Into the Wild

by Larry Correia

  While Cleasby signaled for more of his knights to cover those workers, Baron Wynn approached. It was obvious he wasn’t happy they’d been delayed again, but he was smart enough to realize his military escort wouldn’t have stopped without a good cause. “What do we do now, lieutenant?”

  “Hunker down and wait. Whatever it is probably won’t be ready for storm weapons. They can be rather terrifying if you’re on the receiving end—”

  CRACK BOOM!

  A storm glaive discharged in a blinding blue flash. The blast was deafening. Most of the expedition practically leapt out of their shoes at the impact or dove for cover, but the Storm Knights instinctively turned toward the noise while lowering their visors. Younger had fired at a tree ten feet from where Bevy had been hanging a lantern. The trunk had been blasted into smoking pulp, and the top half of the tree was missing. Though the needles were wet and green, the lower half of the tree had burst into flame. Bevy hit the ground. His helmet slowly lifted, swiveled back and forth, and then the Storm Knight leapt to his feet.

  The unexpected noise had made Cleasby’s ears ring, but he could hear Younger shout, “I had movement on the right! It was heading right for Bevy.”

  The two Storm Knights in the woods had dropped their lanterns and were waving their arms. “Cease fire! Cease fire!”

  “Are you all right?” Cleasby shouted.

  “Damn it, Younger. That was only an owl!” Bevy shouted. “It was a bloody bird!”

  Younger looked at his Lieutenant apologetically. “I didn’t know what it was, sir.”

  Cleasby’s initial reaction was to rip the private’s head off. Fire discipline was vital. A stray arc wouldn’t hurt a man in storm armor, but it would be devastating to any of the civilians in the way; however, he had ordered Younger to blast anything that came near those men. He’d have a talk with the private about target identification later, but right now he had a convoy to secure.

  When Caradoc closed his eyes, he could still see the glowing line. That bolt of lightning hadn’t come from the sky but rather from one of the Cygnar’s glowing swords. The one called Cleasby had not lied: the Cygnar had claimed the storm. Caradoc had heard rumors that their army had learned to harness lightning. Seeing proof of it with his own eyes was disquieting. The soldiers he’d fought before had been armed with swords and guns. This time, it seemed, the Cygnar had sent their elite. Their blasphemous technology was a pale imitation of nature’s true fury, but these soldiers were mightier than expected.

  Caradoc signaled for his hidden warriors to hold their positions. He had expected to harass and terrify the blue men tonight, to cull their weak, and to send the rest running back to their “civilization” in terror. They would know his fury, and he would water the mountain with their blood. How dare these intruders enter the holy place and pollute it with their filth. But now things had changed.

  Guto moved silently through the brush until he was close enough to communicate with Caradoc, but Caradoc already knew what he would say. The elder was going to urge caution. Without the element of surprise, they risked losing too many warriors.

  While on the hunt, they communicated with minimal language, using hand signals and a few hissed words. In this way, Caradoc conveyed, I will not let them pollute our sacred ground.

  Guto responded: If we die now, then none will stop them. Summon the rest of the tribe, then hunt them.

  Below them, the Cygnar were preparing themselves. Their leader was not physically strong, but he was proving to be clever. He’d sensed the ambush and thwarted their plan. Caradoc vowed to personally gut Cleasby for this insult. Guto waved for his attention.

  They are on our ground, Caradoc. Tomorrow they will see what became of their friends. Let them know fear. Let their fear gnaw at their guts. They are herd animals. They will hide in their corral. We will pick off those who stray, and when we are many, we will take them all.

  As much as Caradoc wanted to slaughter them now, the elder was right. So, he signaled for the warriors to fall back. He could not stop these wretched intruders from reaching their sacred ruins, but he would make sure they never left.

  Just before dawn, Lieutenant Cleasby awoke to a very grumpy camp. It was cold, wet, and miserable. It had begun drizzling halfway through the night. His Storm Knights had doubled up on watch, so they hadn’t slept much, and when they had, it had been inside their armor. No matter how much one trained for that, having to sleep in full gear was utter misery. Storm armor was insulated to keep them from being electrocuted while using their weapons, but that meant once moisture got inside, it tended to stay trapped there. Since he’d allowed no fires to be built inside the circle of wagons, once his team got damp, they stayed damp.

