Special Delivery

"You're not the normal guy."

"He got sick." It took five days for any king of delivery to made to the camp.  Another five for the driver to come back and him to run into an "accident" (yes I killed him, sure I bet his family will be without a horrible person who delivers old food to people locked up in an internment camp of misery, my heart bleeds for them).  For a food supply as I said it was pretty sorry looking food, mainly just old nasty bread. The guard at the front gate looked like the bored soldier type who envisioned grand battles against foreign forces but ends up doing something so mind numbingly boring he's let the job slack.

"Whatever get inside." He waves me past their wooden gate and I lead the small cart with a couple pack horses to where he designated.  Inside was as I had seen from afar, broken down shanties with overly warn muddy roads to travel down. The prisoners in the camp were shorties, all shorties.  I don't even know what their crime was outside of people being shorties (Ronerawth has a history of hating them, I personally find them annoying but not something I'd lock someone up forever for). They looked gaunt and beaten down.  Not very surprising considering the conditions.  I navigated to what amounted to the kitchen area and started to unload my supplies to a shorty who looked healthier than the rest, but still beaten down.

"Frink sick or something?" His voice was that of a seasoned con man, polite and welcoming, even if he was wearing rags and had bags under his eyes.

"Yeah came down with a case of sword flu."

"Never heard of that, is it bad?"

"Kills the person most of the time." We moved the bags from the loading area to the "Kitchen", I put that in quotes because it was basically a pit with a small cooking fire and a pot over that. There were some crude hand made wooden tools hanging on the wall.  The grubby shorty con man lead me over to a wall where other bags were. We swapped the empties for the full and made my way back to the wagon. As the shorty went to put the bags on I struck him behind the head with the butt of my sword and put bags on top of him, no guard noticed my deception and I was able to get back on the wagon and out of the camp no problem.  I would have liked to have warned the shorty prior to striking him, or have him be completely compliant in what I was about to do.  But that could have damaged my plan to sneak a prisoner out of there to get the lay of the land. I was just glad he stayed knocked out, or realized what I was doing. Nothing more embarrasing than trying to "rescue" someone and they screw it up. I should know, I've constantly been accused of it.