The Quest of Words

Chapter 4 - Bandits

I was quite stunned, of course. I hadn’t heard them approach, at all.

They all just stood there, shoulder to shoulder, quietly looking me over. From the looks on their faces, they didn’t quite know what to make of me. Then again, I didn’t quite know what to make of them either. They were what you might call humanoid… in the way that you would most decidedly describe them as not human. Most of them were what I would off-handedly label elves or maybe vulcans depending on your sci-fi preference. They were of various colors ranging from pale white to dusky gray, their ears swept back and pointed with a light curl at the tip. Their hair was all sorts of different unnatural colors, ranging from bright pink to bald.

Two of the men, not-elves, were some kind of… tree things? Their skin looked craggy, like bark, and they stood tall and spindly. Their hair did not fall from their head, as you might expect, but instead emerged from their shoulders of all things. Their faces also sat too low in their bodies, right between where their arms connected to their torso. Both of them looked so much the same that either I was suffering from some sort of racial blindness (likely) or they were twins.

Yet, one of the others looked just like a normal human, except he was rather short and squat. I would have called him a dwarf, except he had no beard, and rather significantly, he had a single horn coming out of his forehead, short and thick like a rhinoceros.

The last man, I would probably describe as an orc. He had gray skin and an upturned nose with a great big chin and small tusks jutting out of his underbite. His eyes were black and without pupils, almost like a shark. Most of his hair was shaved, and what was left was gathered into a loose top-knot atop his head. This one stood head and shoulders above all of the rest. I assumed he was the leader. Because he scared me.

They were all dressed in a rough assortment of leather armor, hide, and fur with various straps and buckles seemingly attached at random. Alarmingly, they were all armed with crude cutlasses and daggers and even a few bows. Slightly more worryingly, they each and every one of them had the word [Bandit] blazing redly just above their heads.

The big one, the orc I guessed, said something then. I couldn’t understand him at all. I could usually identify most of the major languages on Earth from the sound and cadence of them, if not necessarily understand their meaning. German is distinct from Italian in much the same way that Japanese is distinct from Cantonese. This didn’t fit with anything I had ever heard before. Maybe Dutch.

Whatever it was, he said it again, this time louder.

“Yeah, I’m sorry, uh… sir. I don’t understand your language,” I smiled. No reason not to be polite. Even if they were bandits. Especially because they were bandits.

That surprised them. Apparently, they didn’t like surprises, because they each took on a fierce expression and began drawing weapons.

“Hey, now! Let’s take it easy!” I said, pulling my hands out of my pockets in a placating gesture. The action released the office chair wheel I had been holding where it tumbled out of my ripped pocket, down my pant leg, and predictably landed on my shoe. All twelve heads followed the motion down and stared at the weird looking thing suspiciously.

“Uh… I guess it’s time for some ‘wheel’ time strategy?” Cringing at my pun, I launched it right into the big ones face, pegging him right between the eyes. He howled in rage, but I was already booking it to the tree line by that point. Now, I would like to say that I gave them a merry chase through the wood, dodging this way and that, like a clever fox giving the slip to a bumbling set of hounds. I would like to say that I found some bit of luck, or that I outsmarted them. But I didn’t. My out-of-shape, lumbering run didn’t even let me make it to the blasted creek before I was tackled to the ground, tied and trussed, and unceremoniously dragged back to the campsite. I may have blackened one of their eyes in the struggle with an elbow. I wasn’t sure.

What followed was a lot of yelling and arguing between the various bandits. They kept dangling my keys or the wheel in front of my face and yelling things at me. I kept just saying, “Yes, those are my keys,” or “That’s just a wheel, dude,” or “Please, stop slapping me?” Finally, they decided to stuff a dirty rag in my mouth and shove a bag over my head. They continued to argue and yell amongst themselves for a while after that. I considered trying to sneak away, but frankly, with the bag there, and the fact that my hands were tied behind my back and my feet were bound, I didn’t think I could inch my way to safety. I didn’t know much of what was going on after that. At one point, I was grabbed and carried, fireman-style, over one of their shoulders. The guy must have been ridiculously strong. I was not light.

I don’t know how long that went on. I was in no way comfortable being carried like that. The guy’s shoulder dug into my kidney in just the right way as to send a jolt of pain through me every time he took a particularly hard step. Every once in a while, I would be traded off from one to the next. One guy could carry me for quite a while, but the rest, I figured, just didn’t have that kind of stamina. Here and there, they would stop to rest. The bag would be removed and they would let me drink out of a skin. It wasn’t water. I don’t know what it was, but it was not water. Each time this happened, I would try and get a sense of where we were, but all I ever saw was more trees. In any case, after I got my… liquid refreshment, the bag would be replaced, and after a short rest, we would resume our journey.

