The Blackstar Legacy - Chapter 5

After leaving travelers to make their way south as best they could, they turned back north. Thankfully, the days had been uneventful, although the road was indeed nearly empty, as the travelers had described. The small section he’d seen in Farvale had been a near constant flow of people, and Osric had been picturing at least half as much as he’d seen there.

Instead, in three days of travel, they had only passed one other group, also travelers who’d been nervous to pass a heavily armed group. Osric felt bad leaving them behind to travel south on their own, but if they started escorting every group of travelers, they’d never complete the rest of their mission.

As they neared the very end of their time on the road, before continuing north as the road curved away northeast toward Wolfridge, Osric thought they might get off the road without any further issues.

They’d seen signs of bandits along the way, but it seemed like they’d decided to avoid well-armed travelers and look for easier targets instead. While Osric would have been happy to rid the world of their kind, he was also happy to not have had to deal with it.

His hopes for an uneventful remainder of the trip were dashed when Rowan, trailing a bit ahead of the group, held up a hand. They didn’t pull weapons, except for Rowan who had his bow held loosely, but they put hands to hilts as they moved to fan out behind him.

A group of seven men on horseback appeared wearing worn but well-made armor, to Osric’s eye. While they weren’t brandishing weapons either, they also had hands on hilts.

Which was fair. It was a dangerous road these days and everyone was nervous when encountering others on the road.

The riders drew their horses to a halt a dozen yards away.

“Ho there, travelers,” Rowan called out, holding up a hand.

“Move aside and let us pass,” one of the men said.

“Gladly. Be careful on the road. Bandits are thick, and the Rangers are spread thin of late.”

The leader of the mounted group tilted his head, studying him.

“Rangers? Your kind don’t exist anymore.”

“As long as I’m standing, the Rangers still exist,” Rowan replied, more calm than Osric would have expected.

They started to step to the side of the road and let the men pass when one said, just loud enough for the group to hear, “Weren’t the boy and girl supposed to have others with them? An old man, a wolf...”

“They didn’t say anything about no ranger,” his companion replied.

Osric’s hand tightened on his sword hilt. “What are you talking about?”

“Seems there’s a good-sized bounty out for a young man and a girl traveling together. Word is, they came from somewhere near Farvale. You lot wouldn’t happen to have an old ring on you, would you?”

“We want no quarrel with you,” Rowan said.

“Then leave the boy and girl. They’re the only ones listed on the bounty.” The leader shrugged. “Or step aside and let us search them. If we don’t find a ring, you can all go your way.”

“We’re not going anywhere,” Jasper said.

“That’s fine by me,” the scared leader said, drawing his sword. “The bounty says ‘dead or alive.’ We can check their corpses for the ring just as easily.”

The leader drew his sword, and the rest followed his lead, pulling weapons. Osric cursed himself for relaxing when they weren’t instantly hostile. They’d split themselves to make room for the riders, and now half his people were on the other side, too far away from him to support.

It could have been worse. At least Talia was with him. Jasper was on the other side, but he had Rowan with him, who was more than capable of defending himself and the others.

Grace was her own story. As soon as the man started to pull his sword, she took two large steps backward and disappeared into the forest. A month ago, Osric would have been worried she was abandoning them, running to safety. After what he’d seen over the last few weeks, she’d shown that there was more to her. That she did care about others, regardless of what she said.

Her disappearing was part of a plan. Something these men would regret.

Surprisingly, Talia was also already in motion, her hands drawing symbols in the air, moving in their intricate pattern. She hadn’t let herself relax, even if only to wait to see what the men would do.

She never took her eyes off the men as she pressed her palms together, rotated them apart while drawing her left hand down as her right moved up, fingers spread wide.

As she brought her right hand sweeping across her body, a roiling ball of fire leapt out of thin air, pushing away from her outstretched hands and striking toward the group, which had just started their horses charging forward.

Her aim wasn’t perfect, the ball exploding behind the group instead of in the midst of them, spreading out in a roar of flame and heat. Horses screamed and reared and the three men further back joined them, ripping burning cloth off their skin, which was blackened and charred.

Surprisingly, they managed to regain control of their mounts, which must be well trained indeed to not run at the first hint of pain.

The leader spurred his mount forward, charging straight for Osric. His blade came down in a vicious arc that Osric barely managed to deflect, the impact sending Osric let the impact push him, rolling away from the warhorse, its hooves slamming into the cobblestone where Osric had stood a moment before.

