It was An Ambush

Ok confession time, I apparently didn't have as much of a complete story as I alleged when first starting this out.  I know bastion of honesty like myself caught in a bit of a lie is shocking to even me. See the problem is that despite my own perfect recollection of my own misadventures *cough* my past self was lying to Marian about writing down her story and instead I was half doing that, half making bad limerics and drawing really awful erotic drawings (an erotic drawing of mine is like a circle with a dot on it and a label saing "breast" because you would just assume it wasn't if I didn't label it). I still took notes, sort of.  Look all I'm saying if this is obvious that I'm having to fill in details now with past recollections of what Marian told me, well I did, because I was lazy, back then, not now, now I'm a straight dealer who would never put down lies in my journal to overinflate my own ego or abilities.  There got that off my chest now back to the actual story.

The ambush that Marian was unknowning walking into had been set up shortly outside of the bog.  Her attackers had the route and wisely chose the place where a bunch of people would be tired and run a little ragged from riding through a smelly bog in the summer would be leaving as the place to assault.  It also worked because it was the only road out of the bog in the direction they were traveling in and thus they were funneled into a clear and easy path to intercept (they could have gone another way if not for the carriage, and the fact that quicksand and deep mud could effectively kill a horse before you were aware you had a problem). It was the place Marian knew they would be at their weakest, especially with the stupid carriage behind them.  So it wasn't much of a surprise when Marian and Stuckey's horses got shot out from underneath them.

It wasn't the first time as a mercenary Marian's horse got shot out from underneath her, so she knew the drill. Her feet cleared the saddle, she rolled through the fall and brought her weapon up at the same time.  The attackers were thankfully close, probably not willing to lose their prey to a failed long distance shot.  Stuckey was not as practiced as Marian and she heard his leg shatter underneath the dead weight of his horse, his howl of pain highlighting the extent of the injury.

"Put it down girl you're beaten." The man in charge didn't look like a bandit, he was dressed in Judges clothing. The five men he had with him were all dressed in formal Red Hand outfits.  Marian had seen outfits similar to them over the years in Lork, and she really couldn't forget her initial introduction to them when she was on the run.

"We have a valid contract to escort the girl, you are interfering in private business." She looked at Stuckey who had gotten himself out of his saddle, but would need a healer soon, bone was poking out of his pants.

"I'm sure you do, but the people you are escorting are kidnappers, despite what they might have told you the councilman's niece they are secreting away is very much their prisoner." The council, the Red Hand's supreme seat of power, a bunch of incestuous rich magic users who inherit their position from the ones who came before.  In theory they were "elected" to the postion, but no one I've ever spoken to has voted for it.

"Shit." Marian tossed down her hammer and raised up her hands, Stuckey and the other mercs did the same.

"Eloquently put, you'll have to come with us of course, though we won't bind you, I assume you realize what the penalty for fleeing will be."

"Stuckey's got a busted leg, he's not really going anywhere without some kind of..." With a hand signal Stuckey was murdered by arrows, four to be exact Marian shook her head at the inhumanity of it all.

"Shall we go?" The judge indicated they move and Marian and the mercs with her didn't have much of a choice.  Marian apologized to Stuckey's corpse and got moving so she did not join him.  She knew then that things just got a lot worse and of course the worst was yet to come (as is frequent in any dealings with the Red Hand as an entity, they weren't named the Red Hand out of politeness!)