I think I must have lost consciousness, eventually, from hanging upside down. When I awoke, it was to quite a lot of noise. We had evidently gotten to where ever we were going. Small mercy, that. I was tossed to the ground with little care and made to wait there for some time. Eventually, I was dragged somewhere else.

This new place was a bit quieter than where I had been, and shortly, everyone stopped talking. A man with a powerful voice said something, and the man holding me replied while grabbing and shaking my head. “Mmmph,” I protested. The powerful voice said something else, and the bag was ripped off my head.

I was, I discovered, in something like an outdoor throne room. There was crude furniture scattered about, made from scrap wood, bundled twigs, and strapped together with wicker. Several men of various alien descriptions, but no new species from what I could tell, were all staring at me with some degree of surprise. Each of them had the same red [Bandit] hovering over their heads, although one or two had a slightly less red [Outlaw] hovering there. What took up most of my attention, however, was the absolutely huge man sitting right in front of me. I had to assume that he would be at least eight feet tall while standing, given his stature, but I couldn’t yet be sure. He looked more like a human than the rest of the men I had seen, otherwise, except his face was rather too bony and his skin was an unhealthy looking yellow. His hair was trimmed short into a bowl cut except for a prominent bald spot in the middle looking rather like a tonsure. Interestingly, this man had the words [Bandit King] hovering rather boldly above his head.

He gave me a cocky grin and held aloft my keys and that stupid wheel as if to gloat that he now had them. He spoke again in that powerful voice. It was evidently a question, because the rag was yanked out of my mouth.

I took a moment to work some moisture back into my yap before saying, “Look, I’ve been trying to tell you people that I don’t understand a word you’re saying. Different language? Uh… La langue? No? Uh… Sprache de Deutche? No, look, those are just my keys and a wheel that fell off of a chair. There are four more of the things several miles back from where you found me, if you’re so interested,” I tried explaining again. The King frowned and the man standing to my side, the ‘orc’ from before, cuffed me behind the head. I guessed that the King didn’t like that because he barked some kind of reprimand at him. The ‘orc’ growled a bit, but backed down. This continued for a while. It was clear that the Bandit King wanted to know more about the things I’d been carrying, but of course, the language barrier proved insurmountable for now. In frustration, I started playing the ‘point-at-thing’ ‘give-it-a-name’ game, but the guy wasn’t having any of that. Eventually, he made a dismissive gesture, which caused the bag and rag to be replaced, and I was dragged away again.

I was shortly deposited somewhere else, and my hands were secured to a post behind me. And then, I was left alone for quite a while. With nothing else to do, I started trying to at least lip the rag out of my mouth. One of my nostrils had decided to clog up, and it was getting difficult to breathe properly. It took me a good while to accomplish, but I did succeed with a heavy sigh of relief. That done, I started trying to work the ropes behind my back, but that, I realized was going to be quite a project. Plus, escaping from here or trying to might end up getting me killed. These people had been a little rough, but so far, they hadn’t really done me much harm. Besides, there was always the hope that they might give me some food eventually. I was not a man who was used to skipping meals, and it had been well over a day since I had eaten.

After a while, it occurred to me that I still had a skill point remaining, so I began searching for something that might help me out of this predicament. “Hello, Menu-thing?” I whispered. It didn’t respond. Then again, I hadn’t actually given it a command. “Oh… uh… I want to spend a skill point.”

I considered that for a bit. The language barrier was a problem, that was certain. On the other hand, I would really rather not talk to these people at all, if I could help it. My inability to answer their questions might have been the only thing keeping me alive. It wouldn’t hurt to check, though.

“I want a skill to help me communicate with the locals.”

Hmm. This was new. “I don’t suppose listing them would be too much to ask?” The menu, of course, ignored me.

“Well, could you at least tell me the name of the language they are speaking?” I asked.

“Yes… I know that,” I said patiently. “Ok… what about… like… a skill to help me learn new languages quickly? Or better a spell that allows me to speak languages I’m unfamiliar with?”

“There we go. Now was that so hard?” I asked.