On the other side of the road, Rowan surprised Osric by shooting an arrow not at one of the men, but burying the shaft into the animal’s rump. The animal, already scared from the burns it had received, had taken too much, its instincts taking over from its training as it reared up, spilling the man on its back onto the roadside.

Osric popped back to his feet and lunged forward at the scared leader, the tip of his blade sliding under the thigh plate of his armor, drawing first blood. The leader grunted in pain but kept his seat, wheeling the animal just out of Osric’s reach, turning it to put his blade in a position to attack again.

“Heathus protect him!” Jasper called out, loud enough for his voice to be heard over the shouts and clashing steel.

Osric felt the familiar warmth of the gods coursing through him again, filling him with purpose and strength.

A scream from the trees drew everyone’s attention as Grace suddenly emerged from the forest, leaping out of a tree and onto the back of one of the mounted men. Her arm locked around his throat as she buried her short sword into a gap in his armor.

Rowan took advantage of the momentary distraction to send two more arrows flying, again into the rump of a horse. Not a fatal blow for the animal, but enough to send it rearing up, its hooves pawing the air as it threw its rider to the ground.

That was enough to send everyone back into action, with the leader pressing his attack on Osric who, feeling the surge of energy from Jasper’s blessing, moved just in time to deflect the blow.

“Give us the boy, and the rest of you can live,” the leader yelled.

None of Osric’s friends bothered to reply. They already made their decision. Talia, in response, sent a wave of golden light rippling across the field of combat from her outstretched hands, washing over Osric, Grace, Rowan, and Cinder. Osric had felt the energies when the gods had healed him and when Jasper had blessed him but this was something … else. Something more raw.

He felt incredibly fast. Impossibly fast.

Osric’s blade recovered from the deflection a moment before and moved lightning fast, striking under the leader’s parry and cutting into his thigh, drawing both blood and a scream.

“Kill the girl first! She’s the dangerous one!” he yelled through gritted teeth.

One of the men spurred his mount toward Talia, but his wild swing went wide as she ducked behind Osric.

On the other side of the road, the fighter Grace had been clinging to finally stopped his struggling as she continued to press the sword deeper and deeper, slumping forward. She pulled her sword free but kept him pinned to the animal, using his dead weight as an anchor to help her fight from.

“One down!” she yelled triumphantly.

Osric grimaced. Even in battle, she took nothing seriously. Rowan, for his part, continued to retreat as fighters closed on him, putting more arrows into another horse, just as the man started to make a charge at Jasper. He was smart. They’d come into the fight with a clear advantage, and he’d made it his mission to bring them to ground, take their advantage from them.

The attacker fell from his horse, bucked as the animal reacted to the pain, ending his attack before it started.

Osric stepped back himself, pushing Talia almost into the trees. It created more space between himself and his friends, but with the new rider and the leader, he was feeling pressed from two sides.

His distraction caught him.

The man may not have been possessed with speed granted by arcane magic, but he was still fast. Osric managed to parry his first strike against his swords’ crossguard. Osric was distracted as, at almost the same instant, the man who rode for Talia took another slash, thankfully directing his ire at Osric and not Talia.

Osric managed to dodge to the side, still locked against the leader’s blade, and avoided the slash, but that left an opening for the leader to counter his stroke, the blade drawing a line across Osric’s arm, where the metal chest piece he’d acquired could not protect him.

It had been imprecise, a counter against a target moving sideways, so it didn’t take his arm clean off, but Osric still grunted from the pain of the slash.

“Duck,” Talia yelled as her hands moved quickly in front of her, manipulating the energies only she could see.

Osric didn’t need to be told twice and ducked enough to give her room. He could not see what she did with her hands, but three of the diamond-shaped bolts of energy slashed past him, slamming into the new attacker’s chest, burning holes clean through the leather armor he wore and burying deep into him.

The man’s eyes rolled back in his head as he toppled from his horse, dead before he hit the ground.

Across the way, one of the men thrown from his horse earlier pushed himself off the ground where he had fallen from his animal and began to run at a retreating Rowan, clearly angry for the attack that caused him to be thrown from the saddle.

Jasper clearly did not want the same thing to happen twice, and reared up with the mace he’d been carrying but hardly used since their adventure began. It was a powerful, vigorous blow, if ill-aimed. The man had been helpless, and Jasper’s blow only hit his shoulder. It clearly hurt, but a prime moment to take a fighter out of the battle with a blow to the head while he could not defend himself was wasted.

