The fight would be upon them soon, it was only a matter of a few hours until the large group reached its destination and blood would be shed. A diamond mine located in the Southern end of the Dhabu Mountains only a few hours from the edge of the Laeto Rainforest had been overrun and the owners wanted it back.

The mine had been founded years and years go by a wealthy family, one that thankfully did treat their employees well. After many years of no issues at the somewhat secret location of the mine, security had become somewhat relaxed over time. This had resulted in allowing a force of orcs and goblins invading the mine, slaughtering anyone that couldn’t get away, resulting in a huge loss of life. The family who owned the mine of course took exception to this invasion, and since it was their employees who had been killed they had taken full responsibility for allowing security to get to the point where this tragedy could happen.

To that end, they had hired on mercenaries to clear the invaders while also looking for more workers and permanent security personal once the mine was secure again. The black haired woman riding up front in one of the wagons was getting paid well for this job, and any chance to kill some filthy green skins was a welcome one. The wagon drivers were just hired to get the mercs close to the mine so they didn’t have to waste strength and energy on travelling there. A good chunk of the mercs, Kawabata found out, were all from the same troop, she was one of the solo mercenaries among them.

”Mind if I smoke?” She asked the driver who shrugged in reply, the tattooed woman got her pipe from her pack and stuffed her favourite herb into it.

The driver caught a look at what she was putting into it. ”Is that…?

”Yup.”

”And you’re going to…”

”Smoke it, ya.” She eyed him as she struck a match and lit the pipe, she’d rather her hookah but that was hard to use on a bumpy wagon ride. The drive stared for a moment and then went back to watching the horses with no further questions asked. Kawabata inhaled from her pipe, held it and then exhaled slowly and leaned back in the seat wagon continued on with some of the other mercs sitting behind her with supplies. For her part the ronin travelled light, everything she had was in her backpack, and the katana in its scabbard between her legs, she wasn’t wearing any armour. A light jacket with a simple shirt under it that allowed the large snake wrapped around a heart tattooed on her chest to be visible and with the sleeves of the jacket stopping at her elbows to allow full movement it showed off the tattoo work on her arms. Flowing flowers done in lines that resembles claw marks that twisted around each arm. A good chain with a large hoop hung around her throat.

Seeing as they had some time yet she leaned back in the seat and propped her feet up as she puffed on the pipe letting the herb do its thing.

Ormund trotted ahead of the rest of the caravan of mercenaries as he saw one of his scouts returning. They were getting close to the mine, now, and he didn't want to run into any unforeseen surprises. The centaur approached the human and glowered down at him. There really was nothing special about this one, just a regular human, half decent with sword, spear, and bow. Half, no more. In a world of magic, this human was remarkable in the way that he was so utterly plain. Average height, average weight, muscle from the work and training but looking just like so many others Ormund had commanded. Four years in the Crimson Kings and the human still held no rank. Well, Ormund thought, there was still time for the human to surprise him. The human was young, after all.

"Report." Ormund barked.

***

Derek cursed under his breath as he jogged back down the road toward the main force of mercenaries. He had been assigned as a scout, again. It wasn't too bad, being a scout. You sneak on ahead on your own, take a little look about, and report back if you saw anything. No trudging about with the main group, and you got to sling most of your gear into the cart, the better to be all sneaky and the like. There were two problems with being a scout, though, and Derek always came back to thinking about them.

The first problem was that, as a scout, you were pretty useless in a pitched battle. Sure, some of the scouts got to hang about on the edges, passing messages and information back and forth while also keeping an eye on the enemy. They didn't want all the scouts doing that, though, did they? They wanted the rest of the scouts to do something else. So far Derek had been in lines of archers, crossbowmen, spearman, and plain old sword and board infantry. He'd done it all, because there wasn't a single engagement where he had drawn the lot to be a messenger, or scout, during the main scrap. So he was always off scouting before the battle, when scouting was most dangerous and terrifying, and then he was right in the thick of the fighting when the fighting happened. The worst of all worlds, and all because of luck. Curse luck.

