Within the thick shadows of the forest, twenty bandits crouched like vultures awaiting a wounded prey. The red, tattered cloths over their heads gave them a ghostly, ritualistic look, faces hidden except for sharp, focused eyes. Leather cuirasses covered their torsos, blackened and battered from years of conflict, with iron spikes adorning their pauldrons like savage thorns.
Their arms rippled with lean muscle, each man gripping a twin-bladed axe that had tasted both coin and blood.
These weren't mere highway thugs. Every one of them had the posture of killers, Novice-ranked axemen at the very least, honed by years of bush skirmishes and town raids. They had watched Kaelor's caravan for a full day, hidden like shadows among the trees, gauging the convoy, identifying strengths and weaknesses.
And all eyes had eventually locked on that, the massive, chained beast with three heads and molten fury in its eyes.