V3: Bad Penny

	Clutching the ledger to her chest, Penny made herself as small as possible in the brushy hiding place into which Emery had shoved her. As bad as her current situation might be, getting caught by her Uncle would be still worse. It was unfortunate that her hiding place put her directly adjacent to the one they called ‘idiot’, as he was certainly in greater need of a bath than she had been. Not that he smelled badly, precisely, but he certainly exuded such a strong scent that it seemed as though she should be able to visibly detect it. Such meanderings of the mind were certainly one way to distract from the imminent danger of permanent confinement to her Uncle’s mansion.

	Except that any men her Uncle had sent out would certainly not be so big as that, and he probably would have sent a whole group to make sure the job was done properly. The man passing down the road was even bigger than the brute who shared her present stand of bushes. And they would probably have been carrying straight swords, not the great gently-swept monstrosity of a blade hanging from this one’s belt. Oh, and they almost certainly would have been riding horses, not at all similar to the massive black-and-tawny canine that paced along with its wet nose to the ground, triangular ears standing erect and sweeping back and forth in synchronized counterpoint.

	Pulling back gently on the scruff of the beast’s neck to bring it to a halt in the middle of the road, the rider turned his head slowly from right to left. He had angular, lupine features that made him look disconcertingly similar to his unusual steed despite the clean shave, hair dark and close-cropped. Most of his armor seemed to be packed in a tidy bundle just behind his seat, with only a fitted steel cuirass protecting his torso front and back. Narrowed eyes scanned the tree line to either side before he sat back in his saddle with a mouth beginning to form a firm line; it was an expression Penny had often seen in her own mirror, or imagined on her face.

	“Could hear y’all hollerin’ about half a mile back,” the giant drawled, pitching his resonant voice to carry into the woods where Penny’s ‘bodyguards’ had laid their ambush. Silence was his only answer, except for the low rumbling growl emanating from the dog between his legs. From what little she knew of tactics and archery, the stranger had stopped just outside the optimum area for Garret and his band to effectively spring their ambush; but considering that they outnumbered him six to one, even at his prodigious size... “Alright, now you’re just being insulting. Come on out before I get offended.”

	With a rustling of leaves, Garret stepped out of concealment and into the road, hands palm out at his sides. “Well lookee here, if it ain’t Lano Brown. I didn’t recognize you at first, ol’ buddy. You got, uh, bigger? Nice dog.”

	From what Penny could see through the bush, the mutual recognition between Garret and this ‘Lano’ person did very little to improve the latter’s disposition. ‘Idiot’ started saying what sounded like some very improper words under his breath, though in a language Penny had never heard, sweat standing out on his forehead as he stared at the stranger.

	“Garret. Been a while.” Even as he spoke, the stranger’s eyes focused on a point somewhere over the bandit leader’s shoulder, shining white teeth showing under a curled lip. “Point that somewhere else before somethin’ bad happens to you, shorty. Yeah, I can see you. Ain’t gonna tell you again.”

	Raising his open hands and his voice in equally placating gestures, Garret said, “Camelia, we’re all friends here. Go ahead and take it off the string, huh? What’re you doin’ up this far north, Lano? Surprised to see you so far north, didn’t think the locals would take kindly to you and yours.”

	“They don’t,” said Lano, settling back in his saddle again, still staring at a particular point of brush. “How about you have everyone come out where I can get a good look at ‘em? You ought to remember the drill.”

	“Oh, come on, Lano. Now who’s bein’ insultin’?” Garret’s grin was fixed and humorless, voice strained as he sidestepped out of the line of fire. “What happened to that crazy bastard you signed on with when we last parted ways? Barker? Seemed like y’all were tight.”

	“We were, til we had a difference of opinion over who ought to be in charge.”

	Oh, how wonderful. Another bandit leader and his merry crew of outlaws. Still better than her Uncle, probably, but even odds as to whether this Lano would be an improvement over Garret. Now Penny thought about it, hadn’t Camelia said ‘others’ were coming? This was just the one person.

	“Last chance, Garret, because we know each other.” Lano reached up to the collar of his cuirass, drawing out a little brass tube hung on a braided cord around his neck.

	“Hey, come on, there’s no need to bring your friends into this. Let’s just--”

	Sighing, the giant put the whistle to his lips and blew one sharp, short note. Before it had faded, Penny felt something flat and hard tap her shoulder lightly. Turning to look, she came eye to tip with a razor sharp length of steel terminating in the hand of a tall, dreadlocked woman who smiled down at her from less than three feet away. Interlocking patterns of red and green ink coiled out from under the neckline of her light cotton tunic, like a lover’s hand cupping the sharp line of her jaw. Her other hand held yet another sword, this one tickling the bridge of the idiot’s nose. One bright red droplet ran down one side to the corner of his mouth, despite the fact that he had frozen in place just as surely as Penny herself had.

