The path back to the Neeft was mostly uphill, and despite the conditioning of the Academy, the relative peace of his time at this post had had a detrimental impact on Cadryn’s endurance. To say he was winded when he arrived, outside the open gates, would be a grave understatement. Doubling over he forced his breathing into normal rhythms, and only then did the sound of raised voices reach him from inside the courtyard.

“If you don’t give us what we want, we’ll kill’em! I swears it on my mother!” cried out a scratchy voice.

“Do it if you’re gonna, you whoreson,” replied a familiar voice, Flick the Fancy, the merchant Cadryn sided with his first day.

“I will! We already killed that other fat bastard we waylaid on the road! Darcy’s Gang means business, hear!” the youth replied.

“Then you did me a favor,” Flick wheezed.

Moving up the edge of the gate, Cadryn risked a glance within. He could see what looked to be all of the bandits, loosely arrayed around Flick’s Cart, one had looped a noose over one of the overhangs and had the merchant up on a barrel. They were dressed in plain traveling clothes and armed with mostly daggers and bows. The bandit was addressing Sefton Atwood.

“You realize that man is not even an Imperial Citizen,” Sefton was saying. “We’re under no legal obligation to save him.”

The statement seemed to confuse the young bandit even more, he looked over his shoulder almost directly at Cadryn. Having not seen him, the bandit went on, “Well, half the Thrones then! A man’s life is worth something, ain’t it?”

“It is,” Sefton said, “the question you should be asking yourself is this: ‘How much is my life worth?’ ‘How long will this Imperial paper pusher listen to me before he has is Mage burn me down?’”

That got them talking amongst themselves, and Cadryn began to wonder if Mareth could actually summon up that kind of power. He dared another look, and this time, saw motion in the central guard post opposite Sefton, likely Silence and Korbinian. The ground level doors were all closed and barred, something the leader of the Day Shift insisted on whenever one or more of them was out of the toll house.

The talker glanced Cadryn’s way again, and then, nodding at something called up to Sefton. “Time’s up! What it’ll be, blood or coin?”

It was Sefton’s turn to check something, and apparently satisfied, he folded his hands at the window before speaking in a loud by surprisingly steady voice. “Blood,” he intoned.

What happened next, seemed to take place all at once.

The shutters of Sefton’s office slammed closed. The talker kicked the barrel from under Flick, but as soon as the rope took his weight, it snapped. A clay jar came flying down from the Guard post and shattered, releasing a billowing cloud of the same orange smoke from the troll cave. The bandits all began shouting, a few loosing arrows at nothing in particular.

Shortly after, a crossbow bolt snapped out from one of the open windows off the tollhouse, taking the talker in the chest and sending him tumbling from the cart. Several arrows answered, but missed from the sound their impacts.

Cadryn’s instincts warred within him, he had the element of surprise, but there were lot of them. Still, Flick didn’t deserve to die in some botched robbery by these amateurs. Drawing his blades, Cadryn rounded the corner in time to see the double doors below Sefton’s office burst open.

In the open doorway, was an Imperial Knight, or at least a man in the armor of one.

Darcy’s Gang noticed him at once, and the remaining nocked arrows were let loose at him with no effect.

The Knight moved out into the light of day. His layers of heavy armor were of a pattern now retired: steel breastplate with pauldrons, vambraces, and gauntlets, over greaves with a skirting of heavy brigandine to protect the upper legs. The armor was stained and painted the same indigo of the Empire’s colors, with the exception of the left Gauntlet, which was silvered, marking the bearer as a commander. The peacock-plumed Full helm turned left, then right, scanning the assembled banditry.

“My name is Captain Vaast Von Rompa, Imperial Knight, retired. If you wish to live to see another dawn. Leave.” With that statement made, he unlimbered a two-handed Warhammer from his back.

Most of the Bandits, caught in the smoke, attempted to flee immediately. One had another idea.

“He’s old!” the biggest of them yelled, and charging head on, threw his bow at Vaast’s face before attempting to tackle him to the ground.

Vaast allowed the bow to careen off his helm, then, choking up his grip on the hammer to just below the head, lashed out and downward in what was basically a punch.

Gauntlet, and hammerhead, met the bandit’s face in a moist crunching and the man’s battle cry died with him before his body hit the tiles. Dark blood pulsing into a rapidly expanding puddle.

“Anyone else?” Vaast, asked, sliding the glistening weapon back out into a ready stance.

Darcy’s Gang broke. They ran in whichever direction would get them away from the captain fastest. Three were coming Cadryn’s way. He considered letting them pass, then remembered the wounds on Dagamara’s corpse. The Neeft, to say nothing of Kellen’s Veld, would be better with less of their ilk.

He stepped out of the shadows and into the courtyard, blade out and ready, “Going somewhere?” he challenged.

The three pulled up short, then one of them smiled at something Cadryn couldn’t see.

“They are, Imperial,” a voice said from the far side of the gate he’d entered by.

As Cadryn turned to face the sound, he heard the straining of a bow being drawn, saw the speaker through the glare of the sun.

Then the arrow struck him.

It slammed into his shoulder with all the punch of a hammer blow. He’d been hit with arrows before, but that had been within the false-flesh of the Arena’s ritual, at the Academy. This, was something else all together. Sound faded, though he knew someone was screaming.

The shooter turned to run, waving on their compatriots, and he fixated on the face below the hood; small button chin, thin lips pulled together in a smirk.

As Cadryn sank to his knees, legs going weak, one of the three fleeing bandits lashed out with his bow, belting him across the temple.

The tiles raced up to meet Cadryn’s face, and they felt cool, like the darkness that stole away his sight . . .