by Nancy Osa
Everyone found something useful to do. A parade of passive mobs wandered through camp as the building progressed and the sun dipped in the sky. Frida, Stormie, and Turner played target practice with most of them, adding bits of pig, sheep, rabbit, and chicken to their collective inventory. Jools, clearly wanting to avoid Turner, helped Kim craft a corral for the mule and horses out in the tall grass. Rob and Judge Tome built pits for a few of the chickens and sheep that they would keep for their eggs and wool.
The three hunters had put away their swords for the day when a large grayish-white bunny with red eyes hopped across the clearing. It had been a long day for A Squadron, given the draining business in town and at the court-martial, and its members were slightly less sharp than usual. The fluffy mobster sized them up, then targeted the weakest as its prey.
Turner’s health bar had tapered after his near drowning and the mental stress of the trial. The killer bunny approached quickly, and before Turner could identify the threat, lunged to attack.
“Aaugh!” Turner collapsed in the grass.
Every available trooper heard the cry, but the closest was De Vries, who had walked off and left Crash drilling into the cliffside. Instantly, the builder became wolf, and the wolf engaged the rabid rabbit in a wild melee. Frida had retrieved her sword but knew that close combat with this cottontail could turn fatal fast. In any case, she could not tell where wolf ended and bunny began in the snarling, leaping, tumbling mass of fur.
It took several direct hits from De Vries’s wolf form to slay the mobster. By this time, everyone had gathered at a safe distance. They now crept forward, Kim to see to Turner, Crash to help her brother regain his skin, and Jools to collect the rabbit’s foot that the expiring animal dropped.
“Potion of leaping, anyone?” The quartermaster was excited to have found the rare brewing item.
“Something healing would be better,” said Kim, motioning for help in moving the unresponsive Turner.
Stormie knelt down to check his pulse. She indicated that it was steady but barely there. “The Killer Bunny of Caerbannog,” she whispered. “I’ve been all over the world and have never seen it strike before.” She approached De Vries, who was rebuttoning his safari jacket. “Are you all right?”
He seemed to take the fight in stride. “Toppie,” he replied in his musical manner, apparently unhurt. “I wouldn’t mind rabbit stew for dinner, though. I didn’t get a bite before it dissolved.”
*
De Vries was the toast of the table that night. Turner had been patched up and propped up long enough to taste some of the stew that Kim had prepared.
“Am I eating . . . whatever did this?” Turner asked, tenderly touching his wounded side.
They let him think so and watched his esteem for De Vries visibly build.
“So, how’s that shape-shifting work?” Turner asked, curious.
“Yes, have you always had that ability?” Jools wanted to know.
Crash nodded proudly and showed with her hand that they’d been able to shape-shift since they were pup high.
De Vries chuckled. “We used to play tricks on our teachers in school. They had no clue how wolves ended up at our desks.”
Crash mimed a whistle blower.
“Yes, they even called the police once to look for the missing children . . . us.”
“Not everyone tolerates wolves,” Judge Tome observed. “Have you had any close calls?”
Crash rolled her eyes.
“Too many to count,” said her brother.
Frida knew this meant they were experienced fighters, and she was impressed.
Rob was thinking that their reflexes would make them useful in emergencies. “Have you ever thought of joining the cavalry? As humans,” he added.
Crash consulted De Vries hopefully.
“We might.”
“Well, we have some training to do,” the captain said. Then he turned to Judge Tome. “Even though you’re an honorary corporal, it’s not right to expect you to join us when you’ve just retired. But now that we have some weapons and the makings of some ammunition, we should practice skirmishing techniques. You never know what we’ll come up against on the trail. Have you ever carried a weapon, Judge?”
The law officer’s eyes twinkled. “From time to time. I understand the need, Captain. If you’ll provide me a sidearm, I’ll learn to use it.”
