Table of Contents – (spoilers)
The ride to the outpost from the squad’s slaughter of the ambuscade was uneventful. With the bandits’ warhorn having been sounded, the farms they passed were all locked up tight.
The trading post was just a small log cabin, which was shuttered. The military outpost was a bigger log longhouse with a lean-to stable on one side. There were no horses in residence, and it too was locked up. The road, which really had been little more than a cart track worn into the dirt, continued northwest up the ravine as a trail. However, the flanking hills that way pressed in and the little open ground that there was looked marshy.
The squad reined up fifty meters from the two buildings. Choke stayed mounted as everyone else dismounted and unlimbered their bows. All was quiet.
“Okay. Now what?” Pinch asked.
“Five soldiers here, usually, you say?” Choke asked Gabe.
“Yes, sir.”
“So bandits from the wild descend from the hills en masse, blowing their warhorn, and Bitina’s finest hide in their hut like a bunch of peasant women!” Choke bellowed at the longhouse. “Shameful!”
“Okay, so what’s up that way?” Peep asked Gabe, pointing further up the creek.
“That gets wetter and wetter for the next few clicks. There’s some trails and blinds. Good duck hunting. If we cross the crick here, there’s a good trail that heads to the lumber camps on the hump between the cricks,” Gabe said pointing northeast. Then he gestured south: “up the hill that way there’s a mess of trails that wind all through them hills. There’s plenty of hunting camps and little cabins all through there.”
“Good. Okay, so here’s the plan,” Peep said. “We head up the trail into the marshland there. Any luck, and they’ll think the dogs rattled us and we’re heading in there to lose them. First good spot, we set up an ambush.”
“Assuming there isn’t already one there waiting for us,” Pinch interjected.
“Right. Good point. If there is, we take that out. Then use the spot ourselves. We hit whoever follows and fade quick up into the hills before anyone can work to flank. That’s the deal now. Hit and fade. Hit and fade. We do not get stuck in. We got nothing but bush to retreat into around here, and the gobos have all fucked off. We keep that up until they give up chasing us,” Peep said.
“And then, ma’am?” Gabe asked.
“Then we start chasing them!” Peep said with a grin. “Okay?” she asked Choke, Pinch, and Knuckle.
“Sounds good,” Choke said.
“Sweet,” Peep said. “Now, we’ve got a minute here, so let’s be careful heading up into that fuckin swamp there. That aint thunder run turf. So we’ll head in there with some creep.”
“We have the time for that?” Choke asked.
“We should. They got dogs, which can keep up to horses on a short haul, but not for long. And with these being bushrats, not one in ten of them will have horses, and those that do probably aint gonna be worth a shit. And any that are mounted aren’t gonna want to get too far ahead of the main bunch. Not with the message we left for them back at the farm,” Peep said.
“Fuckin A,” Knuckle said proudly.
“Alright, let’s do it,” Choke said.
Peep and the others mounted up. As they did, she held up her hand and said:
“Hold up. Let’s plant a seed here with the soldiers.” She then took a deep breath and hollered at the top of her lungs: “For fuck sakes, Choke! We gotta lose them hounds if we wanna get back to town alive! Let’s go!”
The squad headed up the trail into the marshy stretch of Cowslip Holler. This time they went at a trot, with Peep and Pinch out in front. They had only gone a few hundred meters before they reached the first potential ambush spot where the trail cut in close to the forested hill, which rose up in a steep bank for a few meters to a stand of evergreens perfect for a blind.
Now just out of sight of the outpost, Peep signaled a halt when they were still fifty meters from the spot. She dismounted and handed her reins to Pinch and slipped off the trail through the bush to the forest. Taking her time, she worked her way into the trees and up the slope to flank the site. It was unoccupied. While there was no blind there, the trees functioned very well as a natural one. Anyone here would be hidden from the trail and have a perfect view of it. With her warbow in hand, Peep would have no trouble killing any of her squad mates waiting for her out on the trail.
Peep poked around for another minute until she found a game trail heading up the hill, just large enough for the horses. Then she came back out the same way she had gone in.
“It’s perfect!” she declared as she mounted up. “Let’s push on and then loop back. The dogs’ll be trailing the horses.”