	“If you wouldn’t mind,” the woman purred, “Stand up slowly and make your way out to the captain for inspection. No sudden moves now, we wouldn’t want either of you to fall on something sharp.”

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	More coarse language reached her ears as the rest of the band was turfed out with rather less ceremony. Penny was quietly grateful that her bandit was at least polite about the whole thing, and retained her dignity as she picked her way out of hiding. Nobody else seemed to have managed that, besides the idiot, who had laced his fingers on the back of his head with a sort of tense resignation. Camelia was rubbing her backside with the affronted air of someone who just received a sharp kick in the seat of the pants while yet another giant inspected her bow, while Emery… Was Emery /already/ flirting with those two female bandits? Well, at least they had the good taste not to seem very impressed by his languid gestures, going by the frowns they wore. And they were passably normal in size, though both were as tall as the average man and even better muscled under their traveling clothes.

	Garret seemed to be having the most trouble, flat on his back with what looked to be about a long ton of not very friendly dog drooling on his face through bared fangs. From the pair of knives cast to either side as if flung from impact-loosened fingers, Penny could guess what had engendered such a response. Lano had dismounted, and was overseeing a scene which had taken on the air of an impromptu swap-meet. Where Penny had accounted an outmatching of six-to-one, the actual number appeared to be more like four-to-one in the other direction.

	Eight of them that she could see were of the gigantic persuasion, all of those displaying some form of ritual tattoo on their bared skin, all similarly carrying at least one of those enormous sabers. The rest seemed like more of a mixed bag, dressed in light armor and traveling clothes, wielding bows and smaller versions of the saber. There seemed to be no uniformity to their accoutrement, from hair to dress to armament, but neither did they have the rather out-at-the-heels look of Garret’s followers. Seeing them side by side, with her erstwhile captors in such dire straights, Penny could not decide whether to be relieved that she had moved up to a higher class of highwayman, or concerned that they might prefer to ransom her back to her Uncle.

	As the idiot went down on his knees with a grunt, the dual-wielding woman pointed her sword at him where he could see it. “Stay put, broke-dick. I’ll deal with you in a moment.” Turning her attention to Penny, she favored the smaller female with an easy grin that conjured images of swashbuckling pirates and fae tricksters. “You don’t strike me as a king of the road type. Got a name?”

	“Penelope von Libhra,” Penny said, in her best lady-of-the-manor voice. If they were going to allow her to preserve her dignity, she might as well employ it to her advantage. “My traveling companions of questionable nobility are escorting me to the city of Glockenbaltz.”

	Eyes bright and grinning, the woman glanced up and down Penny’s form. “Okay, cutie. What’s in the box?”

	Giant dogs, giant people, curved slashing swords, and a complete and total lack for anyone’s personal privacy. “You’re Lakelanders!” This outburst was met with silence… yet again. That was becoming something of a pattern, really. Then ‘idiot’ let out a long, quiet groan.

	“Don’t point, don’t point, don’t point,” he muttered, cringing away from the women with his hands still on his head.

	Penny glanced aside at him, then at her extended finger which aimed directly at the woman’s wrinkling nose, then around at the many pairs of eyes now fixed on her. “I should have known. The yellow eyes are such a giveaway, obvious in retrospect. Though I guess I wouldn’t have seen them until you got really close, which I suppose you did.”

	“I mean it, stop pointing at her…”

	“Well, it is rude of me,” Penny said, bringing her hand back to the box hugged against her body, cradling it like a child. “You have my sincerest apologies.” That seemed to set the mood right again, as everyone went back to glaring impotently or searching through someone else’s property, depending on their relevant station in life. “Is it true that you eat the flesh of your defeated enemies? I would advise against eating Garret, he’d probably taste terrible.”

	“Where’d y’all find this one, old meat?” the woman asked of the ‘idiot’, waving one sword-filled hand in Penny’s general direction. She managed to do so in a completely non-threatening way, letting the blade dangle from her slackened grip to aim at the earth.

	“Don’t gotta tell you, Ritva. You got questions, take ‘em to The Height.”

	“Oh, now you wanna play by the rules? Face down, asshole.” Stepping lightly around him, the woman shoved the bandit with a hard boot in the back, sprawling him out on the ground. “Cross ‘em up, kitty. I just know the boss wants a word with you.”

	With the ‘idiot’ crossing his wrists and ankles and grumbling to himself at his circumstances, the woman, Ritva, returned to her examination of Penny. “Box. Open. No more playing around.”

	It seemed safe enough. Bandits were generally the illiterate type, so more than likely they’d lose interest once they knew there was no useful contraband hidden away in her person. Her worst problem would probably be keeping them from using the ledger’s pages for tinder or… personal hygiene purposes. Turning the case out on one arm, she popped the latches and revealed the contents.

