Chapter 155

Ruca watched, his hands clenched tightly around the hilts of his swords, as the slave caravan approached. The mounted guards at the front caught sight of the tree and called a halt well back from it. Ruca silently cursed as the front wagon came to a stop a few hundred feet away. The tree over the road trick always worked in the stories, but in this case, they’d have been better off with nothing. The timing might have been tighter, but they were few enough in number that they probably could have done just fine. It wasn’t like it took a lot of work to organize just a handful of people.

“Told you,” Val mouthed silently. He scowled back at her, but his heart wasn’t in it. They’d been expecting one or two wagons, maybe ten guards. Not this. Ruca knew he could take just about anyone in a duel, but not while a few dozen other people shot crossbows at him. They were completely fucked unless the strangers came up with something.

Val wasn’t going to walk away though, not with her sister in one of those wagons. They were just hoping her parents and her nephew were in there too. The alternative was that they’d been killed. Unfortunately, the refugee they’d spoken with outside of Kanna had only seen what had happened to Tirana, not anyone else.

It had been nothing short of pure, unadulterated luck that they’d managed to figure out who’d attacked Kanna and taken slaves, tracked them to the next province over, and determined which slave caravan Val’s sister was on. It would be a minor miracle if her whole family was here, and a full-blown one if they managed to survive raiding the caravan to find out.

The guards were making no effort to mask their presence, and Ruca could feel the power emanating from them. The only one who could match him was the man seated at the very front of the caravan, the one with a thin sword sheathed and leaning up against his shoulder and a shield on the bench next to him.

In reality, however, what he expected to happen was his opponent to shift their battle to put Ruca’s back to the crossbowmen on the other wagons, who would promptly put dozens of bolts into him. Neither of them had an answer to that, and Wilby couldn’t possibly outshoot that many enemies. Ruca had no doubt he’d get four or five, but they’d shoot back and the slave wagons would make for better cover than some tree branches anyway.

Then there were the foreigners. It was only the fact that they were foreign that made him trust them even slightly. It was clear they were fresh off the boat, so much so that one of them had actually wasted 15 AP just upgrading a language skill. That didn’t do much to inspire a lot of confidence in their competence, but any damage they did was another distraction that would keep the people Ruca actually cared about alive for a few more seconds.

“What’s the plan?” Val whispered.

“Wait for them to move the tree, attack whoever they send to do it. Once the real fight starts, we need to take out the ranged combatants first. I’ll hold off the ones on the horses, you start breaking open wagons. Hopefully most of the prisoners will still be strong enough to run for it.”

It was a simple plan with a lot that could go wrong. It was also the best he had. Wilby was on the other side of the road, near the tree itself. His part wouldn’t change, as long as he kept his nerve. He’d always been a bit squirrely, but he’d invested heavily into perception and tracking skills, and since he was from Kanna too, it was hard to deny him a place beside them.

“Come on, come on. Do something already,” Ruca muttered. The guards were all hanging back, none of them willing to walk into the obvious trap. Smart of them, but someone was going to have to move into the kill zone eventually. They were far enough back that he couldn’t make out the conversation, but he suspected they were busy arguing about who exactly it was that would be doing that.

“Wait,” Val said. “Did they have spare mounts?”

She pointed, and Ruca saw a horse tied to the lead wagon with no rider. He counted their numbers and said, “Shit, one of them disappeared.”

“Counter ambush?”

“Probably.”

This was all falling apart and they hadn’t even started fighting yet.

* * *

“Sure was nice of them to deliver someone to us,” Luke said, standing over the dead body of one formerly stealthy guard. He’d been expecting something like this when he’d noticed that this one’s skill set was nothing like the rest of the guards. He had too many ranks in [Stealth], [Tracking], [Assassination], [Torture], and [Deception]. Whatever this guy did for a living, guarding a slave caravan was outside his normal line of work.

“You think they’ll send out another one?” Zea asked.

“Nah. This was the only guy I saw with the skill set for stalking people through the woods and killing them. I think they’re relying on him to pick us off one by one.”

“How do you want to play it then?”

Luke considered the caravan for a moment. “Doesn’t look like they’re going to take the bait. Too bad about them not getting close enough to set off those bombs. Circle around from the back and start taking out the assholes with the crossbows? If I burn [Life Surge] right at the start, I bet I can kill at least two groups before they even start shooting.”

“Yeah, and then the other six will kill you.”

Luke patted the enchanted chain he was wearing like an over-sized belt. “This’ll keep me safe, right?”