The second problem came from the scouting before the battle. While everyone was all safe together in a group, with watches, weapons, and numbers at the ready, there were a few people out there alone, in the wilderness, poking around in places where other people just didn't want them to be. Which threw you into situations where it was just you, stumbling across a group of twenty goblins who looked decked out to be doing some scouting of their own. In numbers. Big numbers. Derek was glad he had gotten out of there in one piece, but it was going to be just as dangerous explaining to Ormund how he hadn't seen, heard, or smelled the darn things before coming across them. Sometimes, Derek wondered if he was really cut out for being a mercenary.

***

The human kept on coming, not looking like he was going to slow.

"Goblins! Gooooobliiiiiins!" the human, Wright, bellowed as he came tearing down the road toward the captain of the Crimson Kings. Ormund took a second to let this register, before rearing up and turning in place, eyes darting to see what he had at the front of the caravan. There was a cart with two drivers, one smoking, and a handful of archers in the back. Behind them were some knights on horses, and behind them, spearmen. He could get something going with this, until the main group was formed up.

"Spears form up across the road! Bows behind! Knights, off to the side, see if you can find some cover." Ormund could hear the goblins approaching. Sounded like there were dozens of them. He drew his khopesh and steeled himself.

***

Derek floundered to a halt in front of the cart to see someone smoking a pipe of… Wait, was this really the best time to be smoking that? was all that went through his head before instinct had him spinning in place and readying his bow.

The ronin had just settled into a relaxed state as she smoked the pipe when the alarm went up that goblins were on the way. The centaur leader of the Crimson Kings mercenary troop bellowed orders to his men and Kawabata sighed. ”I just lit the damn thing to, fuck.” She inhaled once more on her pipe, nice and deep, and held it as she tapped it on the side of the cart to empty the herb from it.

”I thought catnip made humans vomit and gave us headaches?” The carriage driver asked bring the cart to a halt to let the troops do their thing.

Kawabata exhaled the smoke in her lungs and grinned. ”Yes, it does do that to humans.” She chuckled lightly as she pocketed the warm pipe and jumped off the cart, ignoring the merc human kid that had been looking at her. Katana in its sheath in her hands she walked over to Ormund and stopped at his side, she hadn’t met many centaurs in her life so she was a bit curious as to what he would be like personality wise. His people listened to him that much was easy to see, which meant that they either respected him or feared him, she wondered which. ”We haven’t been formally introduced, name’s Kawabata.” The ronin started looking up at the big guy. ”I know I’m not part of your company, but, we’re with the same employer, so that, in my eyes, makes us allies. I’ll watch your, and your peoples’, back if they extend the same curtesy. I was going to have this conversation before we assaulted the mine, but, now’s as good a time as any.” The goblins weren’t just heard now, they could be seen charging down at caravan head on, these things really had no sense of self preservation, charge ahead and get into a fight was all they could think of.

Kawabata waited right hand on the hilt of her katana left on the wakizashi, still in their sheaths, allowing the bowmen to do their thing until it was time for the close quarters fighters to get stuck in. That did not take too long as the goblins charged forward Kawabata was at the front charging with any of the Kings that were doing the same. She moved both hands to her katana as three goblins charged her, seeing that she had no armour, and in a blink she had drawn her blade and cleaved through them. As her katana cleared the sheath it erupted in flame which made the goblins hesitate for a moment, a moment that gave the fast ronin the chance to down all three in one swipe of her blade, cutting them down and lighting anything flammable on them on fire.

The blade WHOOSHED as she spun it, switching it one handed in her fight hand while her left drew the wakizashi from her belt, its blade to glowed bright with internal heat. Knowing that she was going to be fighting some hated green skins, Kawabata made sure to bring weapons that would not only kill but inflict intentional pain to her victims.

