Another sound is also heard as Seig, gathers himself and then steps around the corner of the cave tunnel to confront the oncomming guards, it is the sound of a guns hammer being clicked back into the ready-to-fire position. As he steps around sword at the ready, their guns come up and he takes out the closest one to him, and causes her to drop her gun, but in doing so, is shot fully in the chest by the other gun at close range, getting some major damage. Farther down the tunnel he can see another woman pulling out her sword, using her left hand, and yelling commands to several other woman around her. A flash of memory details the death wound of the real estate agent, which Sieg now realizes that this woman must have been the one to kill the agent, as the wound had looked different than he had expected it to look. Seeing that she was left handed now brought the memory back, and he knew that she would be a dangerous opponent.He also noticesthat against the walls, sparks seem to be flying, in a trail, andyells back to the group that there are lit fuses!But before he can do anything more, he still had the other woman in front of him that had just fired the gun at him. He takes a grab at her and gets his hands on her throat and looks her in the face, with a pissed off but defiant snarl. "That hurt!" he said and tosses the woman back up against a wall, knocking her out.Rebecca and Rowena look for and find after a slight search, the sputtering trail, and are able to cut the fuses and stop them from continuing their way back to the pack of gunpower barrels that they had found back in the entranceway earlier.Emelio meanwhile had come rushing past Seig and his opponents, heading down towards where theboss woman was, his eyes focused beyond her group, to the crowd of ruffians behind her. In their midst is his sister, and he is all into getting to her to rescue her, but the woman calls out to several woman that are with her, and they cut him off, attacking at him with staves, while the boss woman heads towards Seig, seeing his masters pin. She calls back to the ruffians to take the girl away, while she and the rest of her ladies gets rid of us. Before she can get to Seig, Renee comes running up to her, pulling out her daggers and tries to stab her, but she reposts the dagger, taking a small hit, while doing some major damage to Renee.Rebeccastops one of thefuses, thenturns and focuses on the woman using her sword left handed. It was a Vodacce style to use the left hand, and it naturally caught her attention, making the woman seem more dangerous. Trying to see her Sword strand, to try and lessen the womans abilities, she found it very hard to work against her, but managed to find the strand, with a Queen of Swords court card in place, so she wasn't able at that time to work on the strand, so she changes her focus to Renee who had run up to the woman, and boost her sword skill by tugging on her sword strand.After Seig tosses the woman against the wall, he heads down towards Renee and the swordswoman, who had once again given Renee another dramatic wound. Wounded, but determined, he attacks the woman, who repost his weapon, once again taking the damage from his weapon, while inflicting a dramatic wound on him. Both Renee and Seig are now seriously wounded and facing a deadly swordswoman, who also has taken a few major wounds in order to deal out more.Rowena in the mean time, had taken out her bow, and started shooting at the ruffians as they made their escape, and gets a few of them, but they soon get beyond her range, and she changes her focus to the woman attacking Emelio, who is getting beaten fairly seriously, but still fighting to get to his sister.Rebecca with her long dagger at hand, moves up and gets behind the swordswoman, who has both Seig and Renee at swords points, dealing more damage.Using a bit of repartee, she tries to distract the woman from Seig and Renee long enough for them to be able to do something to the woman."Is that a grey hair I see? It must be, because a true Vodacce would have finished them off by now. You must be in your doddage to have them still be alive."Shrugging off the insult, the woman looks at Seig andreplys with her own repartee to him"I think that once I finish with you, that cow (refering to Rebecca)behind me will be the next to die." and with that, takes another stab at Renee, her being the weakest and knocks her down and out, whiletakinganother hit by Seig, who is also having a hard time holding himself together, from the damage she has given him, and the previous gunshot wound that is still bleeding. It is then that Rebecca, comes in from behind her, and stabs her, taking her down. (Yes I know, not very heroic, but very Vodacce, and they still have to rescue the girl, so Rebecca is desperate, knowing that she would not be able to stand up to the woman, even in her wounded state.) Looking back at Rebecca, the woman glares and saids, as she falls down. "You are the worst of what Vodacce is about. I curse you!, I curse you!, I curse you!" and then passes out. As she falls, one of the other woman that was with her, but injured earlier in the fight, and out yells out "NO! Vittoria!!"Emelio and Rowena have finished off the rest of the women, and head over to Rebecca and Seig, who are reviving Renee. They need to continue after the ruffians to rescue Emelio's sister. They head back to where they saw the men taking the girl, and find a back way out of the cave, only to have Seig yell back that he saw more sparks flashing back towards them, denoting that more fuses were lit, and that they had to hurry to get out of the area. Not knowing exactly where the gunpowder barrels were hidden in this area, they decide to make a retreat back into the cave, and come back out from the other side and follow the men and girl. They just make it past the area where they had left all the hurt woman, when they hear and feel the explosion. It shakes them up a bit, but they are able to continue their way out, to get back to the horses, so that they can continue to chase down the ruffians.Once they get to the other side of the hill, Rowena is able to track down where the men had gone, though it was a bit tough through all the rubble the explosion had left in its wake. But after a bit, she finds carriage tracks on the edge of the rubble, and they follow it for a bit, until they find the carriage sitting empt by a dock into a small river. A quick debate and they decide to follow the flow of the river , figuring that the ruffians were using a boat and using the river to help speed them away. Not to long and they get sight of the boat, or at least the torches on the boat, since it is still dark out. Just when they can make out the shape, one of the torches waves down and up, and they hear a whistling sound, and the echo of cannon fire! The ball hits the area right in front of the horses, and Rebecca, who is riding double with Emelio, and Renee and Rowena who are doubled up, all fall off their horses, as they reared in startlement.Emelio looks down at Rebecca and yells "Stay here!" then kicks his horse into a run, heading straight for the boat. Leaping from the edge of the river, the horse lands on the boat, which is kind of a large barge type. But the horses momentum is too much, and the wood too slippery for him to get a good footing, and continues to slide down the barge and over the edge, taking out several of the men trying to reload the cannon, while Emelio jumps off before the horse falls off the barge.Seig decides to follow Emelio, and gets his horse running after him, but instead of leaping off the edge of the river, as Emelio's horse had done, Seig's horse breaks suddenly, not wanting to jump, sending Seig flying through the air, landing him on the edge of the barge, with his legs in the water, and the breath knocked out of him.Renee is still sorely wounded from the swordfight, and decides the best she can do, is to try to follow the boat on land, and heads off to do so, while Rowena had started taking shots at the men on the boat from a distance, and had gotten three of them by the time Renee had gotten up, and joins her, stopping occationally to shoot another arrow. Rebecca also got up, but grabbed Rowena's horse, the only one left, and mounted and headed off after Emelio and Seig, but only to follow from the edge of the river, and try to get ahead of the boat. She was not about to jump a horse over on to it! She makes it ahead, and gets off the horse, only to have some more men come out of the front of the boat and fire muskets at her, and she takes a couple of bullets, but manages to get to the overhang that she had seen ahead of the boat, on the river, and climbs up into a tree to wait for the boat to float underneath her.That is where we left off this evening.

--------------------------------------------------------------
Fate, a four letter word, with a lot of strings attached.
-------------------------------
"We Pay to Plunder!!"
-------------------------------
The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it.
Henry David Thoreau
--------------------------------
Do not mettle in the affairs of Dragons...for you are crunchy and tastey with ketchup.