  It took a moment for Cleasby to realize he was lying in the mud. His sleeping position hadn’t been a puddle when his watch had ended a few hours before, but such was the nature of establishing an emergency camp in a really stupid position. He sat up and gathered his helmet and gauntlets. A smart soldier always put his kit in the same position so he could find it in a hurry, even in the dark. With a frown, he turned his helmet over and let the rainwater pour out of it.

  “Good morning, lieutenant,” Rains greeted him with far too much enthusiasm. The sergeant’s armor was covered in mud and pine needles. He handed Cleasby an opened ration tin with a spoon stuck in it. “Nothing new to report. How are you?”

  “Cold, wet, and aching. So no one came to massacre us, I take it?” He took the tin and shoveled some of the brown mush into his mouth. It was edible. When it came to military rations, Thorny made sure it was nothing but the best for the 6th—this potted meat probably contained very little retired cavalry horse.

  “We saw nothing at all. There was some grousing during the night about there never being any real threat at all, that we slept in this ditch for no reason, and if we’d pushed on as planned, we could’ve made it to the miner’s stockade and slept in comfort.”

  Cleasby wouldn’t have minded a warm cot himself, but Madigan had taught him that when a leader made a call, he had to stick with it and see it through. He spoke with his mouth full of food. “Who’s complaining?”

  “Sadly, no one I can punish with push-ups. Laborers, mostly, saying they signed up to dig holes, not sleep in them, but Raus is a no-nonsense type, and he won’t risk Horner not paying them. When that ogrun told them to quit their crying, they did.”

  “Wake the others. It’s time to move out. Even with this weather, it shouldn’t take us long to get to the dig site.”

  “Be thankful for the rain, Cleasby. It’ll keep Private Younger from burning the forest down should he be startled by any other owls.”

  “That poor bird never knew what hit it,” Cleasby muttered.

  The atmosphere of the expedition’s members was sullen, and Cleasby caught several hostile glares aimed in his direction. They saw the young lieutenant as the source of their uncomfortable night. Baron Wynn was eager to leave, and he only gave Cleasby a greeting of minimal politeness. Apparently the professor wasn’t pleased about the “unnecessary” delay either, but Cleasby chose not to let it get to him. It was more important to be safe than popular.

  The rain had tapered off, but the trees were cloaked in a mist so heavy it might as well have been fog. Or maybe they were so high up now these were actually clouds. It was hard to tell from inside them. Despite the poor visibility, Cleasby was still feeling much better with the sun up. Horner already had a work crew prepared to move the fallen tree, and that team was ready with axes, saws, and chains. Cleasby sent two Storm Knights to keep an eye on them. Three, if you counted Acosta, who had decided to follow them. Cleasby knew from the invasion that Acosta usually roamed wherever he liked, and giving the Ordsman orders was an exercise in futility.

  A few minutes after the crew started cutting, Acosta returned, holding a two-foot-long strip of bark. The mercenary seemed excited. He handed it to Cleasby without comment, so Cleasby took it and tried to determine what was interesting about it.


  “So you peeled this from a tree… I’m no ranger, Acosta. What am I looking at? Are these cuts?”

  “Yes, but your laborers did not lay a hand on that piece. It was already like that.”

  “Was the tree cut down then?” Cleasby couldn’t help but smile. He’d been vindicated. If it had been cut down, that meant someone had purposefully been trying to stop them. “I knew it. Someone took an axe to it.”

  “That is no axe, my friend.” Acosta opened his hand, splaying his fingers as widely as possible. Several inches beyond each fingertip were corresponding gashes. “I think those are claw marks from where several creatures held on as they tore the tree’s roots from the ground.”

  Cleasby’s smile slowly died.