The squad rode on another ways until they reached a good spot to cut off into the forest. Then they dismounted and worked their way carefully back to the ambush spot. By this time the barking and baying of the dogs was again audible, meaning they were at the outpost, or just about there.
While Choke and Knuckle set up behind trees with their longbows, Peep, Pinch, and Gabe took the horses up to the game trail and tethered them in line.
“D’ye know this turf?” Peep asked Gabe quietly, gesturing up the trail.
“Not well, ma’am. But I’m sure this’ll work its way up and over and into all the bigger hunting trails to the south. All these game trails do, one way or another.”
“Good. Okay, yar here up front with my horse. Watch for anything coming down at us. Whistle the alarm,” Peep said.
“What? Oh, come on!” hissed Gabe. “I wanna be on ambush!”
“Yeah? And I want a pouch full of gold for a pillow. So the fuck what? Yar watching our back and protecting the horses. Ye think that aint important? Smarten up and do as yar told,” Peep snapped. She then pointed out a good spot behind a bigger tree. “Set up there with yar bow, and if we’re really unlucky, maybe ye’ll get a chance to ambush somebody.”
Pinch gave Gabe a friendly slap on the shoulder to send him up to his spot. Then he and Peep moved down to join Choke and Knuckle. By this time the sound of the dogs approaching was getting louder. From her position on their right flank to the southeast, from where their targets would be approaching, Peep gave the lads her final instructions:
“Them dogs are on leashes, or else they’d be on us already. When they come, hit the handlers. They’re the ones that know how to run em. Then, if the dogs are attack ones, they’ll run up here. Knuckle and Choke, ye take them out with blades. Right? I’ll try to pick off any leaders. Then, when they try to flank us to our right, where I came in the first time, I’ll smoke them while ye guys bug out. We hit em and we move quick. No getting stuck in. Right?”
Choke, Knuckle, and Pinch all nodded grimly. Then all four of them settled into their spots to manage their rising nerves as they waited.
On the bandits came, with the dog handlers leading the way. The first had a pair of bloodhounds on long leads that were making most of the noise. Another fellow just behind had three, big attack dogs on short leashes. Right behind them was about a dozen men on foot, most with roundshields and spears. At the rear were four horsemen on little bush horses. Two of them had small roundshields and spears, and two had shortbows unlimbered.
When the lead dog hander’s bloodhounds reached the point on the trail where Peep had left into the bush, one of them veered off and indicated the spot with a long howl. The handler raised his arm to halt the bandits as he moved over to have a close look at the undergrowth.
Knuckle shot at the lead dog handler, and just missed. In the split second before Knuckle’s arrow passed the target, Choke shot at him and hit him high in the torso. For her target, Peep chose the lead mounted bowman, who seemed to have the nicest horse. She hit him center mass and dropped him. Pinch waited just a second before shooting at the second dog handler with the attack dogs. He grazed the man as he dove sideways, releasing his dogs as he did.
By the time Peep and Pinch, who were the fastest archers, had notched their second arrows, the bandits had scattered. Those on foot dropped into the bush either side of the trail with their shields raised, while the three remaining horsemen wheeled and galloped back a ways to veer off into the bush.
The two bloodhounds came baying through the bush on Peep’s trail up to the ambush spot, with the three big attack dogs hot on their heels. With a curse, Peep moved from her position to meet them head on.
Both Knuckle and Choke shot at bandits at the side of the trail, managing only to clip a shield with one of their arrows. Even so, this kept them pinned down. Pinch held his shot and was rewarded for his patience when a shortbowman popped up to shoot. He read the man’s move perfectly and took him through the throat with his hunting arrow.
Crouched low beside a tree, warbow in hand with an arrow notched and held in place with string tension, Peep waited until the dogs were right in her face before she acted. The two bloodhounds stopped a few meters from her to howl and bay, as they were trained to do. However, the three attack dogs, that were as much timber wolves as dogs, came straight at Peep, set to tear her to shreds.
“Stron!” Peep screamed as she thrust her right palm towards them.
Stron’s holy fire jetted out in a three-meter plume that engulfed the three attack dogs. They screamed and yelped in agony and terror as they were lit up. Two recoiled and then collapsed as Peep kept the plume on them for the several seconds it lasted. The third ran off into the bush, somewhat less burned, but shrieking as it went.
