Garroq

"You can dodge a bolt. You can parry me axe. But good luck escaping Garroq's plans." —Rorkesh Rain slicked the stone bridge above Smuggler's Hollow. Beneath, the Watch Captain was laughing, his heels drumming against the crate he used as a chair. "Grey Blades thought they'd collect on the bandit bounty, eh?" the Captain gloated, gesturing with a half-eaten turkey leg. "Not on my bloody watch." Garroq lingered in the shadows, a knife dancing between his fingers. "Getting late for killing, or would you like some pudding as well?" The Captain shot him a look before tossing the gnawed bone aside. He'd hired the dragonborn as a guide and extra muscle, but cared little for his brazen arrogance. "Come on. Sooner we clear out this lot, sooner you get paid and crawl back to whatever rat-hole you call home." The Captain and his men entered the abandoned rock quarry, now repurposed as a bandit fort, with Garroq trailing behind. The fight began without a word. It was a brutal, close-quarters brawl. Garroq watched a group of bandits corner the Captain, two pinning him down while a third raised the killing blow. At the Captain's desperate cry, Garroq flicked his wrist, lodging a knife into the bandit's spine before wading back into the melee. Though the Captain had regained his feet, the odds were terrible. The bandits were well-prepared, and his men dropped like flies before him. Then the crossbow bolts began to fly, hissing from crude walkways overhead, piercing through armor and flesh. The marksman traversed the shadows, moving with a predator-like confidence, sowing chaos among the onslaught of bandits with an unmistakable pattern: one shot to the left leg, then another to the chest. When the fight was over, the Captain staggered over to Garroq, grinning and placing a hand on his shoulder. "I was hoping you had a trick up your sleeve." Garroq snorted, peeling the hand away and walking past the Captain to pull his knife from a bandit's back. Only two of the Captain's men remained, followed by the scrape of a boot on stone that turned all heads. The shadowy marksman now stood at the quarry entrance, his weapon lowered, and gaze locked on Garroq. "Well, if it isn't our hooded hero," the Captain laughed. "Not bad for a slit-eye." The two dragonborn ignored him, surveying the carnage. "All clear, big bruv," Rorkesh said. "Phase two?" Garroq nodded. His axe cleaved one guardsman in half before two of Rorkesh's bolts dropped the other. A third buried itself in the Captain's thigh, sending him sprawling into the mud. "Bastards! Who... who are you?" Wordlessly, the brothers cast back their cloaks, unmistakable emblems catching the fading light. "Grey Blades, bloody hell," the Captain spat. "I should've known." Understanding flooded in faster than the rain. Lady Ainsworth had learned of the Watch's plans and simply let it happen. Unbeknownst to him, the Captain had done her work for her, wiping out every troublesome bandit in Smuggler's Hollow while she quietly placed her two men among his hunters. By sundown, both the outlaws and the Watch would be dead, every loose end buried in the same quarry. One hand washes the other. "The Lady sends her regards." He drew the great axe from his back and looked down at the broken Captain. "Don't take it personal. Strictly business, innit?"