Chapter 6: Bandits of the Mountain Pass

They hardly took a few strides before Miro heard the first whistle, ducking his head instinctively as if away from a large dive-bombing beetle. The next moment, he heard the sound again, and this time it was unmistakable, as it was followed by a yell from the rider sitting in front of him, who then clutched his left shoulder, blood appearing between his fingers. This had been a flurry of arrows that rained down on them from the trees, and Miro almost got hit twice.

The rider moved his hands back on the reins and Miro could see the red wet tear in his shirt.

“I bet you wish I hadn’t been wearing the mana-cles now,” Miro shouted into his ear.

“What the devil are you talking about?”

“Could have cauterized it at least.”

Before Miro even finished talking, a curt sickening scream exploded from the rider ahead of them and she immediately tumbled from her horse.

“Sandis!” the male rider shouted as they raced by and when Miro glanced back to see where she fell, he only saw a boot sticking out from the shrubbery growing by the side of a road, and a health bar that bore the newly learned name rapidly draining to empty.

“She’ll be alright,” Miro whispered into the other’s ear, hoping it would keep the rider focused on their own escape.

Miro’s hopes were dashed as quickly as the life of their horse. The beautiful animal, struck by an unseen volley from their invisible foes, buckled underneath them and sent both of them flying onto the hard-packed road.

The mana-cles made it impossible for Miro to properly brace himself for the landing and it was all he could to not land on top of his arms, which would have likely resulted in two broken wrists. Instead, it was his back that hit the ground first, slamming all the air out of him. He struggled to breathe, opening and closing his mouth like a fish out of water. Stars danced in front of his eyes and the edges of his vision started to grow dark, until his lungs finally decided to cooperate and he hungrily inhaled the fresh mountain air.

Miro struggled to his feet, and found that the fallen rider was also getting up, and not a moment too soon, as two of the bandits were approaching him with swords drawn. They looked pretty much exactly what Miro would expect from a pair of highwaymen – tattered rough-spun clothing, dirty unshaven faces covered in an intricate collection of scars, and wild matted hair. The only discernable difference between them was that one had a perfectly square jaw while the other’s face was long like a horse’s. Both had a red bar simply titled “Mountain Bandit” hovering over their head. Two alarmingly full bars while his own captor’s bar was now only half full.

The rider pulled out his sword, which was a more formidable piece than the two cutlasses the bandits were wielding, but there were two of them and he was hurt. Miro looked down at his shackles and then to the fight unfolding in front of him. There was a lot to be said about picking the evil you know, especially when that evil seemed far less murderous than the alternative.

Miro rushed at the bandit with the square jaw with his eyes closed – if he was going to be skewered for what he was about to do, Miro didn’t want to see it coming. Miro chose to yell as he ran; a berserker sort of scream that reached up from the bottom of his stomach and just seemed like the appropriate thing to do. It also happened to alert the bandit that he was coming, so in one swift motion, square-jaw used Miro’s own momentum to toss him face-first onto the ground. The distraction though, had been enough. As Miro flipped over to see if the bandit was coming to finish the job, he saw the bandit’s whole body snap back, the look of dastardly determination replaced by open-eyed horror, and then he fell to the ground.

“Oh, that’s a lot of blood,” Miro muttered before flipping over onto his hands and knees and expelling the contents of his stomach onto the ground. Though his vision was blurry from the tears that the sudden upchucking had knocked from him, he could not believe what was happening in front of his eyes – his experience bar marched forward giddily until it was full and then blank again.

Level 4 reached

2 Skill Points Available

New Spell Learned: Lesser Fireball

Fat good that was going to do him with the mana-cles still on his wrists. Only hope Miro had was if his captor dispatched the remainder of his immediate bloodthirsty foes. Unfortunately, they were multiplying, and Miro could see two others round the bend in the road and run in their direction. Miro bellowed “Hey!” with all his might but it was too late. One of the newly-arrived bandits took a knee, and let loose an arrow that struck the man Miro was riding with in the side, and the bandit he had been fighting finished the job with his cutlass. The rider’s health bar flickered out of existence without Miro ever knowing his name.

Without hesitation, the bandit with the horse face then turned in Miro’s direction, fresh blood staining his blade. Miro cursed his own failure to lift himself up to be ready to run, and all he could do was back away, in a seating position, kicking up dust with feet that couldn’t get enough traction for him to stand up, as the bandit advanced with a half-toothless grin. “No, no, no, no, no,” Miro stammered, and when the bandit raised his arm to strike, Miro did the same. The sword descended in a swishing arc and landed hard against the mana-cles that crackled with an angry blue energy and then fell away from Miro’s wrists. Momentarily stunned by the setback, the bandit went in for the killing strike. Miro, for his part, feeling his powers coursing through him once more, reached blindly within himself, outstretched his hand, and summoned his first lesser fireball directly into the bandit’s face.

The bandit let out an inhuman howl as his entire head was engulfed in flame, the bar above his head quickly emptying, which stopped the approaching two members of his gang dead in their tracks. Miro knew this was not the time to admire or be horrified by his handiwork. Finally, he picked himself up and dashed into the thicket across the road.

As he ran, hurtling over fallen trees and shredding his pants on thorny bushes, he watched his experience bar grow another third of a level and he knew that the bandit was no more. There was the sound of commotion behind him. Someone shouted “which way did he go?” followed shortly by a scream of anguish. Miro didn’t even turn around, looked straight ahead until he burst through a bush and found himself tumbling down a short embankment and coming to rest at the edge of a narrow river.

Other than the wheezing sound of his breathing that burned in his lungs, peace returned to the forest around him. The river flowed lazily before him. A bird took off silently from a branch overhead to land on the tree on the other side. There were no human voices, no snapping twigs amongst the trees behind him. He thought that he should get up; that he should keep walking and put more distance between himself and the remaining bandits. Instead, Miro fell asleep.