5 Bounty Hunt

Henry slowly advanced with another 9 people through the woods.

The company has split into four different groups and slowly surrounded a large wooden encampment from all four sides.

The encampment Henry was going to attack belonged to Gare the Bloodied. He robbed caravans one after another, killed and kidnapped innocent people for his amusement. Then his seemingly unending thirst for money and power lead him to pillage and occupy a village, this however, might be his last achievement in the mortal world.

The Merchant Association, a money powerhouse, which has enough strength and influence to level a small country, got fed up with him.

Influenced by the merchant's of Teles, they put up a bounty of 150 gold coins on his head. For them, this amount was only a drop in the ocean, but for common people, this money was a fortune.

Gare the Bloodied used to be a noble back in the day, but due to the change of power in the country, he was stripped of his nobility and was forced to become a merchant. Unfortunately, he was not good at handling his coin and lost most of it due to unsafe loaning, betting and investing.

After such a failure, he spent the rest of his riches, or more like life savings, to buy up as much equipment as he could and create a bandit gang.

It went good for the first few jobs, and more and more bandits started to join him. When his bandit band reached a number of 150 he grew more and more sure of his success.

Right now, after a year of his unending success, surrounded by female prisoners forced to accompany him every night, he was enjoying his evening leisurely sitting in his balcony drinking an expensive bottle of red wine, not realizing the grim reaper coming closer and closer towards him. Or maybe he did, but decided to stay ignorant and enjoy his short-lived life…

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"You sure this is a good idea? I mean, he has 150 bandits at his back while we only have 45 people…" A fellow band member asked with a somewhat concerned voice.

Henry didn't pay attention to him, since he already got all the details from Janna beforehand.

"Don't worry. Gare is a filthy, paranoid, disowned noble. Even though he has 150 bandits at hand, more than half of them usually leave to raid caravans. We even identified 80 bandits of his split into three groups and leave towards different trade routes this afternoon. He probably got desperate for more money, or he's just a greedy pig." A female scout, named Janna, said with a slight disgust in her voice.

"If anything else, this is the perfect time to strike, when his defenses are at his lowest." She added after calming down.

Henry, however, still felt her frowning. The Twelve Claws was still outnumbered quite a bit, but we had the element of surprise and the night's cover.

Without worry Henry and his small group advanced after Janna through the woods. Thankfully the village was specialized in lumber and wild game, so it was surrounded by thick forests and greenery.

After 30 minutes of slow and tedious approach, Henry finally spotted the encampment. Even though it was dark, he could still make out the most of it, due to the lit lanterns it surrounded itself with.

The village was turned into an encampment and had a wall made out of logs. It looked pretty solid; however, Henry was sure that it can be easily destroyed if they dug under it.

The upcoming battle was going to be hard, and every member will be forced to kill at least one man each and more, however, since everyone were paid per kill, most of the band veterans were looking forward to it.

Henry looked towards the wall and sighed in relief. The wall might be sturdy, but the watch on it was way less than he anticipated. It seemed that most of the bandits were asleep, so if they managed to get inside stealthily, it would be easy pickings. Their plan, however, was not a sneaky one.

Arnold, the leader of Twelve Claws, decided to bet everything on the advantage of the element of surprise. He gave up on rescuing the imprisoned villagers, we're only paid for the Gare's head anyway, and our plan was to set the camp on fire.

After the destruction of a small bandit camp near the river a few days ago the company has acquired over a dozen of bows. On this mission almost half men were given a bow and Henry was one of them.

Janna the scout, without any trouble, lit the torch in her hands. After a few moments, 5 members, including Henry, lined up for a volley. Everyone drew their bows and Janna lit them one by one.

"3…2…1…fire!" Janna shouted loudly and we let the bowstrings go. The lit arrows flew through the night sky and without trouble set fire to the wooden wall.

A moment later, from all around, other small fires flew through the sky and hit the wall as well.

