A Princess, a Knight, and an Assassin Walk Into a Tavern...

Tollie

As the street they were following the men down split, the men taking the un-cobbled smaller road to the left which gradually headed uphill and further out of town, West held his hand up in a silent 'halt' motion, allowing the men to walk out of sight; momentarily relieving Clarity of the job of keeping both she AND Tollie hidden from sight. Tollie really had tried to 'sneak about unseen'...but she just wasn't good at it, she couldn't sense, like Clarity seemed to be able to, when the men were about to turn back to check. Oh well.
Hawke gave him a questioning look, absently rubbing the now slightly swelling mark on his face, though it didn't seem to be bothering him much...
Sighing heavily West said, "No need to follow, I know where they're headed." His eyes following the road off into the distance, seeming to see things there in the dark, though Tollie following his gaze couldn't make out anything.
"But..." He added after a moment, coming back to himself, "It wouldn't do to have them get there before us." Smiling meaningfully, "Wouldn't want them spoiling the surprise that we're here, now would we?" Looking over at the other two he said, "Think you can catch 'em?"
Clarity made a sort of snorting sound before instantly disappearing into the blackness that surrounded them, Hawke smiling slightly before disappearing after her.
Bowing gallantly for Tollie to continue on down the path, West said charmingly, "After you m'lady." Falling into step beside her as they walked.
After a moment of silence, Tollie straining her ears for any sounds from ahead of them, she whispered to West. "Do you think Hawke is alright?" Her eyes wide, remembering the startling encounter she'd witnessed earlier. Hawke was no slight man, and Clarity'd FLATTENED him, just like that! Admirable and alarming all at once.
Still, she was pretty sure, whatever it was, she was on Clarity's side. She could just have easily clocked West as kissed him tonight...not that the results would have been as impressive. AND, what then? The other women would have just continued on their merry little path without her...
Hawke was very nice – but he was still a GUY, making him fully capable of deserving everything he got. Maybe. She was pretty sure anyways.
To her surprise West laughed openly, "That poor fool? No. No, unfortunately I'm pretty sure he's not going to be alright for a very very long time." He laughed again, shaking his head, Tollie looking over at him with both worry and confusion.
"No?"
"Nope." Then sighing he added, "Gotta admire the guy though, he's got to have himself an iron pair of..." Stopping abruptly and looking over at Tollie who was listening intently to his every word, he ended lamely with, "uh...guts."
Just then there was some shuffling and muffled grunts somewhere ahead of them, followed by silence yet again. West continuing with the conversation after a time as if they'd never stopped. "Playin' with fire that one." Then he chuckled once to himself, "Not that I can talk." His eyes flitting over to Tollie's momentarily.
The other two abruptly joined them then, simply slipping back out of the shadows and into step with her and West as if they'd never even been gone.
"We're all just seeking the heat and dreading the burn." He finished quietly to no one in particular.


The small island climbed up from the west side where they'd docked until about the middle where it suddenly dropped down abruptly, surrounding the east side of the island with a sheer wall that was highest at the middle, but sloped downward on each end of its crescent shape. The east side of the island was also half the size of the west side due to the crescent shaped lagoon that filled it. The shallowness of most of the lagoon and the cliffs at the north and south of the island left the west side the only option for docking ships, but the east side was still prime real estate, a real vacation draw for the wealthiest scumbags of Echo Isle...or at least it had been before Nadia and her thugs had taken it over.
One of the problems with Nadia was that there were enough of her and her crew that she couldn't be easily evacuated, not without a heavy loss of life on both sides. Yet, another problem with her was there also weren't enough of them to pose an actual threat to the mainland. She had simply moved in during the hurricane season, when no one else was around, and hadn't, as of yet, made any aggressive moves beyond the borders of East Echo, making any attempt by the King's soldiers to force her out, the first act of aggression – bringing them all to the biggest problem with Nadia. As oldest daughter of Schtaant the Bold, any act against her was an act against him, or rather the whole tribe of Raiders who inhabited the lands to the East beyond Echo Isle. Not a war the king was interested in waging if he could at all avoid it and, as the two nations were in an uneasy peace for the time being, so then was Nadia left in uneasy peace in East Echo.
Until tonight anyways.

