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Post by Tandar on Mar 16, 2009 16:27:42 GMT -5
Tandar turned his head away from Brandwyn. "It's not that serious." He made sure Ian was looking at him before he mouthed the words "it's bad."
Reaching for his double knife scabbard, Tandar smoothly pulled out his throwing knife and let it fly. Unfortunately, his estimation of the speed of the running mercenary was a little off. The blade entered at an awkward angle, barely penetrating the leather armor and merely slicing the skin of the man's belly.
"Dren, take out that target!" He pointed to the Grizzly on the run.
The ranger returned to his work. Since the handkerchief wasn't long enough to stretch all the way around Brandy, Tandar lengthened it by tying strips of leather to the ends. He made sure the cloth was held on tight, but within moments it was already dyed blood red.
He embraced the Royal Scout. "I missed you."
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Post by drenith on Mar 16, 2009 17:04:54 GMT -5
Drenith saw the man and pulled off another shot. Although it was better than his last shot he failed to hit a vital organ and just shot him in the chest. Drenith Ran after the man forgetting to just mount Adina in his haste. He caught up the man and pulled out his Saxe knife and jumped at the man. He tackled the man and heard a crack in the man's right leg for he hit it on a rock with Drenith's weight pushing it down.
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Post by Brandwyn on Mar 16, 2009 17:23:03 GMT -5
Brandwyn's sobs eased off a little and she started feeling a bit whoozy. She lifted her head a bit and said, "I missed you too. I didn't think I was going to see you again - that he was going to - " She blinked back more tears.
Her legs felt like they were going numb. "You saved my life!" She pulled back and looked him in the eyes and smiled a crooked smile through the tears running down her cheeks. "Thank you!" and she kissed him on the cheek and hugged him again.
"I don't feel so - " She couldn't think straight and everything was a hazy red color. "... I feel strange..." She tried to fight it and concentrate on something. "Asfala! she has bandages and ointment in my saddlebags. Asfala come here!"
Brandwyn's horse trotted over and lowered her head and Brandwyn grabbed the reins with one hand, but very weakly. She moved and tried to stand up, but a pain jolted up and down her spine. "Oooooo....not...a...good...idea...." everything went black and Brandwyn passed out, the hand holding the rein went limp as she slumped in Tandar's arms, unconscious.
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Post by Brandwyn on Mar 16, 2009 17:37:03 GMT -5
Tory ran up and tried to knock the guy Drenith was wrestling with out with the butt of her boot knife, but she missed, narrowly missing Drenith in the process.
She backed off a bit, "Sorry! Guess that wasn't such a good idea." She felt useless, wondering how she could help out since her fighting skills were not very good.
She saw Brandwyn slump over and realized that Tandar might need some help. She started running for him, making sure to stay out of the path between him or Ian and the last Grizzly that was still fighting them. She didn't want to get caught in any crossfire.
As she passed Ian, she saw his bow on the ground near him and stopped to hand it to him, calming Bandit down with a soft murmur and a pat on the shoulder so the horse wouldn't think she was attacking Ian. She noticed Ian looked in pretty bad shape too. Then she resumed her dash to Tandar's side, calming Asfala down as she got there.
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Post by drenith on Mar 16, 2009 18:16:29 GMT -5
Drenith wrestled the man and saw Arrow, "Hey you with the white hair a little help here! Theers some root in my pack by Adina get my flint and the root!" He yelled at him as he punched the Grizzly trying to knock him out.
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Post by Brandwyn on Mar 16, 2009 18:35:59 GMT -5
Ragnar watched the scene unfolding around him and wished his hands weren't still tied so he could be more help.
He scooped up Adina's reins and led her over to Drenith. He couldn't get the saddle bags opened though with his hands tied so tightly together. "Iya canna geyt iyt open. Leyt mea hoyld hiym." Ragnar slumped down on top of the guy, pinning him to the ground so Drenith could get up to get his root out of the saddlebag. Ragnar wondered what the ranger was up to and hoped it didn't involve any scorcery.
