130. Playing Soyent Without Any Cards?

Then Kigeir picked up the two youngest children in his arms - who had started to cry by now - and ignoring the pain in his bad knee, he started trotting towards his home as fast as he could, his wife following just behind him. Looking back, he confirmed that his older son had understood the situation as well, and after holding the girls' hands in his own, Leif had started running as well, the three of them quickly overtaking him.Although his heart was beating so fast he feared it would jump out of his chest, Kigeir was still glad that he had found out about this attack sooner than most people, so hopefully he'd be able to reach his home soon and keep his family safe. While it was supposed to be nearly freezing right now, somehow he didn't feel the cold at all. At some point, he even heard the sound of horns being played from somewhere - probably as a warning of the bandit raid to the rest of the village. As he turned into the side street towards his home, he noticed that the light of the brazier - which had been shining on the blonde hairs of Leif and Elsie - suddenly got extinguished. He wanted to look back into the market square to see what had happened, but he knew he didn't have the time to stop running. Before long, in the light of the moon which was still hiding behind the now ever-present clouds, he was able to see his home just a few dozen yards ahead of them. He was going to thank the Goddess that they had gotten away from the bandits, when two huge men in fur coats emerged from a side alley right in front of them - preventing them from reaching their home. It didn't take more than a moment for Kigeir to realize that they were bandits - with unsheathed swords held high in their hands. With the two youngest children bawling loudly in his arms, along with the whimper of the girls hiding behind his wife and Leif, he shivered in fear of their lives. May the Goddess save his family now, because he certainly had no way to fight those bandits. ******* ~ Tesyb ~ ~ Somewhere near Tiranat ~ They all had been running towards the village as fast as they could, hoping they reached the village before the bandits killed someone. Although one of them had even gotten an arrow in his arm when leaving the other guards near the bandit archer, but thankfully the wound was not in the guard's leg, so after putting a piece of cloth to tie his arm to stop the blood, the guard had been told to go directly to the manor, since he wouldn't be of any use in a fight for a while. Soon, they reached the edge of the village - where the longhouses were being constructed, and Hudan gestured all of them to stop for a moment. Although it wasn't windy anyway, all that running had easily warmed up his body, making the nearly freezing weather seem irrelevant. "Now listen to me carefully," the guard captain began. "We've left four guards back there and one of us already got injured and had to leave - that means only nine of us are here now. But one bandit is already dead and at least one of their archers is also back there, which means there would be at most eight bandits in the village right now. So while it won't be easy for us anymore, we can still take them down!" The other guards gave confident nods in reply to that, but Tesyb wasn't feeling confident at all. The rest of them were veteran guards, and they had been doing this for years by now, but he used to be just a coal miner a couple of months ago! While he knew by now from his regular practices with other guards that he was good with a sword, would he really be able to go against a real bandit? Would he really be able to take a man's life? He was also getting worried about his parents, who lived at the western edge of the village. What if the bandits attacked that part of Tiranat? But Hudan's next words brought his mind back to the present. The guard captain was looking directly at Tesyb. "Don't worry, lad, I know you have it in you. Just do what you've been doing in the training and the Goddess will take care of the rest." Tesyb gave a hesitant nod. "I'll do my best." "That's what I like to hear!" Hudan added, "Now we don't know where all the bandits are, but they want to loot as much as possible, so they will certainly be spread out. So here's what we'll do. We are going to break into four groups - each of two men - while I'll go alone." He pointed at four guards before speaking. "The first group will circle around the village from our left - which is the east - and the second group will go around from our right - that's towards the west. Your target is to look for any bandits who are trying to loot the houses at the edge of the village - and that's where they are most likely to be, since that would make it easier for them to run away at the end. That's why I am giving both of our horns to these two groups, so you can blow the horn to call for help from the other guards in case you find more than two men against you." Once the selected four guards had nodded, Hudan pointed at four other guards including Tesyb. "The last two groups of two men, as well as I, will run straight into the village. Since it's unlikely that the bandits would have gone into the middle of the village in bigger numbers, your task is to quickly look for any lone bandits - and to move on as soon as you can after taking care of them. And of course, if a horn is blown from the edge of the village, the closest group will go to help them, while the rest of us will continue taking care of these pests." "Now do you all understand what you have to do?" the guard captain asked. Once the rest of the guards nodded, he gave a savage grin. "Then let's go and send these bastards to the Goddess for daring to attack our homes!" "For Lord Kivamus!" one of the guards shouted a rallying call. For a moment, Tesyb and the others were surprised, but then they looked at each other's faces for a moment, and grinned. It was the new baron who had given faith to the villagers that they'd be able to survive the winter - even after they had lost all hope in the recent months. Lord Kivamus