The leaves whorled restlessly in the autumn winds, tornadoes of seasonal decay that evinced an image of ghastly black birds scritching their way across cobbles in a morbid procession. The stoic trunks climbed to astonishing heights in all directions save for the dingy brown scar of a road that wound its way through the brush and trees. Their barren branched fingers knitted together with neighbors ceaselessly, as if the crackling motions pondered a grisly fate.
Behind a thick wall of brush, upon a fallen dead hollow sat two figures. Armed and clad in hidden armor under garish costume, they waited in silence, arms and legs crossed in contemplation.
Roland glared intently at his gold pocket watch before stuffing it back into his coat. "Any time now," he said to his companion.
"What you ain't sell that pretty piece of git for?" Bugg asked him.
"Time," Roland started, "is a very valuable tool in our trade, Bugg. I would have thought even you would have absorbed that bit of knowledge by now," he chided.
"S'a clock tower inna village tells time straight enough, isn' there?" Bugg asked. "Even tolls the hours fer ya, pretty as a pint," he smiled.
"True, but, we're hardly in a way to look at, or hear that tower right now are we?" he asked, "and what's more, were we to try and make our way out here by a certain bell, to perhaps intercept a certain carriage that a certain fat lord will be hauling a certain dowry in, well, we'd be fortunate enough at all to find some of his horse's dung without the time in our pocket."
"So the lardly Lord is trying to marry off Pelafina again is he?" Bugg asked.
Roland nodded, staring straight ahead. "He's bound for the western coast. I hear he's even set his sights as low as the fisher Lords," the man chuckled inwardly, picturing a frumpy Lady Lostorot scaling a giant fish with a cloudy eye. He shook his head as the image faded.
"How is it you know the man and his offspring will be down this way?" Bugg asked.
"Investments my dear man! In information, in ale for loose lipped guards, in time well spent with a few giggling maidens," he sighed, "lots of investments." Roland said, "so that perhaps a missive might come my way when an interesting carriage may be scheduled to leave the grounds. That chest of gold must be getting awfully big by now..." he deduced, an avaricious glint in his eyes.
"Aye," said Bugg, "Why you suppose he can't marry this one off? The tales are that she's only got one eye, and it's uglier 'nna pigs."
"What does that matter? All that's important is that we're going to relieve him of that burden and be on our merry way in," another furtive glance at his watch, "well, a quarter bell or so. Then it's all the ale houses and brothels we can hit on our way back to the northern guild house for a timely holiday," he concluded by clapping the huge ogre of a man on the shoulder.
"I like my job. I don't like no holiday," Bugg said, feeling rather down at the idea of time off.
"Bugg, your job is to break bones at my behest, I would hope that you love it dearly, for it is very often that I require your services in a pinch, but as it stands, if I don't get out of the southlands soon, my eyes may melt from boredom!" Roland exclaimed, his gloved fingers working slow circles at his temples. As his words were stifled dead in the bushes before him, he cocked his head to the side at a very faint, but unmistakable, sound that issued from far along the road.
The marauder stood and hunkered down, pulling a small crossbow up from between his legs and cocking a quarrel in the catch. That done, he drew his duelists sabre and waited patiently for the sounds of the carriage to draw close enough. Bugg knelt beside him, needing only to tighten the leather gauntlets that adorned his ham hock fists.
"Same as always," Roland whispered, "you spook the horses, I'll pin the guard, throw the driver down. Not too rough now, we don't need a murderer's bounty on us as well!"
The horses clopped steadily along the road, urged on by a dim looking gray bearded man, who looked wholly out of place in a driver's vestments. At his side was a wary guard, formidable in physique, but green in the eyes and face, and the way he sat himself; tense and coiled like a scared kitten. There was a cumbersome crossbow between his legs, probably set so long as to remove any amount of damage it might inflict. The carriage itself was a fashionable color of maroon that befit the sorts that cared about the fashionable colors of carriages at the time. Smart bronze gleamed along the edges and rails. Loud shouts issued from inside the padded walls, that could only be the Lord Lostorot going on about his daughter's failings.
Roland edged closer to the road, then patted Bugg on the back two times, which was the signal to go. Bugg rumbled onto the road, screaming a horrid low pitched battle cry that could moisten even a hardened soldier's underclothes. The horses reared, completely terrified, eyes four sides white. As the driver struggled with the reins, Roland darted to the side of the carriage, "Ey!" he shouted at the guard, who instinctively turned to face him. With practiced precision, Roland loosed the quarrel into the man's shoulder from twenty paces and closed fast with his sabre. The guard pitched sideways but surprisingly didn't tumble, instead drawing a two-handed broadsword and, leaping down from the carriage, attempting to engage the thief with one good arm.
