Hard Days and Cold Nights

The carriage creaked to a halt as the coachman hauled on the reigns. The four horses neighed and stamped their feet in frustration, iron horse shoes sparking on chips of flint in the road way. The big horse’s breath steamed in the cold winter air even though the lazily fall snowflakes had yet to coat the ground. The pine and oak of the Drakwal too had yet to take their coat of white, the anemic heat of the sun enough to ward off the flakes until the chill of night set in. That should be an hour or two yet, even in these northern latitudes. Even so they cast long shadows over the road, a remote section of switchback that climbed out of an isolated valley. The cause of the abrupt halt was immediately apparent. A moderate sized tree lay across the road, obstructing passage out of the valley. Judging by the green and healthy look of leaves and bark, it had obviously not been felled by the slow decay of old age or the vicissitudes of weather.
 
The coachmen let out a curse which morphed into a cry of alarm as a half dozen figures dressed in mismatched armor and threadbare cloaks emerged from the treeline hefting rust splotched weapons and an assortment of firearms that looked like they were as dangerous to the users as to their intended victims. All had looks of feral triumph on their unshaven faces. The leader, a muscular man with a dirty blond beard and a great sword slung over his back sauntered forward, a triumphant smirk on his face that showed off surprisingly good teeth given the scarred and battered shape he was in.

“Thought you could use the snow to escape did you Gräfin,” he mocked. A slim hand pulled back the curtain to reveal the woman inside. While she was unquestionably beautiful, graceful and poised, she most certainly wasn’t Gräfin Brunhilde Von Dounkebruk who possesed none of these qualities. She was dressed in imperial fashion,  a corseted shirt of red and cream stripe, though she had forgone the traditional long skirt in favor of tight trousers of dark brown fabric and long boots like those favored by pistoliers. A rapier, of find quality but with its once fine hilt worn by long use was belted around her waist, along with a pair of long cavalry pistols. Another marked departure from the noble Lady of Donkebruke. There was a forgien caste to her, a slight angularity of features and a wavy quality to her dark hair that suggested she was likely from at least the Southern Marches, and likely from Tilea or Estalia. 

“I’m not a Gräfin,” she confessed in accented but perfectly intelligible Riekspiel.

“I am a Baronetess of the Court of Middenheim, though honestly its an ugly word and it dosen’t come with any land or income,” she explained to the gruff bandit who had been shocked by this sudden departure from his plan.

“Where is the bitch who owns this carriage?” he demanded, confusion transmuting to anger. A frequent response in this bandits life it might be observed. 

“Probably back in town sitting down to a Mondstille feast I expect,” the stranger, definitely a Tilean, replied, remarkably undisturbed by the bandits, many of whom were now openly leering.

“I don’t know what you are playing at bitch,” the leader snarled, “but I suppose we can find a use for a pretty noblewoman as easily as a fat one.” That raised a lewd chuckle from the gang.

“I am Camilla Dela Trantio,” the woman introduced herself, “and I’m afraid I have other plans.” They started at her with open incredulity.

“Listen bitch, I have six men here and a score back in camp and I…” The treat was interrupted by the distant boom of a firearm. It was a sharp precise sound, a dwarven made weapon if Camilla was any judge.

“Nineteen,” she corrected. Veins bulged in the leaders neck and he opened his mouth to snarl a threat. Another boom sounded from the direction he had indicated his camp was in with a hook of his thumb.

“Eighteen,” she said mildly. The bandits had had enough.

“Get her out of that fucking coach and…”

“Oh we can get out on our own,” Camilla interrupted with a smirk. The leader was fit to burst, and it seemed likely that appolplexy might carry him to Morrs garden on the spot.

“We? You got a mouse in your pocket or something?” he sneered.

“Not exactly,” she admitted, and then swung the door of the carriage outwards on its tallow greased hinges.

“I’m not a bloody mouse,” a gruff voice declared. The bandits had just enough time to register the squat form of a dwarf laying on the floor of the coach, a dark green ranger cape tossed over a shoulder and a wide mouthed blunderbuss clutched in his meaty fists. They did not, however, have time to move before the coachgun went off with a roar that would have outdone some small cannons. Three of the thugs staggered back, one of them spitting blood, another clutching at his shredded chest. The third took a piece or rusty langridge through the eye and collapsed to the ground without so much as a twitch. Camilla hauled the door shut and ducked behind the thick oak panneling as the survivors refleivly fired their own firearms. One of the pistols snapped impotently and a second hissed as the poorly maintained weapon squibbed. Both the leader’s gun and another thugs pistoles fired, gouging splinters from the side of the equipage. Camilla popped up and kicked the door open, with her boot, leaping gracefully to the ground with a pistol in each hand. Both weapons cracked one dropped a thug who was tearing at the priming pan of his pistol to the ground, clutching at a red wound in his gut. The other struck the leader in the chest plate, but ricocheted from the thick metal, with an audible clang that flung him to the ground. The dwarf rolled out of the carriage somewhat less gracefully, hitting the ground with a thump but rolling to his feet in an instant. He swung the smoking blunderbuss like a club, caving in the skull of a bandit holding a smoking pistol with a sound like a melon being dropped to the floor. As the leader staggered to his feet the surviving bandit lunged for Camilla, her rapier whipped free of its scabbard, flickign aside his short sword  before thrusting expertly into the gap between breastplate and pauldron. Bright red arterial blood gouted from the bandits lips, staining his beard before he fell to the ground.

“I will make you die slow!” the bandit leader screamed, unlimbering his great sword and taking a swing at Camilla, she skipped back out of the arc and tried to thrust in while her opponent was of balance. Violent and stupid the man might be, but a poor swordsman he was not. He managed to get his blade up in a cross cutting parry that would have shattered the slender blade if Camilla had attempted to parry the stroke rather than dancing back once again.

“That little knitting needle isn’t going to stop me girl,” the bandit snarled.

“I’m going to..” whatever else he was going to do was lost in a scream of agony as the dwarf’s short handled axe hacked into the back of his knee in a spray of blood and popping tendon. The brute screamed like a cattle at slaughter and collapsed as his leg gave way. The dwarf stepped forward and, quite dispassionately split the bandits head from crown to nose with a second slash of his bloody axe.
 
“He dinnae know when to shut up,” the dwarf exclaimed in the sudden silence that followed. The only sound was the coachman who was by now retching in horror at the sudden and complete slaughter that had unfolded in the space of a few heart beats. Blood coated the road side and the bodies steamed in the chill winter air.

“My thanks Master Bjornson, might have been a real challenge with that great sword of his,” she admitted. Gunir Bjornson laughed derisively.

“Ye’da managed lass, ye always doo,” he said, wiping blood and brain matter from his axe blade onto the bandits cloak.
 
“Well I’m just as pleased I didn’t have to,” Camilla admitted. In the distance the sound of gunfire grew more intense, intermingled now with the clash of steel on steel. Camilla whipped her own blade clean with the tunic of a dead bandit.

“We had best get to it, sounds like Cydric might need our help despite his boasting,” she declared.
[@POOHEAD189]