Chime

[Roger Smith]

They were, as it turned out, not of a mind to do any such thing. As Anderson drew nearer, he could see them shifting and shuffling about, some of them hopping down from their perch to step into the road, forward from their blockade. This close, he could see now they were all of them armed. Leather, animal hides and chainmail. Some with swords, some with axes, one with a spear. Two of them, still sitting on the wreckage off to either side, sporting a crossbow. Thirteen of them, all total, with one of them standing before the rest, clearly the leader of the bunch. Nearly a foot taller than the rest, sporting a pair of blades resting sheathed over his back. A large bull's skull stood in for a pauldron over his left shoulder, while the right arm, in an ornate metal gauntlet, rested on the hilt of an absolutely gargantuan axe. A real fighter, from the looks of him.

"Well, well, well, evenin' to ya, Father!" skull-pauldron calls out when the meandering priest is still half a hundred yards out. "Quite a time to be travelin' out here. Where might ya be headed?"

"It's always quite a time tae be travelin', when you have th' sort o' duties of one in my line o' work," comes the response. Much quieter, not shouted as boisterously, but it carries cleanly on the breeze. "I'm headed tae nowhere specific. Wandering without aim or certain destination, as ah've nowhere tae go that I know the location of."

"Ah, so you're a new arrival, then, are ya, Father?" the lead man asks, earning a chorus of snickers and jeers from his cohorts. "That's a right shame it is. Someone might see fit to take advantage of your newness and lack of direction, in these most uncertain times."

"Aye, is tha' so?" Anderson had not broken strike, continuing slowly forward. He was, by now, only half as far out as when he'd first been spoken to. "An' what sort o' person are you, then? Tae se' up shop ou' here, in tha middle o' the road, like this, with such an armed group. A group of concerned citizens set tae warn folk away from trouble on the road ahead, p'rhaps?" He lowered his gaze slightly, his glasses catching the light of the setting sun and turning the lenses to gold. Behind the shrouded lenses, his eyes roved this way and that, observing the surroundings. Plenty of hills and rises to either side of the road. A copse of trees. Ditches and streaks of scraggly brush and shrubbery. "...or maybe somethin' far less reputable?"

"Now, now, Father, there's no need for that sort of suspicion!" The skull-shouldered man lifted his left hand in a placating gesture, waving it slowly. "We're just as you said, just a humble bunch of concerned citizens! Part of the local militia, from a nearby town, come out to warn folk on the road of dangerous troubles around and about these parts." He turned to gesture around at the general scene and countryside. "It's been dangerous times lately, wouldn't ya know!"

"Oh, aye? Well, forgive me for mah wariness. Ah've just seen nothin' save fer strangeness and unsavory types since arrivin'." Anderson's pace remained unslowed, and he had once again halved the distance between the two groups. He turned to look off one side of the path, sweeping around to gaze off the opposite side. He could see telltale signs of movement, in the brush. Someone, or something, lurking there. Taking great pains to stay hidden, even if the efforts were clumsy. "So, what's this ye said about dangerous troubles around these parts? Places I should be avoidin', I'm to take it?"

"Oh, for sure, for surely, Father. All sorts of places and things you should avoid. We'd be glad to give you all the information you could need and then some," the leader of the bunch went on, eliciting another round of snickers from the others lounging about. "Mayhap we could even go so far as to provide ya with an escort! And all for quite a nominal fee, as it were."

"Ah, is that tha way of it, then?" Anderson had finally stopped, half a dozen paces out from the bunch. From here he could see it clearly. The gutted, overturned forms of wagons and carriages forming the bulk of the wreckage off the sides of the road. Smashed and trashed, torn apart by bare hands and blades in equal measure, brute force reducing the structure to ruin. The splintered wood was stained with ugly, dark splotches here and there. The work of common brigands and highwaymen, without a doubt. He craned his neck, rolling it around and eliciting a few sharp cracks and pops. His shoulders dropped from their hunched posture as his gaze came to fall squarely, heavily, on the leader of the impromptu roadblock. "Ya shouldnae tell such lies, my son."