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Post by drenith on Mar 16, 2009 20:24:34 GMT -5
Drenith pulled out the bag and got the root. He lit it with his flint and held it under the man's nose rendering him unconscious "Okay he said as he tied up their newest captive and walked over to Brandwyn "Is she okay?" he asked Tandar. He was worried about her being unconscious but decide to get her to a doctor as soon as possible.
He looked at everyone else, "anyone got a seemingly life threating injury I should know of?" He looked around, "Hey are we missing someone?" Drenith had thought there was a full fledged ranger with them but where is he, what was his name Pa, Pal Pali, Palisade, "Wheres Palisade?"
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Post by Brandwyn on Mar 17, 2009 4:57:26 GMT -5
"He was dragged off by those guys at the beginning of the fight." Tory pointed in a general direction to the southeast, but not exactly at the spot where she knew Patrick had entered the woods.
She got Brandwyn's medical kit out of her saddle bags and unrolled it on the ground next to Tandar. There were bandages, ointment, herbs as well as items for performing surgery and sewing people up and cleaning out wounds.
"You might have to cauterize it to get it to stop bleeding, but maybe not, since it is a puncture wound." She said gravely, noticing how bad the wound was. "It's a bad spot for that, though."
Tory looked up at Drenith and back to Tandar, noting their ranger gear. "You must be Tandar and Drenith, the one's Brandwyn was talking about all day yesterday. How did you know we were in trouble?"
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Post by Brandwyn on Mar 17, 2009 5:07:00 GMT -5
Ian rode over by Drenith. "I could use some patching up, but I am afraid if I get off Bandit, I won't be able to get back on." He pressed his hand down near the wound in his leg, the knife still sticking out of it. "I think he broke my leg with this knife. It feels like it is embedded in the bone."
Ian was far more worried about Brandy than himself. "We are going to have to take her back to the city. Neither one of us is in shape to continue our mission today."
Now that the fight was over, Ian had some time to think about what had happened. He wondered how a ranger had been taken out of the fight so quickly without firing a shot or putting up any kind of fight.
"Tory, was Palisade knocked out when they pulled him off his horse?"
Tory looked up at Ian, relunctant to answer. She wasn't sure what Patrick was up to, but she refused to believe he had betrayed them - especially her. He had promised he wouldn't leave her behind, but she had seen the tracks at the edge of the road. She wanted to believe he had been knocked out and dragged off, but those tracks told a different story.
She couldn't bring herself to lie, but she didn't want to say anything to incriminate her mentor. "I don't know. I got pulled off my horse at the same time and that guy hit me in the head. I was out of it for a little bit." 'There, that was mostly the truth,' she thought to herself.
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Post by Tandar on Mar 17, 2009 15:52:50 GMT -5
"Have the scouts been disposed of?"
Patrick sat at the small, round table in Gauge's tent. Using his knife, the captain cut chunks of meat off a chicken on the table and ate as he debriefed the contact.
"Yes, Captain," Palisade replied. "The men are taking care of them as we speak."
"Good, good. They had no reason to suspect you?"
"No, sir. To them it appeared as if I was taken as a prisoner of the Grizzlies." Patrick cleared his throat before he continued. "Not that it will matter. They will be dead soon anyway."
A breathless runner sprinted up to Gauge's tent, bearing news of the impossible. "They have survived the attack! The Royal Scout and the apprentices are still alive."
Captain Gauge's chewing slowed as his fury escalated. "How? What of the men?"
Sensing the officer's anger, the messenger backed off a little. "They had help, sir." He gestured helplessly. "A pair of rangers arrived before the Grizzlies could finish them off."
"What are you saying?" The captain's rage bubbled over. It was not uncommon for Gauge to kill bearers of bad news.
The runner's voice sank to barely above a whisper. "Sir, there was one man left standing when I left. The rest were dead or dying."
In a flash, Gauge was out of his chair and on the messenger. With his knife still coated in chicken fat, the captain rapidly stabbed the man five times. There wasn't even time for a squeal. Palisade continued to sit calmly, though drops of blood splattered onto the table. Gauge returned to his seat and resumed his meal, cutting off another slab with the bloody knife.
"Get back out there before they realize you were behind this," he growled.
Wordlessly, Patrick stood and left the tent, stepping over the unmoving body on the ground.