Though there were many housing options on East Echo, Nadia and her crew all bunked it Raider style in the biggest available mansion, treating it like a great lodge from home. What she did with the other houses Tollie had no clue, but she was pretty sure she had heard animal noises coming from some of them.
It was possible Reik was in one of them somewhere, but Duhningham suspected that if Nadia had him, he'd be stowed away in the great house with the rest of them, keeping with the traditions of her homeland where slaves (there were no prisoners in her people, you were either a captured slave or a citizen) stayed in the homes of their owners, with the owner's other property.
West swore he hadn't handed Reik off to Raiders originally, so how he may have ended up here was a mystery – but it was their best lead. Perhaps the Raiders were behind this whole thing, though it seemed more subtle than their usual tactics, or perhaps they had just been profiteers as West had been originally; either way, the gentleman they'd been following had definitely been Raiders. So here they were.
They'd met up with Duhningham and the tough crew she'd managed to drum up – and none too easily either Tollie guessed, judging by the state of Duhningham's face - a healthy distance from Nadia's abode, and tried to figure out some reasonable way to face this.
The plan was to sneak in, grab Reik if he was here, and sneak out – hoping to avoid getting massacred and starting a war so far as that was possible. But as the next step was informing the King that Nadia had his son, potentially starting a war anyway, they decided they might as well try this first. They would go in groups of twos and threes, each searching a particular section of the mansion, taking out who they needed as they went, to keep their presence unknown, then were to return back out to a designated spot to wait for the others.
If they got Reik, great, if they got info on Reik but couldn't get him they were to come back so they could make another plan, if for some reason they needed help, worth risking everyone elses' safety for, they were to signal loudly...for all hell to break loose.
And, as this mission required both stealth and fighting, two things Tollie was horrible at, she was to stay in the designated meet spot and 'keep an eye out'; again, if there was something worth risking all their lives over, she could also call out a warning.
Of course...it had been at least 20min now since they'd left her...
...Since Captain West had quickly and seriously removed his coat and hat and handed them to her on his way to follow the others, turning partway away before suddenly turning back around and kissing her almost fiercely on her forehead, his hand at the back of her head pressing her into him.
"This goes south, you go to the ship, understand?" He said, pulling back only far enough to look at her intensely, "You don't wait for us, you don't come and get us, you run to the ship."
She nodded, knowing that was what he needed her to do, though she honestly hadn't decided at that point if that was really what she WOULD do.
...Since he'd left her without another look back.
20 long, quiet minutes
Quiet was good...right? That means no one had noticed them yet...right? Of course, death was also quiet, maybe they were all dead, all of them, and she was waiting alone in the dark for no one...
But probably not.
Argh, she was going to go insane.
Her eyes had long since gotten used to the dark, especially here by the lagoon where the light of the moon and stars was shining in both the sky and water, and her eyes searched the silent expanse of mansion again, a movement catching her eye. It had been too quick though and was lost when she looked back to where she'd thought it had been. Then another movement caught her eye, and another. What was she seeing? Large...somethings being dropped from windows? Were they stealing something from the house and dropping it from the windows?
Wait a minute...
Suddenly she realized what she was seeing. Raiders, their signature shields and helmets giving them away, were dropping out from their windows and silently making their way around to the front, quietly pooring through the front entrance, they just kept coming and coming and coming...
Tollie didn't know if Nadia had been sneaking men in since then, or if the initial scout count had been off, but there were far more Raiders here than any of them had been prepared for. It looked like a beehive the way they were all crawling around.
For one frozen moment Tollie didn't know what to do. Calling out would certainly let the Raiders know for sure that something was up...but if they didn't already know that something was up they wouldn't be pouring out of their windows the way they were...
"THE FRONT! THE FRONT! THEIR COMING! THEY KNOW! RUN! RUN!" Tollie began screaming her head off, sometimes not even saying real words, just yelling indistinctly.
Finally, she must have made enough noise because she saw three crawling bees, suddenly break off and head her way.
She stopped screaming.
Oh crap!
She started booking it through the trees and around the house, for now simply running AWAY from those coming towards her, racking her brain for where best to go next. She knew that in theory she was supposed to run towards the ship, but in actuality taking off straight in that direction was just going to get her caught. She needed to hide.
She dodged this way and that a few times then hunkered down in some bushes, breathing heavily, eyes peeled for any movement.
1...2.............................and then 3 lumbering bodies past by her. But for how long? This hiding spot wasn't going to last a close inspection. Looking about, something strange caught her eye. With all the movement of the house taking place in the main body now, how odd that a lone candle was making its way further and further from the action, she watching its progress, losing it occasionally until if finally stopped in a far back room on the top floor.
So absorbed was she in puzzling out the significance of what she'd seen that she didn't notice the hands until they were grabbing her, lifting her easily up into the air. She cried out, but it was more an automatic cry of fear then her actually thinking anything solid before she was suddenly air borne, and then just as suddenly splatting awkwardly onto the ground.
She couldn't get in any air, her body having a panic attack about that whilst also stinging where her hands had slapped the ground, sharp pains at her chest and hips and...movement from behind her. She began struggling to move again, managing to scoot until she was crawling on her hands and feet, bellyside up, backwards towards the house. The man could have killed her by then, but instead he just progressed towards her slowly, she hitting the wall and using it to scramble to her feet.
Desperately she groped for her dagger, the man stopped moving towards her when he saw what she was doing, holding up his hand and shaking his head slightly, gesturing towards his own fantastically large battle axe that he had still sheathed at his side.
Eventually sense started to drift through her confusion...something about Raiders...they didn't...they didn't what?...Oh yeah. They thought it dishonorable to fight the unarmed or defenseless. So long as she didn't resist the worst she was going to get was a life of slavery.
Wait a minute. A life of slavery? No thank you.
Before she could decide exactly what to do, something came lunging out of the dark right into the man before her, tackling him completely to the ground. There was a struggle, during which she finally heard Captain's voice half grunt half yell, "Run!"
Captain?
Captain!
There was the sound of scuffling and then another, "Anytime now..."
Oh right.
But wait, no. She wasn't just going to leave him here.
It turned out to be an unnecessary worry as his opponent stopped moving and he came to her, taking her hand and hustling her away.
"Wha...what are you doing here?"
"Saving you."
"But..."
"The way you were yelling I knew it was only a matter of time before the thugs got a little too interested, so I ran to the nearest window and out to you...only you weren't there anymore. Lucky for me, you scream like a little girl." He smiled at her teasingly.
"What happened, where are the others?"
He just shook his head. "I don't know...I don't know where any of them are or I would...but I can't..." They headed towards the back of the house, he obviously intending to get them out into the foliage beyond before heading up towards the west. But she stopped them suddenly, looking up. They were now directly under the window where she'd last seen the candle.
"What is it?" He questioned, looking ahead, thinking she'd seen something that had stopped her. Then noticed her surveying the walls.
The whole mansion was covered in vines, thick tropical vines that would someday completely consume the house if someone didn't take care of it...vines that conveniently went all the way to the window...
She began to climb.
"Umm...what are you doing?"
"I know it's crazy and dangerous but I think there's a chance Reik is up here."
"Really, why?"
"It's hard to...well...I saw a candle." She explained lamely as she climbed. Luckily she was very good at climbing as it was the main way she and Reik had gotten around to where they'd wanted to be...but no one had wanted them...in the castle.
"A candle?" He said in the same flat tone she knew he would use.
"Yes."
He sighed. Starting up after her. "You know we're going to die right?"
She just smiled, continuing on her way.

