The Night of the dead part 1

Dukat

Resident Freddy
Joined
Jan 10, 2004
Messages
5,396
My last story was about my main char, Dukat. This one is about one of my alts. I hope to write the next part if / when i get the chance.

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The village of Ludlow lies a fair way to the north of the city of Camelot. It originally started life as a base for woodmen and foresters who had come from Campacorentin Forest, and had decided to take thier expertise to the forests of the black mountains. As they began to settle down and start families, the forester's base was expanded into a small village. Now the village is little more than a hamlet. This is mainly due to the bandits and thieves whose hideout was in the hills surrounding the village, raiding it from time to time for supplies.

The other main reason for the villages small population was the goblins of tepok's mine, previously known as the Black mountians mine, it had been overrun by goblins a few years earlier, ever since then many people have been killed in the goblin raids.


It was a warm summer's night, the moon lighting up the ground from behind moderate cloud cover. The scout grimaced; it would be hard to aviod detection with the light from the moon, but he had his orders. He advanced, his longbow held in his left hand, a blade in the other. He spotted their base easily enough, "Some base." he thought to himself as halted his approach to scan the area ahead of him, deciding the way forward and moving off to the right.

The base composed of around fifteen men, up to ten of which seemed to be sleeping in front of the fire in the center of the camp, surrounded by three small tents. Those awake where standing in a loose circle facing ******ds that went around thier sleeping comrades. This seemed strange to the scout, who knew any fire would destroy the sentry's ability to see in the night, and also made them easy to see in the light.

The scout found a good spot a stone's throw from the camp, well hidden, he waited. Some hours later one of the guards said something that the scout didnt quite hear before moving out into the forest, he didnt notice the shadowy figure moving after him. The guard stopped, and so did his 'shadow' a few steps behind, a second later a sound like thick paper ripping accompanied by a loud cough startled the guards back at camp, three of the four remaining left thier posts and moved off after thier comrade. They found him at thier latrine, an arrow embedded in the back of the guard's throat. They were more angry than worried, and ran back to the camp, thinking to wake the others and hunt down whoever was out there. when they got back to the camp they found the guard who had remained behind, attached to the tree he had been leaning up against by the two arrows now in his chest. Two of the guards began waking the rest of the camp up, while the other stayed with his dead friend, keeping watch. When the rest of the camp was awake and ready, they went over to the dead man by the tree. When they got there they found more than they had bargained for; yet again the guard who had remained behind was dead, though this time he had no arrows in him; he had two slashes on his chest and throat.

The sight was not a pretty one, many of the younger guards wretched and began depositing thier supper on the floor. one of them was very ill, coughing and choking, a friend of his went over to comfort him, and found an arrow in his side. With a shout the men charged off in the direction they assumed the arrow had came from, a tremendous din was made by the stampeding force now only eleven strong. Two more men fell to arrows out of the night as they ran through the forest.

"Bugger this Jim!, I didnt join up to fight somthing I can't see!" one of the guards exclaimed "Come on lad's! I'm going back home, who's with me!?", with that he moved off into the night with two others, this left six bandits hunting after the scout.

Having killed six and routed three of the fifteen men who had started off, the scout changed his tactics, instead of hunting them, he was going to let them hunt him.

"Hey Jim! over here!" one of the six men left had found some tracks, the scout could clearly see the one who was shouting, a big man holding a sword, but he wanted to find their leader, the one known as 'Jim'. The rest of them arrived after much shouting and swearing from the man who had discovered the tracks, he rightly feared for his life. 'Jim' was not what the scout had expected. A small briton man with black hair, the scout had expected to see a huge man, perhaps even a highlander, what he saw suprised him. He had been briefed about his target, this man known to the others as 'Jim', according to the scout's commander, Jim was really called 'Cyfer Dyfwych', the infamous leader of the cotswold bandits. His target identified, the scout moved off to make his own plans.

The tracks he had made lead to a cave about ten minutes walk away. The track passed under an overhanging cliff before it reached the cave, and it was here the scout awaited his prey. They made quite a noise moving, had the scout brought a few of his team along he would have been able to take all six of them out from where he was standing. as it was he watched carefully, he identified his target (he no longer cared about his name, he thought of him only as the target) and drew his bow, taking carefull aim on the man beside the leader, the big one who had 'discovered' the tracks. when the group of men got so close that the scout could clearly make out each man, he loosed his arrow. The big man took the arrow straight in the face, and went down hard. The other men jumped into cover at each side of the track (the scout knew they would, but he also knew that the cover was light and wouldnt stop an arrow), for the first time that night the scout had to duck out of the way as one or two of the five survivors loosed arrows at his perch.

Moving in close, the scout circled behind the men and advanced up to where he could see them. he waited for the bandits to move off again before he struck. It seemed his target was developing a mild form of sense, for he now moved slowly and quietly in a spread out formation, but still with everyone in view. Not that this would save him. The scout expertly drew his bow as he sighted the five men moving ahead of him. He loosed the arrow, another man fell."Cant you men do anything right?!?" Cyfer cursed as the scout circled round, getting closer to the four remaining men. one of the bandits had gone hysterical, crying and sobbing, he had lost all of his friends and didnt trust the man he knew as Jim, after seeing the team reduced to four he had had enough, attacking anything that cast a shadow with his knife, eventually he dropped it and ran screaming into the forest.

The screaming man had distracted the three bandits left, as they looked in the direction he had ran off in, the scout came up behind one of them and thrust his blade between the poor bandits shoulder's, he moved towards the second bandit, a highlander with a hammer, just before he got to him the man turned, saw the scout coming and lunged at him swinging the large hammer, the scout evaded the blow by mere inches, and as the highlander continued to swing, the scout put an aimed jab from his sword down into his side, the large highlander didnt seem to notice this, and thumped the scout, knocking the wind out of him and putting him on his back in the mud, then jumped on top of him. Just in time the scout rolled out of the way, leapt up and came down on the higlander, landing his knee in the mans gut, the huge highlander recoiled and with a second to strike, the scout slashed his throat.

Cyfer came out of nowhere, swinging his bastard sword in a large arc and down at the scout, connecting with his armour, the studded leather unable to deflect the blow, the sword cut a gash in the scouts left arm. The scout grunted and dropped his bow but did not cry out, his training had taught him well how to deal with pain, he kept his mind sharp where others would have blacked out in pain, swinging his sword arm round and into Cyfer's unarmoured leg, the bandit leader screamed. standing up, the scout moved back and feinted left then struck right, Cyfer's sword came up in a parry to the left and he screamed again as his sword dropped to the floor, the scout had buried his sword in the mans right arm. Cyfer fell unconsious but alive on the floor.

Three days later he was back in Camelot, going to see his trainer. "The authorities in ludlow report the crimerate has dropped by half since you brought in Dyfwych, Good job Kalloth!" The scout didnt smile "I did what I was told to do, it was just a job." His trainer was used to this by now and didnt drop his smile. "Well, you'll be pleased to know we're sending you straight back out again, this time to the Black mountains mine, it seems they have a problem with the goblins..." at this Kalloth did smile, not of joy, but of the knowledge that he would finally have his revenge on the goblins who had killed his pearants a few years before...
 

Dukat

Resident Freddy
Joined
Jan 10, 2004
Messages
5,396
oh and sorry if theres a few typo's in there, wrote the whole thing from notepad :S
 

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