So, they reserved the next two days for mounted and infantry drill. De Vries had built a watchtower with a balcony in the rock. When dusk fell, they dumped gravel and sand from above on the creepers and zombies that clustered at their door, improving their aim and suffocating the monsters for their drops. In between the more dangerous mob spawns, they dashed down to attack spiders for their string. When skeletons appeared, though, they sought safety indoors. De Vries and Crash offered to morph and chase them away, but Rob reckoned that their wolf forms had done enough for the battalion lately.
He was interested in gauging their skill with weapons when they assembled the next day at the area that had been cleared by the creepers’ sand-dampened explosions. Squadrons A and B demonstrated cavalry maneuvers on horseback first, with the goal of teaching the others transport and battle formations.
Once mounted, even Norma Jean, the mule, was amenable to walking, trotting, and cantering by file and by twos. With a little practice, they were all striding forward abreast in a phalanx—the mounted version of linking arms and trampling everything in their path.
When they paused for a breather, Crash socked Frida in the arm and gave her an enthusiastic grin.
“It is fun, isn’t it?” At least, it is in broad daylight, without any hostile mobs to worry about, Frida thought.
Rob must have read her mind. “Enjoy it while you can, troops! We’ll be practicing this by moonlight pretty soon. Then we’ll see how effective we are against the undead and pesky exploding creepers.”
It was time to throw weapons into the mix. “Turner! Arm C Squadron with our old swords and bows while Kim and I set up targets.”
Rob borrowed Kim’s golden earring for use as a bull’s-eye. He jabbed a sapling into the dirt at one end of the clearing and hung the gold hoop from it. The troopers were to gallop at the target from a ways off and run their sabers through the dangling band. Wool from their sheep had been wrapped around bales of dry grass and hung from several more saplings to mimic bodies to stab at. For bow practice, they would let loose a few captive rabbits to use as moving targets.
Crash went first. Frida was not surprised that her sword arm was both strong and true. It pierced the fake bodies and ran through the earring with single slashes. However, the miner’s aim had previously been focused on stationary blocks. She did not do as well with bow and arrow, managing to clip only one bunny on the ear, shooting from Roadrunner’s back.
“Practice that exercise from the ground for a while, Private Crash,” Rob advised.
Then De Vries tried his luck. He couldn’t skewer the earring on any pass, even when he slowed Velvet to a walk. It was almost embarrassing to watch him attack the woolen bodies, which he only managed to strike with his sword after he got off his horse and ran right up to them. His mind was better suited to geometry than ramming things with sharpened sticks. He excelled at estimating an arrow’s trajectory against gravity and wind forces. He nearly decimated their domestic rabbit population before Kim called him off.
“Good work, Private De Vries,” Frida encouraged him, making a mental note of his strengths and weaknesses. Now that she was a corporal, she might wind up giving him orders in a melee. If they got caught in hand-to-hand combat, he’d be a goner.
The judge was next up. He pulled his sword and clucked to Norma Jean. Away they sailed at the dangling gold ring. To everyone’s dismay, though, he could not skewer it. He gritted his teeth and came at the earring time and again, slicing the air nowhere near it.
“Never mind!” Jools called. “Try the body targets!”
Norma Jean gamely galloped right
at the stand-ins for zombie or griefer bodies that might need killing, but Judge Tome could do little more than scrape at them, when he hit them at all.
“Arm rigid!” Rob coached. “Look at Crash!”
She demonstrated a lunge with her pickaxe arm, but the judge’s limb had all the rigor of a wet noodle.
“Never mind, Judge,” Stormie said, handing him his bow and a few arrows. “You’ll do better with these.”
He did not. In fact, Stormie and Turner had to duck when his aim went completely awry and their last two bunnies hopped away to nibble on grass.
“Where’d ya learn to fight like that, Judge?” Turner needled him as he collected the weapons.
Judge Tome had no comeback. He appeared contrite but determined to give it another try later.
“You know,” Jools said, escorting him away from the drill field, “a lack of proficiency with weapons is not the worst thing on earth. I’ve found that one stays alive much longer if one never fights in the first place.”
Rob overheard him and glared.
“But . . . I’ve changed my tune somewhat recently,” Jools amended.
