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Are they trying to separate us?! Over the tumult, I could hear the sound of steel against steel. Gourry was apparently crossing swords with someone. In that case...
Before I could move, I saw a flash of a blade myself. I leaped back, put a hand to the sword on my belt, and quietly began a chant. I could barely make out the attacker through the smoke. All I could really see was a faint light coming from the blade in their hand. I drew my shortsword, blocked the blow, and evaded away. Soon, I completed my spell and...
Suddenly, I felt a familiar sensation. Isn’t this...
I aborted the spell I was chanting, turned around, and started chanting a new one as I ran. I was trying to go full tilt, but my opponent caught up with me immediately. He struck out with a knee, but I leaped back to dodge it.
With a tree to my back, my opponent and I glared at each other awhile. Then I charged with all my might, unleashing my spell at my assailant! “Lighting!”
There was a brief flash of white in the thin forest. Normally all the spell did was provide light, but I’d made a few adjustments to give it maximum brightness in exchange for minimal duration. Taking it square in the face could blind you for some time.
I thought my opponent had run right into the spell, but if my hunch was right, it probably wouldn’t make a difference. I started chanting my next spell while running.
Zing! There was a tiny whistling sound on the wind, and I came to a dead halt.
My shadow trailing behind me on the sun-dappled ground was impaled with a small knife. I knew this trick. Shadow Snap was a spell to bind a target’s movements from the astral plane. Being able to pin someone in their tracks might sound powerful, but it wasn’t too effective against anyone who knew how to counter it—like I did!
“Lighting!” Using the same spell as before to conjure up a ball of light, I freed my shadow from the binding. And just as I turned to face my opponent...
Fweeeee! A whistle echoed through the forest.
Apparently they had a lookout who’d called them off. Hearing the signal, the men around me immediately turned and ran deeper into the green. Even the guys tangling with Gourry began to withdraw.
“Should we go after them?” he asked from some distance away.
“Let’s not,” I said, joining back up with him. This wasn’t any ordinary bandit gang. They knew the terrain, and we didn’t know their numbers. Pursuing under these conditions was a bad idea. “But I wonder why they retreated so suddenly...”
When I looked around, the answer became clear. Two men unlike the ranger bandits had appeared from the side of the forest nearer to the road. They wore fine silver armor that sparkled in the sunlight through the trees like fish flitting past the surface of the water. They were a matched pair, equipment-wise, suggesting they were probably soldiers.
“Who are you people?! Who were you fighting?” one of them demanded as he caught sight of us.
Aha...
They’d most likely been passing nearby and come to investigate when they heard the sounds of battle. The bandits—rather, the raiders—had sensed their approach and retreated.
“We were hired as mercenaries!” I held up my hands as I spoke to show that I meant them no harm. Gourry also sheathed his sword. “We ran into some raiders and got into a skirmish! But they turned tail when you arrived! You can confirm our story in Atessa yourselves!”
The soldiers looked at each other, then exchanged some hushed words. Then at last, they said, “Very well! Will you accompany us to the city?”
“Sure thing! Can I put my hands down now?”
“If you like... but don’t try anything,” said the cautious soldier.
“I won’t,” I replied breezily.
The two soldiers then escorted me and Gourry out of the woods and back to the main road.
“Ohh?!” I exclaimed.
There were a few dozen others dressed in the same armor as the soldiers. And, at the center of their neat ranks stood three fancy horse-drawn carriages and two equally well-made wagons. It was a bigger force than I’d expected.
And I gotta wonder...
I raised my voice a little to ask Soldier No. 1, “Hey, are you guys bigwigs?!”
“We’ll check your credentials first, then talk,” he responded.
But just then, one of the small carriage windows opened and a familiar face emerged...
“Lina! Master Gourry! I thought I recognized those voices!”
“Hey, been a while!”
“Yeah! It sure has!”
Soldier No. 1 blinked in surprise at our exchange.
The carriage door opened wide, and a girl dressed in white vestments—
“Stop, stop! Don’t make trouble for your guards! We can talk when we get back to town, Lady Amelia!” I called, trying to prevent her from busting out of her carriage.
She simply responded, “Just Amelia is fine! See you later, then, Lina!” And with that, she pulled back inside.
The soldiers around us all looked stunned. At last, Soldier No. 1 turned back to me, his armor clinking awkwardly. “It seems that you... er, that you’re an acquaintance of our princess, miss?”
“You could say that,” I replied with a wink.
The girl in the carriage was Amelia Wil Tesla Saillune. Given her name, you can probably guess that she was part of Saillune’s royal family. Gourry and I had traveled with her for a while some time back.
And in the event you’re wondering if we were her escorts, the answer is no. Amelia was a little younger than me and still had a bit of a childish air about her, but she knew shamanistic magic and white magic and she was a crackerjack bare-knuckle fighter. She’d joined us as an equal in battle. After a real rollercoaster of adventures together, we’d parted ways when she had to return to Saillune.
During one of the aforementioned adventures, Gourry and I made the acquaintance of quite a few members of the Saillune royal family. I’d recognized the nation’s soldiers by the crests on their armor and, given how the group was acting, correctly guessed that the carriage contained a VIP. I had an inkling it might be someone I knew, which was why I’d spoken up so loudly. But I’d never expected it to be Amelia herself!
And so me, Gourry, Amelia, and the Saillune brigade headed back to town.
Atessa, the city of smiths...
I’d stopped here with my mom while traveling once long ago, and I knew the general history of the city. This blacksmithing mecca, built on both the big forest and the local mines, had once been the subject of a territorial dispute between Zephilia and Saillune. At that time, the city had had a lord and a considerable guard, but now that the kingdoms had made nice, any military presence was kept to a bare minimum and security was mainly handled by locals. The lord had also been transferred to another domain, and the town now had a mayor to represent it. (Though, apparently, the mayor was a relative of the former lord.)
Of course, that didn’t mean there were no soldiers in Atessa. The mansion of the former lord was now used as a guesthouse, and there were about twenty Zephilian soldiers posted there under the pretense of “administration.” Two of them greeted us at the city entrance, then escorted Amelia and the Saillune group (plus me and Gourry) to the mansion.
Now, I call it a mansion, but it had clearly been designed to act as a fortress if need be. It was made of sturdy rock, and bare in its decoration.
When we entered the front gate, we found about a dozen people—seemingly local bigwigs—among the soldiers, all standing in front of the front door in a neat row. One of said bigwigs was MacLyle in a dress uniform. When he saw us, his eyebrows rose a bit, but he was in no position to say anything.
As all assembled stood at attention, an attendant placed an unnecessarily ornamental stepping stool at the foot of the carriage, and the finely decorated door opened. The person who exited was none other than...
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