Some more time passed, the wagons ahead had already moved off into the distance and the wheels still haven’t been fixed. Shawn leaning his back on the cliffside wall was busy zoning out when he suddenly noticed the armoured figure, who had just stood there silently start to look around. What is he looking at? Shawn tried to look at what got the armoured figure’s attention.
Following the helmet swivels, he noticed how they were directed to the trees where the birds were. Bird watching? Well, nothing better to do, I guess. Shawn then blinked; a frown appeared on his face. The trees had several birds hanging on the branches chirping about a few minutes ago, in fact now the trees were completely barren. He hadn’t noticed the birds due to the roaring of the rapids. Suddenly Shawn was at full attention.
“Lawrence, we have a problem!”
Lawrence turned his head towards Shawn, about to ask why before he heard a guttural battle cry coming from the hill. Jerking his head back towards the hill he saw several figures climbing up the edge armed with blades charging the caravan.
Upon them making it up the hill and passing the trees they could be identified as warriors of chaos. Fanatic fighters who worshipped the dark gods, corrupted by chaos their main goal is to kill all non worshippers.
Soldiers in a panic started yelling orders and attempted to form a line to block the attackers. Unfortunately, with only six of them the line that was formed was thin and could barely cover a single wagon. The soldiers quickly abandoned the line and tried to take on the over two dozen warriors of chaos that came charging in yelling their battle cries.
All travellers that were following the wagons pulled out whatever they had to defend themselves with as the rapid warriors crashed into them. Those who were in the wagons sat in fear huddled together in a vain hope that no one would notice them.
Lawrence gritted his teeth as he pulled out his machete ready to take on anyone who approached him, before hearing a scream from his left. Some unlucky traveller collapsed with an arrow sticking out his back, quickly glancing up he noticed a small handful of warriors of chaos up on the cliffside raining down arrows. Cursing Lawrence starts to move closer towards the cliffside wall to avoid the archers’ line of sight.
Seeing the driver of the back wagon being slain and the horses about panic and crash into the wagons in the front. He quickly ran over and cut the harness, freeing the horses, allowing them to run wildly through the fighting and into safety.
Sara and Michael huddled in the wagon along with five other passengers, Sara clutched Michael close to her. A couple arrows slammed into the wagons roof. One of the other passengers could be heard sobbing. Fortunately, their driver had unhitched the horses from their wagon. Peering through a small hole on the side of the wagon she could see the warriors running in and attacking everyone. Not again. Not right after Goldroot. She prayed for some miracle to get them out of danger.
The armoured figure quickly whipped out their longbow, firing once and managing to strike one of the archers in the chest, sending him careening down the cliffside slamming into the ground dead. The figure then switched back to their broadsword as quickly as they fired their arrow and began crossing blades with a chaos warrior who had approached them.
Noticing that the broken wagon in the front had now been overwhelmed, with a chaos warrior climbing onto it and another standing over a mother and a young girl a few meters away. The curly haired guard laying next to them was motionless and the passengers from within being slaughtered Lawrence rushed in. Quickly running in he dispatched one by surprised before the other warrior jumped over the wagon to engage him, mouth frothing with rage. The extra momentum caused Lawrence to be pushed back. Nearly toppling over, he steadied himself as the warrior readied his strike.
Then the curly haired guard came to life, opened his eyes, unsheathing a dagger, and stuck it into the back leg of warrior. Roaring in pain the chaos warrior fell to his knees and Lawrence easily finished him off with that.
The soldier with blood oozing out his forehead with ragged breath eked out. “Hah… get… get my family…” Pointing at the mother and child.
“Don’t worry, your safe now.” Lawrence tried to assure them with his best smile. Quickly glancing around, inwardly breathing a sigh of relief as the chaos warriors seemed more focused on the wagon’s contents then them.
“Now let’s help your father and get out of here.”
One of the chaos warriors armed with a rusty falchion approached Sara’s wagon, a large arm pulling back the wagon canvas, all seven pairs of eyes stared at him in horror, someone screamed. Giving a nasty grin he gave a quick laugh while drinking in the fear and began to lift his blade, aiming to strike down on Sara. Sara in turn put herself in front of Michael while he in wide eyed fear whimpered at the sight of the chaos warrior.
