The bandits had begun their raid. Waiting for the sun to descend, they attacked under the cover of night. The guard towers on the southern side never saw it coming. They were immediately infiltrated and swarmed. They put up a decent fight, the increasingly dire news they received from the east had forced the head of the garrison to sure up the town's defences. He had not done so expecting an attack anytime soon, but his safety first mentality had nonetheless saved the town from a far grimer fate.

That being said, they were still not faring great. The bandits were far better equipped, most even being more skilled. What they lacked however, was airtight organization. The soldiers never operated in squads of less than five. Each of the seven towers around the town had three squads stationed inside. Factoring in the soldiers garrisoned and on patrol, the town had 331 soldiers for its defence. That was almost four times the amount of manpower that the bandits had. Unfortunately, most of those men were blissfully unaware of the fact that bandits had suddenly emerged. That left only 45 soldiers to combat them at first. They fought as hard as they could, making use of narrow paths to try and limit the amount of bandits they faced at any given time. The guards at the top of the towers struggled to proved much cover fire under the assault from the bandit’s gunners. Worse yet, the towers were the first places to be hit. The soldiers defending them, struggled to bar the bandits path.

“Gather all the women and children, quickly!”

The captain of the bandits was in a hurry. His men were tired. He had given them a few hours to rest, but the fatigue they’d built up from constantly being on the move over the past week surely wasn’t gone. He would have preferred to attack the town the following night, but his scouts had spotted a camp by the lake a few hours ago.

----------

They couldn’t make out who the owners of the camp were, but they were definitely armed. He wanted to attack them first and make use of their camp, but he feared he would unnecessarily alert the town of their presence. On the flip side, if they noticed his men’s movements and alerted the town it would be disastrous for him and his men. In the midst of discussing how to handle them, one of the men he sent into town to get a better sense of their strength came running in.

“Captain! Captain!”

Everyone in the room, including the captain, feared the worst, “What? Has Zar caught up with us?”

The man, out of breath, shook his head, “No, no no. Worse. The camp. The one by the lake. They’re from GoldenHeart!”

The captain was stunned, “GoldenHeart? Out here? Why?!”

GoldenHeart was the most well known mercenary guild in the Alden Empire. The had close ties with the royal family and operated out of the capital. They fielded the most elite malsirs not working in the military. As such, they only did the big jobs. If they weren’t fighting something as large as a titan or as powerful as a sturm wolf, they would most likely decline the offer. For one of their teams to be out here, where there were neither magical beast nor beings to fight, it could only mean something terrible for him.

“Wolf must have done something. The only thing they could fight here is bandits. There’s no other explanation.”

One of his men fearfully asked, “Should we prepare to run captain?”

The captain replied solemnly, “Where would we run to? The further west we go, the more we dance with death. No, we take the town tonight.”

Another one of his men couldn't accept that conclusion, “What?! But captain, the men are exhausted. Even if we could overpower the garrison, fighting GoldenHeart after that would be impossible.”

Olin threw his two cents in, “It would be impossible to fight GoldenHeart even if we didn’t have to worry about the garrison.”

“We’re not going to fight the garrison or GoldenHeart. We’re going to get hostages. Olin, gather the men!”

----------

Their plan was simple, they could not fight nor run so they would do neither. They would bargain. If GoldenHeart was truly here to fight Wolf, they would need information. They had information, key information. Getting GoldenHeart to listen was the problem. Be it a guild or a garrison, no one would care to sit down and hear the words of a bandit. They had to engineer that situation. They needed leverage. Their captain thought of only one way to accomplish that, using the town’s women and children as bargaining chips.

“Move! We have to do this quickly!”

That had to work fast, while most of his men were keeping the soldiers busy the rest were pulling women and children out of their homes. The captain feared GoldenHeart would notice them before they could organize the hostages. If they showed up before he had the situation under control, everything would be over. Thankfully for him things were moving according to plan. He just needed to raid a few more homes. The larger the hostage count, the more seriously they would consider his proposition. He was starting to feel assured.

As long as they don’t set any fires, everything should be—

His thoughts were cut off by a sound. His heart sank. He looked towards the center of town in horror. The bells were ringing.

----------

“Arleigh. Arleigh! Wake up!”

Neia kicked her, she didn’t want to but she had no choice. Arleigh burst to life. Clutching her back, she yelled angrily at Neia, “What the fyk was that for?”

“Bandits! In the town. Suit up quickly, Nyle already headed out.”

“What?!”

Settling down, Arleigh could hear bells ringing. Dong! Dong! Dong! Then a pause. Dong! Dong! Dong!

“Shit.”

Arleigh quickly put on her gear and ran into town with Neia. As they approached they saw fires being set all over the place. Some of the other members of their party were already helping the townsfolk evacuate. Arleigh could only spot men.

Running up to one of her allies, she asked, “Where are the women and children?”

“We don’t know. We haven’t seen any.”

“Nyle said you two should search for them. He’s looking for whoever's running the show for these guys.”

Neia wasn’t paying the conversation any mind, she had spotted some bandits in the distance and ran straight for them. Seeing her partner run off, Arleigh swiftly replied, “Will do. If you could do something about these fires it would help,” and ran after her.

Catching up to Neia as she was splitting a man's skull in two, she informed her of their task.

“They’ve taken all the women and children? Hmmm. Slavers?”

“I don’t think they’re slavers. They don’t operate this far south of Otger, they’d lose too much money on transport.”

Neia had cut another man clean in half in the time it took Arleigh to respond, “How much do human slaves go for?”

Arleigh, trying to locate where the largest concentration of bandits was, replied a bit slow, “Way too cheap to be this far from Karvos. Um, Neia. What is that?”

Turning towards the direction Arleigh was looking in, Neia saw a bright red light beaming down from the sky. It would have looked angelic if the red wasn’t so deep. Instead, it felt incredibly unsettling. Arleigh sighed.

“Even the easy jobs.”