Crisis at Forest's Edge, Part 1: Trouble Brewing

She hurried through the scattered bushes and sapling trees, occasionally throwing a glance backwards to check for pursuit. The sounds of the Eradicators came to her ears on the breeze, the hounds barking, the men shouting and cheering. They had grown fainter after she jumped the creek, but too much time had been wasted in that blasted nest of thorn-covered vines. Now, they were gaining on the open ground between the hill area and the forest proper.

The Eradicators were coming to kill her, and even if Crant could make it to the forest, there was no guarantee that the inhabitants wouldn't execute her themselves.

This most recent mess had started three nights before, when the young woman had stopped at a roadside inn for the night. A pair of well-armed men had been lounging at a table in the center of the room with their drinks, talking loudly and acting rude. They'd at one point mentioned that their party would be going monster hunting the next day, and were sure to bring back some Animkind corpses.

Crant had seen many members of the bestial races that made up the Animkind people, and had come to respect a few of them as well. She knew any attack on the part of these men would certainly result in retaliation upon any humans in the area, and had the potential for the deaths of innocents on either side. That night, after the pair had passed out at their table, Crant had snuck into the inn's small stable. There were only six or so stalls, and each of them housed a decent-sized horse, with tack and gear hung in sacks on the gates.

Without a sound, the woman had taken her sword and sliced some narrow gashes into each mount's saddle girth, the belt that went under the horse and held the saddle in place. The cuts were not big enough to be noticed by someone not looking for them, but once the girth's buckles were tightened, the strain would hopefully cause them to tear.

The next morning, as she munched on some freshly cooked scrambled eggs and hash browns, Crant heard some satisfyingly-startled cries coming from the stables. The same pair she'd observed before slinked into the room, along with three of their companions. All of them appeared rather disheveled, and one fellow appeared to be favoring his left leg. Behind the group stalked in a dark-haired man with a pair of short-handled axes hanging on his belt. This was the one member of the group that didn't look like he'd fallen off of his horse.

Taking a seat at the long table beside the smaller one where Crant ate her morning meal, this man glared at each of the others in turn.

"Who was supposed to be on watch last night?" He growled.

"Me, Talarn." One of the pair from the previous night muttered.

"And why didn't you check the stables? For the gods' sakes, don't you realize we're practically in Animkind territory?"

"But, I figured, since we weren't in a camp, Solsh and I could have a few drinks..."

Crant snorted. "More than a few, it looked like." She muttered. The dark-haired man, Talarn, stiffened, and turned his head just enough to look at her with one eye.

"I don't suppose you saw anything last night, did you, miss?" He asked, in a tone of annoyance.

"Afraid not. Though, I will point out, there's no Animkind settlement that's close enough to have sent a scout or two in order to sabotage you without risking those scouts' lives on the journey."

"And what would you know about those monsters?"

She took a moment to slowly set down her fork. "I know they don't deserve the reputation people usually assign to them. I also know they don't risk their warriors' lives on meaningless raids."

"Maybe it wasn't one of those beasts. Maybe it was an Anim-sympathizer." Talarn said, his lips curling into an unpleasant sneer.

"My goodness, what would ever give you that idea?" Crant tilted her head with a crooked smile. Now his gaze hardened into a glare, and Talarn stood with an abrupt scrape of his chair.

"C'mon. We have gear to repair." He snapped before stomping out of the room, the other men following along dutifully. Crant allowed herself another chuckle before returning to her food.

About an hour later, after paying the innkeeper and retrieving her pack from the room, she'd set out along the northern road. As was her habit, Crant kept both eyes scanning in either direction, and her ears tuned to the natural bird calls and plant rustlings of the surrounding land. So she was ready when a crossbow bolt whistled out of the tall grass to her left.

To Be Continued...