The Road to Ragodast

Katya Redfort, a Seeker of the Verden Inquisition, was a woman on a mission. She had been assigned to recover a text stolen from the Royal Archives, a text that was unfortunately about magic, and very dangerous magic at that. The suspected thief, Sabina Hoyt Habiscus, had managed to flee the country, and unfortunately, the army had failed to find her. Katya had been informed that a mercenary tracker by the name of Artem Eluf Lucio had been hired to find Sabina, but there was no guarantee that he would return the book. In fact, there was a good chance he would sell the book if he acquired it, which would make recovery of the text very difficult. Therefore, it was Katya's job to get to Sabina first.

Katya had decided to start the search for Sabina at the Dalen town of Ragodast. Naturally, the Verden Inquisition was not welcome in Dalen, so she had to adopt a disguise. Katya used her influence to get hired on as a caravan guard for a merchant caravan that was leaving the Verden city of Hartford to go to Ragodast.

Preparations were made, and soon, the caravan was ready to go. Unfortunately, some commotion at the gate held up departure. Katya saw man create a cloud of smoke, then get past the gate guards and into the city. Katya was tempted to pursue the man, who clearly was a shameless magic user, but she had a job to do.

Eventually, the gate guards were able to get it together, and traffic through the gate continued. Soon enough, Katya's caravan was on the road to Dalen. Some of the merchants and guards bantered for awhile, but Katya walked in silence.

The first couple of days of the journey were blissfully uneventful, but their luck didn't last.

The sun was getting low in the sky on the third day of the journey when Katya detected movement in the darkening forest on either side of the road. Concerned, she approached one of her fellow caravan guards and said, "I think we are being watched."

"I feel it too. Hopefully its just Dalen securi..."

Suddenly, a fireball flew out of the forest and struck a clump of men, knocking them off of their feet. Some of them didn't get back up. The fireball was quickly followed up by a hail of arrows and quarrels flying from both sides of the forest. Katya looked around for the enemy wildly, struggling not to panic as men dropped left and right. The caravan guard captain began shouting orders, and the remaining caravan guards began to rally when another fireball flew out of the forest. This time, Katya was ready. She cast a barrier between the fireball and the guard captain, causing the fireball to detonate off the barrier harmlessly.

The caravan guard captain looked at her with wide-eyes, then continued barking out orders. The men formed a semi-circle shield wall while crossbowmen took shots at the attackers in the woods. The mage throwing the fireballs stopped his attacks, probably so as not to draw attention to himself. Katya held her shield up and took missle fire from the attackers in the woods, wondering how they were going to survive this mess.

The two sides continued to exchange missle fire for about ten minutes, with the caravan guards taking very few casualties. Katya wasn't sure how their attackers faired. Eventually, a cry went out amongst the attackers, and they emerged out of forest on all sides of the caravan guards. Katya gulped. The rugged looking men that had ambushed them outnumbered the survivors of the caravan at least two-to-one. With a roar, they charged the shield wall, bearing a variety of weapons from mauls and hammers to swords and axes. Katya held her ground as they came, wondering how she was going to get out of this situation. She had a job to do, and she was not going to die for these men. Then, the bandits were on top of them, and Katya's instincts took over as she blocked her attacker's strikes and counter-attacked when an opening became available.

The caravan guards slowly melted before their attackers, and it became apparent that they were going to be overwhelmed. It was all Katya could do to prevent herself from being flanked. But as the fighting continued, Katya knew it was only a matter of time before she went down unless a miracle happened...