Linus immediately pulled back on the reins, bringing his horse to a dead stop as the bandits encircled Archie and Luke. [Sneaking] and his distance seemed to be protecting him for the moment but he knew it wouldn’t last. Without a second thought he slipped off his horse, leaving it to the bandits and retreated into the woods.Once he was far enough away from the trail he ducked against the shady side of a tree and sat down, pulling [Sneaking] tight around him and focusing on sight and sound. Sounds of shouting and arguing came from back in the direction he’d fled from. It continued on for some time and he carefully crept further and further away until he felt confident they couldn’t track him down and he could no longer hear them

He waited to make sure he’d gotten away, then some more just in case. After that he waited because a little more wouldn’t hurt and then he wasn’t sure what to do. At some point in all his waiting and hiding he let his skill lapse. Luke is a Tier 3 Linus thought to himself, on the cusp of Tier 4, there is no way he would let himself get taken by bandits. He probably tore them apart, or just went along to find the camp and make sure he finished all of them at once. Plus he was supposed to be protecting Linus, not the other way around. Linus didn’t owe him anything. If anything he owed Linus, leaving him stranded in the middle of nowhere. What was Linus supposed to do? Walk all the way back to the town and then try to get back to the capital? No, that wouldn’t do, besides regardless of Luke and his dereliction of duty Archie had never failed him.

Despite every instinct telling him to stay hidden and carefully make his way home he knew in his gut he needed to try and save them. Listening to his stupid gut he once more activated [Sneaking] and carefully crept his way back to the trail. He was relieved to find he had difficulty following his path and lost it more than once, eventually having to just continue in the right direction until he stumbled upon the trail. Once there he carefully followed along the edge of it to find where the bandits had intercepted them. After almost an hour he still hadn’t encountered any tracks that matched with their horses and the bandit attack. Eventually he realized he must be too far along in the trail and started to double back, retracing his steps.

After closer to two hours he finally found where the attack happened. No one remained but there were plenty of tracks, both horse and men. He took a break there before trying to track them. First he needed to figure out where the horse prints ended on the trail. They were faint on the hard packed dirt but he could just barely make them out. There were too many boot prints, which were invisible on the path itself but were apparent on either side of it. Those prints dispersed in several directions, at least two of which appeared to move in the direction he had originally ran off in. He had to follow the horse prints, which all trailed off together, and hope that the captor kept the horses with Archie and Luke.

The tracks meandered through the woods, mostly continuing in the direction they had been traveling but slowly diverging as time passed, at least as far as Linus could tell. He regretted not having any tracking related skills or anything ranger related, [Plant Lore] and [Sneaking] only provided so much information. He was leaning heavily on the first one to identify any disturbed or broken flora. It was a real stretch of the skill but in several places he had completely lost track of the bandits and was the only way he could think to keep following. The skill and his head felt strained from all the limit stretching. As for [Sneaking] it was starting to become second nature to him, not just minimizing his appearance and noises but also strangely interacting with [Plant Lore] to help him avoid leaving traces behind. For any plant damage he imposed he tried to fix with a short blast of [Growth]. Any prints in the soil were left and hopefully would blend in with those he was tracking.

After several hours of careful creeping, and only a few completely justified and absolutely necessary stops, Linus finally arrived at his destination, the bandit camp. It was much larger than he expected. This wasn’t a few men in the woods that had fallen on hard times and made a bad decision or two. No this was a full fledged bandit camp. There must’ve been at least 30 members, maybe even more that he wasn’t seeing or were out of the camp. While most of the camp was made of tents there were some permanent larger structures and all were laid out in a roughly organized manner. This was not going to be as safe or as easy as he’d hoped. A few desperate men drinking around a fire he might be able to handle. Or at least avoid until he got to Luke and released him so he could handle them. This? This was out of his league. Once again his brain pointed out all the reasons why this wasn’t his problem and he should just pack up and start [Sneaking] home... Damn Archie and his quiet reliability and constant support. Well if he was going to do this he’d need to plan ahead. No point trying to save Archie just to end up dead himself.

Thankfully dusk had arrived at the campsite at almost the same time as him. Using the newfound darkness he continued [Sneaking] around the outskirts of the camp, taking care to keep track of any sentries and stay far away from their view. He imagined they must have perception skills that could overcome his own stealth skill. Several painfully slow loops later he was starting to get a sense of the layout and the sentry locations. By his count there were 8 sentries, dispersed equidistantly around the site, between 50 and 100 meters out. Once past them there was no additional defense except for the inhabitants themselves. There were 4 larger fires burning, one in each quadrant with a smattering of torches throughout the rest of the area. He carefully studied the few permanent structures, assuming if Archie and Luke were still alive they would be kept in one of them.

One of the buildings was immediately ruled out, it seemed more like a fancy cabin and was definitely the best maintained and decorated, likely it was a home for the head of this operation. The other three were much larger, one of which he soon ruled out as a type of kitchen and dining area due to the high influx of people around dinner time and the multiple smoke trails billowing out the rear of the building. The last two were similar in size and both looked heavily guarded, with both sets of guards being replaced within minutes of each other. It wasn’t until he saw a person from the mess hall carrying multiple trays enter one of the buildings and leave empty handed moments later that he knew where his friends were being kept.

With hopefully the correct target identified Linus retreated further into the surrounding woods and started to plot his plan of attack. First he’d have to remove at least some of the sentries. He debated whether removing only one would be more beneficial since it was less likely to be noticed or not enough and a sentry on either side might catch him anyways. After deciding to only target the sentry directly between the outskirts and the prison building he then scoped out the best path to it. He’d need to veer to the right and avoid one of the big fires. The tents were fairly spread out in this section so he would have plenty of room to move but would need to hug up against them to not be spotted out in the open.

Reviewing what he had on his person the majority of his potions and powders would be useless. They Eyes Deceive could be used to confuse them but it worked much better when ingested rather than inhaled, plus he didn’t have a dispersal system, and the Speed potion was a last resort with its recovery period. As for weapons the whip sword would be staying secured on his back, hopefully the additional weight wouldn’t slow him down too much. The throwing knives were checked on his belt before the shortsword and punch dagger were pulled from their sheaths and held at the ready. This was it, he was going in.