Honestly, both of those looked pretty good. The first one would be the go to skill for the long term. On the other hand, that spell would go a long way toward solving my problems in the here and now. Unfortunately, I wasn’t sure if it was a good idea to select one just yet. I still needed to get out of here, after all, and I only had the one point. Dismissing them both, I starting thinking about other options. And I needed to be specific…

“Ummm… how about a skill…”

Right then, I heard someone come into my room, or wherever I was. I heard some kind of rustling and some scraping sounds, followed by distinct clink. Then the bag was ripped off my head. Standing there was one of the elf looking men. He was pale of skin and bald, and I thought he might have been one of the ones from the campsite. He got right up in my face examining me closely. I, in turn, was afforded the opportunity to look him over in great detail. His face was… well the kindest I can say is that it was unsymmetrical. The right side of his face was slightly lower than the left, like someone had sliced his head open vertically and resewn it back. But badly. Consequently, his right eye had a milky hue to it. I wasn’t sure, but he might have been blind in that eye. The other one was a clear and pale blue. Otherwise, his nose was a bit large for his head and crooked, probably from having been broken at some point in his past, and his breath was just this side of rancid. As he backed away, he gave a grimace, and from the look of his teeth I had an inkling as to why. I wondered if he found me to be as ugly as I did him. My Charisma was only four, after all. And I hadn’t checked to see if those negative modifiers were still in place.

Looking around my prison for the first time, I surmised I was in some kind of hut or a lean-to, maybe. Behind the elf-man, there was no door, but rather a hole left in the wall with a piece of leather hanging there as a partition. Other than the two of us, and the post I was leaning against, there was nothing in this room save for a trio of mismatched clay jars.

He gestured to me then and pointed to a bowl of something that was sitting just to his side. He waved it at me and asked me a question. Looking down at the contents, it looked like some kind of stew. Or anyway, it was moist, in a bowl, and there was a spoon.

“Is that food?” I asked hopefully.

He spoke again, showing me the bowl. I nodded, hopefully in agreement, and then jerked my head at the bindings holding my hands behind my back.

He grimaced again, looking behind him, furtively. Then he pulled out a knife and pointed it at my face while giving me some kind of suspicious sounding speech.

“Right, I won’t give you any trouble. Just untie me, alright?”

He nodded, and began untying my hands. This guy wasn’t all that bad, I had to admit, despite the red [Bandit] sign hovering above his head. He hadn’t hit me so far, and he was delivering me food. He was my new favorite guy. Temporarily, at least.

After my hands were freed, he quickly backed away with his knife held in front of him. He clearly didn’t trust me in the slightest. At the moment, though, I didn’t much care. Instead, I slowly reached for the bowl, keeping eye contact the whole time. He seemed to relax a bit after I had my hands full, but didn’t come any closer. And he didn’t leave either.

Dismissing him for now, I looked over my soon-to-be meal. It smelled okay — a bit of a meaty aroma with an earthy smell that you would normally get with carrots. I couldn’t see any carrots, though. Shrugging, I gave it a tentative taste. It was… bland. But it tasted like food, so I wolfed it down, gratefully. All too soon, I had finished the little bowl. I wasn’t anywhere close to full, but plainly, that was my lot.

Seeing I was finished, the elf-man gestured with his knife at my hands, giving some kind of curt command. It took me a moment to understand, but I soon realized what he was getting at. Rolling my eyes, I pulled my hands back behind the pole behind me and waited. He circled around and then retied my hands, maybe a touch looser, which I appreciated. He then came around my front, said something else with a grin, and then shoved the rag back in my mouth.

“Hmmm! Mphn hee, mnn!” I shouted angrily as the bag was shoved back over my face. “Namn iin!”

The bald elf laughed and then I was once again left on my own.

The bag itself wasn’t particularly well made, so it let in a fair amount of light from the outside. It was just enough for me to make out the ring of light from around the leather partition in front of me, and from the flickering shadows, I could tell when someone would walk past. With nothing to do, all that I could occupy myself with was working at the blasted rag in my mouth. Unfortunately, Mr. Bald-Pale-and-Ugly had really shoved it in there, so I was having quite a time of it.

By this time, night had fallen, once again. So what faint entertainment I had from watching the shadows go by was soon subsumed by darkness. I couldn’t hear much from inside of my prison, but eventually I began to hear snippets of what sounded like singing. Drunken singing.

Haaa…. I could so go for a beer right now. And only one tiny bowl of soup for the whole day? I’m going to waste away in here.

It seemed that having shitty days was a trend around these parts. I had had two in a row, so far, and at the rate I was going, I was in for another shit night to top it all off. Then again… it could always get worse. At least it wasn’t… but then I stopped short. No, nope. Not going to fall into that trap again… But then I thought about it a bit, and gave a vicious grin… Then again, it could be raining. And I waited with glee. And waited.

I said it could always start…

Right about then was when the shouting started.