[coronatiger]

Thoughts on November 5th

We had breakfast in the room I share with Olivia, so we could discuss our battle plans privately. Ilzo wanted to put sharp things at the bottom of the pits he dug yesterday, as well as digging more holes. My contribution to the planning concerned putting up red strips of cloth along a path that the bandits could follow to where we wanted them to be. We should wait with that, so they wouldn’t find us and scout the battlefield. Va’lyndra said she was going to shape some trees, widening and flattening the trunks to give us better cover from archer fire.

Leopold escorted Ilzo to the market to buy sharp things, and Va’lyndra and I went to find someone to bring our message about following the red trail to the bandits. We found a street urchin at the border of the Pond district, and Va’lyndra paid him a few coppers to relay the message to Varg. Then we headed for the battlefield, where we had arranged to meet Ilzo and Leopold.

When we came close to our ridge, three handsome elven men stepped out of the trees and asked us to stop. Two of them pointed arrows at us, and the third spoke. He asked “the elf” to come over to them, and ordered me to remain where I was. The elves had an emblem of a tree on their armor, but no uniform. However, it was obvious these were forest guardians from beyond the wall.

Va’lyndra greeted the elves. “Praise to Elendus, and peace in nature!” The man replied that it was good that she hadn’t forgotten her ancestors’ ways, but wanted to know what we were doing here. Va’lyndra explained that we were practicing a ritual dance for Elendus. The elf wasn’t convinced, so she elaborated that one should dance through obstacles in nature, so we had prepared this area with dangers. She offered to demonstrate, but apologized that she hadn’t brought her Elendus statuette this time, nor her regular partner. The elves said I could be her partner, but Va’lyndra claimed that I didn’t know the dance; she had intended to teach it to me before the others arrived.

The elves told Va’lyndra to put down her weapons, claiming they’d only get in the way when she was dancing. I didn’t trust the elves at all, not when one of them was aiming straight at me. I looked him in the eyes and put a string on my own bow. That started a shouting match between Va’lyndra and me. She threatened to tell Olivia I had done something bad. “Oh, yeah? I’ll just deny it, and who do you think she’ll believe?” I always confessed when I had misstepped, so I was certain Olivia would trust me, no matter how eloquent Va’lyndra was.

When the elves threatened to banish us from this place, Va’lyndra got really mad at me and stomped over. I flat out refused to put away my weapons while someone pointed theirs at me, but I proclaimed loudly that I didn’t understand why the elves felt threatened. It wasn’t as if I had any arrows in my quiver.

Va’lyndra went back to the elves and got them to lower their weapons, and I reluctantly put down my bow. They demanded that I put my knife down as well, and I considered being obstinate, but decided not to. I put my foot on the hilt so the magical weapon wouldn’t fly into my hand, and my toes under the bow so I could flip it up and grab it. Unless the elves had special training, I should be able to get a shot off before them, if they took aim again.

Va’lyndra demonstrated her dance, dodging between the traps that Ilzo and I had set up yesterday. After dancing for a while, Va’lyndra spoke some more with the elf leader. He raised his voice and gave a command in Elvish, said some parting words to Va’lyndra, and then he and his men left. I spotted two coming out of hiding, and thought it was good that we didn’t have to fight. I would have been fine, being further back, but Va’lyndra may not have survived.

I got an apology from Va’lyndra for being so sharp with me, but the situation was very delicate, she said. Then she went back to the traps and danced again. I determined to show her how it was done. I hadn’t seen this dance before today, let alone tried it, but I’m a skilled dancer in general, and this one had so much ducking and weaving among the traps that I even could draw on my acrobatics talent.

I felt like an elf while I was dancing. The dance also got me thinking about Sulla, for it had elements reminding me of a mating ritual. No wonder Ilzo and Va’lyndra use it as foreplay. I hadn’t believed they were actually dancing when they went out to be alone. I had thought it was a euphemism.

Ilzo and Leopold arrived half an hour after us at the battlefield. Va’lyndra explained to everyone that we had to tidy up after we were done. The elves hadn’t liked very much that we had dug holes and set up snares, but Va’lyndra had managed to soothe them, at least for a time.

I helped Ilzo with his traps, starting with putting arrows at the bottoms of the holes he had already made. He had purchased nearly a thousand of them, so I had plenty to work with. The holes weren’t even three meters deep, so I had no trouble getting out of them on my own. The bandits might not be quite as adroit as me, but I supposed that was why the arrows were there, to discourage them from joining the fight after the climb.

Leopold helped with the traps too, and he and Ilzo mainly focused on making the rear slope up to our ridge a treacherous route. Ilzo made more holes there for me to fill with arrows. Va’lyndra worked on top of the ridge, shaping trees, as she had said.

When the agreed time was approaching, the others sat down to rest while I made a trail of red cloth. At the place where the bandits should find the trail, I put up lots of red on the first branch, so they couldn’t fail to see it. Then I hid. I waited until the sky darkened. Nobody came. When it was getting so dark I might not find my way back to the others if I waited any longer, I left.

When I explained that nobody had showed up, Ilzo said we should wait until dawn, and if nobody had come by then, we should go back into town and beat up the bandits in their home base. The rest of us thought that was a bad idea. I posited that the street kid we had paid to deliver the message might have gotten something wrong. Maybe he messed up the message – Va’lyndra hadn’t exactly formulated it simply – or maybe he delivered it to the wrong person.

We decided to head back to Alvheim and look for the bandits. We walked along the edge of the forest, and Va’lyndra discovered that the bandits had gone out, but not where we expected them. They had also gone back to town.

We entered the Pond district and people stared at us, dressed up for battle as we were. When someone dashed ahead of us, we assumed they were going to alert the bandits that we had come, and turned around, making sure not to lose the dwarf teen who followed. He had to be a scout for the bandits, for he trailed us out into the forest.

Just out of sight of town, we started hanging up red cloth again; we had taken down the first trail. We went almost all the way to the battlefield, and stopped to wait. After a few minutes, Leopold reported that the scout had gone home, and Va’lyndra and Leopold went the rest of the way to our prepared site, continuing to hang up red cloth on the branches.

Ilzo and I waited until we saw torches approaching, and Ilzo exclaimed, “Look! The lambs have come to the slaughter!” We followed the trail and joined Va’lyndra and Leopold on the ridge. When I could just see the torches far into the trees, Leopold raised his voice. “Stop where you are!” He wasn’t looking at the torches, so I assumed he had spotted scouts trying to sneak around our flanks. One of the scouts fell into a pit trap with a scream and a thud. Ilzo laughed out loud, and Leopold repeated his warning. While we waited for the negotiators to arrive, Leopold pointed out the flankers to me. Va’lyndra went to the rear of the ridge to keep watch there. I counted the torches. Only ten, but the elves and dwarves in the gang probably had no more need of the light than my friends did.

The bandits stopped about sixty meters away, and talked among themselves until both Leopold and I had called for them to send their negotiators up to us. Leopold even had to remind them about the monsters roaming the Bewitched Forest. Then two dwarves in chainmail, carrying axes and shields, approached. Since they headed right for the traps, Ilzo went down to escort them along the safe path.

I asked Leopold if he thought there would be fighting. He said he believed the bandits would attack when Ilzo got down there. I quaffed a potion of invulnerability, and held potions of battle and of speed in my hand. Those didn’t last as long, so I wanted to drink them at the last minute. Ilzo should survive a few seconds without my covering fire.