was the one who treated the commoners as humans - instead of like nodor dung stuck to his boots - completely opposite to what the other nobles did. He was the one who had made everything possible and given them hope for a bright future. So of course, they were fighting to protect him and his ideals. They were fighting for him! "For Lord Kivamus!" he and the others shouted their new war cry as well. And with that, they divided into five groups, and each of them ran towards their allotted areas to eliminate the bandits. As Tesyb entered the village along with another guard and started running between the houses, he wished that he was the one allotted to go towards the western edge of the village, so he could go towards his home and protect his parents from the bandits. Could he do that even now? Hudan wouldn't really find out anyway, as long as he told the other guard some make-believe reason, right? But then he forcefully put that thought away from his mind. Just like Hudan was trusting him to do his job, he also had to trust the rest of the guards that they would do their jobs properly - including those who were going towards the west side of the village. Glancing at the guard running next to him for a moment, he nodded to himself. He trusted the other guards. They were his brothers now. And his parents will be safe. They would make sure of it. And then, he kept running between the houses, hoping to test his newfound sword fighting skills soon. ******* ~ Calubo ~ ~ Somewhere in the forests surrounding Tiranat ~ Calubo had been moving slowly and silently towards the left of the location where the archer was supposed to be hiding - trusting the other guard to be moving towards him from the right. The two guards back near the body of the fatso had been told to move around and make lots of sounds there, to hopefully make the archer keep thinking that all the guards were still there. Before leaving, for a while he was thinking that there were more than one archers here, since he had felt that some of the arrows were coming from a different direction. But after thinking about it, he had realized that it was likely just a single archer who was changing his position again and again, to make them think that there were more bandits here than there actually were. It made sense too, since the bandits would have wanted to take most of their men to the village to loot even more grain. That meant they might be able to take care of the lone archer sooner than they thought. Truthfully, he didn't even know if he would be the one to find the archer, or the other guard. But he prayed to the goddess that it was him, since it would give him a chance to get even with these bastards for nearly starving him and others at the quarry while making them work them to the bone. As he came closer to the location that he had last seen the arrows coming from - assuming he really was coming closer, since it was hard to tell in the night - he saw a wide fedarus tree. So he crouched even lower, and very slowly, moved behind the tree, trying not to make any sound. He did hope that the archer hadn't seen him on his way here, but he couldn't be sure about anything now. After giving a moment to catch his breath, he slowly bent his neck around the tree to see if he could observe the archer from there, but there was nothing ahead of him - apart from even more trees and a few small shrubs further ahead. Did that mean the archer had changed his position again? Dammit! How was he going to find him again from here? He was thinking about leaving his current position and circling around once again from the north, but just to satisfy his curiosity, he decided to stick his neck around the fedarus tree again. And right at that moment, he jerked back as an arrow whistled very close to his ear, making him fall down in surprise. But he quickly got on all fours, and scrambled to get his whole body behind the cover of the tree again. The archer was still here! Even though he tried to breathe deeply a few times to calm his wildly beating heart, it took a while for him to start thinking properly again. He realized that his sword had also fallen down from his hands in that terrifying moment, but thankfully, its hilt was still within the cover of the wide fedarus tree, so he swiftly pulled his sword back and held it close to his body, like it was the only thing standing between him and a raging adzee. This meant that he wasn't wrong in gauging the bandit's position, after all. But now that the archer had seen him for sure, it would be stupid to stay in the same place for long. He stood up again with his sword in his hand, and once he had located a nearby tree with a good cover, he quickly jumped ahead and rolled to a position behind that tree. Immediately, an arrow passed right through the position he had been just a moment ago. Dammit! Just how many arrows did the archer have? Discover more content at empire He exhaled again, and once he was ready, he repeated the same thing, and got cover behind another tree. Thank the goddess for the forests! He didn't know how else he could have moved closer to the archer if there was just empty ground between them. And then, again and again, he did the same thing, and kept moving closer to the archer, with an arrow passing close to him nearly every time. It was risky, and it felt scary, but there was no other way to get closer to the archer. And as long as there was a good distance between them, it would be like the archer holding all the Soyent cards in his hands. And nobody wanted to play Soyent without any cards, did they? This time, he had gotten cover behind a relatively narrow tree, so after thinking about it for a moment, he stuck his sword to the left side of the tree, and quickly moved his neck to see from the other side. As expected, the archer shot an arrow towards the side where his sword was, narrowly missing it, but his head remained safe. And within that single moment, he glimpsed movement behind those shrubs he had seen earlier. He had found the archer! 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