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My arms ached. I felt like I was simultaneously floating and being pulled down at the same time. Someone slapped my face. It jarred me and I came back to full consciousness. I was slapped again and as my eyes focused I saw a bandit in front of me getting ready to strike me a third time.

‘Stop,’ a voice commanded. The bandit in front of me lowered his arm and looked behind him at two figures a few feet away. I saw the big half-orc plus another person in a hood. I looked up towards the ceiling and saw that I was hanging by my arms, dangling a few feet off the ground. Sige and Nigel were also tied with their hands over their heads but their feet touched the ground. They were looking at me.

We were in a room with six others standing around us. Five wore fangs on necklaces, but not the hooded man in the back, who was wearing a nice hooded cloak. The command to stop had not come from the half-orc, whom I assumed was Brutus, but from the hooded one.

‘Yall got any water?’ I asked. ‘My head hurts like it was kicked in by Nigel’s mule.’

I was met with silence.

‘I’ll settle for an ale,’ I offered, trying to be helpful.

‘You aren’t as funny as you think you are,’ the hooded figure said. Then he stepped forward and drew near. ‘I’m tired of your mouth.’

Suddenly I connected the voice. It was the voice we heard in the echoing cavern, but it also was the voice of …

‘Joad?’ I asked with a raised eyebrow.

The figure raised his hands to the hood and took it off of his head. A toad-like face was grinning at me. ‘Yes,’ he said simply.

‘But, I thought you died!’ I stammered. ‘We saw your dumb-looking hat at the wagon and thought you’d been killed somewhere.’

Joad shrugged and held his smile. ‘You’re not as smart as you think you are either,’ he replied.

‘That hat is the only thing uglier than he is,’ I conversationally told the bandit in front of me, jerking my head in Joad’s direction. He looked at me with dull eyes and I could tell he would be no fun.

‘That hat was the latest fashion in Valorion, but I don’t expect you to know that,’ Joad replied.

‘Nor care. But what the hell, Toady? Why are we tied up like this? What’s going on?’

Joad dropped his smile and rolled his eyes at me before walking over to Sige and Nigel, looking them over, and inspecting their bonds. He walked back to me and thought for a moment before answering. He leaned back and punched me in the stomach, sending me swinging.

I grunted and coughed. He didn’t hit me that hard but he was twice my size so that’s relative. ‘Are you punching or tickling? What the hell was that Toady?’

He punched me again, harder this time. ‘That’s it,’ I gasped while swinging away from him in a wide circle. ‘Use your hips next time though.’

Joad stood back and watched me. ‘What this is all about,’ he said slowly so I would understand it, ‘is I’m the one behind the ambush. Idiot. I ordered the attack and paid these Sumadean goons as my muscle.’ He waved a hand around to indicate the handful of bandits in the room.

‘Funny enough, I figured that out for myself, thank you.’ I replied. ‘Shit, even Sige figured that out,’ I said, jerking my legs over towards Sige. Sige nodded.

‘What I meant was why. Why did Joad the Toad hire people to attack the wagon he was driving? What were we carrying?’ I asked.

‘That is for me to know, and for you to die without knowing. That will be the last time you or anyone else calls me Joad the Toad,’ he added with impatience. He turned and began to walk out of the chamber, stopping at Brutus. ‘Don’t make it quick,’ he said and then left.

Brutus didn’t answer but looked at Nigel with a fixed glare. No one spoke for a while.

‘Hey,’ I called out. ‘I get that y’all have beef between you two but I’m just curious if you want to put that aside for a second. You’re Sumadeans. Why would you take orders from a Valorian goat turd like Joady Toady?’ I asked.

Brutus turned his gaze upon me and said simply, ‘Because he is paying us.’

‘Oh. Well, that’s fair I guess,’ I replied.

‘Where’s my daughter?’ Nigel demanded of Brutus.

‘Around,’ he replied again and then reached for a dagger on his belt. He pulled it out slowly. It was a rusty piece of dung, the scraps of a blacksmith’s discard, but it had an edge and was wrapped with a rawhide handle. He raised it to Nigel threateningly, and then to our collective astonishment, he cut Nigel down.

Nigel groaned softly as he lowered his arms, never taking his eyes off Brutus. The half-orc then cut Sige down, and then last me. I came tumbling to the ground like a sack of flour, but I was free.

‘I’m not interested in gutting you while you hang like sheep. That would be too easy,’ he said. ‘I want to fight.’

‘Six to three? With our hands still tied? Aren’t you worried that’ll be too easy?’ I quipped.

The other bandits squared off and began to encircle us. Some held blades and others clubs, and they waved them menacingly.

‘Sige, you speak dwarven, right? How do you say, “Your mother was a dwarven tavern girl”?’ The half-orc glared at me and started in my direction. ‘Sige?’ I asked again.

‘Umm, it’s something like ‘joth kuridir jr en dwjord nothaar,’ although there is some disagreement on the conjugation of the word dwjord …’

‘Thank you, Sige that’s fine,’ I said, cutting him off. ‘Did you hear that, orc? Joth cooder jeren dwjord nothor whatsit,’ I said, badly butchering the dwarven words. ‘I bet that’s where you get your other half, isn’t it?’

I had wanted to make him angry, and I succeeded. Brutus snarled and took a wide slash at me with his crude dagger. I dodged and rolled between his legs, using my hands to push off the ground and mule kick Brutus in his arse so he went flying. Then the fight was on. Nigel got hit in the gut with a club but Sige was a half-elf and as nimble as I am, ducking and weaving between wild swings of bone-handled knives and daggers. Brutus charged me and this time I rolled to my side allowing him to pass like a bull, while simultaneously turning on the ground to sweep his legs with mine. He fell and I climbed onto his back, lacing my tied hands around his throat and pulling backward while hooking my heels into his abdomen.

