Heirina got up while grabbing her spear wondering if she messed up by letting Zelos stay on guard duty alone… she told him not to do any training, but maybe he disobeyed her. Still, when she looked around, she found nothing aside from the darkness of the night… The others also couldn’t see anything, but there was something in the air.
“Stay close to the horses, everyone. Edea, stay inside the carriage and don’t leave no matter what.”
“Captain… Do you think that they are bandits? We avoided villages and towns even on the way back… so how come we were found?”
“They knew that we would come here to bring back Edea. That should explain that… to be attacked as soon as we arrived on this territory. Still, they aren’t good if we found them already.”
“They will probably wait until we get tired… I can dispose of them with my speed.”
“No, Kaitrine… they probably know what you can do and attacking them in the darkness wouldn’t do us any good. They could have laid traps and fighting in the darkness should be their bread and butter. We will have to stay alert until sunrise.”
Zelos was at the top of the carriage looking around. Still, he couldn’t see anything well because of the light of the campfire nearby. He wasn’t doing anything, so it seemed that he followed his orders and that was why he was able to sense them.
“Captain, should we head for a more used path tomorrow? They might attack tomorrow at night, after all… we can counter their strategy like that.”
“Perhaps that is the best option, after all…”
“Let them come to us, we will be able to tell who they are and who they might be working for that way.”
Heirina considered Zelos’s idea… he had a point, but they didn’t know how many enemies they were dealing with and more of them could join them. Still, she soon realized that more enemies could be hidden in the towns and villages and that would only increase their numbers. More of them would join the enemies anyway, but they shouldn’t make things easier for them.
After thinking about that, Heirina considered the reason why they were being targeted now of all times. The prisoner was no longer with them, so most likely, they wanted to know where he was exactly… Another reason for their attack would be to target Heirina herself to weaken her clan. There was also the possibility that they just wanted to kill Edea as well…
In the end, nothing happened, but morning came and the group looked pretty tired… when they checked the surroundings, they only saw empty hills, but they still could feel that they were being watched.
“The territory until Edea hometown is filled with hills… the enemies will have plenty of places to follow us and remain hidden.”
“We can always force the horses to move a bit more… It is the final stretch of the journey. Once we reach her hometown, we can ask Captain Lua to deal with the bandits, she won’t like there are people acting like that in the territory she is meant to protect.”
“Even if we hurry up, I doubt that we can cross the distance before midnight… if the enemies attack then, the horses will be exhausted… we will keep proceeding as usual and then wait for a chance to turn the tides of the situation.”
Everyone nodded and soon they began to move again. Zelos stayed at the top of the carriage while checking the surroundings… Now and then, he would see some points in the hills moving, but the enemies were smart, they only appeared for a moment and they did that when the carriage was going downhill as well.
“They know the area well…”
“Do you think that they have been here for long, Zelos?”
“Who knows…”
Irlan sighed… that was very like Zelos to say. In any case, they were too far away from anything and the main roads that they could use to gain speed as well… so the scenario didn’t change at all. Soon noon came and passed and the group didn’t find anything that they would use.
“They are following us from the sides as well… we can’t just suddenly move faster and try to gain distance from them.”
The wind was against them, so Heirina couldn’t say for certain… but she couldn’t hear any signs of horses, so the bandits must be on foot. Still, she decided to check it.
“Can you hear horses, Zelos?”
“No, they must be on foot.”
“Edea, what do you know about the existence of bandits in this territory?”
“... I knew that they existed, but they don’t act often… like once every six months. We always failed to track them down since they don’t use horses.”
“They must have traits similar to mine then… but focused on covering longer distances instead of moving faster like me in closer distances… that also means that they are part of the same clan.”
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After hearing that, the group went quiet… running away was no longer plausible. The existence of a clan of bandits was something that was probably kept hidden from the ears of the population since that would cause panic… but it wasn’t far-fetched… Irlan knew that they were relatively common in the past.
“Cover the horses with some pieces of cloth, and we will keep moving even at night. Those pieces of cloth should protect them a bit from arrows or other projectiles. The enemies should be a bit tired as well, so we will make things harder for them.”
At the same time that she passed her orders, Heirina lit two torches and then put them one on the front and another one on the back of the carriage as they kept moving. The horses were losing a bit of speed, but they could keep going for a couple of hours.
“They are here, and I can see their silhouettes approaching…”
Zelos could see the silhouettes of the enemies approaching from the sides and the backs, so everyone grabbed their weapons. It looked like the fact that they didn’t decide to camp made the bandits put their plan into motion… that made sense. According to Heirina’s map, they were twenty kilometers away from their destination, and the enemies would have a hard time realizing the distance that they had crossed at night… They knew that too and decided to attack.