The two hounds wanted no part of this and tucked tail to run. Peep stood up and shot one with her bow, felling it with an awful yelp. The other made good its escape.
“Bug out! Move!” Peep yelled back at the boys. She spared a moment to draw her shortsword to finish off the two horribly burned dogs. As she did, she heard the sound of horses moving through the bush to the south, heading up the hill.
“Horses flanking!” she yelled as she ran back up to their ambush spot.
Choke, Knuckle, and Pinch were already gone up to the game trail. Out on the main trail, the footmen had their heads up and were retreating behind their raised shields. Peep paused to snap a shot at one of the nearest ones and was able to put her needle bodkin arrow straight through his thigh. Then she was off, following the lads up the trail.
The boys were all mounted and waiting for her on the game trail. With Knuckle and Choke being the best ground fighters, and incapable of shooting their bows from horseback, they were at the rear. Choke was last in line and Knuckle second-last. Gabe was next, in the middle, with Pinch behind Peep’s horse in the lead. Peep ran up the trail through their horses and mounted up. She slipped her Scythan bow into its saddle case and drew her heavy shortbow from her back as she started up the trail.
Being mounted on full-sized horses on a game trail, they could not ride quickly. Even so, they were on their way up the hill through the forest before the yelping, squealing, and crying of the injured men and dogs had begun to fade.
About halfway up the hill, the grade of the slope flattened out and the trail they were on branched. The forest here was less dense and the view opened up. Peep was the first to clear the thicker bush. She did not see the horseman waiting in ambush for them. At a range of about sixty meters on their left flank to the south, he was mounted behind a little rise that hid his horse from view. As well, there was a big bushy spruce between his position and where Peep emerged from the bush on the game trail. By leaning back in the saddle, the man could stay out of view behind the spruce, and could lean forward to peek or shoot around it. Clearly, he knew the terrain well and had picked the perfect spot.
The horseman’s hunting arrow took Peep high in the left bicep, piercing it cleanly.
Peep grunted in pain and rolled out of the saddle and into the bush beside the trail, involuntarily dropping her shortbow as she did.
The horseman’s second arrow hit her horse high in the shoulder, just below the withers in front of the saddle. The horse reared and screamed, and bolted up the trail. On the ground, Peep was able to keep a grip of the reins with her right hand and was dragged up the trail a little, wrenching her mount’s head around to bring it to a halt.
Next in line, Pinch saw where the second shot came from, but did not have an angle on the shooter behind the spruce. Even so, he snapped a shot up that way to put the fellow on notice that his spot would not long be uncontested. Keeping low in the saddle with an arrow notched and ready to shoot, Pinch nudged his horse a little up the south fork in the trail.
“Gabe! My horse!” Peep barked as her horse continued to prance and buck as much as her tight hold on the reins would allow. It had stepped on her at least once by the time Gabe had managed to dismount and move ahead to get a hold of its bridle.
The horseman behind the spruce wheeled back away from the squad, visible just a second to Pinch as he retreated. A few seconds later, from behind the rise, three strident blasts of the warhorn proclaimed to all around: “They are here!” This was repeated just as soon as the horner could draw the breath to do it.
With Gabe holding her horse and working to calm it, Peep rolled away and gripped her arm tight. The wide-headed hunting arrow had gone straight through her left bicep, cleanly transfixing her arm.
“Stron, heal me,” Peep murmured. She grunted in pain as the divine healing snapped off the rear off the arrow flush with the entrance wound, and pushed the front half of the arrow out the exit wound.
“Thank you for this blessing, Stron,” Peep said as she flexed her arm to check that it was, indeed, fully healed.
Peep scampered back to the trail to pick up her dropped short bow and moved past Pinch on the south fork of the trail. Then she broke off in a sprint down the trail towards the little rise the horseman had shot her from.
Knuckle and Choke had reached the fork of the trail and dismounted.
“Fuck,” Choke said as Peep ran by them. “Pinch. Back her up! Gabe! The horses!”
Choke and Knuckle both unlimbered their longbows from their saddle cases and took up position at the top of the game trail. They kept most of their attention down the trail, where the sound of the bandits on foot moving through the bush could now be heard.