  The miners’ camp was a welcome sight. It was a symbol of warm food and dry beds. The miners had even constructed a sturdy palisade wall. The logs were tall, thick, and sharpened to a point to keep out the local animals. The fort itself was located at the entrance to a rocky valley. The rough doors were open just a crack, as if inviting them in.

  Cleasby thought, Something is wrong.

  He shouted for the convoy to come to a halt.

  As the wagons stopped along the muddy trail, the professor called out, “Oh, what’s the hold up now, lieutenant?”

  It was hard to put a finger on it, but something about the fort wasn’t right. “I’ve got a bad feeling about this,” Cleasby muttered.

  Rains was standing next to him. “There’s no smoke. A cold morning like this, wouldn’t you have a fire going?”

  “It’s just too quiet.” There were supposed to be a dozen miners here, and Rathleagh had left a squad of hired guards. Neither group was the type to sleep in. Nervous because of the giant claw marks, Cleasby had had Pangborn walk Headhunter the rest of the way in, and a six-and-a-half ton warjack made quite a bit of noise. “They should have heard us coming.”

  “Cleasby!” Baron Wynn couldn’t hear their conversation, but that didn’t stop him from shouting from his seat on the lead wagon. “I appreciate your caution, but enough of this nonsense. We’ve got work to do!”

  “We’re going to check it out first,” Cleasby called back.

  Wynn demonstrated that he was remarkably spry for his age by hopping down from the wagon. The annoyed professor headed straight for Cleasby. “I picked you for this expedition because you appreciate the value of scholarly investigation. Risk is justified in the name of science. If I wanted to be coddled the whole time, I could have asked for anyone else in the entire army!”

  He needed to escape before Wynn caught up. “I’m going in.”

  “You’re the officer,” Rains said. “Let me do it.”

  “I’ve got it.” In truth, he didn’t want to stay here with an irritable noble and a bunch of surly academics. “I’m feeling expendable,” Cleasby said as he started toward the fort.

  Rains whistled and then gave hand signals for some of the other Storm Knights to form up on Cleasby. The rest would protect the expedition. Turning his helmet, Cleasby saw that Thorny and Allsop were following him. A moment later, Acosta decided to tag along as well. Poor Rains would have to deal with the impatient baron alone.

  The palisade logs were built tight, but there were enough gaps here and there for him to see through and get a glimpse of the bunkhouse and outbuildings—but there was no movement. The Storm Knights reached the wooden gate. Peeking through the opening, they could still see no signs of life.

  “Hello there!” Cleasby called. “Is anyone home?”

  “Bravo, sir,” Thorny said. “If it’s an ambush, that certainly put them off their game.”

  “Beats getting shot by accident by a jumpy mercenary.”

  Cleasby pushed the gate open. The hinges were rusty old things, probably salvaged from mining equipment, and they made a very loud creak in protest. The heavy chain used to secure it was useless, dangling from the inside. An open padlock lay in the mud.

  “Charge glaives.”

  Their group walked into the compound. The interior was bigger than Cleasby had thought it would be, but the miners had found such a rich strike that they’d likely erected the walls in anticipation of it becoming a much larger operation. The ground was soft and muddy; crates and supplies were stacked everywhere. They’d built a rough stable and a shed to keep their hay dry, but there was no sign of any animals. A few smaller outbuildings nearby were either just recently finished or still under construction. Valuable tools had been left on the ground to rust. A discarded boot stood alone in the middle of a shallow puddle.

  “Hey,” Allsop was standing next to the palisade. He pointed at a splintered hole that looked like a large caliber bullet hole. It struck Cleasby as odd: if they’d been attacked, he assumed the bullet holes would be on the outside of the fort.

  The biggest structure was the bunkhouse. Cleasby nodded toward it, and the Storm Knights approached, glaives ready. Acosta followed them: only the Ordsman hadn’t even bothered to ready his two swords. His visor was open, and he seemed slightly amused by the whole affair.

  Cleasby felt a growing sense of dread. Twenty men didn’t just disappear into thin air. Even if most of them were working at the ruins, someone would have remained here.