We hastily loaded and drew our bows again and repeated this process a few more times.

After firing four volleys the encampment was completely on fire, even the fire inside the encampment started to spread wildly as we heard bandits shout from all around.

We put our bows away and drew swords instead. Since the wooden wall started crumbling down, we started our advance towards the base.

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I was within 10 meters of the fence, or at least its remains. A lot of it has already burned down and opened up a free pass for us.

I could already hear the screaming and fighting coming from the inside so we decided not to wait and attack as soon as possible.

Janna went to the rear and ordered us into a neat row of 10 people. We advanced through the big gap and entered the camp.

At first I was surprised at the emptiness of the place, but soon after I saw a bandit trying to make off with a bag full of goods.

The bandit was about 20 meters away trying to sneak out of the camp, so I drew my bow and shot at him. My first arrow missed him and landed near his feet.

After getting surprised he started fleeing as fast as his legs allowed him to, so I drew my bow once again and fired. This time my arrow hit him straight in his back and he fell like a doll whose strings were cut. The bag fell from his shoulders and various silver and gold wares spilled out.

I marked his place in my head for later and advanced with everyone towards the biggest building in the middle.

When this was still a village, that house belonged to the village chief, but since the bandits took over, it has become the residence of their leader.

It has yet to catch fire, and multiple bandits could be seen running around inside.

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After cutting down two bandits along the way, I finally reached the house with my group.

As we came near the main door, a group of 15 bandits, with a plump looking man in the back, came outside.

"It's probably Gare" after a quick thought I drew my bow and let loose an arrow towards him. However a huge bandit equipped with full plate armor stood in front of him with a shield and protected him.

After witnessing that most of us had ranged weapons, the bandits, ordered by Gare, charged at us. Only the lone bandit with a big shield stayed with him. All of us drew our swords and shields and prepared for battle.

Since some of us were outnumbered, I hurriedly tried to kill the single bandit attacking me. However, this bandit was way harder than the others I fought before and we were at a stalemate.

"It's probably his personal guard or something…" as I had these thoughts the bandit lunged at me and swung his sword. I quickly blocked with my shield and tried to attack back. Because he had no shield, I thought I had the advantage; however the bandit jumped back and threw a throwing knife at me.

I was surprised. No bandit ever tried this kind of move and I could not react in time. The knife went straight through my useless rusty mail as if it was butter and stabbed me in the shoulder. The sudden pain caused my grip to weaken and the sword slipped out of my hand.

The bandit sneered at me and decided to use this to his advantage instead. He lunged at me once again and I raised my shield. The bandit, however, saw it coming from a mile away and kicked my wooden shield using his whole body weight.

The small leather handle snapped and my shield fell from my arm. I had no shield and no sword. I will die at this rate.

As the bandit tried to regain his balance for the next attack, I jumped at him with no weapons. The bandit let a surprised gasp as I threw myself at him and without too much trouble knocked him on the ground.

The bandit tried to swing his sword at me, but I stepped on his arms and disabled him. All that was left for me was to finish him.

Since he wore a helmet with a nose guard, it was hard to attack him barehanded, so without much thought I grabbed my shield and using all of my strength smashed his face with the edge of it.

I bashed and bashed and bashed until his face did not resemble one. All that was left was a limp faceless body and an eerie silence. I looked around in response to the silence.

The bandits were startled and even Gare was looking my way with his mouth wide open. My group however, used this moment to press their attack and cut down as many enemies as they could.

The battle flipped to our advantage.

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A dozen of men were fighting a single huge figure. This figure or a person rather, was 2 meters tall and wore full plate armor. He wielded a white sword in his right hand and a huge steel tower shield, which almost covered all of his body, in his left.

"Take this you bastard!" A mercenary shouted as he swung his war hammer sideways.

A huge bang resounded and a dent appeared on the shield. The figure however, did not seem dazed at all and swung his sword from above with full force. The sword sliced through flesh and bone like butter and the mercenary was cut in two pieces from head to toes.