The wooden shields of the goblins were cut through like paper and lit on fire as Kawabata’s blades struck them. Deep would cauterized from the sheer heat of the katana, which meant that the goblin would lay there and burn to death instead of drying from Kawabat’s blade. This was deliberate on her part, to cause such pain to these things. Her agility and reflexes to a trained professional might seem inhuman as she danced death among the greenskins.

She kept what eyes she could on the Crimson Kings to, keeping ready to jump to their defence should one of them need assistance. She would uphold her promise to watch their backs.

The woman jumped down from the cart and went off to speak with the captain, and Derek left them to it. Good luck to her, that's all he could say. The centaur wasn't the most approachable person on the best of days, and here they were, about to be in the thick of a fight. A fight that wasn't his fault. Could have happened to anyone. Anyway, they were obviously out here to screen the approach to the mine, so  it was bound to happen. Just good luck that-

Derek cleared his thoughts and drew back on his bow, raising the angle and judging when would be the best time to loose. He was at the back, behind two rows of men, so he didn't have much in the way of a line of sight. All that was left was hoping, and-

He let the arrow go, and instead of nocking another, he watched it arc up into the air and fall harmlessly into the dirt of the road, a good ten feet in front of the charging goblins. Great. Nobody else had loosed their arrows yet, so it was just his own sad little arrow sitting there. A second later the archers in front of him let their own arrows go and they fell satisfyingly into the group of goblins, eliciting screams of pain and frustration. A few of the goblins tripped over their fallen and injured comrades. It would have been amusing if Derek wasn't too busy hating himself for a wasted shot. Looking back over his shoulder, he had an idea.

***

Ormund's eyes darted across the landscape, trying to take in all the details before flicking back to the forming lines of men and women who would, any moment now, be fighting for their lives. His nostrils flared as he caught the scent of something approaching. There was the smell of something burning, a herb of some kind he suspected, did little to cover the scent of a predator. A big one, perhaps a lion or a tiger. A rear leg twitched, ever so slightly. Then there was the woman from the lead cart next to him, the smell coming off of her. There was something different to it, it was not like the scent of someone who spent a lot of time with foul beasts. It was like she was the beast. A shapeshifter, then? His jaw clenched as the stranger introduced herself.

Ormund opened his mouth to say something polite, the least he could do, when a lone arrow went sailing through the air, over their lines, to land nowhere near the enemy. His head spun around to see who had done it, and his height allowed him to see clearly over to where that scout was standing, looking mortified, as he should. They'd be having some words later. The rest of the archers did a much better job, and the battle began. He looked back at the goblins, his grip tightening in anticipation around his hilt. They would wait for the goblins to crash into the spears, and then the knights would charge in from the side and mop them up. Simple.

Except, the shapeshifter. She went charging out alone, into the middle of the goblins, messing with the ability of the archers to rain arrows into them, and leaving his line of spearmen standing there, waiting for a charge which was faltering. Unkind words were forming on his lips, but watching as she took out goblin after goblin, he had to admit some grudging respect. Different class of mercenary, there. Nothing for it now, though, his whole plan fallen apart, he was going to have to improvise.

"Knights, charge!"

***

Derek clambered up onto the wagon, pulling himself up and balancing carefully and grabbing an arrow. He was curious why they had the spearmen lined up all nicely if knights were going to run off and charge the goblins. Maybe they thought the goblins had split up, and the spearmen were there to protect the caravan as more mercenaries got up to the front. He drew back the arrow, lining it up, watching the woman cut through the goblins like they were made of paper and watching the horsemen pick up speed, the captain at the head, his strange curved sword held ready. 

A goblin looked like it was going to sneak up on the mercenary with the flaming sword, and while Derek suspected she was well aware and could handle herself after she had already left a pile of smoking green corpses in her wake, it didn't hurt to make himself useful. He took a breath, held it, and let the arrow go. There was a brief moment when he thought it was going to miss, but the goblin flinched back away from the backswing of the flaming sword and into the path of the arrow. Derek was pleased with that.