The man screamed but rolled away from Jasper and pushed himself to his feet. He was forced to take a step back again as a grey streak leapt past him, almost impacting against him, and grabbed onto one of the few remaining mounted men. Cinders’ fangs tore into the man’s leg as the wolf pulled him from his saddle, shaking his head violently, causing his sharp teeth to dig even further into the man’s skin.

Grace, seeing Jasper in combat, pushed off from the dead man on the horse and landed beside the cleric with a fluid twist, her blade already in motion as she hit the ground. The short sword whipped out with deadly precision, slashing through the hip where the leather chest piece was tied together, cutting the bindings and biting into flesh. Only the man’s quick backpedal caused the blade to only open a long gaping wound, instead of piercing through into organs.

On his side of the road, the leader poised to strike at Osric again. Osric prepared himself, his arm still burning from the earlier hit, when suddenly three bolts of pure force whipped past him, streaking unerringly toward the leader. They struck the man in rapid succession, each impact drawing a grunt of pain.

“Your bounty’s not worth dying for,” she called out, not that like this was the type of man to run from a fight.

A few steps from Grace, Rowan shifted his bow to his left hand while drawing his shortsword and slashing out as the man got close to him. It drew blood and caused the man’s own attack to become clumsy and wild, allowing Rowan to step aside easily, allowing the desperate attack to cut through nothing but air.

The leader, bleeding from multiple wounds and his chest still smoking, seemed to be undeterred from his attack. His blade came down with crushing force toward Osric’s shoulder. Osric tried to dodge, but he had limited space to maneuver if he wanted to continue to protect Talia, which allowed the edge of the man’s sword to bite deep.

Pain flared through Osric’s arm, but he refused to give ground. Behind him, he heard Talia moving, preparing another spell. Allowing her time to work was the smart move.

Osric gathered his remaining strength, ignoring the burning in his shoulder and, with both hands gripping his longsword, drove the blade forward with all his might. The leader’s eyes went wide as Osric’s sword punched through his armor and into his chest. For a moment, time seemed to stop as their eyes met.

Then the leader’s grip on his weapon loosened, the sword falling from nerveless fingers as he toppled from his saddle. He hit the ground with a dull thud, blood pooling beneath him.

With their leader gone, the fight seemed to go out of some of the remaining combatants.

One of the men who’d been unhorsed earlier saw the battle going against him and turned to run, sprinting away from the conflict as fast as he can. The movement drew Cinder’s attention. The animal abandoned his previous victim, releasing the man’s lead, and took off after his new fleeing target. It was not difficult for the wolf to catch him, his jaws clamping down on the man’s leg with devastating force. The mercenary screamed as Cinder’s teeth tore through leather and flesh, falling to the ground as his forward momentum was suddenly halted.

“Please! I yield!” the man cried out, trying desperately to crawl away while fumbling for his dagger.

Not all of them could run. The wounded fighter near Grace and Jasper was trapped between them, with nowhere to flee, instead swinging his blade in a clumsy arc, trying to create space to escape. Grace ducked under the attack with casual grace.

“Really? That’s the best you can do?” she taunted.

Jasper seized his opportunity as Grace kept their opponent distracted. His mace came down in a powerful overhead strike, connecting with the man’s shoulder. Bone cracked beneath the impact, sending him to his knees.

That left one man standing, and he too had seen enough. He took one look at his fallen companions and turned to flee into the forest.

Grace reversed her grip on her weapon, coming in to finish the man off. Osric wasn’t sure how much different this was than cold-blooded murder, but considering what these men had planned for him, he also wasn’t seriously worried about the morality of it either. The mercenary weakly tried to block, barely able to hold himself up, but it did no good. She kicked his blade away and drove her sword through his back, impaling him. He collapsed, the last of his life leaving his body.

“And stay down,” she muttered, already seeking her next target.

Through the trees, the last mercenary was running with almost no care, crashing through undergrowth. Talia’s hands had already been in motion, and she twisted, so that instead of pointing to where the leader once was, she instead pointed to the running man. Osric was amazed when, as her hand cut a diagonal line and then both hands thrust forward, a brilliant bolt of lightning erupted from her outstretched fingers, accompanied by a deafening crack. The sheer power of it was terrifying. The electric blast struck the fleeing man square in the back, lifting him off his feet and sending him flying forward, rebounding off of a tree. He convulsed once in the dirt, wisps of smoke rising from his scorched armor, and then stopped moving altogether.

Osric had no idea she was capable of such incredible magic.

