Tales of the Red Rogue - A Heroes Arrival

Chapter 13

The guards stood watching the entrance to Whiteglen looked like there were on edge, one of the younger ones caught my eye and nervously approached me.

"Y... you're the one who's been l... looking for Shean right?"

"Yeah, what's up?"

"We erm.. we had some little red things attack the town from the woods."

"Is everyone okay?!"

"Yeah... Keith got them all with Percys help, they w... want to see you."

He opened the gateway for me, shaking as he did so, the thought of these guys protecting town made me feel less safe than I ever had, at least Keith was here.

On the other side of the gate there was a small pile of red Kobold corpses, deep cut wounds across their bodies and crossbow bolts sticking out a few of them, I saw Percy standing outside of the guards barracks leaning agains the wall and smoking a cigarette.

"I see you managed to deal with an attack without falling asleep."

"I've never fallen asleep on a job."

I couldn't help but feel the charm that radiated from this man with the sly grin across his face.

"It wasn't too hard, Keith got most of them, lucky I was here it he would have been in the body pile with them."

"What happened?"

"Come in and we'll talk, Keith is just cleaning his wounds."

"I see you seem unscathed."

"Fight from a distance and you'll never get scratched."

He patted his crossbow he had slung on his back, before opening the door to the barracks.

Truth be told it could barely be called a barracks, the place was a small house if that, it had a graveyard attached the back of it that had no more than ten gravestones, the inside was one big room, two tiny cells, a few cots against the walls and a desk at the far back of the room made of the whitewood everything seemed to be made from.

Sat at the big beautifully carved desk was Keith, old and jolly, his grizzly white beard covered his face, he was bandaging up his arm, blood had began to stain through the old bandages but still he just smiled.

"You look pretty messed up Keith."

"I gave better than I got kid, Dagna says you fought a few of these things the other night?"

"It was only one of them, the thing snuck up on me, got a nasty scar on my leg from it."

"The little bastards are quick but weak."

Percy chimed in with the smug attitude he did everything with.

"I don't think they were very fast at all, I didn't get hit once."

"Thats because you were hiding behind a wall the whole time, you coward."

It was nice seeing people deal with an attack on their town with such jolly banter, it made it feel like it wasn't really happening, but after my run in with the man in red I felt like the time left for Shean was running out.

Keith glared at my chest, spotting the blood seeping through the gaps in my armour.

"What happened to you boy!?"

"I ran into a guy in the woods, he didn't take too kindly to me, seemed he was part of the dragon cult and planned to kill me for sticking my nose where it shouldn't be, I got this good boy out it though."