The attack went so smooth the sword embedded itself in the ground and the giant struggled to pull it out.

Henry could feel his body tremble after seeing such superhuman strength, however, he didn't miss this chance to strike. He slashed and stabbed multiple times at the only weak parts of the armor – the joints.

After landing five good hits the giant lazily pulled his sword out of the ground and casually bashed Henry with his shield.

Henry felt his bones crack as he flew ten meters and limply fell to the ground.

"H-how is that human!" "How is this possible?!" a few veteran fighters shouted with voices filled with fear.

The huge figure looked towards them and with robot-like movements charged.

Three mercenaries raised their wooden shields but the giant's charge knocked them away like bowling pins. After a few moments of intense wood-breaking and metal-bending sounds three mangled bodies were left in their place.

The huge monster, now covered in blood, turned around and slowly jogged back to Gare the Bloodied, who seemed to be enjoying the crushing defeat of the attackers. He clapped like an idiot and resembled a court jester rather than a bandit leader.

Henry held onto his chest as if something was broken and barely stood up on his feet; then scrambled his brain for a solution.

The rest of the mercenaries ran away, and when he started to consider doing the same Janna appeared from behind him.

"I've got a plan if you're down. We'll split the bounty."

Henry grimaced for a second and with a pained look gave a short answer.

"Go on."

"That's no human. It's a golem. If I kill the owner, the person who he desperately protects, it will crumble and die away." She said with confidence in her eyes.

Henry considered it for awhile, but after noticing the movement ahead he forced out a nod.

"Alright, what do you want me to do?"

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This is insane, how am I supposed to hold the golem away from its master and not die in the process?! But if what she said is true then we'll win...and, if we split the bounty, my money problems will be solved for the time being… Ahhhhh fuck it!

I sheathe my sword, which was covered in cracks and dents, and take out my bow. Then I fire an arrow at the Golem.

I wasn't trying to be accurate and my arrow hit the Golem's enormous shield. Its master, Gare the Bloodied, looked my way with an annoyed look and pointed his finger at me. The Golem quickly listened to its master and started to charge towards me.

I already knew that blocking something like that is impossible, so I quickly jumped out of the way. The strength the golem ran with was so strong that he easily mangled three people. It's not something you can joke around with.

The golem struggled to slow down after missing his target and using that moment I shot another arrow at it and started to slowly back away.

After stopping, the golem, instead of attacking me again, turned around and slowly walked towards its master.

"Tsk. That bastard is not as dumb as he looks." I clicked my tongue and shot my arrow once again.

It seems that Gare noticed that I was trying to achieve something and ordered its pet to come back. Since the golem was further away from his master than before, and did not seem to be in a hurry to come back, I aimed my arrow at Gare.

Unfortunately my arrow only hit his shoulder, but the panicked Gare lost his composure and screamed out of pain.

"AAAAHhhhh, FUCK! KILL THAT BASTARD!" Gare shouted with a face full of wrath and the Golem obediently listened.

It threw its shield away and charged me again, but this time with double the speed than previously. I knew I could not dodge in time and was about to be killed.

But then, unexpectedly, the golem fell from his feet onto the ground and stopped moving. I looked towards Gare and noticed his headless corpse on the ground. Janna was standing next to it, holding Gare's decapitated head.

"That was way too close, you know…?" I said to myself and tried to force a smile.

I coughed a few drops of blood and slowly sat down. While we were fighting the bandit camp turned into shambles and I could already see the ground littered with bodies further ahead.

Janna was cleaning her dark colored blade while I struggled to breathe. I think my ribs broke and due to sudden movements previously some of the bones might have gotten dangerously close to my lungs.

The surroundings slowly turned darker and darker when I noticed that I was actually already lying on the ground. I could see Janna run towards while shouting incomprehensibly.

Ahh this was one hell of a day…