Sige managed to time it just right so that a high knife slash came down and severed the bonds on his wrists, freeing him. He was fighting hard and managed to disarm one of the brutes, taking his dagger, then killed another with it. I was impressed. Nigel was going hand to hand with another bandit about his size, trading punch for punch and standing tall.

I kept pulling back hard on Brutus and he was gasping for breath, trying to reach me with his arms, which I was just able to avoid. He rolled over so I was between his back and the ground, trying to crush me. He attempted to pull up and then slam me into the ground, but I just held on tighter, pulling with all my might against his throat while pushing in the opposite direction with my knees and heel hooks.

Nigel knocked out one of the bandits he was fighting and then took the club that one dropped and brained another one with it. Sige was finishing another one off too. We managed to fight six to three without dying, it seemed.

It was just Brutus and me now, me with my choke and Brutus scrambling for breath. Slowly his attempts grew more and more feeble until finally, he slumped in my arms, unconscious. I unhooked my arms from around his head while the others helped push him off and pull me up. We used his dagger to cut me free. Only Brutus was left alive. We tied him up with scraps of rope, hog-tied with his hands tied behind his back to his feet.

‘Let’s not be here when he wakes up,’ I said and the others agreed. At first, we grabbed what weapons we could from the dead or unconscious, but as soon as we ran out of that chamber and into the next we found our gear. We dropped what we had taken and donned our weapons. ‘We have to go after Joad,’ I said. I looked at Nigel. ‘If we can’t find him, we’ll get from Brutus where your daughter is. I swear it.’

‘Thank you,’ he said and then followed me down the passage and back into the larger cavern we had started in earlier. We heard steps to our left and we followed at a run, stealth no longer our objective. We caught a glimpse of Joad, still in his cloak, rounding a corner down another side passage with something in his hand. We followed, our paces quickening. I held my saber in my right hand and my seax in the left with the blade down so I could slash with it too.

The passage opened up into a wide room, the three of us stopping at a skid with Sige on my left and Nigel on my right. In front of us was a young woman in a chair, and Joad stood over her, desperately trying to get her to open her mouth and drink a pink potion he held in a glass beaker.

‘Freddy!’ Nigel yelled and raised his crossbow as he advanced on Joad. ‘What are you doing to her?’ he yelled again.

Joad stopped struggling over Freddy and raised his hands in the air.

‘Back away from her!’ I commanded, pointing my saber at his groin (which was eye level).

He complied, hands still raised and began to sob. The tears started so suddenly that the three of us just stopped where we stood, staring. He began to blubber about how much he loved Freddy, and how ever since he first saw her in Brackenridge Falls he had fallen in love with her. He sobbed and sobbed. Meanwhile, Freddy fumed. She was tied up in a chair with her arms tied behind her back, but she was hopping mad, and I mean that literally. She was hopping the chair over to Joad and started kicking at him.

He whimpered. Sige and I covered Joad with our bows while Nigel lowered his and went to untie his daughter. When her bonds were cut she got out of the chair and started beating Joad with it, cursing at him.

I just stared. It was a glorious sight.

“But then as we went to tie Joad up and bring him in for trial, he jumped up and put a knife to Freddy’s throat. So I had no choice but to shoot him in the face,” Dusty said.

The shire reeve sipped at his coffee, watching the halfling. Dusty sipped his and watched him. The shire reeve nodded and said, “So what was his motive? Or did you not find out before you killed him?” he asked with only the slightest hint of sarcasm.

“Well, according to Freddy, Joad had sent her love letter after love letter filled with perfume-scented poems pining over her. He would stalk her at work and he had taken a job with the East Anvril Shipping Company to deliver supplies to their ranch. Somehow Joad learned about a shipment from one of the mage towers in Valorion that was rumored to have an awful strong love potion. He hired the bandits to kidnap her from the Diamond G and then to ambush our wagon so he could make off with the potion. He made it look like he was killed in the attack, and figured we would be too, or that we would return to Brackenridge Falls instead of pursue him.”

“But he was wrong,” the shire reeve concluded.

“Clearly,” Dusty said while taking another sip of coffee. They were sitting in the Falls Cafe in Brackenridge Falls and had just finished a nice second breakfast. The shire reeve had to make a report and needed to interview Dusty for the official findings. Dusty had suggested the cafe, rather than the jail, and the shire reeve agreed.

“Y’all recovered the horses?” the shire reeve asked.

“Yes sir, we did. But not Brutus. That biggun broke his bonds and escaped before we could bring him in,” Dusty said.

The shire reeve nodded and finished his coffee. He stood up with a soft groan, slapping his pantaloons with his hands as if dusting himself off from the yarn he just heard. He glanced at the waitress for a second and then looked down. “Well, Dusty. Sounds like a simple case of self-defense to me. I’ll send my report on. Shouldn’t be no trouble for you or … any of the others,” he said loudly. Dusty stood and they shook hands and then the shire reeve left. Dusty sat back down.

A young woman in an apron came over and gathered the plates and flatware. Dusty looked up at her with a satisfied smile.

“That’s not exactly how it ended,” she said quietly as she stacked the plates.

“No, not quite,” Dusty mused. “But I couldn’t very well tell him you took my crossbow from me and shot Joad in the head, could I, Freddy?”

She offered Dusty a sweet smile and took the dishes back while he finished his coffee.

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This is part eight of “Love’s Sendero.” Click here to read more short stories. If you like these free stories, please subscribe. If you REALLY liked them, please consider leaving me a tip by purchasing it on Kindle for .99 (the cost for 1/3 of a cup of coffee).