Demonic Knight, part 9

The arrow struck the trunk of the tree next to Elysia, and he stood there vibrating. The catgirl looked around with fierce eyes, sniffing the air and probing the tall grasses. Had the beasts come back to catch up with them? Why hadn't they just killed them?

Elysia looked at the black feathers on the arrow's tail, and thought that the spear couldn't have belonged to a beastman, since it didn't look like the kind of weapon one of them would wield, and Kat hadn't mentioned seeing one armed with one. bow. Goosebumps rose at the threat of danger, and she strained her senses to see if she could hear anything; but all she heard was the wind in the branches of the trees, the song of the birds and the noise of the distant river.

"That was a warning shot," she yelled at them in a harsh, uneducated voice. "Don't come any closer."

Upwind, Elysia thought. “The goalkeeper is upwind. Very professional." Her own thought had no doubt just occurred to Frey when he glared at the point the words came from.

“I'll give you a warning shot too, I think so. Come out and face me with my sword,” she said. "Are you warriors or cowards?"

"He doesn't talk like a beastman," commented another voice further to the left. It was a friendly voice, containing a trace of joy that she couldn't control, no matter how serious the situation.

“Who can know…? These are strange times. Certainly he does not look like a man. He's more like a little giant.” That was said by a woman somewhere behind them, and Elysia turned to look, but she couldn't see anything. The area between her shoulder blades contracted; she expected an arrow to stick in there at any moment.

"Are you implying that I might be a beastman?" Frey inquired with a voice laden with anger. "I'll make you swallow those words."

“Maybe you should calm down until we can see them,” Elycia whispered. She then she yelled: “Forgive my friend. He is a great enemy of the Evil Powers and he is easily offended. We are neither beastmen nor mutants, as you can easily see, but adventurers on our way to Bergheim to find work. We have no intention of causing you any harm, whoever you are.”

"He certainly speaks very well," declared the first voice. "Don't shoot, boys...until I say so."

"It could be a witch... They say they are manipulative women" suggested the woman's voice. “Perhaps the girl is a relative of yours.”

“Naah! That's Kat from the Kleinsdorf inn. She has served me many times, and I would know that hair anywhere.” The jovial voice seemed thoughtful for a moment. “Maybe she has been kidnapped. I have heard that in Bergheim there is a good market for virgins for profane purposes.”

Elysia thought that things could easily turn ugly. These people seemed scared and suspicious, and it wouldn't take much to convince them to fill her with arrows and interrogate the girl after her. She racked her brain for a way out while she hoped that Frey could overcome her natural inclination to rush headlong into trouble, or they would both be finished; at least she would be finished, she doubted that Frey would come to harm.

"Is that you, Mr. Messner?" Kat asked suddenly.

Gods bless the girl, Elysia thought. “Keep talking; every word said will increase contact and make it harder for them to think of us as anonymous enemies.”

“Don't kill them. They have protected me from the beasts. We are not witches or worshipers of Chaos.” He looked at Elysia with bright eyes. “This is Mr. Messner, a ranger adventurer hired by the elderly Duke of Bergland. He used to sing me songs and tell me jokes when he went to the inn. He is a good man."

"That good man is probably about to stick an arrow between my eyes." Elysia thought, praying they wouldn't be upset by his feline traits.

“Kat tells the truth. We killed a few beastmen, and we may have to kill many more. They destroyed Kleinsdorf… They could be on their way right now. They are led by a Demonic Knight.”

A large, paunchy man stepped out of the trees to Elysia's right. He was dressed in furs and a motley green and brown cloak; On his neck was a small gold badge that marked him as an adventurer of that rank. Elysia was surprised, because she could have looked at the man several times without realizing that he was there. In one of his big hands he carried a bow, but it wasn't aimed at either Frey or Elysia, and his movements were extraordinarily stealthy for someone of his size.

She stopped ten paces from the edge of the road and gazed at them as if she were measuring them. He had a battered face and sparse gray hair; his nose seemed broken and crushed, and his ears swollen from repeated blows like those of a veteran boxer. His eyes were gray and cold as steel.

“Naaaah!… You don't look like hell spawn, that's for sure. But if you are not, you have chosen a good time to anchor wandering in the forest… when all the corrupted souls from here to the Far North have set in motion.”

"So why are you here?" asked Frey with a sinister expression. It was obvious that he could barely control his anger.

“Not that I have to answer that question, let's be clear, but it's my job. Me and the boys are keeping watch over these woods by order of the old duke, it can be said that my group has a very long term contract, and I assure you that I do not like what I have been seeing so far.”

He rubbed his nose with the knuckles of one hand and stared at them. Elysia tried to gauge the man, who looked like a peasant, but the sharpness of his eyes and the humor she sensed in the way she lazily slurred her words suggested they were dealing with an intelligent man cunningly camouflaged. It seemed that it was difficult for him to get angry, but the catgirl guessed that once her anger was aroused, he would be a formidable foe. He was frightening in his calm style, and the nonchalance with which she towered over the dark hero suggested that he was someone who was sure of his authority. Elysia had seen men like him before, reliable adventurers trusted by her lords.

“We are not your enemies,” Elysia assured him. “We are just traveling adventurers, and we don't want trouble.”

The man laughed, as if she Elysia had said something funny.

“In that case, you are in the wrong place, lass. Something has stirred up the beastmen in a way she hasn't seen in twenty years. They have left a trail of destruction from the woods to the mountains, and from what you say they have finished off Kleinsdorf as well. Too bad…, I had always liked that town. What about Klein and his soldiers? Surely they must have done something.”

"They are dead," Frey answered, and gave a caustic laugh.

The ranger looked at him with an angry expression in his eyes.

“Naaaah!… There is the castle. He has been there for almost six hundred years. Beastmen never attack fortifications. They do not have the necessary strategic capacity to do so. It is what has kept us alive in these doomed lands.”

"It is true; what Mr. Frey says is true,” Kat interjected, speaking as if she were about to cry.

"If I were you, I'd be careful with the next village," warned Frey. And then he added in a sardonic tone, "That's for sure they'll have a nice festival soon."

"Who are you?" Messner asked with a serious voice, he didn't do it, nor did the previous comment sting.

Before Elysia could respond, Frey beat them to it. “We are the Platinum Rank Ragnarök group; I am Frey, leader of the group; my partner is Elysia”

“Are you the group that defeated the rat demon in Riverheim? Are you Frey the dark hero and Elysia the black cat?

“Yes, we are Ragnarök,” Frey said in a confident voice as he pointed a thumb at himself.

Having an idea of ​​who he was talking to, Messner then turned towards the forest.

"Rolf... Go west and see what you can see," he said. “Freda… Gather the rest of the boys and we'll meet in Flensburg. I'll take our friends there. Looks like things are about to get ugly."

The others didn't respond, and Elysia didn't even hear a sound in the bushes, but she knew that the watchers were gone. She had been very close to death and, at no time, did she get to see her possible executioners. She felt her distaste for the woods creep back into her; she preferred places where a man could see danger approaching. Messner gestured for them to follow him.

“I am Messner, leader of the Green Leaf gold rank group. Let's go; along the way you can tell me what you know. By the time we get to Flensburg, I want to know exactly what happened.”