Their leader stared a bit harder because the moment Eleonora drew her sword, several alarm bells rang out to him at once.

  First, the blade she carried was unmistakably real steel and not the cheap stuff most nobles liked to parade around with. Second, she held it with the easy, instinctive confidence of someone who had not only been trained but had practiced a lot with a sword. And lastly, as his eyes traveled over her stance and the fit of her armor, he realized with a sinking feeling that her armor wasn’t decorative at all.

  Eleonora, meanwhile, took a heroic step forward.

  Only just barely slipping in the dirt with an undignified skrrp, before catching herself and launching into a charge.

  For all her ditzy charm and butterfly chasing demeanor, she had been trained by the best instructors her father’s coin and rank could buy. The moment steel met steel, something bright always lit behind Eleonora’s eyes.

  Her posture shifted just so, centering her weight properly. While she moved with the crisp precision of someone who had spent half her childhood being smacked around with wooden practice blades until she learned perfect footwork.

  She hit the bandits like a cheerful hurricane of death. The first man who was a bit taller than her, tried to swing down at her helm. But with skilled ease she snapped her shield up, the blow bouncing off with a ringing thonnng! that left him off balance.

  Allowing Eleonora to follow up with a neat, economical thrust under his guard, straight into his unprotected chest. He let out a loud death rattle before dropping his weapon and collapsing dead on to the roadway.

  A second bandit tried to flank her, only for her armor to render the attempt laughable. His rusted blade scraped across her left pauldron with a shriek that made him wince harder than she did. Eleonora turned, bright-eyed and breathless, and batted his sword aside with a crisp parry.

  She then stepped in, twisted her wrist exactly as her instructors drilled, and cut in a downward slash across his thigh.

  He toppled with a yelp.

  A third came at her in a panic, hacking wildly. Eleonora ducked under the first swing and planted a boot squarely into his chest.

  The man went stumbling backward.

  She then pivoted slightly so her blade flashed forward, slicing through the weak leather vest of another bandit, piercing his lung. The other bandit she'd kicked managed to finally get up.

  Him and another bandit circled Eleonora, suddenly more wary at the death of their two comrades.

  Then Eleonora charged in, shoulder checking one of the bandits before spinning to face the other one. She then deflected a strike off her vambrace, and riposted the bandits strike before lunging forth; her blade disembaling the man. As he fell writhing about and clutching his abdomen, the other bandit as soon as he recovered, ran away in terror.

  Eleonora distracted by this failed to notice the bandit leader coming up behind her. With a mighty slash his blade arced towards her back. However the cheap blade just bounced off Eleonora’s armor with a loud clang.

  She turned to face the bandit leader; who stared at his own sword as if it had betrayed him; and drove her shoulder into him. He hit the ground hard, and a swift jab of her sword ended his contribution to the fight.

  Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

  This rather than breaking the remaining bandits seemed to galvanize them into an even greater fury. Eleonora did not so much fight the enraged bandits, so much as instead it seemed like the wrath of God had descended to smite them for their sins.

  One of the bandits swung high at her, his clumsy swordsman ship telegraphed the move with all the subtlety of a beached whale.

  Eleonora easily ducked out the way, then popped up, and gave him a nasty slash across the face severing the man's nose. Eleonora then caught another bandit's blade in her gauntleted fist. Followed by a thrust of her blade into the now defenseless bandits throat. As the bandit fell lifeless she tossed aside the man's crappy sword.

  As Eleonora was looking for a new target a third bandit lunged desperately, his dagger aiming for a joint in her armor. Eleonora turned at precisely the wrong moment for the bandit, as his dagger glanced off her shoulder plate and skidded harmlessly across the curve of her steel pauldron.

  Eleonora quickly dispatched him just like the others.

  Meanwhile, Isadora dispatched the one bandit who got too close to her with a clean, precise strike to man's eye with her own sword. She watched Eleonora whirl through the remaining attackers like a sugar-addled demon from hell. Feeling immense pride for her fighting prowess.

  By the time Eleonora finally stopped, she was breathing heavily and felt like she had just run a mile. Her hair was slick with sweat under her helmet. She gazed a moment at the road which had been transformed into a grisly tapestry of death.

  The bandits lay scattered and in broken heaps, some dead outright, others clinging weakly to life with wet, rattling breaths. Blood soaked into the dirt in dark streaks and puddles, turning the dust into sticky mud beneath her boots.

  “Whew!” she said. Then, with a triumphant little flourish, Elina sheathed her sword and popped off her helmet, shaking free a cascade of sweaty golden hair like she had just finished something far gentler than a small-scale massacre.

  Then she had felt instant regret as the smell hit her far harder than the earlier stench. It was an indescribable, suffocating wave of human filth and slaughter. Unwashed bodies, blood, and the unmistakable stench of voided bowels all blended together into one foul, choking odor that seemed to cling to everything.

  Eleonora pinched her nose and her face scrunched adorably at the horrendous smell. “Isadoraaaa… they smell, like, even WORSE now! How is that even possible? Like… how do they do that? Is it magic?”

  Isadora dismounted, inspected a bandit with a practiced eye, and shook her head. “No magic, my lady. Just filth.” She stayed confidently.

  Isadora set to work dragging the bodies off the road with the weary efficiency of someone who had done this more times than she cared to count.

  Eleonora immediately rushed to help even though every time she grabbed a bandit by the arm she let out a tiny, strangled squeak, recoiled, or made a face as though she had just bitten into an especially vengeful lemon.

  “My lady,” Isadora tried, very gently, as Eleonora gingerly nudged a corpse with the tip of her boot, “you needn’t...”

  “Nope!” Eleonora exclaimed, grabbing the limp wrist of a dead bandit and instantly gagging. “Ghk! I got this! Knights help clean up after an adventure! It’s like… chivalry or whatever.”

  Isadora paused mid-drag, staring at her peculiar charge for a long, blank, contemplative moment. “…Yes, my lady,” she finally murmured.

  Together, they worked their way through the grim aftermath and bit by bit, they hauled the bandits off to a shallow mass grave, they had dug off to the side of the road. Isadora did most of the digging.

  As while Eleonora tried to help, she almost immediately blistered her hands on the shovel's rough wooden handle. So instead mostly at the bequest of Isadora, she instead busied herself with cleaning her armor and trying to pretend that she thought that counted as a meaningful contribution.

  As they stood over the rough mass grave, Eleonora planted her hands on her hips and made an executive decision with all the solemn gravity of an imperial princess issuing an imperial decree.

  “We are not looting them,” she declared, nose wrinkling in dramatic disgust. “I don’t want cursed, stinky gold.”

  Isadora, who had already mentally tallied the practical value of the bandit’s “gear" and already knew they were worthless, folded her hands neatly behind her back and inclined her head slightly and said, “As you wish, my lady.”

  Eleonora huffed a bit, “Besides,” she added, shuddering, “they probably touched everything with their… dirty hands.”

  “Undoubtedly,” Isadora said, very calmly, while absolutely refusing to think about what horrors the boots might have contained.

  When at last the pit was filled with dirt, Isadora took out her dagger and carved a crude epitaph into the trunk of a nearby tree:

  HERE LIE BANDITS, MURDERERS, AND THIEVES