Without bothering to look to make sure it was safe first she simply tumbled into the window. One, because the vine got pretty wimpy towards the end and she barely made it at all, and two, because even if there was something in here what was she going to do about it – it was either fall all the way down or tumble in and she chose tumble in.
She heard a gasp and a movement and then looked up to see Reik looking over and down at her from the far end of the room with wide eyes.
"Reik!" She half cried, scrambling to her feet.
He looked at her, confused for a moment, then squinted, still saying with doubt, "Tollie?"
She couldn't believe it, she'd found him, and he was alright, at least he seemed alright. She ran to him and hugged him. He, finally accepting that she was really here and it was really her, embracing her back.
"Tollie I can't believe it! What are you doing here?"
She stepped back but didn't quite let go of him. "Doing here? Why saving you of course!"
"Saving me...?" Then his eyes got wide, understanding dawning. "Oh no. Tollie, are there other people helping you?"
"Yes, they're downstairs, so we have to hurry because..."
Suddenly the door flew open and a large streaking figure came charging straight at her, a full out battle cry coming from somewhere deep in its chest.
"Wait!" Reik called, standing in front of the shocked Tollie and raising his hands up.
The figure stopped, but only just barely, almost nose to nose with Reik, her big axe high in the air above them.
"Nadia, this is my sister Tollie, she thinks she's saving me."
Then turning to Tollie, Reik said, "Tollie...this is Nadia...she also thinks she's saving me."