The rcenaries did not spare a glance for the long haired man hauling a fat companion along the road, nor the hunched old traveler with a comically large bag.
Ogre skin and rough cloth did their work. Joji and Walter passed as ugly strangers. Alaric passed as a weary porter with a bad arm.
What caught every eye was the donkey.
Rizz stepped into the lantern light like he owned it, broad as a draft horse and twice as loud in presence.
Cargo pants hugged his hindquarters, absurd and wrong for this country road.
One bald rcenary gaped.
"Why does that donkey have pants?"
Another laughed and made up a na on the spot.
"This a mythical creature. Donkey Wearing Pants."
Rizz loved it. He lifted his chin and let the attention wash over him, as if attention was a resource.
Then he hooked his shades from his cargo pants and slid them onto his face.
"Look," soone said. "He can even wear those glasses."
"Classy," another muttered with envy. "I wish I had a mount like that."
Alaric heard the praise and his mouth tightened. Joji heard it too and flashed Alaric a look that said you simply have no taste.
Then the hoofbeats and wolf padding behind them made everyone rember the predicant.
The assassins slowed at the edge of the caravan’s light.
The rcenaries, well rested and already keyed up from their prize, drew steel and raised bows in the sa breath.
Wolves prowled in the dark behind the attackers, hackles high, eyes bright.
For a heartbeat, it was a standoff, all of it held in the thin space between torchlight and shadow.
A man stepped forward from the rcenary line. Mid thirties, beard showing small patches of white, built not pretty but brutal, thick in the shoulders and forearms like an apex gorilla that had learned to stand straight.
He carried a broadsword that looked too big for most n to lift, much less swing.
"Who are you? I am Joveric the Brawn," he called, voice flat. "And why are you chasing people on my road?"
Joji answered before anyone could decide he was a problem.
"I do not know who they are," he said. "They ambushed us out of the blue."
It was the truth. He knew no nas. Only intent.
From the dark, the assassin leader sneered.
"None of your business. Scram."
The rcenary leader’s mouth twitched with amusent.
Joveric glanced back at the enormous Depth Salamander lashed across four carts.
A walking mansion worth of hide, the sort of loot that made n foolish.
Joveric looked back to the wolves, to the organized line of killers, and decided they were not random bandits.
Then his smile sharpened.
"You take us for three year olds," he said softly. He lifted his blade. "n. Kill."
Alaric’s gaze snapped to Joji, begging for an answer. Was this the plan?
Joji only shrugged, then raised his voice high.
"We can help!"
His mouth moved again without sound, aid at Rizz.
"Lowkey. Lowkey, lil bro."
Rizz got it. He backed off the road, chewing a carrot he produced from his pocket like a donkey trying to look harmless, eyes tracking everything.
"I did not choose the thug life," he murmured. "Thug life chose ."
The first arrows flew.
Joji started hurling the remaining bone javelins, the throws tight and straight.
He aid for horses and knees, for anything that made a charge collapse into confusion.
Alaric took cover at once, hugging the evidence bag like it was a child.
He did not argue. Priorities were clear. The bag mattered more than pride.
The rcenary leader charged. Red aura flared around Joveric like heat shimr.
He spun into the attackers with his oversized blade and beca a cyclone of steel.
Horses charging his line were cut in half. n toppled.
The road filled with screaming and the wet sound of at eting tal.
Even while spinning, Joveric moved faster than a man should on foot, boots eating ground in quick, brutal steps.
The two assassin leaders hesitated. Their plan had been simple. Isolate the targets. Kill clean. Leave no witness.
This was not clean. This was a battle under lanterns with a prize caravan watching, and a killer in red aura carving through horseflesh like wheat.
Worse, the fat man on the tall stranger’s back, the disguised Walter, kept leaking aura in faint pulses, not flashy, controlled, the kind that suggested training asured in years.
The Cutlers were not supposed to have aura manuals. There had been no report Walter could wield it.
Doubt crept in. Doubt killed ambushes. The leaders exchanged a glance. One whistled. Then another.
The assassins pulled back without a word. Wolves followed, unwilling, dragging away from easy blood.
In the span of a few breaths, the road went from chaos to aftermath.
They left behind bodies and broken tack and thirty dead wolves cooling in the dirt.
The rcenary leader kicked one corpse in the head. The head rolled, and he caught it, turning it in his hand like a cabbage at market, inspecting the face for a mark or a na.
He did it again with another, and another, until he seed satisfied.
His n did not waste ti.
They sward the wolves with knives, harvesting at and fur, laughing through the stink of blood because free resources were free resources.
Joji joined in, sword working like a tool. Walter followed, using a small dagger from the blacksmith.
Soon they had four wolf pelts and a handful of tusks. Proof, if anyone asked, that they were only poor adventurers scraping by.
The rcenary leader’s eyes found Alaric, the old man disguise with the splinted arm and the too heavy bag.
His gaze flicked once, caught the injury, then moved to Joji, a tall brute under false hair, closing in on seven feet without seeming to notice he had grown.
"Young man," the Joveric said, voice casual. "Why would foreign folk target you?"
Joji felt the weight behind the question. This man was strong. Stronger than himself, or close enough that the difference did not matter in a bad fight.
Still, Joji could not give him Everhart. Not in Fellbarrow. Not where the count would love to blow that na wide open.
"I apologize," Joji said. "I cannot tell you the full story. All I can say is we are headed to the Cutler Estate to settle so matters."
The rcenary leader studied him, then let it drop. Tight lipped n did not loosen for intimidation.
He also noticed sothing else. Joji’s party did not rummage through the dead n’s pockets.
They did not loot rings or boots. They knew their place, or they had rules.
That earned respect.
The rcenary leader sheathed his blade and jerked his chin toward the road ahead.
"We are going the sa way," he said. "Co with us."
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