Round One
(this is followed by round two)
"Fire and charge forward?" Kazzak asks the Baronet, aiming his crossbow into the trees,
"Or stay and fight?"
Meanwhile,
Antonius stops the oxen and jumps down from the buckboard. Stepping off of the Road in between tree trunks, the cleric holds aloft the bloody glowing amulet and intones his
Command with all the sepulchral authority of
Wee Jas:
"Drop!" to the half-seen figure to the south.
Hider Two drops what he's holding.
"What? Faskat!" he swears aloud.
Not answering
Kazzak directly,
"Guilbert, get on the cart and keep it moving!" Berthold issues the command as he vaults over the side of the wagon and lands with a jangle of heavy armor on the Road.
"Olyana, take cover in the cart!" he adds as he runs past her, and then tosses his shield to the boy,
"Reynald, cover Guilbert, here, take my shield!" Then, drawing his huge sword, the knight crashes through the foliage to seek cover in the trees as he approaches the figure he's spotted to the north.
Kazzak realizes that he has his answer and presses the lever that looses the crossbow bolt. The shaft disappears into the trees.
Dell hops down into the bed of the wagon, pushes past
Kazzak,
Amnestria, and
Sora to jump down off the back of the wagon, and dives into the trees, ducking out of view of
Hider Two.
Amnestria pokes her head up over the side of the wagon, pulling her backpack with her as a rudimentary barrier. She can hear her heart pounding in her chest, but she calms her mind through long practice, recalling the familiar movements of creating fire from the Weave and the arcane phrases that she must vocalize to send the flame flying through the air.
The half-seen
hidden figures in the trees yell and attack.
The first hidden figure,
One, looses a bolt at the boy,
Reynald. But the crossbow bolt clips an
ox, so the bolt goes wide. The
ox screams in pain and starts to try to run, held back by its yoke.
Two, who no longer has his crossbow in hand, draws a sword and runs at
Antonius. He misses completely.
The third hidden figure,
Three, looses a crossbow bolt at
Olyena.
Olyena falls with a bolt lodged in her chest, dying.
Completely undetected by the party until now, a hidden figure behind the wagon,
Four, looses a crossbow bolt at
Amnestria.
Amnestria takes 5 piercing damage as the bolt strikes her in the shoulder. Her
owl flaps up in alarm.

In response,
Amnestria lets the magic roll forth from her, sending fire through the trees to engulf
Hider Three.
Hider Three takes 6 fire damage and she dies horribly.
Seeing the approach of the ambushers,
Sora leaps out of the wagon with a clatter and rushes into the woods, crashing through the underbrush to come around the broken tree stump to attack
Hider Two with kicks and punches.
Hider Two takes 10 bludgeoning damage!
Seeing his servant struck down in the attack,
Berthold yells,
"Reynald, get Olyena in the carriage!"
As
Guilbert climbs up onto the buckboard and takes the reins, young
Reynald looks back and forth between
Guilbert and
Olyena. Deciding which order to obey,
Reynald tosses the shield into the back of the wagon and gets his arms under
Olyena's bleeding form and then tries to stand up. He manages to do so with a huge grunt of effort; the full-grown woman weighs a bit more than he does. Then he tries to figure out how to get her up and over the lip into the bed of the wagon when he can't throw her in (even if he was able to throw more than his own body weight over his head, he wouldn't want to treat her so carelessly). Eventually he flops her body over the side and walks his hands down her body, pressing her weight up to lever her over the side and rolling her as gently as he can into the wagon; it's not too much of a drop.
For her part,
Olyena tries to cling to life, but the damage to her organs makes it difficult.
Olyena fails her first death save.

14 - Antonius (10/10)
14 - Berthold (11/11)
14 - Kazzak (12/12)
11 - Dell 9/9
7 - Amnestria (4/9)
5 - Hider 1, Hider 2 (-10), Hider 3 (dead), Hider 4
3 - Sora (12/12)
0 - Noncombatant servants: Guilbert, Olyena (dying, one failure), Reynald