Ten knights and the captain crashed into the group of goblins, who at that point were already dropping like flies and appeared to be regretting their decision to follow the scout back here. The centaur was swinging his blade with enough force to send the goblins flying in pieces, and the woman was moving so fast that Derek couldn't quite track everything she was doing. The knights were laying about themselves with swords, horses kicking and biting, and Derek and the rest of them were just milling about, watching it happen. There had been more than twenty of the goblins to begin with, but there were only a couple left now. Derek considered trying to put in a sneaky shot to take another down, but there was too much happening, and he wasn't that good.

***

Ormund grunted as he turned in place, looking for any more of the goblins. It didn't look like the mercenaries even had any casualties. Was this just a scouting party, then, or an attack by the greenskins holding the mine? If it was a scouting party, that meant there were a lot of them waiting up ahead, if they were able to spare so many. His jaw clenched, and he looked about to find the shapeshifter, and went on over.

"Good job" he managed to grate out stiffly, as he approached her. The smell of goblin was doing a good job masking the smell of whatever this woman was, and he was almost grateful for that. He stood, awkwardly, and without much else to say he looked over at the spearmen and archers, standing around, gawking. "Get on over here and clean up this mess!" he roared at them.

She heard the call from the centaur for the knights to charge a moment later Kawabata had mounted knights around her attacking the goblins. She switched her tactic up a bit then, she didn’t want to spook any of their mounts with her flaming swords, but she wanted to stay vigilant for any goblin that tried to attack a horse when a rider wasn’t looking. Kawabata had an idea of where the goblins closest to her were at most times, like the one behind her that managed to jump away from her blade only to get by an arrow fired from one of the mercenaries.

Once the knights and Ormund joined the fray it didn’t take much longer for them to mop up the rest of the goblins. Kawabata took a breath as the last few were finished by the knights, that was too easy, this had to be a roving scouting party on the edge of the main camp around the mine itself. The ronin cooled her blades and sheathed both of them as Ormund came over to her and she nodded to her words. ”You and your men as well.” She replied before Ormund ordered his people to start a clean up. ”I’d suggest piling them all up, we can set them on fire but I’d wait until we have the mine back. I have a feeling this was only a roving scouting party on the edge of the main camp for the mine itself. I don’t think we have a lot of time before this group is missed by the rest of them, and that’s only if we didn’t miss one that got back to the camp to warm them.” Kawabata explained as she thought for a moment.

”These are your men, how do you want to handle the main camp? I’ll admit I may have jumped ahead with this group, but I’ll follow your lead for the main camp to better mesh with your people.” Kawabata questioned the centaur. ”I could also run solo and attack from another direction to pull their attention for a moment for your people to get into position.” She offered as an idea, but ultimately she’d leave it up to Ormund on what to do.

Ormund fretted the ground idly with one hoof while he thought things through. The mercenary had shown she was on a different level that the rest of this group, and Ormund himself wondered if even he would be able to put up a fight. It was not that he did not have faith in his own skill, it was just, from the way she had moved, and from the scent which clung to her. If she thought she could cause a distraction, alone, he would take her word that she was confident she could pull it off and survive. Yet, sending her off alone did not sit well with him. He ran through his mind the numbers he had in his own band, and those of the other mercenaries who had joined them. Perhaps he could spare a scouting party, small enough to not slow this woman down, but able to provide her with some kind of support if she needed it. Yes, that was what he would do, and he knew just who to send with her.

"Longbottom! Bring your party up here and bring that worthless excuse for a solider Wright with you!" It was a delicate balance, his shout down the line, between being loud enough to be heard and responded to, but not too loud as to alert any goblins who might be within a mile of here. A delicate balance, that is what it was. He turned his attention back to the sword wielding mercenary. "Thank you for the suggestion. I am inclined to listen to you, but I want you to have support. Take a scouting party, and use them how you would." He nodded to the woman, and took his leave of her while he went to gather together the different small groups of mercenaries and come up with a solid plan for assaulting the mine, and using the distraction to the best advantage.