  The bunkhouse was basically a really big log cabin, but it looked like the miners had put in a lot of effort to make it sturdy. They’d had to because winter here would undoubtedly be brutal. There were windows, but nobody would send expensive, heavy glass panes out to a place like this, so the windows were covered in tarps for insulation. Cleasby carefully lifted one corner to peek inside, but from his angle, he could only see a couple of stools and a table. A cloud of flies came buzzing through the gap, followed by a terrible, putrid stench, so thick and pungent that it made him gag.

  A bad sign.

  Thorny went up the steps, looked to Cleasby for confirmation, and then tried the door. It wasn’t locked. He swept inside, ready for a fight, and Allsop rushed in behind him.

  Acosta was smiling. He had picked up the lone boot.

  “What’s so funny?” Cleasby demanded.

  “I don’t know what manner of horrible thing happened here yet, but I knew I was supposed to come along.”

  “I still hold onto some hope that your Lady is mistaken.”

  Acosta chuckled. “Doubtful.” He tossed the boot to Cleasby, who caught it with one gauntlet, flinched, and then dropped it when he realized there was still a foot inside.

  Thorny and Allsop came stumbling out of the bunkhouse. Thorny lurched to the side, opened his visor, and threw up.

  Allsop’s face was pale as a sheet. “You’d better see this, lieutenant. We found somebody, but it isn’t pretty.”

  Cleasby had seen a lot of horrors on the battlefield, and he’d found that the best way to bear the shock was to be as clinically detached as possible. He tried to look at scenes of carnage no differently than if he were taking a dissection exam at the university. After all, it was just the same bits and pieces; only these were rearranged, usually in a rather dynamic fashion. It was easy for him to tell himself that lie, and it helped get the job done, but it still didn’t completely stop the nightmares.

  Inside the bunkhouse, the smell was even worse. The blue glow of his sword provided sufficient light to see the single body inside, slumped in a chair—male, age indeterminate. His clothing suggested he had been one of Rathleagh’s mercenaries. From the state of decay, Cleasby guessed the man had been dead for at least a week, and that was the moment when Cleasby’s scientific detachment came in handy—the dead man was missing the top-half of his head, the contents of his skull decorating the surroundings. Judging by the scattergun on the floor and the pattern of holes and dried brains delicately splattered across the ceiling, it had been a suicide.

  Acosta entered and pulled away the tarps to let in some fresh air. He appeared to be as actually casual about the sight as Cleasby was pretending to be. “Well, this one’s got both feet, so that means at least two casualties. Or
perhaps only this one, and the other is still hopping about on one foot.”

  Trying to dismiss the carnage, Cleasby looked for any other clues as to what had happened here. Personal packs and clothing were still stored beneath the bunks. Some of the beds had been made while others were messy. Food stores and wine bottles were still in their places, undisturbed even by animals. Nothing appeared to have been rummaged through or stolen. There wasn’t even a sign of a fight inside the bunkhouse.

  Yet something had happened to cause everyone to go missing—mostly—and one fellow had blown his own head off over it.

  Cleasby had a sudden, compelling urge to be outside. “We’d best tell the others.”

  But the others hadn’t waited. As Cleasby walked down the steps, the first of the wagons was already rolling into the fort. Rains was waiting for him, looking rather apologetic. “I’m sorry. I told them to stay put, but the baron was eager to get to business. When there was no yelling or lightning from you, he demanded we proceed and said that I’d have to physically restrain him to keep him there.”

  Cleasby shook his head. “I’m surprised you didn’t.”

  “It was sorely tempting,” Rains muttered. “Nobles can be such entitled whiners.”

  “I heard that,” Thornbury complained. He was still leaning on the corner of the bunkhouse, his breakfast now at his feet. “I’m fine now. Thank you for asking. I’ve seen such things before, but it was just that ungodly stench that got to me. It was so thick, it was like being smacked in the face with a wet skunk.”

  Cleasby didn’t see the professor among those entering the fort. “Where’s Wynn?”

  “He was right…” Rains turned. Then he said something in Idrian that had to be profanity. There was no sign of Pickett either. “They were right behind me.”