An unlawful blockade.

Walking alongside the trade convoy had been comfortable work heretofore, but now? It turned out that the shield-maidens were heavily invested in my bare legs, and began a rotation so they could each have prolonged ganders at me in my "winsome" robe in cycles, and so no longer was it easy to keep pace with the caravan, I had to keep pulling down on the fanciful robe's hem just to keep my linens out of sight!

Blushing furiously as I hark yet another wolf-whistle directed my way, I scurry away to the lead cart, staff in hand, and hop into the front in hopes that my employer might help take some of the heat off me. Sitting there calmly, but chuckling into her dress's sleeve, is the illustrious trade magnate, she says to me, without turning to look, "Yes Ahab, certainly. I can hear my guards giving you grief. Please, take a seat for a while."

I oblige, filled with relief, as she shoos a few of the women who were harassing me away, but my embarrassment returns when I noticed that Ming Zhao herself was stealing the occasional glance at me too, be it at my bare legs or my bare chest, she was surreptitiously trying to get a compromising angle.

We travel this way down the forest thoroughfare for less than a half-mile more, when in the middle of the woods, where it had no right to be, an imperial checkpoint stands tall. The leader of our company stops the merchant train, shouts, "Shénme guǐ?!?" and hops off her seat on the carriage, motioning for both her most imposing shield-maiden, Aradia, and me to follow.

The beautiful business-maiden halts her pacing one score feet away from the blockade, trying to figure how it could possibly have gotten there, and I come up beside her just in time to hear a bomb go off.

BANG!!!!

Simultaneously with the cacophonous explosion, over thirty well-armed brigands leap from the underbrush to engird our company, I'm staring down the assailants, staff hoisted, when riding in on a crazed stallion from the checkpoint comes an imperial knight.

The enigmatic armored figure sizes us up briefly before grabbing an enormous sword from their belt and flourishing it, the de facto brigand commander then asks us this, "What brings you lot into "his" territory? Have you anything to say for yourselves, merchant scum?"

I respond to the aggressive inquiries by putting on the fiercest countenance I could muster in my scarcely dressed, embarrassed state, and stepping to the front of my group, ready for a fight.

Ming Zhao responds by planting a flintlock pistol in the small of my back and shouting back at the knight, "I claim allegiance to the dark lord Zachariah! This man is the cleric he's been seeking so fervently, and we're turning him in."

She has betrayed me!? The cold metal of Ming Zhao's gun barrel rams firmer into my spine, pushing me closer to the sinister rider looming over us. "Then a welcome guest you are, fair magnate. Zachariah will be most pleased," comes the booming response from inside the helm, as they twist the sword backwards in their hand.

I see one of my guild mates sprinting frantically from the deep woods to my aid, and her concerned face is the last thing I see before the knight strikes me fiercely with the pommel of their massive broadsword, knocking me out cold. Leaving me dead to the world.