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Meryl could only wait and watch Stefan do an over-the-top bow to Lord Abern as they left his manor. As they walked away he exclaimed that you needed to \'perform\' in order to win over and remain on friendly terms with Nobility. If you are not doing something to show gratitude to a noble, they just won\'t care about you.

Putting that depressing topic of how life worked with nobles to the side Meryl followed after the rest of the group, yawing a little as she did. They had spent the night in the lap of luxury, but she could not enjoy it. After everything the lady of the house had said, fears and doubts just spun around in her head. Something was definitely wrong with this whole situation.

The only thing that kept her going strong was the firm knowledge that Orc\'s are dangerous and need to be taken care of. This was unrelated to the oddity with Lord Abern\'s son\'s hunting trip and needed to be done to keep others safe.

And so, with that as her focus bouncing around the many other thoughts in her head, they headed out to complete their mission.

And they did so in style.

"That was nice of Lord Abern to lend us a carriage" Helena said as she ran a sharpening stone along her sword.

"Yes. From his point of view, what is one carriage compared to the need to quickly find his son\'s killer. It needs to be done as both a matter of revenge and before they kill someone again."

With them now all sitting in the carriage, they got to talking about plans for dealing with their target and the first stop on the journey. The only one missing from this discussion was Ethandril, the elven bowman of the group who was driving the carriage.

"Okay everyone." Stefan said to get the groups attention. "We are heading to the beast-kin village to see if they know where this Orc went. The only problem with this is that since they took a hunting party and unjustly imprisoned them to make some coin, I can\'t imagine they will tell us a single truth. As soon as we bring up that we are looking for this Orc because of the hunters that were attacked, they may lock up and not tell us anything."

There in lie the first problem. Well for Meryl it was more understanding why this was the case. Why had a village imprisoned a group of human hunters for no reason? There are people out there that would try to kidnap people as slaves to sell, but for a whole village to be a part of that, it just doesn\'t sound right. But while she was still trying to figure that out, the rest of the group had already agreed with Stefan\'s statement.

"So, we can\'t let loose that we know they imprisoned them, as that might even make them go after us. We need to ask about the Orc, claiming we\'re after the bounty on its head. Nothing more. As they might get suspicious. But even then, they will probably tell us all lies about what happened in order to remove the blame from them."

Another resounding set of agreements was heard once he said that. All aside from Meryl who just nodded with concern.

"But even if they do, I am sure we can figure something out if we look around their village and question the right people. When we have an idea of where the Orc is, we then head after it. While I would like to deal with them, we can\'t do anything about the village. They are not part of the job and we can\'t just….attack a whole village."

Meryl completely agreed and so did the rest. The only difference was that she saw it as a moral thing, the village having many people who surely hadn\'t been a part of the imprisonment. There were probably also children living there as well. Stefan however meant it as the village likely had more people than their group, and taking them all on may not go well for them. The rest of the group just saw it as not being necessary as it wasn\'t a part of the job.

"When we are searching for this Orc, you need to be careful." He then looked between the Helena and Meryl, "you two especially. I\'m sure you are aware of what Orcs are famous for. We don\'t want it taking your innocence or anything," Stefan finished with a slight chuckle, which the other men in the group joined in on.

"Innocence. Please, I lost that a long time ago." Helena replied.

"S-so did I," Meryl managed to tack on through the embarrassment of the conversation.

They continued talking for a little longer on how to face off against an Orc, but until they knew more about it such as if there was more than one and if it had kidnapped anyone, they didn\'t fully know how to get rid of it.

….

The journey towards the village steadily continued. The road they were on was like all the others, just a well-trodden dirt path.

It was incredibly boring.

Some of the others were playing some card and dice games to pass the time, but Meryl wasn\'t feeling it.

And besides…the boredom soon disappeared after what they spotted on the road.

"We\'ve got trouble ahead," Ethandril called out from his driver\'s seat.

"What is it?"

"There\'s a carriage in the road, no driver and it looks like all the guards are dead." He said replying to Stefan.

"Okay. Let\'s get over there as quickly as possible."

Snapping on the reigns, the Umbrea that had been pulling the carriage went into overtime and almost galloped towards the carriage, taking them a while to slow down and stop.

Once they did, they all disembarked and drew their weapons, not wanting to be caught off guard.

As they moved, they paid close attention to the surrounding woods and the bodies, in case it was some sort of trap, but as far as they could see, nothing had been set up like that.

As they reached the bodies, they moved around them taking a look at the scene. They saw six bodies in total, armour bent and crumpled for a few, meaning a massive force must have it them. They saw that the door to the carriage was open so either someone from inside fled, was taken or was part of the attack.

One of the group bent down and held a piece of glass under one of the men\'s noses and saw it mist over with the man\'s breath.

"This one\'s alive."

Shocked that this was the case, they then went around to check the others, and shockingly again found them all to be alive. Some were worse for wear being quite injured, but a good recovery potion or two should fix them up.

As they moved around they heard a groan from one of the men, seemingly having woken up from his passing out. He groggily looked around not sure what was happening. But as soon as he saw someone moving by him he went to grab his weapon.

"St-stay back." He said as he moved his sword about from his slumped position on the floor.

Helena who had been near him moved back before the blade cut her.

"Hey, easy there. We are a group of mercenaries who spotted this carriage and came to help. Meryl can you pass me some water."

Grabbing it out of her pack, she passed it over to Helena who then passed it to the guard who had started to calm down. After a few gulps, his thirst was sated and he breathed out a sigh of relief.

"Who do you work for and can you tell me what happened here?" Stefan asked the man as he made his way over.

