Ambush

W02: The Light Woods

It's Gilday, Bernfleur 18 10:56:56 1020. The full moon is up. The tide is high and rising. The sky is blue and cloudless, the sunlight is bright, and a cool wind blows from the northwest.

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This gorgeously sunny spring day with its cool breezes is an enlivening day to be out in nature... or, at least, passing through it in the comfort and relative security of an enclosed carriage wending its way along a forest road. The problem with forests, though, is that they provide cover for highwaymen. It is just so that the driver of one particular carriage, one in which a particularly elegant lady has been traveling on her way to the world-famous City of Alexandria, finds itself ambushed. With no warning, a hulking brute of a man (perhaps giantborn? He is huge, after all.) falls out of a tree whose branches extend across the road some 20 feet above it. The man is massive, and his landing shakes the ground noticeably. Standing there brandishing an enormous cudgel, his sudden appearance spooks the pair of horses yoked to the carriage, and the driver is almost as panicked as he tries desperately to keep the horses from toppling the vehicle.

It is here where our scene opens.

It had been an eventful trip, Nokkela's last few months away discussing business arrangements with an engineer who had promised upgrades to their airships had gone well, but they had taken far longer than she would have liked. She was watching the woods, knowing the possibility for ambush, which is why she kept her weapons with her in the carriage. As the ride jerks and bounces on the road, Nokkela tosses her head out of the window to see the trouble. "Oh, bother," she responds in a tone that masks her instinctive response of panic. She glances to the woods, looking for allies of the aggressor. "I told him this would happen. Did he listen? No, 'the roads are safe, there haven't been attacks in weeks'." She growls in a mostly unladylike fashion, pulling her rapier from its sheath. Maybe the driver can get past him. She hopes so, because that is one big man.

There is no way that the driver would be able to steer around this brute, panicked as the horses are. As the big assailant raises his club and crouches to jump over the horses and clock the driver, all chaos breaks out. The wooden beam that connects the horses to the carriage shatters with a loud CRACK! The horses jerk free and try to run off into the woods but get abruptly halted as the yoke that connects them smacks into the trunk of a tree they were trying to both go on opposite sides of. The carriage, jolted severely as the drive beam shattered, narrowly avoids tumbling smack into the massive attacker, who is tripped mid-attack, and sent rolling into a tree where with another cracking sound, he suddenly goes limp and ends up dead of a broken neck. While all this is happening, a gang of about 8 gobbers swarms out of the woods, armed with menacing looking axes. As the carriage comes to a grinding stop, the driver is overwhelmed by four of the gobbers who take no time to hack the poor man into bloody chunks. The other four are about to scramble into the coach of the carriage, but suddenly freeze at the piercing screech of what sounds almost like a giant eagle, but deeper with a thrum to its voice. Just then, a pair of arrows appear in the chests of each of three of the gobbers, two on the unfortunate driver, the other about to open the door to where Nokkela was sitting.

"Blazes!" Nokkela lets a stream of rather unladylike words flowing from her mouth, and she snaps back as the gobber's axe strikes the door. She grabs her leather jerkin, and throws it on over her dress. It isn't very stylish looking, but it may just keep her alive for longer.

She kicks against the door, slamming it against the gobber before he can open it, and kicks off her fancy shoes. She leaps out of the carriage, unwilling to keep herself pinned in a cage to be easily dispatched. She comes out with a thrust to the heart of the bandit, and then kicks him off the rapier's blade. It's a mildly clumsy move given the noble dress that she wears. It isn't very combat friendly, and she turns to look at the giantborn, and looks for the archers who dispatched the gobbers.

Preceding the arrival of the archer, three more gobbers are impaled with a pair of arrows each, and the last one knows better than to stick around. As he turns to flee, a large beast with the enormous forequarters of a giant bald eagle wearing a shirt of gleaming mithral mail erupts from the forest, spreading its wings as it leaps atop the carriage and in pursuit if the one who would get away. Riding on the lionesque hindquarters of the monster is a male elf with a magnificent longbow in hand, nocked with not one, but two arrows. From the fleeting glimpse Nokkela gets of him as he hastens past, he has short hair, strange goggles on his face, and is dressed in form-fitting leather from neck to foot but for a cape of tawny feathers which billows out behind him. In a trice, the gobber that was trying to flee is clutched in the talons of the griffon and being pecked by its curiously metallic beak. The elf pats the griffon on the neck, then hops off, landing noiselessly on both feet with a 180-degree mid-air twist to face back toward the carriage. He looks the scene over, then, seemingly satisfied, puts the bow, fully as long as he is tall, into a short quiver over his shoulder where it entirely disappears inside. With calm, even breathing, he steps forward to approach the broken carriage, even as the griffon consumes the gobber.