“I can’t see any of them… how many of them are there?”
“Ten from each direction.”
While Heirina was holding the reins of the carriage, she couldn’t help but bite her lips. That number was pretty high. Waiting for each one of them to kill almost ten of those guys was very unlikely. Before long, she was able to see their silhouettes, and they were moving at sixty kilometers per hour with no trouble… even though they chased them for the entirety of the day.
Before long, Zelos saw that they had come with weapons as well… not bows since they wouldn’t be able to stop and aim them fast enough, but with throwing spears. Heirina saw that too and soon made the horses move faster, but before they could gain speed, she suddenly heard a nasty sound.
When she turned to the side, she saw one of the enemies falling on the ground and his comrades slowing down… in the next moment, she heard the same sound coming from the opposite direction, and soon she saw another enemy falling on the ground.
“What sound was that?”
“The sound of someone’s skull being smashed.”
Zelos had his iron balls in his hands again… Heirina blinked several times when she realized that he had thrown those thirty meters away and hit the heads of the enemies, and killed them instantly. Still, she didn’t have time to think about that for long since the other bandits began to throw their spears.
Irlan and Kaitrine quickly left the carriage while it was moving and approached the horses. While the animals were grunting, they blocked the spears with their own weapons. Thanks to their traits, they pulled it off.
“Can you grab them for me instead of throwing them on the ground?”
Kaitrine looked at Zelos, showing an expression as if she was about to ask: are you serious?
“Just use your iron balls, and that should be enough!”
“Phrasing.”
Heirina would have rolled her eyes if the situation weren’t drastic… moreover, she could see the enemies grabbing more weapons from their backs while others were grabbing the ones on the path that they had fallen.
“They aren’t fighters! They won’t get close to us because they don’t have the skills to fight us fair and square even with their numbers! Just block their attacks while Zelos decreases their numbers!”
“You are putting a lot of faith in me when now they are totally wary of me here.”
The enemies were looking at Zelos, and it looked like he was their next target…
While Zelos was looking for the best target to hit with his next iron ball, he saw several of them throwing their spears at him… their coordination was amazing, if anything. Still, their attacks left at least one of them open to counter-attack, and an iron ball flew right into the head of the poor bastard.
In the next moment, the spears rained down at the top of the carriage, but Zelos blocked several of them with his wooden spear… unfortunately, three of them hit his arms and right left, and soon he felt the blood flowing from the wounds.
“... You guys might regret this…”
Zelos grabbed one of the spears and then mimicked their throwing technique and then hit the bandits… the first projectile flew in a straight line and then impaled the first target. The second pierced the leg of the next target and the sound of pain of the enemy echoed in the area.
“Zelos! More is coming!”
Zelos was so busy with the enemies on the back that only Irlan’s warning made him wake up for that attack. The enemies on the sides threw their spears at him, so soon, he found himself surrounded by them. He wanted to spin two spears in front of him to block all of them, but in a single moment of thinking made him realize that it was impossible for him to pull that off… so Zelos blocked the few of them that were about to hit the top of the carriage with the iron balls and avoided the others… Still, the other two of them hit him… and one pierced his right leg.
“Shit…”
Zelos was used to the pain of training, but the pain of his flesh being pierced by a spear was still something that he didn’t get used to. There was no way that he could get used to that… Still, at least he made sure that the carriage wasn’t hit and Edea remained safe. She was their client, after all.
“I don’t have time to aim to kill… Scaring them should be enough.”
In the end, Zelos had several spears around him, so he threw them toward the enemies without the same precision and precision as before… they spun in the air and hit the enemies’ bodies, but not with their tips… some of them actually were impaled… but that had been a very small number.
In the end, thanks to the wounds that they suffered, the bandits felt less compelled to engage and decided to step back… but not before one of them had his back slammed by an iron ball. Without hesitation, Irlan and Kaitrine jumped from the carriage and went to grab that poor idiot. Before long, they returned and hopped on while carrying the unconscious bandit. Heirina nodded when that happened.
“Good job… we should keep going just in case. Do you know how many of them died?”
“Around ten… ugh.”
Zelos suddenly pulled the spear that had pierced his leg… it only pierced around five centimeters, but it had been enough to reach the muscle… just when he had his crazy idea, thanks to that battle. Kaitrine looked at Zelos, but she couldn’t see his wounds well, thanks to the darkness of the night, but the smell showed that they weren’t lit.
“... Are you all right? The smell of blood is spreading quite fast.”
“I will be soon enough,”