herself. To travel from Estethford towards the other towns further to the east would require going through her territory.

As he drifted in closer, he could see numerous men in and around the village. They looked well dug in there, with pits dug around the perimeter of the village, with fields of sharpened stakes before it and stout wooden walls protecting it. There were even watchtowers established to look over the approaches to it, and men on guard duty in them. There would be no sneaking into the village, no possibility of surprise. He let himself come in closer to the village, to get a better look at it and what lay within.

A number of men were training in the middle of the village, thrusting at bundles of straw with spears. Others were shooting at targets with bows. A woman in a red cloak and with long, dark hair stood observing it all. Beside her stood a shorter figure, one in a dark hood and cloak so that Chance could observe nothing of them. Just looking upon them gave him an uneasy feeling, a chill.

The woman raised her hand and the training came to a halt. Then the bowmen were stringing arrows to their bows again and raising them. They released and a flurry of arrows arced skywards, rising towards where Chance circled above.