Nokkela watches with wide eyes as the griffon snatches up the goblin and uses it as a snack. She winces, watching the disgusting pull of flesh, then looks away to the unexpected hero. "Um," she glances around. "Thank you kindly." She wanders on her bare feet across the road toward him, rapier lowered at her side. Interestingly, her noble girl feet look a bit more like those of a street rat, calloused and tough rather than dainty and smooth. "Oh no, Gerrtan!" She turns back to the carriage, and climbs the side to check on the driver. "Oh, you poor noble man," she says sorrowfully, reaching up to close his eyes. She kisses her fingers and places them on his forehead. It takes her a moment before turning back to the elf.

"Pardon my rudeness," she offers, brushing a stray curly lock of hair out of her face. "I am afraid you have caught me at a rather unprepared moment of stress. Thank you, thank you for your help."

Ga'Elian smiles at the woman, and merely nods in response, allowing her the time for a private farewell to her traveling companion. As she attends to that, he walks silently around the wreckage, carefully examining what happened. Then, in a thickly exotic accent, his voice a mild, almost melodic tenor, the elf says, "I sympathize for thee. Was this man dear to thee, miss?"

"He was dear to his family," Nokkela responds. "He served my family as a coachman for the last few years. He was a good man, and this fate is most unbecoming for him." She keeps her composure, though the sadness is clear on her face.

She looks back to the griffon. "You seem to be a rather successful adventurer," she confesses, wincing as it strings tendons from its meal of a corpse. "What mechanism of the creator places you aptly on course to deliver me here? I must say, when I saw the giantborn I thought I was certainly doomed."

Ga'Elian nods at the man's impromptu eulogy, then responds to the lady's question, "I wot not how work the destinies of mortals. Mayhap the gods purposed to deliver thee by mine hand, or there might have been no higher fate involved than pure happenstance. At any rate, I take it upon myself to ward those innocents who venture to travel the forests around here. Alas, that I was unable to save thy servant in time." With a friendly, perhaps even mildly playful smirk, he nods his head and adds, "I am Ga'Elian Faravanilas, and my companion," he nods toward the griffon, "is Erithamiel, or Silverbeak as this Trade tongue would have it." Looking at the driver he offers, "If thou desirest it, I will convey his remains to thy people. Perhaps they may secure his restoration to life, else they may dignify his flesh according to the customs of thy folk. In any event, we here are all that remain to clear this mess from the road, that it obstruct not the travels of others yet to come. Thou mayest assist me if thou wilt, or it shan't take me long if thou hast other things to attend to. I suppose thou hast possessions to collect, ere we seek a safer haven for thee?"

"There are many possessions," she admits. "I do not know that Erithamiel would like being a beast of burden, from my understanding of griffons. "If it is possible to restore Gerrtan, then it would be of greater value than all I carry, only allow me to bring one parcel with me. My journey was to secure business arrangements with an engineer, and the details of the final arrangement are contained in the carriage. And if I should ride with you on a griffon, it would be wise to take opportunity to change to more appropriate attire, lest I be indecent during flight." She swishes the dress back and forth, indicating that it might well fly up on them while airborne. "Will you afford me this request?"

Ga'Elian simply says, "As thou sayest." Then turns and gets busy clearing first the corpses of the robbers, then (with the griffon's help) moving the wreckage off the road and camouflaging it to make it less interesting to others who might take too much interest in investigating it. As he moves about, he is not weak, but his preternatural dexterity is obvious. He also leaves no tracks in the foliage, although the same cannot be said for the things he moves.

Nokkela opens the carriage door prior to its removal, and removes a leather bound document bag, and opens a trunk, pulling from it an outfit that looks far less expensive than her current dress. It is a pair of gray travel trousers with a white shirt, much thinner, and ideal for wearing under a leather jerkin. She places the document bag on a stone, along with some black traveling boots, and glances around. While there is a fair bit of foliage, there isn't a lot of full cover around for her to use as a dressing screen. She makes her way back from the road slightly, taking the rapier with her in case there might be a straggling highwayman who might still be lurking.

She finds a section of thick bushes which cover adequately enough, and manages to get herself free from the dress, placing it over the bushes for some extra cover of decency. She spends time redressing, pulling the trousers off the bush cover first, and then the shirt.

The girl who returns looks much less noble, and far more like an adventurer herself, albeit not so expertly equipped. She buckles her rapier to her hip, which, in and of itself is of excellent craftsmanship. Her bare feet carry her back to the boots, which she steps into before lacing them up, and taking the document bag up into her hand.