---

Derek flinched at the sound of his name, and quickly got down off the wagon before the captain saw him up there. He wondered if he was going up there to be torn down by the centaur, or given some kind of dangerous duty which would make him wish he had stayed home all those years ago, instead of becoming a mercenary. Sergeant Longbottom came strolling up the line, nine others following him, and he barely even glanced over at Derek standing next to the wagon. Maybe something similar was going through his own head, about being given a bad assignment of some kind. Maybe the mention of Derek by name had made him think that Derek was somehow responsible. Well, the young man sighed and joined the others.

The captain stomped past them, gesturing with a thumb over his shoulder toward the mercenary who had taken on so many of the goblins alone. "Sergeant, do as she says. Either make sure Wright does something useful or lose him somewhere, I don't much care." With that, the captain was off, yelling at other people. Ahead, on the side of the road, a pile of dead goblins was already forming. The mercenaries were working quickly, nobody wanting the centaur to see them slacking and direct his anger toward them, not while that anger was already directed at someone else. It just happened that the captain was often angry with Derek. He still had a job, though, so he must have been doing something right? Right?

The sergeant approached the woman at the head of their group, and asked what she wanted of them. Derek stood, watching and listening.

Ormund shouted at some of his people to gather, they were to go with Kawabata on a scouting run ahead of the main group. ”I’ll make sure they all get back to you alive, Ormund.” Kawabata nodded to him as she watched them form up, he called also one of them worthless, which she found kind of mean, but then again this was Ormund’s command not her so she kept her mouth shut.

Longbottom came over with the group he collected to scout with her, eleven in total with Longbottom and the one called Derek, making twelves with Kawabata herself. Longbottom asked her what she wanted of them and she thought a moment. ”We’re going to go ahead of the main group, I have two objectives in mind; gauge the strength of the enemy at the mine itself so the rest knows what to expect and, potentially, to cause a distraction. If we cause the distraction we hit them hard from a distance, so make sure to bring your bows or crossbows. Fire what we can in a few moments and then bail, drawing some of them away allowing the main group to rush in the opening. We’ll have to see about that when we get to the mine itself, if there’s too many, well, head on is probably all we’ll really have to go with so in that case we’d regroup with the everyone else and go from there.”

As she explained this she had unclipped the katana from her hip and reached back to drop it into her backpack. It simply went in, despite being longer than the backpack the katana went fully in, since this was her endless backpack that contained pretty much everything she owned. ”Take another minute to check your things, leave anything too heavy.” She reached her empty hand out and a bow appeared in her hand, a yumi bow, all seven feet of it. ”Been a little while since I used this…” She said allowed, mostly to herself. She got in a firing stance with the bow held in her left hand and just before she place her right hand on the strong an arrow appeared in the same way the bow had. The arrow was a little over three feet long and a slight light blue glow to it. Kawabata knocked the arrow and raised the bow, she held it below the center point, leaving more of it above her head, she drew back and fired almost in the same motion. She didn’t hold the full draw for more than a moment, trained to quick draw then release. Keep an eye on your target, raise, knock, draw and release without looking away from it, intuitive archery. The long arrow slammed into the tree she was aiming for, buried itself a foot into it and promptly covered an area around the impact area with heavy frost. ”Perfect.” She grinned.

Looking back to the rest of the group she was now in charge of she nodded. ”Alright, let’s go, keep low, go quiet, you see anything call it out, quietly.” With that Kawabata turned and headed into the trees in the direction the goblins had come from.

Without saying anything, unless she was spoken to, the ronin followed the goblin tracks back a little ways before veering off from to hopefully find a flanking side of the camp. They had all been given a general lay of the land by their employers and that’s what she was working off of, so she had to hope that their information had been accurate.