“Uh… Probably not,” Zea said. “I mean, sure, it absolutely will for the first ten or twenty shots, and then it’ll start to degrade rapidly. Depending on how good their aim is, it might not even last through the opening salvo.”

“Oh. I thought it would be stronger.”

It wasn’t like he’d expected to just charge into an army head-on and be completely invincible. He hadn’t even really thought it would last this entire fight, but he figured he could take out two or three wagons before it gave out.

Honestly, as long as the high level guards around the first wagon were taken out, and there wasn’t some dude who was level 50 lurking inside it, Luke was confident he could clear all the crossbow wielding guards off the tops of the slave wagons. The great thing about crossbows was that it didn’t matter how much strength the guys holding them had. Agility might help them land a hit, but the damage was always going to be predictable, and Luke knew he could take it. He just needed to protect his face from lucky shots.

Of course, the high level guards weren’t being taken out. The ambush had failed simply because they hadn’t placed the bombs far enough back. All they could do at this point was wait for the wagons to start rolling forward again, which didn’t look like it was going to happen any time soon.

They waited twenty minutes before the someone in the caravan finally got impatient. Two of the guards with the highest strength stats road up to the tree and dismounted while two more covered them with drawn bows. Unfortunately, at no point in time did they get close enough for all four of them to be caught in the blast, and the highest level guy they really wanted never left the caravan.

“Want me to take them out? Two’s better than nothing,” Zea said.

“Seems kind of wasteful. Think you could get both of them with just one?”

“Hmm. If that guy takes two steps to the right, I can.”

“Okay,” Luke said. “I’m going to head for the back of the caravan. Give me thirty seconds before you set one or both bombs off. I’ll use them as a distraction.”

“Got it. Good luck. Don’t push it if they all focus on you. Do what you can and get back behind cover.”

Luke nodded and set off in a jog. He wove through the trees, probably visible if anyone with a high perception happened to be looking in the right spot, but there were only three or four guys in the whole caravan with the raw stats and he was hoping his lack of XP presence would keep any of them from even glancing his way. The not-bandits weren’t doing much to hide their own XP and should serve as attention bait for him.

He was halfway there when he heard the twang of a bow string and one of the guards yell out in surprise. Something heavy hit the ground, presumably the body of one of the two guards who’d been tasked with moving the tree. Immediately, a chorus of cries came up from the caravan.

Luke cursed silently. That was not the distraction he needed to get close. Hopefully, Zea would still be able to draw some attention with one of the bombs. He wanted to be on top of the wagon and killing the first four guards before anyone realized what was happening.

Luke reached a spot where he’d have a good angle to rush the back wagon, but the guards were all alert and looking around now. Of course, the trees were the only place to hide, so more than a few were watching for someone to emerge. Wilby had completely ruined the element of surprise.

Then the bombs went off. Everybody turned to look at that, and Luke couldn’t blame them. Loose dirt went fifty feet straight up and the concussive force stripped a chunk of branches on the fallen tree bare. A body arced up with the explosion, maybe still alive. It was hard to tell.

[Analyze] came back with nothing, proof positive that whoever’d been hit was dead. Even figuring that out was more time than Luke should have spent looking. With a thought, he triggered [Life Surge] and took three great bounding steps to clear the trees, then hurled himself a hundred feet through the air to land on top of the wagon.

Either it was less sturdy than it looked or the force of the impact was greater than Luke had expected. Wood gave way under his feet as he landed in the middle of the group of guards, but he was too well coordinated for that to slow him down. His mace spun in a bloody arc, crushing the skulls of all four guards in less than a second and flinging their bodies to the dirt below.

He pulled himself free of the hole he’d made in the roof of the wagon and had a brief instant to see confused faces looking up at him before the smell hit him and made him gag. It had already been bad prior to his impromptu ventilation, but this was on a whole different level. As much as he wanted to heave his guts out, there were still seven wagons ahead of him that he needed to clear out and some of the guards had noticed him.

He had at best two seconds before the first bolts were flying in his direction. [Tactical Foresight] pointed out which guards were quickest to aim their weapons, mostly those in the next wagon ahead of him. The ones near the front of the caravan were still looking at the crater left by the explosion, thankfully.

The one on the left in front of him was his next target. He was the calmest out of the four, smoothly bringing his crossbow around to aim at Luke while the other three scrambled to react to a threat from an unexpected direction. They wouldn’t be fast enough to stop Luke.

The wagon wasn’t stable ground, but the distance was only about twenty feet instead of a hundred. Luke crouched, then leaped to the next wagon.