Suddenly the chaos warrior froze, falchion only raised halfway, his face switched from confusion, horror, and then finally pain before dropping sideways hitting the floor. From behind appeared Shawn, with his bag hanging of him, round shield on his right hand and knife now embedded in the fallen warrior. Standing over the recently back stabbed chaos warrior he looked at the group sitting in the wagon in annoyance.
“Why the hell are you still sitting here? Get out of the fight already idiot!”
Looking dumbfounded at Shawn for a brief moment she simply nodded and picked up Michael and stumbled out of the wagon on shacky legs, the rest then followed suit. Standing out she noticed fully just how outnumbered they were, half the soldiers seemed to be laying on the floor.
Shawn pulled out a short sword and then stood right in front of an elderly gentlemen. Facing the cliff, he lifted his small round shield over their heads causing an arrow to bounce of harmlessly.
Then he proceeded to prod the group to move further down the road away from the fight, back down the path the wagons originally came from.
“Stick to the wall, don’t make scene and shut up!”
As Sara and the rest hugged the wall and shuffled their way down the road, fighting occurring all around them. Shawn stood there constantly swivelling his head waiting to intercept anyone who attacks. Shawn noticed how the some of the chaos warriors started going after the supply crates and the ones on the cliffside began to drop ropes so that the crates can be tied and lifted. Supplies, right, the main reason why they’re here.
His attention was then refocused to a charging chaos warrior, hands clasped to a battle axe crazed look in his eyes ready to strike. “Rahhh!” roared the corrupt warrior with the intent to crush the smaller fighter in front of him.
Shawn quickly moved his left foot forward, having it pointed directly at the warrior, then moved his right foot behind in a ninety-degree angle and waited.
The chaos warrior moved two steps closer, Shawn looked back to check if the archers were still busy pulling up the crates, they were.
Two more steps, Shawn raised his short sword up.
The fiery rage filled eyes of the chaos warrior was met with cold black eyes.
Two more steps, the warrior began to lift his blade.
Suddenly Shawn pushed of from the ground with his backfoot, gliding above the ground for a meter, upon landing his right leg replanted itself onto the floor. He then lunged his left foot forward until his knee reached a ninety-degree angle, tilting his head up slightly he was now only a little more then an arms length away from the warrior.
The chaos warrior still in midstep looked down towards his opponent in a strange lunging stance. However, before the chaos warrior could process, Shawn thrusted his sword arm forward the blade piercing through the neck of the chaos warrior. A look of shock appeared on the face of the warrior as Shawn pulled the blade back out, before the body hit the floor Shawn had already turned around to check for more enemies. Seeing no immediate threat, his attention focused back onto the Sara and the rest.
“Move.”
As they moved past the last wagon, the armoured warrior began to guide the passengers
trapped in there out to join Shawn’s group of unarmed and move along the trail to safety. Shawn counting the additional heads that suddenly appeared, looking rather peeved turned to the armoured figure and quickly yelled, “Don’t thrust more responsibility on me!”
“You’ll manage.” An echoey feminine voice replied from the helmet.
“Grrrr.” Was all he replied with.
The few remaining caravan travellers that were fighting started to join up with the group in their retreat. Shawn noticed Lawrence tailing the back trying to help that soldier along with a few of the passengers. Of course, he is. The only thing that was going for them right now was that the loot seemed more appealing than a bunch of stragglers to the chaos warriors.
One chaos warrior seemed to find that an injured soldier with his back turned was too tantalizing to ignore and approaching Lawrence’s small group. But before reaching them he felt a stabbing pain on his right pectoral chest, looking down he found a short sword embedded there. He could have sworn that no one was close enough to stab him. Looking up to try and find culprit the last thing he saw was an arrow flying towards him.
Shawn pulling back his now empty left hand turned over to look at the armoured figure who had just loosed an arrow. The armoured figure turned helmet meeting his eyes.
“You help people needlessly.” Was all Shawn said before turning his head back to the front and fishing out a hatchet.
“Thank you.”
As Lawrence and the final few members reached the larger group, they all began to retreat down the road and into the woods. The warriors of chaos no longer cared about the remaining travellers as they posed no real threat, and the supplies were far more important. As they moved further away from the wagons the noises of the chaos warriors finally quieted.
Taking one last look before the wagons were out of sight, Shawn cursed. In less then ten minutes a simple trip to Esterwood city had been completely ruined. Looking at the group of scared and wounded desperately trying to get away from their attackers Shawn could only feel a sense of hopelessness as he moved further into the woods.
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