CHAPTER 8
WEAPONS, AMMO, AND ARMOR CRAFTING commenced the following day with enthusiasm, now that Turner had fully recovered from his rabbit attack. The whole battalion gathered outside the cliff dwelling and spread out to focus on their tasks. The arms expert instructed Judge Tome and Kim in bow construction, making sure they reinforced the compact bow bellies with plenty of spider string. Frida and Rob were allowed to craft arrows from the now-abundant feathers and other materials, subject to Turner’s approval. Projectiles that did not meet his standards were broken over his knee and the ingredients recycled for another try at perfection.
De Vries was put to work smelting the iron, gold, and diamond ore that Crash continued to unearth even as she stood otherwise idly by.
“Thank goodness we have a use for this stuff,” the builder said, busily manning the furnace. “Sometimes we have to just give it away, my knor of a sister stacks so much of it.”
Crash smiled sheepishly from beneath her yellow cap. Her route through camp on any given day could be traced by the jagged trenches that she notched with her restless pickaxe.
The ore became sword and axe blades and chest plates on De Vries’s crafting table, but he suggested approaching the village armorer in Spike City for additional pieces. “I’m no good at helmets or boots,” he admitted. “Ask me to build a cathedral, though, and it’s yours.”
Rob acknowledged his architectural prowess but posed the need for more practical structures. “We’re going to want dozens of chests and extra carts to carry Bluedog’s loot to the hills.”
Meanwhile, Jools toyed with his brewing ingredients. He made as much base potion as he could with the Nether wart Colonel M had given him. Then, he added rabbit’s foot, sugar, and various spider eyes to achieve distinct leaping, speed, poison, and weakness elixirs. He begged Stormie for some precious gunpowder to make splash bombs.
Stormie sighed with pleasure as she crafted and stacked blocks of TNT. “Just like old times,” she said to Frida, who sat nearby fletching arrows. Little by little, the famed adventurer and artillery specialist was amassing the components for TNT and a cannon. They would reserve these for their return to combat with Lady Craven and her mobs.
“You’re just a simple gal who likes to blow things up,” Frida joked. “Remember those fireworks you set off for us out in Bryce Mesa?”
Stormie recalled the display that had commemorated their first big victory over the griefer army. “Those were the days. Now TNT’s a luxury. Say, Captain,” she said, and Rob looked up from the arrow he was fumbling with. “I’d really like a stronghold to store my cannon parts and TNT when we ride off. No sense taking those with us and risking their loss.”
“De Vries?” Rob invited the builder to assume the chore.
“You bet!” He removed some iron bars from his inventory and paused in crafting armor to attend to the more appetizing job.
The burgeoning supply of weaponry gave the cavalry enough firepower to spend on mob target practice that evening. Rob ordered the troops out into the open with just some dirt chunks to use as bunkers for cover. He had them follow Turner’s lead in engaging the enemy—zombies and skeletons that spawned singly and in agitated bunches in the darkness.
Turner zigzagged across the grassy savanna, crouching here, slashing there, and taking out mobsters one or two at a time without getting hit himself. The others practiced and avoided significant damage, except for Crash and De Vries, who suffered some serious hits from baby zombies that they thought were too cute to attack. The light of the half moon, however, was not enough to facilitate sighting for the judge, who grazed the captain’s ear with a bad sword thrust. Stormie grabbed the poor marksman just in the nick of time to pull him from the range of a trio of skeletons that were acting much like a wolf pack in their tactics. While one advanced, the other two split up and circled around behind their victim, trying to surround him.
Crash recognized this approach and signaled her brother. They donned their wolf skins and gave chase, not letting up until the skeletons were nothing more than a pile of bones—which they then collected and buried out near the horse corral.
“Nice one!” Jools complimented the pair after they reverted to human form. “You gave those skellies what-for.”
“Sorta makes up for your sharp shootin’,” Turner taunted the judge, whose bow he had confiscated.