	Without more than a split second of a glance at the inside of Penny’s case, Ritva raised her sword into the air with a cry of “Book!”

	“Book?!” Contrary to Penny’s dismay at this reaction, Lano sounded positively gleeful. “Book, book, book, hahaha!”

	Someone that size should /not/ skip, Penny decided. It was extremely disconcerting for that much man to move so light on his feet, and Lano did fairly glide over, skidding to a stop in a puff of dirt.

 	“Book, book, book!” he caroled, reaching into the box and taking it out with… due reverence? “Glory be, a book!” Holding it carefully by the spine, he peeled back the cover and turned the first page. Then another, and another, his face falling in disappointment. “Fuck. Ledger.”

	“Aww!” Similarly crestfallen, the woman sheathed one sword, then reached in with her now free hand and pawed through the loose papers. “I was hoping it’d be another of those Lorren whatsits.”

	“Ritva, you got a weird taste in literature.” He was still flipping pages, slowly enough that Penny could tell he was actually reading what was written there, quickly enough that she knew he was doing so with rather alarming speed. His demeanour of disappointment was starting to dissapate, brow creasing as he ran his finger down the columns of names, figures, dates, her whole future penned by her father’s hand.

	“I like the pretty words he uses!”

	Snapping the book closed in one hand, Lano waved it at the woman like a hostler shooing flies. “Half of Glockenbaltz is in this thing! Hoo, I’m guessin’ this meat didn’t know what they’d got hold of.”

	“Might not have known what to do with it if they had,” Ritva sneered. “I’ve heard that about these northern folk.”

	“What’d you get out of the girl?”

	“She’s a Glockenbaltzer, I reckon. Penelope von Libhra,” Ritva said, her voice taking on a haughty air to match the delicately indelicate roll of her wrist as she pronounced Penny’s name. Penny hoped that was an inaccurate portrayal of the tone she had actually used. “Says your buddy and his meat were takin’ her to the city, but I get the feelin’ they might have been headed elsewhere than that, and it wasn’t a plan she had any input on.”

	“He’s not my buddy. Other than that, I reckon you’re right, she’s got that bean-counter smell. Only question now is what we do with her. Wouldn't wanna haul her all the way down to Shylo for nothin'.”

	"Could take her to the Grim? A lot closer, and he'd probably just tell us the latest and throw it back on us."

	"Sounds good."

	“Excuse me,” Penny said, interjecting with what she considered a very appropriate level of lady-like waspishness. These two somehow seemed like the types who would respond to a show of authority. “I don’t mean to be a bother, but could I have my ledger back?”

	“No,” was the immediate and simultaneous reply from Lano and Ritva. Now both pairs of eyes were fixed on her, a regard that put her uncomfortably in mind of standing too close to an overbuilt fire.

	“You and I need to have a discussion about this,” Lano said, wrapping the cord binding back around the ledger with an air of finality. Then his voice took on the tone of a man reciting long practiced phrases. “Until then, you are a prisoner of the Wild Bunch out of Shylo, and by extension the Outfit of Chalice Lake. Cooperate with us and you will not be harmed. If you want, negotiation on behalf of your ‘escort’ is permitted, or you can delegate that to their captain.” Wrinkling his nose, he added, “Personally, I’d rather deal with you than Garret.”

	Straightening her back, Penny met Lano's eye with her own unwilted glare. "Very well, Captain. Though I feel I must remind you that it is the duty of a prisoner to escape her captors when given the opportunity."

	Favoring her with a grin, the giant nodded his head once. "Well, I reckon we'll just have to make sure you never get the temptation. Ritva, keep on eye on this'n while I deal with the rest of this meat."

	Stepping and turning to plant herself at Penny's side, Ritva tilted her head towards the 'idiot'. "What about that one?"

	"I'll take care of him." Bending down, Lano seized the brute by one arm and hauled him up roughly, and without any apparent undue effort. Dragging him along, he said "Up, you sumbitch. I got words for you." Then raising his voice to issue orders to the rest of his crew, "Wrap it up, folks. We're on our way to Glockenbaltz! It's your lucky day, Garret, I'm gonna cut y'all loose minus one big, dumb, dead weight. C'mere, boy, off 'im!"

	"Glockenbaltz?" Penny's eyes went wide as she stared up into Ritva's inquiring face. "We're really going to Glockenbaltz? Now?"

	"Well, camp first. And then we'll link up with Grimm Lanni's gang farther south, not actually in the city. We're not allowed in, y'know."

	"Why's that?"

	"On account of fuckin' and fightin' too much, I suppose. Glockenbaltzers got all kinda funny rules about that kinda thing. 'Public safety' and 'This is a church' and all that nonsense. Come on, let's get you in the wagon before there's no room left."