"We work for…Lord and Lady Quinterus. We were travelling with their daughter Lady Ameril to bring her to Caldaria for her wedding ceremony. All was quiet during the journey but suddenly we were attacked by an Orc. It even used some sort of invisibility spell or potion. We didn\'t see it until it had already knocked one of us out. It also had some odd potion that immobilised us."

The guard pointed over at his colleague that was still passed out by the carriage. All around the ground and with some still clinging to his leather trousers they could see an odd grey shell-like substance.

"It stuck to him and made it impossible for him to move."

Stefan moved over to the guard on the ground and picked up some of the shell. With the faintest of movements, it cracked and crumbled.

"Ahhhhhh!"

Hearing a man cry out Sefan, Helena and Meryl dashed around the carriage to the rest of their group to see what was going on.

"Well, it looks like another one\'s awake," Helena said as she saw everyone giving the man a side berth as he screamed.

"It hurts, it hurts so much."

When Stefan saw where the man was holding, he grimaced as he realised where he had been hit.

"Give him something to deal with the pain," Stefan said as he bent over to pick up what had hurt the man so.

"A blunted arrow?"

Merly saw him looking at it, and she could see that it was crude in design. It didn\'t look like a Fletcher had made it. Comparing it to the others on the ground there were inconsistencies between them, and a fletcher would hardly be able to sell their wares if they did that. She came to the conclusion that an amateur had made them, not a professional by any means.

But that just begged the question of why? If you\'re up against a group of guards wearing armour like they were, the easiest thing would be to fire arrows that pierced the crude leather they wore or to hit the areas that were just cloth, killing them quickly. It\'s as if whoever fired them was trying not to kill them.

The guard that had been in agony had drunk a potion offered to him and was now calm again. It was then that he finally realised there were a bunch of other people around him.

The group explained who they were, and the guard from the other side of the carriage spoke alleviating some of his stress.

"Who took you lot down?" Stefan asked the guard in case his story did not match what the first guard had said.

"I never saw who it was. They just kept firing arrows. At one point they threw a bottle that caused an explosion," he replied pointing at the shallow burnt crater. "They were good shots, took one of us down right at the start. It was only when the explosion knocked me down that they manage to hit me in my…. well. Then they finished me off by hitting me in the head. They were brutal."

"It must have been Orc\'s attacking you as well. While one of them took all three of us down, the others kept you lot occupied." The guard from the other side shouted out.

"Orcs. Here. Such vile creatures. Wait… did they take-?"

"Yes."

"We must go after them. We need to rescue her. Who knows what a group of Orcs will do to her." The guard frantically said as he tried to stand. But even with the pain-relieving potion he drank, that didn\'t help with how it had physically affected him, meaning he struggled greatly to stand.

"We shall go after them. You stay here. Ethandril, you are our best rider. Take one of these horses and head back to Lord Abern. Let him know what happened. Meryl and Helena, come with me to try and track this beast down. The rest of you, help the guards while we are gone." Stefan shouted out to the group as he stood tall in an almost heroic pose.

…

Meryl didn\'t think this was a good idea. It sounded like there were more than one Orc and that they were actually quite smart. Just the three going after it may not be a match for them. Fears kept going through her head, but thankfully she voiced them to their fearless leader.

"I understand what you are saying. Even I would struggle against a few Orcs, even more so since it sounds like they have some amount of intelligence. We shall follow them, and see what the situation is. It\'s possible there is a group of Orcs waiting for the ones that left to raid. They may have other hostages as well. All this information is vital and will help dictate how we deal with them when we are able."

While things were strange about Stefan and this whole mission, she had to admit, he knew how to be a mercenary and a leader.

"If it\'s only a few Orcs, then we can wait until they either separate from the others or fall asleep, then we rescue the lady and kill them. Come on."

They headed into the forest, slow as can be. Helena was upfront using her tracking skills to follow where the Orc had gone. So far, following where they went had been easy. They had been running and moving without care. They even found drops of blood here and there.

The odd thing was that she could only see one set of Orc footprints and a few human-looking ones. It\'s possible the other Orcs took another route, trying to throw anyone following them off track. That is assuming they had that level of intelligence. But on the matter of the human tracks, one was obviously the lady that was taken. But who could the others belong to? Slaves maybe?

Before long they came to a slightly flatter area of land which had an assortment of tracks and damaged branches and plants. From all this, they figured that this was the camp they had used.

"It\'s hard to tell, but it looks like something had been burning here. Probably a campfire."

"So, they picked up camp and they left. Which direction?"

Helena looked all around the area, looking for any signs of where they had gone. The only problem was that nothing looked out of place at the edge of the camp. There were no footprints in the dirt, all the plants a shrubbery looked as ruffled as everywhere else. Even the dripping blood had ceased and with most of it being root systems it wasn\'t like there were many twigs and branches they could find snapped. Even when she did, she found some in three different directions. Which meant either they split up, or animals had come by at some point and broken it.

"There\'s nothing to tell where they went."

"What?"

Helena explained all that she was seeing. While it didn\'t do much for Stefan\'s annoyance at the situation, he conceded that it wasn\'t her fault, but that of the Orcs that had fled.

"Smart enough to have potions to immobilise and create explosions. And now they are also able to easily cover their tracks. These Orcs need to be dealt with as soon as possible, lest their numbers increase."

At that, with no idea where they went, Stefan decided they should return to the carriage. The only thing they could do now was follow on with their original plan and go to the beast kin village.

Hi All, I hope you liked the interlude. The chase is on, and while they may have lost Olivia\'s tracks, who knows what they may find out at Yoban\'s village. We shall have to see how things go in the next chapter. n/ô/vel/b//in dot c//om

Please let me know your thoughts on the chapter.

Braderzsz