[coronatiger]

I jogged back to Leopold and asked if there were more bandits. He counted quickly and said no. I looked down at the arrow protruding from my belly and asked if I could go to Olivia now, but Leopold said we had to help Va’lyndra and Ilzo. He showed the way, and when we got close to their hiding place behind a fence, Va’lyndra whistled to let us know where they were. I asked again if we could go to Olivia, but Va’lyndra showered us with her water jet to wash away the worst of the blood and dirt, first.

I took over carrying Ilzo, and led the way to the hospital where Olivia worked. I was quite the sight, standing in the reception area with an arrow in my gut and an orc twice my size over my shoulders, asking for Olivia. The receptionist asked if I needed a doctor’s care. “Yes, from Olivia, the new one,” I replied. The woman asked what happened to us, and Leopold said we were attacked by a gang in the Pond. That was good enough of an answer, and we all got to see doctors. I got Olivia all to myself.

“I thought you were going to handle this affair peacefully,” Olivia accused while she was patching me up. “I thought that was the plan, too,” I said, “but when I went inside a small hut to have sex with this guy, the others just started fighting!” Olivia tightened the bandages with a hurt look which made me flinch. “Sulla thinks I’m doing good deeds, sleeping with random people.” That wasn’t much of an excuse, but Olivia said, “At least it wasn’t Ilzo. But if you were sleeping around, how come you got shot?” I explained about how we had to lug the unconscious Ilzo through the Pond and how another group of bandits caught up with us, without detailing the horrors.

When Ilzo woke, we returned to the inn to have a “drink”. Olivia stayed at work. Everyone stared at us when we entered the Leaping Trout, bloody and bandaged as we were. Leopold ordered washing water for us all, and then we headed straight for our rooms.

After washing myself and my clothes, I gathered everyone in Leopold’s room to talk. Va’lyndra was concerned for the last bandits we had fought; we hadn’t had time to give first aid. I said they should be fine, as we had only given them one or two cuts, and mostly to the legs, but Va’lyndra said they could still bleed out.

I finally got the explanation for why there was fighting in the first place. The bandits had wanted to chase away Va’lyndra, Ilzo and Leopold, but they didn’t want to leave me behind, and thus fighting broke out.

We still hadn’t identified the gang’s actual top dog. I thought we should return to the Pond to find him, but this time, we should be ready for a fight. We still didn’t allow Ilzo to bring Surkalpi, so after we had prepared ourselves, we bought a big, rectangular shield for him. Then we headed for the Pond.

We had the address of the second leader. He was a dwarf named Varg. When we got close, Ilzo approached a street kid and said hello. The boy held out his hands, begging, but Ilzo asked what he had hidden under a rock, and promised gold for the information. Va’lyndra shouted, unnecessarily loudly, that he should stop giving away his gold. The boy seemed threatened and dashed off. A couple of other urchins coming our way turned around.

Ilzo lifted the rock and revealed a string underneath. Leopold said it was an alarm, and Ilzo pulled it. The boy had already done so, so pulling it again shouldn’t alert anyone new. Leopold pointed to three houses further ahead, and said he could hear chiming from them all. He warned us there might be an ambush. Ilzo smiled with anticipation.

The leader’s house was one of the three. When we got closer, we saw that there were cattle behind it. A dwarf woman sat in a chair on the porch. I walked up to her and asked for Varg, the bandit leader. She wanted to know who I was, so I gave her my name. Her name was Nalla, she said, and I asked for Varg again. Nalla asked if I was going to perform. I told her I was, but I needed to speak to Varg first.

Nalla said that Varg wasn’t in, and she didn’t know where he was or when he’d return. Leopold approached and introduced himself, asking how Nalla knew Varg. He also introduced Va’lyndra and Ilzo, and the way he spoke made me realize Nalla was blind!

Nalla told us she was Varg’s sister, and wondered how we knew him. She knew who I was, that was obvious, and probably didn’t think her brother frequented the same places I did. Leopold confessed that we hadn’t actually met, but Varg was up to no good, and we were here to ask him to stop. Nalla didn’t know anything about that. We said goodbye, and Va’lyndra tried to press a coin into Nalla’s hand. That must have been an insult, for the coin came flying back at us, clanging off Ilzo’s armor. He picked up the coin and we left the scene.

I suggested we returned to the first field of battle, where the other deputy leader lived. Va’lyndra informed me that he was one of the three who died in that fight, after Ilzo gave him a kick which caved in his chest. There weren’t any people there, just blood, so we headed for the second battlefield, where I had participated. There were no corpses in the street, but there was blood here and there.

We began to suspect that the remaining bandits had holed up somewhere. We knew where many of them lived, and we picked a place far from the battlefields, hoping that the person living there hadn’t been involved in the fighting. Ilzo knocked on his door and Va’lyndra listened for movement inside, but there was nobody there. The next house on our list was also abandoned, but there was someone at the third.

A man was working in the tiny vegetable garden behind the shed. I asked Va’lyndra for the name of the guy who lived here, and when I said it out loud, the man turned, startled. I walked up to him and asked if he was part of the crew that made trouble in the Pond. He was a little flustered, and thought we were there to entertain. I asked if he knew where the rest of the gang was, but he didn’t want to answer, so I said he had two choices: He could let me persuade him to talk, or we could let Ilzo do it.

He picked me, so the two of us went inside his shed, where I commenced today’s second good deed. After a few minutes, someone knocked on the door, but we ignored it. Leopold entered, saying the gang had found us, looking prepared for fighting, and he and the others wanted me to help. I slithered out from under the gangster, apologized that I had to go, and told him to finish on his own. I dressed sensuously, but quickly.

Outside, I could see six armed men, a short distance away. Va’lyndra said they were waiting for reinforcement before attacking. The gang had fought us twenty against three and six against two and lost both times. Now we were armed, too, so six against four seemed like really bad odds for them. They scattered when we approached.

Ilzo ran after one, and I jogged along, thinking that splitting us up might be what the bandits wanted. Va’lyndra and Leopold followed after more slowly, as they didn’t want to exert themselves needlessly. We ran through streets and gardens and finally caught up with the bandit. Ilzo ran alongside him, asking where he was headed, but he tried to turn away. That didn’t work, as I was on his other side. Realizing that he was trapped, the bandit sat down dejectedly. I told Ilzo to pick him up and carry him back to the others for interrogation. Ilzo didn’t even bother taking the man’s club, and he hit Ilzo in the back when we began to walk. Ilzo said that if he did it again, he would have to disarm him, and while the message was delivered quite calmly, it was clear that Ilzo was threatening to rip the man’s arms out of their sockets. There was no more trouble.

Leopold introduced himself and asked the bandit’s name. That was none of our business, he said, and Va’lyndra suggested we find somewhere more private to talk. Leopold spotted an abandoned shed nearby, and we went inside that.

Leopold informed the bandit that he had just witnessed the torture of a demon, and would try to replicate the process, if the bandit didn’t answer our questions. He still refused to answer, so Leopold had Ilzo hold him while he gave the man a short incision on his arm. The purple energy of the Chaos knife surged into the poor man.

The man was obviously in pain, but Va’lyndra thought it necessary to cast a spell, too. She did her magic dance and touched the prisoner. He accused us of being sorcerers, but finally feared us more than his superiors. His name was Kalle, and he took orders from a man called Nork. We got another name, too, but I didn’t catch it. This last man was the one to order him to go to the address where Leopold so rudely had interrupted my “information gathering”.