Near the treeline, Rowan faced off against the fighter still on his feet, the man desperately trying to fight his way free to try and run as well. The ranger showed how skilled of a fighter he was as he shifted his weight, feinting left before darting right. His opponent took the bait, committing to block the false attack. Rowan’s actual strike came in low, his shortsword finding flesh beneath the mercenary’s guard, ending his life.

Osric looked around the now littered battlefield. A dozen paces down the road, Cinder looked up from the body of the man he had caught, and now mauled. That was all of them.

The battle was finished. Now came figuring out exactly what had just happened.

Osric wiped his blade clean on a fallen mercenary leader’s cloak and knelt beside his body, checking him for any clues. It didn’t require a thorough search. A leather scroll case hung from his belt, a rolled scroll inside with a seal that he did not recognize.

“Everyone all right?” he asked, glancing at his companions.

Talia nodded, though she looked weak. Osric imagined it took a lot to channel such powerful magic. Grace, of course, was already rifling through the dead men’s belongings.

“Let me see that wound,” Jasper said, coming to him.

“Answers first. Do you recognize this seal?”

When the cleric shook his head no, Osric broke it and unrolled the parchment. It was a bounty, which wasn’t surprising from what the leader had said. Nor was the rest of the contents. Descriptions of himself, Talia, and the ancient ring he’d discovered what felt like a lifetime ago. More unexpected, however, was that it mentioned Jasper and Cinder.

“Well?” Talia peered over his shoulder. “What does it say?”

“A lot, and none of it good. Whoever put out this bounty knew about us. You, me, the ring. Even Jasper and Grace.”

“The brethren?” She asked as he passed her the document.

“It’s what makes sense. If it was just us, perhaps it would be something else, but I have not been just showing this ring around. Who else would even know about it to describe it so closely.”

“Look at the horses,” Grace called, interrupting them as she led one of the less-skittish mounts toward them. “Well-bred, well-trained. These weren’t common sellswords.”

Rowan lowered his bow slightly. “Why doesn’t it mention Grace or myself?”

“What do you mean?” Osric asked.

“It mentions Jasper, which means wherever they got their information, it was after we returned to Farvale, well after we killed Godfrey. We hadn’t found Jasper by that point. Yet whoever wrote this doesn’t mention Grace or myself, who were also there when we returned.”

“That doesn’t make sense. No one survived that fight, and Captain Lockwood covered for us afterward,” Talia said.

“Unless...” Jasper’s voice was heavy. “Unless they knew about me separately. They knew about the three of you and your wolf, from before Rowan joined you and before you found me and Grace. The only answer is that they took that information and put it together with my name, independent of the fight in Farvale.”

“But how?” Osric asked.

“They knew I had knowledge of the document’s other half. That I was one of the few who even knew it existed. After I left the Brethren, they kept tabs on me. Checked occasionally to ensure I wasn’t causing trouble. But they considered me harmless, just a mad old man in a hut.”

“Until you vanished,” Grace said, understanding dawning on her face.

Jasper nodded. “When their people at the sunken temple were killed and the document taken, they must have connected the pieces.”

“It’s all speculation,” Osric said, but the theory made sense. “What matters is they haven’t given up. And now they’re using bounty hunters.”

“Makes things more complicated,” Rowan agreed. “We’ll need to be more careful in towns. Avoid main roads when we can.”

Grace finished securing the horses’ reins. “At least we got some decent mounts out of it. Better than walking.”

“I’ll help you gather up the others,” Rowan said, leaving with Grace to catch the other horses that had run during the fight.

“And supplies,” Talia added, examining the saddlebag.

Jasper stepped closer to Osric. “Now, about that wound.”

Osric had almost forgotten the slash on his arm. The pain returned as Jasper examined it. “How bad?”

“Clean cut. Nothing vital.” Jasper closed his eyes in prayer. Warmth spread through Osric’s arm as the wound sealed under the cleric’s touch. “But we should move soon. That fight wasn’t quiet.”

“Agreed.” Osric rolled his shoulder, testing the healed muscle. “We need to get off this road before more bounty hunters show up. Or worse.”

They spent the next few minutes gathering useful supplies and distributing them while Rowan and Grace brought back four more horses. The others seemed to have started running and never stopped, but it was enough. There were five of them, not counting Cinder, and five horses.

Rowan quickly patched up the animals that had been injured and showed amazing ability to soothe them, calming their nerves. Within twenty minutes of the end of the battle, they were ready to travel again.

“Let’s keep going. With horses, it won’t be long before we reach the Claws,” Osric said, pulling himself up into the saddle.