Gabe cursed and tied Peep’s stallion’s reins off to the nearest tree. Trusting his own horse not to go anywhere without him, he moved back and set about handling Choke and Knuckle’s mounts.
Peep sprinted over the little rise on the game trail, running as fast on its uneven ground as she could have over an open track. Pinch followed her on horseback.
Coming over the rise, Peep spotted the three horseman from the group they had ambushed. They were together on the trail at another fork about thirty meters ahead of her. The bowman was closest to her, mounted and keeping an eye on the trail. Behind him were the two light lancers, one of whom had the warhorn.
Peep and the bowman each shot each other in the same instant. It was their kit that made the difference in the exchange. The bandit’s hunting arrow hit Peep square in the chest, but her brigandine armor turned it away easily. However, Munn’s custom, truncated war arrow from his heavy shortbow punched straight through the chest of the bowman’s leather armor. The bandit slid from the saddle with a gasp and gurgled his death rattle from the forest floor.
Behind the bowman, the lancers spurred their mounts and came single file up the trail straight at Peep and Pinch, the latter of whom had just come over the rise. Peep juked sideways off the trail and into the bush behind a tree as she dropped her shortbow to activate her forceshield ring. The lead lancer veered off the trail to spear Peep as he reined up. His attack was perfect, and would have gone straight through her neck, were it not for the invisible forceshield she had raised to deflect it aside.
The second lancer barely slowed as he came around his fellow and straight for Pinch. On horseback, with a bow in hand, Pinch was no horse archer, and he knew it. Faced with a light lancer bearing down on him, Pinch ducked down low and slid from the saddle as he wheeled his horse, putting his mount between himself and his foe.
The lancer did not hesitate, and plunged his spear deep into Pinch’s horse’s side, just behind its shoulder in a perfect kill. With his spear stuck deep inside Pinch’s horse, the bandit drew his battleaxe as he dismounted. Pinch stepped back from his dying, thrashing horse and drew his shortsword to face the man, cursing that he had left his buckler shield on his saddle to make his bow work easier.
Back at Peep’s tree, the first lancer wheeled his horse and took another stab at Peep with his spear, which she again blocked with her forceshield. However, shield or no, Peep would have been in real trouble, on foot with a shortsword facing a mounted opponent with a reach weapon. However, she still had other means at her disposal.
“Stron! Burn this motherfucker!” Peep shouted as she thrust her Wheel brand up towards the horseman.
The man’s screams were cut short as he quickly took in a lungful of the holy fire and collapsed from the saddle to asphyxiate.
The rider facing Pinch had chosen to dismount, confident that his mate would have no trouble with Peep. His biggest worry had been getting around Pinch’s dying horse to engage him. When Peep lit up his mate, however, the bandit turned her way in alarm.
Standing back from his horse with his shortsword, Pinch still had his hunting bow in his left hand. When the bandit turned away to behold his friend’s immolation, Pinch dropped his shortsword, pulled an arrow, and shot the man through his neck.
In her burning of the bandit, Peep had managed to avoid burning the horse by keeping the plume of fire focused around the bandit’s head. This had badly singed the tree behind him, but it was later spring and things were green and the fire did not take hold. Peep picked up her bow and jumped into the bandit’s saddle as he vacated it, leaving him to wheeze and gurgle his way to Altas’ judgement. The horse pranced and bucked a little, but she soon settled it down. By the time she had, Pinch had finished grabbing what he needed from his dead horse’s saddle and was mounting the other bandit’s horse.
Back at the top of their original game trail, Knuckle and Choke kept watch with their longbows while Gabe got all their horses set in line on the western fork of the trail. Peep and Pinch had not been gone for seconds before the bandits on foot began appearing up the trail. The grade up from the hollow was steep and the bush around it was tight, almost a thicket. This meant the bandits chasing the call of the horn had to come up the game trail single file.
However, the men were no fools or cowards, and there was the better part of a dozen of them, so come up they did. Leading the way came spearmen with their full roundshields raised high in front of them. Up above them, to either side of the trail where it opened up into the flatter, open area, Choke and Knuckle both shot at the first bandit to come. Both their arrows struck his upraised shield and he quickened his jog up the trail.