"Don't make this mistake, laddy!" Roland taunted, closing lightning fast, whirling his sabre in a dizzying dance. As he reached striking distance, he began a lunge that he expertly halted as the man dropped his sword and raised his good arm in surrender. "Wise decision!" Roland exclaimed, drawing close the man then ostentatiously kissing him on the cheek before throwing a hard hay maker punch that knocked the man out cold. A sudden sharp pain splintered through his fist and he dropped his sword and crossbow as he spun slowly in a circle clutching his wounded mitt. He quickly regained his sabre and composure as a heavy latch on the door was worked loose.
The carriage door was thrown open and a jowly voice demanded to know what was happening from inside.
"My Lord, tis the renowned thief, Roland D'Arsle and his companion, the fierce Bugg," Bugg beamed at his name as he sat on the driver's rear, keeping him pinned to the dirt, "here to relieve you of a certain cache of gold coinage that we know travels somewhere upon your vast person!"
The watery voice boomed from within the carriage, the man obviously too saddled with weight to so much as lean out the door. "The bumbling ponce and his dim sidekick? I've truly been bested by them?" he jeered from inside, "I have it on good authority that the blue silk clad duo of you and he were seen to suck each other's cocks while bathing in a river!" he taunted, breaking into a flabby roll of a cackle that ended in a coughing fit.
"That ain't true seein' as I don't bathe!" Bugg called back.
Roland burned with rage and embarrassment at the insult. "Sir, if you think I don't threaten your life today-" he began. "You don't," the lord loudly interrupted, "you would not strike me down, you haven't the nerve! You're a simpleton thief who has trifled with powers far beyond him this day. If you think your neck won't be stretched in a week's time, you're sadly misguided!" he finished his tirade by spitting out the door toward the thief.
Feeling his first wave of doubt, he went about the rest of his plan, cutting three horses loose and putting the driver and wounded guard on the last, telling them to ride or die. With that bit of business finished, he approached the carriage door, sabre first and laid it upon the fatty neck of Lord Lostorot, slightly dazed as he again requested the gold.
"As you can see, I have won the day, sir, I believe you find yourself with no choice but to give up the coins-" Lostorot smugly interrupted again, "The coins are here, boy, under the bench upon which I sit, and I shall not be moving for you or your sticker, so either kill me and take them, or leave me be on my way. Soon a hundred men will be arriving on swift mounts to hunt you down!" he finished, smiling wide with greasy lips.
Bewildered for a second, Roland weighed the options in his mind, knowing that it would be next to impossible to move this mountainous man fast enough without at least gravely injuring him in the process. He licked his lips and pondered a hasty disassembling of the carriage, which proved a fruitless idea. Suddenly, a new approach occurred to him.
"Your daughter then!" he demanded in a confident voice, "She rides with this infamous duo to a secret safe house where we shall keep her under arrest until you make a gold payment befitting her status!"
Lostorot was cackling from within before Roland even finished his decree, "You would take my daughter? Leave me my dowry and take this worthless wench from me?! Oh Gods above," he bellowed in mock prayer, "what have I done to earn thy favor this day?!" he broke into a laughing fit again. "Oh you'll be receiving payment for this one, for sure, to keep her!"
There was a rustling in the cab, and a protesting woman's voice, growing louder with each passing second until she was shrieking in fury. Roland had to disengage his sword from Lostort's neck as the lithe form of a woman dressed in yellow silks was ejected from the carriage into the dirt road.
Roland bent to help her up, but she quickly yanked her arm back from his grip, and turned back toward the carriage to kick at the laughing man inside. "Bastard!" she yelled as Roland secured her by both elbows and began to pull her to where he and Bugg had hobbled their horses for the escape. As he spun her around to survey her she spit on his blue overcoat in a decidedly ignoble gesture of contempt.
"You're a Lord's daughter?" he asked incredulously, as he drank deep her beauty with his eyes; naturally curled locks the color of a summer sunset that dangled here and there, popping off the pale canvas of her creamy skin. Her eyes were blazing jade as she contorted her face in disgust at her situation, though nonetheless heart stopping. Her pouty pink lips were curled in a sneer as she looked the two of them up and down.
