Chapter Twenty-Two
Luise did not know when things had started turning bad. What she knew was that she had barely touched the hot water of the tub, nodded to the waitress who had been about to leave the room, and as Saito was about to leave too to give her privacy, the door had swung open -more like broken.
The maid had dropped the bucket of hot water as armored men had stepped inside, and in a second, there were knocked out men slammed against the walls as Saito hadn't just allowed random strangers to barge in with their weapons drawn for no reason.
It took a few seconds for Luise to understand that Saito had knocked out two men in full plate by slamming the pommel of his dagger right against the side of their helmets, hitting their temples squarely. She wouldn't have believed it possible herself, but she had to change her opinion the moment she saw it happen with her very eyes.
"Are they the bandits from before?" Saito asked.
Luise just stared. "You-" she looked at the armored men. "Th-They were in full plate!" she snapped. "Bandits don't have that kind of money! Mercenaries don't have that kind of money! Nobody has that kind of money!"
"T-The royal messenger," the waitress muttered. "He does. That's-That's his banner on their armor."
"What," Luise's eyes widened -and if Saito could see that even through the mask, then it meant they had to be quite wide- "B-But why!?"
"Luis-ahem," Saito coughed. "Luis, do you remember Valier? The crowd outside the church?"
Luise bristled at the implied accusation. "They wouldn't send armored men for that sort of thing! It's like they think we're spies or something!"
"The...The Royal Messenger's lands are close by," the waitress mumbled. "If you-if you adventurers angered him in some way-" as she stammered, trying to recover her breath, Saito looked at Luise.
"We'd better leave before we cause more trouble."
"We've got to explain things properly," Luise said. "We can't just run from the royal messenger's men! We need to head to Tristain, and we can't do that if we're being hounded every step of the way."
The waitress had meanwhile peeked out of the door, and then abruptly closed and locked it. "M-More are coming, kind sirs!" she exclaimed as she stepped away from the door, seconds before a large ax came crashing through it, soon followed by the full-armored man wielding it.
"We'll drag you to Count Mott by the hair if we have to, you wretched bitch!" the man snarled.
"Wait just a moment now-" Saito said, a puzzled look on his face as he took a step forward, only for the man to backhand him with his gauntlet, sending him to crash against the wall. Groaning in pain, Saito spat out a few shards of broken teeth, his eyes crossed.
"Saito! Why you-" Luise whipped her wand out and as the tip ignited, a thundering explosion rocked the man off his feet and through the nearby wall, all the way out of the inn. His fellow colleague watched from the side of the door the human-sized hole and then screamed as he rushed back downstairs.
The words 'reinforcements' was all that Luise needed to hear before deciding that bailing was definitely the best possible solution. She grabbed her backpack and slung it back on her shoulders, before pulling on Saito's own to bring it closer to the boy.
She neared Saito and hoisted him up, handing him his own backpack. "Can you walk?" she asked him, and when Saito shakily nodded, she sighed in relief. "We've got to leave."
"They'll be waiting for us downstairs," the waitress said as she steeled herself, heading down along the first floor's hallway until a specific room, which she opened with a key. Once inside, the waitress opened the window and looked outside. "We can jump from here to the stable's rooftop. There are horses in the stables-"
"I can't ride one," Luise said. "Saito?"
"Never rode one," Saito mumbled.
"I know how," the waitress said. "You're adventurers, and-well-I'm sorry, but please bring me with you!" she exclaimed, clutching her hands to her chest. "I'm scared of making the trip myself, but I can't stay around much longer. I've got family in the capital that can hide me-please-"
"So you're the reason those soldiers barged in like that!?" Luise snapped. "What did you do to get someone as important as a Count on your case like this!?"
"Later," Saito hissed, wincing as he touched his broken teeth with his fingers, holding back a few hisses of pain. "We-We leave first, talk later."
Luise grumbled, but nodded. "It's the boobs, isn't it?"
The waitress inclined her head to the side, and as understanding dawned, her lower lips trembled. "P-Please, if it means getting me to safety-as long as it's not that old fat count-"
"What? No! No!" Luise shook her head and crossed her arms in front of her. "You got it all wrong!" she snapped hotly. "He's the pervert!" Luise jabbed a finger at Saito, "But I'm keeping him under check! Let's just move it. Pull your weight or we're leaving you behind!" with that said, Luise brought a foot on the windowsill, and then took a deep breath. "Let's go, Saito!"