“Cover me, Choke,” Knuckle said with a wide grin as he dropped his longbow and drew his warhammer.
Knuckle’s close quarters weapon was a brutal thing that might be called warpick or hammer, depending on which side of its double head was in use. On a stout, forty-centimeter hardwood handle, the head had long, iron support braces down each side of the handle. One side of the head was a hammer, with a wide square face that came to four raised points at each corner, the better to grip mail or other armor and focus the blow. Reverse of the hammer was the pick: a wide, fifteen-centimeter claw like an eagle talon, designed to punch straight through any sort of armor. Against his foes this day, wearing nothing heavier than leather armor, if even that, Knuckle would be using the hammer, so as not to get his weapon stuck in any of them.
When the lead bandit was just a few meters away, breathing heavily from the hard climb up the bank and then the hill, Knuckle threw himself down the trail at him.
With his shield raised high above him to protect from the arrows he expected, the spearman did not see Knuckle coming. Knuckle brought his warhammer down in a two-handed, overhead swing, right in the middle of the roundshield’s center boss that covered the shield’s handle. Sad it was for the spearman that his shield’s boss was made of hard-cured leather instead of iron, for it crumpled. His hand was smashed behind the boss as his wrist and forearm were broken from the sheer force of the blow.
With the spearman’s shield driven low, Knuckle thrust his warhammer straight into his face in a one-handed lunge, hitting him with the weapon’s square, iron cap atop the handle. Then, as the man fell back, Knuckle delivered him a hard hammer blow to the side of his knee, crushing the joint completely.
The spearman directly behind Knuckle’s first victim was now, of course, all too aware of what was happening. He squared up behind his shield properly and thrust his spear into Knuckle’s side. A powerful spear thrust delivered straight will penetrate mail, but the man’s attack was not this. The thrust was not powerful, and Knuckle was able to roll with it so that the spear point glanced off his left side. As it did, with his free left hand, Knuckle grabbed the spear shaft and yanked it towards himself. This pulled the spearman’s right arm well out in front of him as it threw him off balance. With an overhead swing, Knuckle smashed his arm just above his leather bracer and folded his forearm in two with a horrible compound fracture.
Down the trail in front of Knuckle, four more spearmen were visible before the trail curved out of sight. With their fellows’ anguished screams rising, they were frozen for an instant, looking over their shield rims up at Knuckle in horror.
With the spear still in his left hand, Knuckle twirled it into a throwing grip and heaved it at the next man’s shield. It was an off-hand throw for him, and Knuckle was no great spear thrower to begin with, but it caused the man to flinch behind his shield as the spear clattered harmlessly off of it. The flinch was all Knuckle needed. He half jumped and half skipped the two strides down to the man and crashed into his upraised shield. As the two fell, Knuckle grabbed the rim of the bandit’s roundshield with his free hand and yanked it downwards as he swung his hammer hard overtop of it. Knuckle’s blow connected smartly with the bandit’s helmetless head and smashed it open, splattering blood, scalp, skull, and brains across the new green leaves of the flanking bushes.
The bandits further down might have been in a position to take advantage of Knuckle, now that he was on his ass just in front of them, but they were no longer in the mood to test their luck. The three that were visible retreated. Choke took a shot at the middle one as he exposed his flank to turn and run, but missed.
Getting back to his feet, Knuckle very much looked as though he was going to chase the bandits back down the hill. Choke whistled sharply to get his attention.
“Knuckle! Back to me!” he barked when Knuckle glanced up at him.
Knuckle blinked for a second as he wrestled his senses out of the killing fog of his mind. Then he nodded in recognition of the order and jogged back up the trail. He paused at both of the men he had broken on the way down, and put an end to their agonized screams and groans with a hard hammer blow to each of their heads.
Knuckle rejoined Choke just as Peep and Pinch came riding back over the rise to the south. It took only a few seconds for Pinch to secure his saddlebags and quivers to his new saddle. While he did this, Peep handed the reins of her new little bandit horse to Gabe and checked that her chestnut stallion was fit to ride. The arrow in his shoulder had not gone deep, so Peep snapped it off a few centimeters up the shaft from the wound. Then she mounted up and they rode on up the western fork of the trail, heading for the crest of the hill.
Muse Vassal 