Four of them, the road was pretty rough, but compared to the country side it was a well plowed field (thus making it more difficult to try and escape, not that my overloaded cart could get anywhere very fast). Two were normal looking ruffians, ripped clothes, hadn't bathed in a while, hair poorly matted. The other two were a reminder of the horrors of the Red Hand, they were Corrupted. Not in the way that they were magic users who had gone insane, no they had magic worked into them to make them more dangerous opponents (harder to kill, body parts twisted into claws or slashing tendrils). These two had one normal arm and one huge cudgel of twisted broken flesh that looked like a club mixed with a rotten tree branch. Their guns were all in pretty poor shape, which made sense the men were in bad shape!
"Toll Road." The lead speaker had about five teeth in his head, and of those five they were just about rotten.
"Ahhh yes of course I can see the toll is really going to road maintance well." The road was barely that as I said earlier, it had large gaps of broken terrain and everytime my cart had bumped I feared I'd break an axl or something.
"Its a work in progress sir." He said sir like Suh, but I don't abide by that idiocy in my writing.
"Of course times are tough and you have very little funds to fix it, hence the toll! I totally understand, now which type of currency do you fine gentleman take so that I may pay you and be on my way." I had no intention on paying anyone, but I did misplace my revolver earlier during a bathroom break and I was frantically trying to find it without it being obvious thats what I was doing. Why not use magic Trezlan? Because, that's why, also embarrasingly I'd kind of extended myself the day earlier burnning random things in my otherwise uneventful journey, look you get bored riding broken trails by yourself, and boredom leads to burning things.
"What?" The leader shifted uncomfortably, apparently he had not thought his otherwise foolproof plan through.
"Currency my good tollers! Coin, precious metals, jewels? Clearly you must take something for your toll! I don't assume the Guard has paper currency yet, and if they do I'm sadly lacking it." I kept looking for that damn revolver but it seemed to have dissappeared, my sword was likewise somewhere else. I admit my packing is particularly awful.
"Don't be moving too much up there." That was one of the corrupted his words were slurred by what sounded like something deep in his throat, which probably was the truth. I had found my pistol though, so I was able to shift back to the front of my wagon and put my hands up, the revolver nicely concealed in my lap by my robe.
"Sorry I was locating what I was planning on giving you for your toll!" They snickered and then I fired, I'll admit I'd gotten better with a pistol in my time of being with the Followers of Fire (it was the only thing I did consistently aside from bitch that I was stuck with a group of religious zealots). Three of the shots were through the head, and the last was a throat shot (not on purpose my aim slipped a bit) the corrupted I hit through the throat went wide eyed as blackish blood poured from the wound and then collapsed on the road. In a way I felt kind of bad, simple bandits didn't exactly deserve death, but who knows who else would run across these vagabonds and if I left them alive I'd be kind of responsible for their deaths, sort of (I have a very vague sense of morality).
Happily these bandits were the only thing I ran across in my otherwise bumpy horrible ride to Rosetia. I was mildly surprised I didn't run across some creature from a forgotten pit of evil, but as my life would later prove, thats because they were waiting for me to get situated first! Such is the nature of life, your terrors want you to be comfortable before they assault you.
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