North
The trio met with Uridates the master merchant, a calculating man of prodigious wealth and girth, and less than prodigious hair. He greeted Greppa perfunctorily, tightening his lips in something like a smile, and nodded to Athan and Merideth. Then he passed them on to his quartermaster and taskmaster, Midrias.
Midrias was a scrawny, bird-like little woman whose hands darted when she spoke, as if she was stabbing someone with them. Still, she was friendly enough, and evidently worked with Uridates as the "people person" of the team.
"Happy to have you on board," she said to all three, but her eyes lingered on Athan, "Come an' meet the other guards. We've got three wagons o' wine, an' it's worth more'n all three o' you in Aglaonis. You'll get an argur a day, wi' three today, seven on arrival, three to sign back on, and eight when we get back in Theralis. Ah, here they are."
The other guards were eight in number, and all looked foreign.
Two, Mithas and Tital, were introduced as citizens of Aglaonis, the city-state the master merchant was travelling to. They were both nearly of a size with Athan, dressed in ankle-length tunics that would not have looked out of place in Theralis... and they each carried a two-handed sword that resembled a three foot meat cleaver. The blade itself, entirely black iron, was flat-topped and a hand wide, designed for no purpose other than chopping. A crossbar offered some protection to the hands, and the hilt was slightly curved, and designed to allow a full handspan between both grips, similar to an ax handle.
Mithas and Tital were friendly enough, and seemed familiar compared to the other six.
The others also wore swords, although more reasonably sized, and with a sharp point on the end for stabbing with ("Agina'd probably like one o' those," Athan commented to Greppa later on). Four were dressed reasonably, in ankle-length tunics and overcoats, but two were dressed as barbarians, in leather pants, tucked in tunics, and jerkins made of tanned hide. All carried a small, round shield made of wood and as wide as their arms were long. The shields looked unwieldy, and too weak to stop an orc's spear. All six looked like foreign mercenaries, and possessed none of the mannerisms of the Theralis people. The spoke in an ugly tongue, and were very brusque with the three - even basic manners were missing.
One of the leather wearing guards was a bitter little man with dark hair; the other one, from the way they squabbled, might have been his wife, a dark redhead bearing little resemblance to him. The other four "real" foreigners were all blond, and looked more northern than anything else, three men and another woman, all tough.
Greppa slept poorly with them around.
Out of Eastpass
The Theralis military practically covered the mountainside by Eastpass. Their presence continued a mile along the highway, and then abruptly stopped, where a last guard gave them a friendly warning, "If you see orcs, beat feet back here. Personal advice, I'd say let Hethas have the wagons."
Despite the dire warning, orcs failed to materialize, and the wagons slowly made their way north along the valley road. Then, on the third morning, disaster struck.
Most of the guards were resting in the wagon, alert but relaxed(except Athan, who was jogging for a bit), and Greppa was admiring an unlikely rock formation by the roadside - it looked almost carved from the surface of a boulder, or as if something had sheltered the boulder while rain ate away at this segment.
When the rock formation moved. Fast.
Before anyone could react, it had pounced on the bitter little man in the leather jerkin, raking deep wound tracks in his flesh and ripping his throat out with fangs that were suddenly revealed. On the other side of the wagons, the blond woman had been jumped by a second one, although she'd responded better, getting her arm lodged in its mouth and mostly shimmeying away from its claws.
As surprise resolved into clarity, the sight of the creatures burned a permanent scar into the memory of the youths.
Shaped like a horse-sized cat, but with great, heavy folds of rock-colored, hairless flesh, and marble-like teeth and claws. Angry yellow eyes. A thick, club-like tail that lashed violently in the air as they ripped into their chosen prey.
Armorcats.
Athan responded first, screaming incoherently and hurtling a spear the short distance into the one that had killed the guard. The spear thunked into the flesh of its shoulder, and it leapt, smoothly, impossibly fast, onto Athan, and rended his chest and upper thighs into meaty strips, only barely missing his neck for the killing blow. Athan dropped his spear, and found himself holding the predator by the rhino-like jowels.
Greppa, realizing belatedly that he should have buffed everyone long ago, summoned an earth spirit into Athan to provide him with inhuman strength, and prayed that was enough. And crouched between the barrels on the wagon.
Then everyone was hacking into the beasts. The fight was brutal and short. It ended when Athan, getting a better grip and bolstered by primal rage and fear, and Greppa's spells, broke the creature's neck. It's death scream chased off the other one, and silence filled the area.
Two dead: the blond woman had suffered a claw scratch to an artery and had bled to death while the others fought the creature pinning her, and the dark-haired little man had died in the first few seconds.
Athan was also grievously wounded, enough so that Merideth's healing still left scars - three razor-thin, vertical white lines on each thigh, and over each shoulder and pectoral.