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Post by Brandwyn on Mar 18, 2009 5:58:02 GMT -5
Ragnar eyed the tree line on the right side of the road, but didn't see any more Grizzlies out there. He followed Dren over to the girl and Tandar. The wound was bad. She had lost a lot of blood already and if they didn't stop it, she wouldn't make it back to La Rivage.
He knelt down on the other side of Brandwyn from Tandar and looked him in the eye. "Iya cayn heylp her. Iya aym fieyld meydic foyr mya unit." Ragnar's medic kit was strapped behind the saddle of his horse, but the one on the ground here had nearly identical items in it. He held out his hands for the ranger to cut him loose.
"Truyst mea. Wea hayven't muych tiyme. Guage wiyll seynd more meyn soon." He looked at Tandar intently while holding out his hands. "Wea neeyd ta stohp thea bleeedin aynd geyt ouyt of heyre."
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Post by Brandwyn on Mar 18, 2009 10:19:39 GMT -5
Tory backed Asfala up away from Brandwyn and led the horse over to Chip and Caliber so Tandar and his prisoner would have more room to work on the Royal Scout apprentice. She looked around and no one was paying any attention to her. She left the horses and walked over to the edge of the trail where she had seen Patrick pulled from his horse.
She checked the others and most of them were intent on Brandwyn and Tandar and keeping an eye on the few Grizzlies that were still alive. She looked down and saw the tracks where Patrick had hit the ground with his heels. There were shallow furrows in the dirt that led right up to a bush butting up against the trail. Behind that bush she saw enough of a print to know that Patrick wasn't being dragged here, but was walking on his own, though backwards.
Tory glanced back at the others. She was out of site of them now, a few trees blocking her view. A few more steps and there was a clear set of prints where Patrick turned around and started walking forward, following his attacker. Tory followed the trail deeper into the trees just a little ways and came upon a shallow stream. The prints led down into the water and then all traces of her mentor's tracks disappeared.
Tory scanned the bank on the far side of the narrow stream and saw no indication that they went straight across. She stepped into the water and walked a few feet downstream, scanning the stones in the water and along the bank. "There! That rock has been moved." she murmured quietly, seeing a rock in the water that had been stepped on, shifted and had not settled back into the same spot. The water was filling in sand around it rapidly. A little ways further down she saw the moss had been rubbed off a large rock on the opposite side of the stream. They had exited the water here.
She scanned the ground, still standing in the water. She didn't see any other prints and figured she would be running out of time. Someone was going to notice she was gone. She carefully retraced her steps back to the point where she entered the water. Her own footprints were prominent alongside the very faint trail of the ranger and his "captor".
Tory thought for a few minutes, looking back down the stream. She still refused to believe Patrick had betrayed her and the Scouts and left them to be killed. He had to be working undercover. That was what he did for Crowley. Following this line of reasoning, if he was going undercover with the bear claw guys, he would have had to set the Scouts up if that was his mission or he would fall under suspicion. Why would he leave Tory behind too? Assuming he actually did care about her, and she felt that he did, then the only reasons she could think of was that having her along would either blow his cover or he felt it would be too dangerous for her.
Tory contemplated this for a few minutes, her feet starting to go numb from the cold water that had soaked through her boots. "He is not going to want me to follow him." She reasoned it out. She was his apprentice and her job was to back him up, no matter what. So, if he didn't want her to find him, then she decided not to go looking for him after all, even though she was feeling very lost and alone without him to guide her.
Then she realized that the others would want to go find him and Ian was probably an expert tracker. If they suspected that Patrick had set them up, they would want to catch him and either imprison him or maybe even kill him. Brandwyn was already suspicious of him, Tory could tell from the way the scout had been watching him last night and during the ride this morning. Tory couldn't let them find him and kill her mentor. She quickly reached a decision and climbed out of the water. She began to tramp all over the faint marks Patrick had made, making her way back up his trail towards the rest of her party, obliterating any signs of his passing - she hoped. She tried to make it look like he had been struggling with his captor. They would know she had followed his trail, but they would think she'd lost it at the stream and that she had not known any better instead of suspecting she messed up the trail on purpose. Hopefully they would not be able to tell that he had walked there of his own free will, and had not been dragged.
