Gray Cloaks and Oakleaves (An RA Fanfic)

Chapter 1

"Stop! I'll give you money, just please don't hurt me!" A shrill voice screamed.

Justin Marrowmack was sleeping by the forest tree when he heard a cry for help. He frowned as he saw the sight behind him: a pretty girl in a plain white dress was dismounted from her horse and surrounded by a band of three bandits who were armed with an assortment of crudely-fashioned but still dangerous array knives, clubs, and axes. His hand instinictively reached for his knife as he was raging on how to punish fiends like them, but then reason flooded his mind. He was just a 16-year-old boy. He couldn't possibly fight the three of them off. You''ll only get yourself killed, he told himself. He knew he needed to help but he couldn't see how.

He looked and listened around the forest bend for something until he noticed, at the top of a tall oak, a sound of buzzing. He quickly scaled the tree, and very decisively picked up the beehive that lay buzzing near the top of the tree and hurled it a the bandit nearest to him.

The man heard a noise in the forest and turned around in time to smack the beehive that was coming to his face. But that only made things worse. The bees flew out of the battered beehive and came charging at the fiend who had destroyed their home. The bandit tried in vain to jumped away from the hive, but was soon enveloped by dark, angry cloud of bees. The other two bandits had turned to look at what happened when one of them took a knife to the chest. He shrieked in pain and collapsed to the ground, silent and unmoving. The last of the bandits looked around the forest to see where the knife came from. As he did so, he was tackled from behind. 

After throwing the knife, Justin jumped from the tree and hurled himself at the bandit. The bandit dropped his knife as he fell, but then realized that he was being attacked by a mere child. He quickly recovered and punched Justin in the gut, kicking the wind out of him. Justin felt a sharp pain in his lungs and abdomen, but held consciousness and punched the bandit in the nose, hearing the sickening crack of the bandit's nose. Blood dripped from the nose and the bandit recoiled and felt pain explode within his throbbing, bloody nose. 

"You'll pay for that kid." the bandit spat. He picked up the knife that he had dropped and grabbed a fistful of Justin's shirt, raising him in to the air. 

"And you'll pay with your ears," the bandit said with an evil grin. He reversed his grip on the knife and Justin could see he was going to die. He was too weak from the earlier blows that he could feel the breathlessness, the possible cracked rib, and could scarcely move, let alone fight the bandit's grip. Hey, that's pretty funny, he thought groggily, his mind too occupied with the pain that he was going delusional. To think I was going to try to avoid trouble, you know, for a change? Too bad trouble found me, but at least that other girl's okay, right? He had seen the girl who had been surrounded, take the initiative and jump onto her horse as he had distracted the bandits. He also heard hoof beats that meant that she made it to safety. 

"Well, any last words, kid?" the bandit snarled. "Ready to beg me for mercy?"

I never understood scum like this; they want to kill you so freaking bad, they have you, but then they want to just sneer at you and wave their knives at you as you beg for mercy. It's what Broken-Nose here wants, too bad I'm not going to deliver. Instead showing how I'm trembling with fear, let's do something that might just ruin his day. So I grinned, as big as my broken state could allow, and I couldn't resist one last sally before I died.

"Well no. I'm just glad I messed up your nose pretty badly. It looks pretty ugly, but I guess that suits you."

"You think you're funny, don't you? Well, let's see how funny you are without your ears. I'll be happy to kill you; I'll make it slow and painful, okay smart kid?"

Justin looked at the knife as it made it's deadly arc down. He braced himself for the strike, closing his eyes and wincing for the pain that would sear his body. 

But it never came. 

A deep cracked filled the forest as a black shafted-arrow pierced the bandit's chest sending him spiralling backwards. He hit the forest grass and didn't make a sound, dead before he hit the ground. As Justin turned around, he couldn't see the person who saved him among the trees, only a longbow that seemed to float in mid air. Then he saw a gray-cloaked man step out from the large, forest of trees, an act that meant the man was clearly a sorcerer. Justin turned to run, but felt his legs give under him and his head, still fogged from the earlier encounter. The last thing he heard before he blacked out was the sound of a horse neighing to the man in the gray cloak, with the man looking like he understood every thing the horse had said.