Good men had put themselves in great danger – indeed, some had lost their lives in very unpleasant ways – in pursuit of intelligence to further the cause of Reinhilde III, Otillian Empress of Talabecland. That huge effort had been distilled down to a mere bundle of papers, carefully prepared and coded to appear, to a casual observer at least, as ordinary correspondence and a draft-copy of a book about moths.
And so it was that on a moonlit night a courier, clad all in leather and astride a fine hunter, galloped along the road towards Talabheim. He bore a sealed packet bearing those hard-won dispatches, tucked safely inside his saddlebags. Accompanying him were two outriders, grizzled veterans, there to guard and protect him on his journey.
They galloped onward until they came to a dark and dense wald, where they were forced to slow to avoid their horses losing their footing. As they followed the path they spied a light ahead of them, being swung back and forth. The courier reined in his steed, which turned and stamped impatiently.
“Stand and deliver,” came the time-honoured cry of the highwayman.
“Stand aside and live,” growled one of the outriders, pulling his pistol.
His answer was a shot, a tongue of flame betraying the firer’s position off to one side of the road. The outrider loosed at the figure holding the lantern, blasting him off of his feet and leaving him twitching in the mud.
Light played on the horsemen – the bandits had with them lanterns, specially made with silvered interiors and a shuttered front, which they snapped open to illuminate the riders – and then all hell broke loose. A hail of shots rang out from all around, striking the ground and smacking into leather and flesh.
The courier jabbed his spurs into his mount’s flanks and the brute reared up, then made a break for it. A shot slammed into the creature, striking it in the chest, and then another, tearing into its neck. It spun and toppled, shrieking horribly and gushing dark foamy blood, before collapsing into a mass of flailing hooves.
One of the rogues loped over to the dying horse, a pistol in one hand and a hatchet in the other. The beast had fallen on the young man’s leg, trapping him. The villain looked down at the struggling form and he grinned a rotten-toothed grin.
The lad’s hat had come off, revealing a head of curly golden hair that gave his youthful features a certain girlishness. “Please, help!” he gasped desperately.
The bandit raised the pistol, cocked the weapon, and blew out the courier’s brains.
The gang stripped the bodies of the dead, friend and foe alike, before abandoning them in the road. They divided the spoils amongst themselves, wearing their fancy new clothes and squabbling over the meagre valuables. They found the packet of documents, but all were quite illiterate, and besides, even an educated man would have seen little of value in the mundane collection of papers.
And so that night they boiled their stew with the dispositions of troops and diagrams of fortifications, a treasure infinitely more valuable than the paltry collection of coins they had taken.
