True to his prediction, figures soon emerged from the gloom. And just as he'd wagered, there were only four: two brandishing daggers, one clutching a long-barrelled flintlock, and a fourth, a brute more powerfully built than the others, who wielded a crude cat-o'-nine-tails. A second flintlock pistol was tucked into his belt.
"Boss, the carriage is empty!" one of the men shouted back after a quick search.
"Quickly! After them! They can't have gotten far," the stout leader bellowed, brandishing his whip and urging them forward.
His underlings, however, had their attention fixed on the scattered chests and crates, their desire for loot clearly outweighing their desire for pursuit.
"Damnation! What could be in this wreckage? Put that man down, and you'll all be rewarded handsomely."
Prodded by the brute's promise, the men tore their greedy eyes from the spoils. But just as the group began to advance, a clap of thunder erupted from the trees. The gunman at the rear of their formation was thrown to the ground, his life and death uncertain.
"Who's there!"
The brigand roared, his eyes darting about the black, unblinking forest. At that moment, as planned, Lance rose and made a deliberate rustle in the dense woods.
"There! Don't let him escape!" the leader yelled, charging forward without a moment's hesitation. "Get him! A hundred pieces for the man who kills him!"
At this, the two remaining men cast aside their hesitation, their greed propelling them forward with a feverish haste that outpaced even their boss.
"Kill him!"
"The bounty is mine!"
Lance moved quickly through the undergrowth. A glance over his shoulder at the frenzied, near-mad expressions of his pursuers sent a spike of real fear through him, and he quickened his pace. For the brigands, his reaction only stoked their bloodlust. They were reveling in the thrill of the chase. They were the hunters, and Lance, the desperate prey.
Just as their focus was entirely fixed on Lance, a figure erupted from the brush with a righteous cry.
"In the name of the Light!"
Reynauld charged, a living spear plunging into the enemy's flank. Before they could react, his longsword ran the foremost brigand clean through. Without pause, Reynauld kicked the luckless soul from his blade and, with a powerful reverse swing, cleaved into the second man.
Reynauld's sudden appearance threw their ranks into chaos. Seeing his comrade impaled, the last underling turned to flee, but he had barely pivoted before the Crusader's sword scythed through his neck. His head flew from his shoulders, eyes wide with an eternal surprise, his body taking two more stumbling steps before it collapsed.
The swift death of his men did not make the brute flinch. In the precious seconds their lives had bought him, he had already drawn the pistol from his belt.
The barrel was levelled at Reynauld.
"Look out!" Lance cried out from the treeline. His fear of firearms was a palpable thing, and the sight of the pistol sent a cold spike of dread through his heart.
BANG!
The gun was in another's hand; Lance's warning could not change fate. As the headless corpse fell, the shot rang out. But to his astonishment, the scream that followed was not Reynauld's, but the brute's.
His pistol hand became a mangled ruin of flesh and blood, the weapon clattering to the ground.
"Looks like I wasn't too late." Dismas emerged from the woods on the opposite side, a wisp of smoke still curling from the barrel of his gun.
Reynauld, snapping back to the moment, raised his sword to deliver the final blow when Lance's voice cut through the air.
"Leave him alive!"
The Crusader checked his swing, reversing the blade and bringing the heavy pommel down on the brute's head, silencing his howls and sending him crashing to the dirt.
"Why not kill him?" Dismas asked, walking over to join them.
"Does nothing about this strike you as... strange?" Lance asked, raising a hand to placate them. "They saw the overturned carriage, the scattered cargo, yet they showed no interest. They pursued us with a singular, driving purpose."
"Perhaps they thought we took the valuables with us. The cargo wasn't going anywhere," Dismas reasoned, putting himself in their shoes.
Lance only smiled at this. He picked up a fallen dagger and used it to prod one of the corpses.
"For a brigand who has lived for years in the wilds, his clothes are remarkably clean. There is no dirt beneath his fingernails, no calluses on his palms from a lifetime of wielding a blade, no sun-weathered leather to his face."
"And look at this." He handed the dagger to Dismas. "The edge on this blade is too clean. It has seen no real battle. It might as well have come straight from the smithy."
Dismas took the weapon and saw that it was true. But in the darkness, who would have noticed such details? It was only now that Lance pointed it out that they saw.
"You're saying these men are not brigands?"
Lance searched the unconscious leader, pulling a few scattered coins from a pocket... and a brass badge. He held it up for the two men to see.
"It's a constable's badge!" Dismas blurted out, recognizing it at once.
But the man who carried such a thing should be a lawman, responsible for keeping the peace. How had he become a highway robber? The situation grew murkier still.
"What is the meaning of this?"
"That is why I need him to answer some questions," Lance said, picking up the bloodied pistol from the ground. His gaze, now cold as iron, fell upon the downed man. "Speak. Who sent you to kill me?"
"If I talk... will I live?"
Lance was in no mood for games. He pressed the barrel of the gun against the man's head.
"Are you in a position to bargain?"
"The Magistrate! It was the Magistrate! He made me do it, I had no choice!"
Faced with death, the brute cast aside his last shred of defiance, betraying his master without a second thought.
"Only the Magistrate?" Lance's voice was calm, as if he had already expected this.
"And the landowners... the farmsteaders! They were not happy to hear about your arrival, my lord."
Once betrayal begins, it has no bottom. The man spilled the entire story, and through it, Lance began to understand the state of the town. After the previous lord's death and with the roads blocked by real brigands, the Magistrate had conspired with the local landowners, hiking up the price of grain to bleed the common folk dry. Upon hearing that the heir was returning, the Magistrate immediately tasked this man with gathering a few thugs to stage a "bandit" ambush. The plan was to assassinate the heir, after which the Magistrate would kill the "bandits" himself, leaving the town entirely in his grasp.
"You are not lying to me?"
"I've told you everything, my lord! I wouldn't dare lie!"
"Then you are of no further use."
As the words left his lips, Lance pulled the trigger. The hammer's flint struck the pan, scraping a shower of sparks. But the thunderous report he expected never came, the sparks fizzling into nothingness.
The gun was empty.
And in that single moment of stunned silence, the brute lunged, launching himself from the ground in a desperate attempt to seize him.