She stepped back to the bush on the side of the road and peeked around it to make sure no one was looking at her direction. When she felt it safe, she quietly stepped back over to Chip and buried her face in Chip's mane, trying not to think how bad Patrick's betrayel hurt her. She hoped that she was right in believing him to be working undercover. Silently she let the tears fall, mingling with her horse's mane as she clasped Chip around the neck, letting the events of the last several minutes overwealm her.
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Post by Tandar on Mar 18, 2009 16:45:48 GMT -5
Tandar drew his saxe knife and cut through the rope binding Ragnar's hands. He knew Brandy desperately needed medical assistance and he was willing to let the mercenary provide it. He stood over the Grizzly, watching the procedure anxiously.
Patrick put his hand on Tory's shoulder. "You gonna be okay?"
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Post by Brandwyn on Mar 18, 2009 17:30:45 GMT -5
Ragnar grabbed a thick pad of cotton from the kit and handed it to Tandar. "Preyss iyt hard on thea wouynd." Then he quickly picked out some of the herbs and placed them in the small ceramic mortar and pestle and added a few drops of water and began to quickly grind them into a thick paste.
He motioned for Tandar to remove the pad of cotton and the handkerchief and smeared the mixture onto the wound, pushing some of it down inside. Then he placed two fresh pads over the wound and took some long strips of cloth and bound them tightly all the way around Brandwyn, putting as much pressure on the pads as possible.
He pressed down on them for a few minutes, waiting to see if the blood soaked through. He looked up at Tandar while he waited. "Iyf thiys stohps iyt, aynd shea didna looose too muych bludd, theyn shea wiyll live." He lifted his hand and the bandages were not soaked through. It appeared to be slowing the blood flow. "Iyt iys close ta heyr bayckbone, thouwgh. Wus shea moovin heyr leygs ayt all? Iyf noyt, theyn shea may na bea ayble ta waylk agayin."
He checked again and the patch still was not soaked with blood. He figured it was time to move her and get out of this place. "Iya thiynk shea cayn bea moved now. But shea neeyds aye reayl doctoor."
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Post by Brandwyn on Mar 18, 2009 18:21:28 GMT -5
Tory jumped when a hand touched her shoulder, but at the sound of Patrick's voice she spun around and hugged him for a few moments. "I thought you had left and weren't coming back." She said softly as she looked up at him solemnly. She glanced at the others clustered around Brandwyn and Tandar and pulled him over behind the horses out of their sight.
She stepped back from him a bit, dried the tears on her face and crossed her arms and glared at him. "You promised you wouldn't leave me! I saw your tracks in the woods just now. You went willingly with that guy after he dragged you off the horse." Tory knew she could be on dangerous ground if Patrick really was defecting, but she pressed on. "I think you are going undercover on a mission from Crowley to infiltrate these bear paw guys, but that you had to set the Scouts up in order to keep your cover with these guys."
Tory watched his face to see if she could determine what he was thinking. "Or you might really be defecting from the Ranger Corps and set us all up to be captured or killed." It hurt Tory to say those words, but she knew they were a possibility. "Either way it doesn't matter to me. I am your apprentice and my place is at your side." What she couldn't figure out is why he had come back. She glanced back at the others and figured she had better fill him in.
"Look, I think Brandwyn suspects you were behind this ambush. She was asking questions about you last night and was watching you this morning on the ride here. She's hurt real bad though, not sure if she will make it." She relaxed her stance somewhat and leaned up against Chip's hip.
"Those two rangers that were on the ship with them showed up and they have one of those bear paw guys as a prisoner. He seems to be helping them. Somehow they knew we were in trouble and arrived just in time to finish off the last three ambushers."
Tory was worried about what Patrick was going to do. She had just started to trust him completely and now she was unsure of him again. "Ian was just asking if you were unconcious when you were pulled off your horse and I told him I didn't know because I got knocked out. Then I went out in the woods and messed up all signs of your trail up to the stream. At least I hope I messed it up good enough. No one else saw your tracks."
She looked up into his eyes, "So, if you are defecting or going undercover, I don't care which, I want to come with you." She had come full circle in her argument; "you promised you would not leave me behind."
Tory watched Patrick warily, waiting for his reaction.
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