"Uh-uh," Saito grumbled back, heading for the window and jumping out, clutching Luise in his arms as he landed with a hiss on the stable's roof. The waitress jumped shortly after, and in her landing, the roof creaked.
"See? Big boobs simply mean more weight," Luise grumbled hotly under her breath, and Saito was the only one who heard. They jumped down once more, reaching for the ground as two more guards stood by the horses.
"I can't believe someone as powerful as the royal messenger would send so many men after-after a lonely girl! What are you, his daughter or something?!"
The waitress looked fearfully from above the stable's roof, the height difference quite bigger than before. She also didn't have someone as strong as Saito to dull the blow of the fall, so she decided to aptly let herself dangle from the edge of the roof while the boys proceeded to deal with the remaining guards.
"Saving damsels in distress was not part of the plan, Saito!" Luise snapped angrily as Saito's sword held in a deadlock one of the men's own. "It was supposed to be a simple thing! We just had to walk from city A to city B! We didn't have to start a crusade for the purity of all bar wenches!"
"Hey!" the waitress snapped hotly, "I'm not a wench! I'm a waitress!"
"Shut it and be glad my comrade's a moron with a big heart," Luise retorted with a snappish tone.
"Could I have a hand?" Saito asked dryly, "I'm missing the DPS here," he said, "All the DPS."
"The...what?" Luise asked, blinking. The warrior in front of Saito was puzzled too, so much so that he didn't even notice when the waitress slammed a large iron skillet against the back of his helmeted head.
"Spells," Saito said. "Where is the magic?"
The second warrior had meanwhile managed to hide his presence long enough to draw close to Luise, and as he jumped on her, grabbing her wrist with his gauntlet, he held her at sword point in front of his breastplate. "Well now!" the man in armor said raucously. "We've had our fun, but nobody died and nobody has to die yet."
Saito froze, his sword still held in front of him and his eyes narrow.
"We just want the girl," the man said. "Count Mott wants her, and whenever he has a fancy, he always gets his urges scratched. It's the way it goes. And yes, you're good with that blade of yours but trust me, you don't want to earn a personal vendetta from the Count. He knows people, unsavory people. Just...look, just shut up and hand over your sister."
"She's not my sister!" "He's not my brother!" both Saito and the waitress snapped at the same time.
"Never thought I'd be on the other side of a misunderstanding," Luise said dryly, "Look Saito, since it's my neck on the line here-how about you just knock that waitress out like a light and we go our merry way?"
Saito blinked. "Luis?"
"Look, we have no obligations to help her. We have no real reason to help her. A faithful nun of Brimir would help an innocent in need without question, but I'm a tough manly adventurer and so are you. Just, you know, knock her out, let this guy get her and we'll be out. She didn't pay us enough for this shit," as Luise droned on with a gruff voice, Saito caught on. He nodded and slammed the back of his sword against the waitress' head.
"So, how about you let my partner go now?" Saito asked, the waitress crumbled down at his feet and utterly unconscious.
"Glad to see you kids have some wisdom in your skull," the man said, opening his arms to let Luise down. "See, now we can even head inside and have a laugh about this over a bottle of wine or something, well, maybe just half a bottle-"
Luise placed the tip of her wand to touch behind the man's armor with a flourish, and then said a single word. "Boom."
The armor was the only reason the man didn't die, but he was catapulted at great speed forward, impacting first against a tree nearby and then ending up in the middle of a bunch of shrubs, out like a light from the strength of the impact.
The waitress carefully opened one eye, and then the other, before standing back up and dusting herself. "T-That was-"
"Later," Luise said quickly. "The horse, the escape, and then we can talk about the mess you landed us in!"
The waitress hurried into the stables, cutting loose a few horses and finally climbing atop a bay one that seemed to dislike the situation at hand. It didn't whine about having to carry three people -Luise had to count like a hand luggage to the weight limit, probably.
"Did you just think something rude?" Luise asked with a gruff voice.
"No," Saito replied, before wincing as his tongue passed over his broken teeth. "My mouth hurts."
"I'll look at it later," the waitress said as she kicked the horse's flanks. "Just hold tight for now, kind sirs."
As they galloped into the far off distance, only one thought crossed Saito's mind, and it wasn't the striking resemblance to the Japanese people that the waitress seemed to have, or the fact that Luise was practically pressed against his body and he was holding on by clutching her stomach.
The one thought that crossed Saito's mind was very simple, and yet utterly life-threatening.
Did they even have dentists around these parts?