Judge Tome did not seem preoccupied with his slow learning curve. “Ulula cum lupis, cum quibus cupis,” he recited, then translated: “He who keeps company with wolves will soon learn to howl.”
*
The time came for A Squadron to begin collecting Bluedog’s payoffs. Rob insisted on joining them this time. Someone had to manage the packhorse, he said, leaving the others free to take the offensive or defensive, if there was trouble.
Jools saw right through that excuse. “Somebody’s got to keep Turner from pinching the profits.”
The mercenary recoiled. “That charge was never confirmed,” he blustered.
“Right . . . only by a judge and two eyewitnesses,” Jools said, turning on his heel and leaving the troopers to saddle their horses.
De Vries had crafted the cart that Rat would pull and the chests that would hold the loot bound for the syndicate boss. Rob harnessed the short-legged buckskin and tacked up Saber while the rest got mounted. Then they moved off in a southeasterly direction, toward a pumpkin patch in the flower forest. Rafe had told them only that the farmer had accepted the syndicate’s protection from griefers and owed a portion of the pumpkin harvest. Rob, Frida, and Stormie engaged in speculation about the farmer’s loyalties and ability to pay, but Turner did not. As he had counseled, the less they knew about a job, the better.
In familiar formation, the cavalry battalion set out across the savanna—Stormie astride Armor, Frida on Ocelot, and Turner on Duff. Captain Rob brought up the rear, riding Saber and leading little Rat and his cart behind them. A soft rain began to fall as they crossed briefly through the corner of a plains biome, where grass formed an ocean of green waves. Ocelot, Saber, and Rat must have had some training in restraint when it came to a free meal. Stormie and Turner had to play tug-of-war with Armor and Duff, though. The horses could see no reason why they shouldn’t grab for grass that tickled their noses as they went by.
Rob trotted his horses up alongside Frida, taking advantage of their time away from the main group to speak to her in confidence. “I’m happy with how the new recruits are working out so far. What’s your read on them, Frida?”
She consulted her mental file cabinet for the virtual profiles she kept on everyone she met. These must have been in alphabetical order. “Crash is about as straightforward as you can get,” she began. “Mainly because half of what people say is lies—they either lie to protect themselves or lie to make other folks feel better. So Crash basically cuts out the middle man and p
uts her cards on the table. If you can see her face, you know what she’s thinking.”
“I’ma play a few hands of poker with her, then,” Turner said, eavesdropping.
Stormie reined back to walk Armor beside him. “I’d say it’s better to channel her energy than to take advantage of her.”
“What about her brother?” Rob asked.
“I get good vibes from De Vries, too,” Frida continued.
Stormie agreed. “It’s nice to meet a man who builds things up instead of tearing them down,” she replied, glaring at Turner.
“Hey. It pays to think the worst until proven otherwise.”
In their situation, Frida couldn’t argue. “That may be so, Meat. But I like that each of those guys has a useful obsession. It keeps them out of trouble and keeps them from targeting any of our people. There’s just one thing that’s a little off. . . .”
“What’s that?” Rob asked.
“Why would they sign on with us? They seem competent enough to go it alone, especially with their wolf powers.”
“Maybe to hide?” Stormie offered.
“Maybe they see it as some sort of dude ranch vacation,” Rob surmised.
“I’ll bet that De Vries is aimin’ to dump his sister on us when he finds a suitable woman for himself,” Turner said.
Frida shook her head and looked at Stormie. “I think you’re on to something. There’s some reason they want to be under our wing.”
“Same reason we want them as cover?”
“Could be.”
Rob wasn’t schooled in deception. “Well, why don’t we just ask ’em?”
Turner rolled his eyes at Frida. “Newbie here don’t know much about poker, does he?”
“We don’t want to tip our hand,” she explained to Rob. “You’ve got to be very careful what you say when you’re not sure about a player’s motives.”
“Unless you want to die,” Turner put in.
The rain fell harder now as the clouds closed in. Frida tugged on a brown leather cap and watched heavy drops bounce off the pommel of Ocelot’s saddle into the sea of grass.