Friendly Fire
From a hill above the camp, just two hours before midnight, Darcy and Peggy sat and observed the forest’s edge using a telescope that Darcy had enchanted to allow Peggy to see in the dark. The night air was warm around them but the camp had set up a good many fires throughout, regardless. A few men, all elderly as the others had been enlisted in the Tyrant King’s army, patrolled the camp’s outskirts with torches and not much else. Peggy clicked her tongue in disapproval.
“They’re horribly under provisioned and undermanned. It’s a miracle they’ve lasted this long,” she hisses angrily, “Where are the king’s men? Where are the patrols from the nearby villages?”
Darcy frowned. They’d actually banked on having actual facts back-up from local guards on this one. If there were more raiders than even Peggy could handle, she’d actually be putting the refugees in more danger than they already were. She wouldn’t be able to deliver the help they so desperately needed. Darcy squinted at the camp, observing the people. Her gaze landed on a mother and her child and Darcy’s frown deepened. They both looked horribly underfed. And terrified. But not of the forest?
“Peggy, I don’t think these people have been getting any help from the local guards. In fact, I think the local guards might be harassing them…” Darcy said as she pointed Peggy’s telescope towards the starving pair.
Peggy growled, now noticing what she hadn’t before in her search for Ten Rings’ raiders. On the king’s orders, provisions should have been going to the refugees, distributed by militia members from the local town where they were delivered. These people looked far worse than someone would if they were receiving food and medicine from the government regularly. In addition, horse tracks led to the camp from the village but no cart tracks, suggesting that someone had been there but not to bring aide.
These people weren’t being raided by the Ten Rings, they were being raided by Wolf Kingdom soldiers…
Disgust hit Peggy hard and she bristled. How could these men dishonor their King and country in such a manner? Preying on the weak and the innocent was no way to act as a soldier of the Wolf army. How could the King allow this? Did he know? More importantly, would he care? Well, she would find out when she gave him what for.
Peggy’s thoughts of the King were interrupted when she saw a young woman with dirty blonde hair move away from the camp and towards the village road. Peggy’s brow furrowed in confusion until she saw a few lights in the distance approaching rapidly. Soldiers, she thought.
“Shit,” Darcy whispered, probably thinking the same, “what is she doing? She can’t possibly think she’s gonna fight trained soldiers, does she?”
Yet even as they watched the lights approached, revealing seven soldiers in Wolf kingdom uniforms and confirming their suspicions. Peggy felt dirty in her own uniform just watching.
The dirty blonde put her hands on her hips. Chin jutting out defiantly and ratty dress swirling around her calves, she told the soldiers something harshly that made them laugh. She pointed at the leader and said something else and the laughing stopped.
Oh no, Peggy thought jumping to her feet. She started to move but Darcy’s hand grabbed her wrist.
“Peggy, what are you doing?!” She hissed.
“I won’t sit here and do nothing while they terrorize innocents in the same uniform I wear proudly now!” Peggy told her urgently. Darcy sighed and rolled her eyes.
“No, I didn’t think you would. I’m not asking you to. But there has to be a better way to do this! Those are the King’s men!”
A scream from down below drew their attention and they watched in horror as the leader, who had dismounted during their conversation, used his sword to tear open the woman’s bodice. Darcy’s face grew stormy with rage.
“Okay,” she said, releasing Peggy’s arm, “have at ‘em.”
Peggy didn’t need to be told twice.
She ran full tilt down the hill. She didn’t even slow down when she reached the bottom, just kept running until she was close enough to the soldiers’ leader to leap into the air and—using the full force of her momentum—kick the man in the head so hard he went flying fifteen feet and didn’t get up again.
She didn’t much care if she’d killed him.
Landing in a graceful crouch, Peggy straightened and removed her quarterstaff from across her back. She faced the remaining soldiers, too stunned by her appearance to make a move, and smiled a terrifying grin.
They charged.
She spun the quarterstaff and knocked the first’s sword out of his hand before using it to sweep his feet out from under him. While the first was down she blocked a blow by the second and flipped up, catching the quarterstaff horizontally under his chin and flipping him into the third as she landed. The fourth she fought until he was down before the first even got back up.
Peggy fought until she’d taken down all six men in under three minutes before turning her attention back to the girl. It seems she’d attracted a crowd as well. Various people from the camp stood around silently and gaped at Peggy in her uniform and mask.
“Holy moly.”
Peggy started as she realized the girl who had been attacked was standing right next to her, looking down at the crumpled forms of one of the guards.
“Did you kill him? I mean, not that I’m complaining, but you guys are wearing the same uniform,” the girl said, now looking Peggy up and down. Peggy opened her mouth to answer but then snapped it shut, eyeing the silent crowd of refugees standing not ten feet away. Darcy made her way through it and started shooing them off.
“Alright, people, nothing to see here. Move along, nothing to see.”
They grumbled and made their way off even though there was most certainly something to see.
When they were gone Darcy turned to her, surveying the mess of soldiers around the three of them.
“No, I don’t think I killed them,” Peggy said, turning her attention back to the girl who was trying to hold the two pieces of her bodice together.
“Oh, dear. Here, let me.” Peggy removed her uniform coat and draped it around the young woman’s shoulders.
“Thanks,” she murmured, “the name’s Angie, by the way.”
Angie pulled the sides of the coat a little tighter as she slipped her arms into the sleeves and proceeded to button it up. The buttons gleamed in the moonlight, meticulously polished by Peggy and her habits from her army days.
And then Peggy realized that she was indeed wearing the same uniform. Something that had only registered before as a focus of righteous anger and disdain but now registered as dread as well. She’d just taken down seven men who were supposedly on the same side as she and definitely not Ten Rings’ raiders.
“Oh, no,” she whispered.
“What are we going to do with all these unconscious dudes?” Darcy asked. “Because I don’t think it will go over as well if I drop seven of the King’s soldiers on his front step.”
Angie’s eyes grew wide with surprise and her face split into a grin.
“Oh, my god, you’re Agent! Holy moly I was just saved by the Hero of Wolf Kingdom!”
Darcy scoffed, kicking at one of the unconscious soldier’s boots, “Yeah, well she’s not going to be the ‘hero’ for much longer once this gets out.”
“What? But she saved me. She saved the camp.” Angie frowned.
“Not in the way these soldiers are going to tell it. No doubt they’ll probably say they were attacked unprovoked by the Agent and who’s going to challenge that? Agent? She can’t reveal herself like that.”
“I’ll challenge it,” Angie said angrily, “I’ll tell the truth!”
“Yeah? And whose going to believe you?” Darcy challenged back in the same tone, “Certainly, the local authority won’t take the word of a refugee over the word of seven soldiers in the King’s army!”
“Then we’ll take our grievances to the King directly.”
Both women stopped yelling at each other and turned to stare in disbelief at Peggy who had finally spoken up. Darcy’s mouth opened and closed a few times before she finally said,
“And how the hell do you propose we do that?!”