by Nancy Osa
“Amen, sister,” Turner said, clucking to Duff.
They found the farmer in the chicken coop, tossing seeds to his hens from a broken bucket. The bushy-haired man wore a threadbare shirt and pants and limped a bit. He raised a hand in greeting when he saw the squadron ride up.
“We’re here for Bluedog’s portion of your harvest,” Rob said, displaying the extortionist’s calling card.
The man looked as though he were about to cry. “I’ll have it for you . . . soon. Um, maybe next week. Drought took most of my grain.” He dropped his gaze to the ground where the chickens scratched for more seed.
“That ain’t the deal!” Turner burst out.
Rob cleared his throat. “We have our orders: two chests stacked full of wheat. That’s what we’ve come for.”
The farmer raked a hand through his hair. “I do have that much standing in the field . . . but iffen I give it to you, I’ll have nothing left to seed my next crop.”
Rob stared at him, obviously struck by his plight.
“That’s not our affair,” Frida stepped in. “Get to cutting it and stacking it in our wagon.”
“Hold on, Corporal.” Rob glanced around the farmyard at empty cow pens and a pile of broken tools. “Maybe we can accept something else in trade.”
Frida gritted her teeth. “I don’t think so, Captain. Ledger says wheat.”
Stormie smiled with good will. “How about some chickens? We could take those and call it square.”
The farmer wrung his hands. “That’s all I got to eat.”
“Well, then, we’ll have to cut your standing crop,” Frida said decisively. She pulled her iron sword to encourage him to hand it over.
The man’s face and shoulders fell, but he moved off to comply.
“Wait,” Rob said, dismounting. “Stand down, Corporal,” he ordered.
Frida’s eyes went wide. She didn’t move.
“I said, stand down!” Rob reached into his saddlebag and retrieved two emeralds. He put a hand on the farmer’s shoulder. “Here,” he said. “Truth is, we owe you these. We picked up your missing horses a while back, but we needed the animals for transport. I’m real sorry.”
Now Frida looked to Turner for help, but he just shook his head and nodded at the captain. The private was already on probation and could fall no further in rank. For once, he had to defer to Rob’s command.
Frida slowly put her sword away.
As they prepared to leave, Stormie reached into her supply for a stack of pork chops and tossed them to the unfortunate man.
“You, too?” Frida said between tightly pressed lips. “Do you know how this is going to sit with Bluedog?”
“I’ll take that as it comes,” Stormie retorted, getting back into Armor’s saddle. “Ever’body deserves to survive, don’t you think?”
*
The squadron returned with an empty cart and fewer supplies than they’d started out with. They would have to rely on their cut from the next train job to build up the war chest and restock in Spike City.
“Two steps forward, one step back,” Turner groused.
“More like three steps back,” Frida said. “I am not looking forward to telling Bluedog we got skunked.”
“That’s what commissioned officers is for,” Turner pointed out.
The captain called for another round of night target practice, since they’d be breaking camp and facing potential mob spawns on their way back north. The horses’ health had been optimized and rations inventoried. There was no excuse for leaving the explorers on the savanna. The three recruits were game to see the ocean, so they’d camp on the cold beach east of town and avoid the worst of the ice plains while Bluedog’s drop transpired.
That night, when the moaning, jittering, and skittering arose, Rob paired up troopers and sent Frida and Kim on the first run. They were to alternate covering each other’s back and splitting up to double-team the monsters while the others jotted down notes. Frida armed herself to the teeth and went at the wayward mobs with a vengeance.
As Kim backed her, the survivalist knelt and released dozens of volleys of arrows into the skeleton ranks. While they were still busy dying, she rose and tore across the field along the horse corral at a file of shuffling zombies. The mares and stallions stood watching as she held her repaired diamond sword steady as a rudder, simply carving her way down the line, from smallest baby zombie to biggest lumbering oaf.
“Hey, save some for me!” Kim complained as limbs dropped and bodies collapsed in half.
“Split up, troops!” came the command from the watchtower. Frida and Kim stationed themselves on either side of the drill field and rearmed as gangs of skeletons and zombies mushroomed in the center. Huge spiders scuttled among them.
Frida had literally worn out her diamond blade again on a dozen zombies. Now, she grasped a gold axe in one hand and an iron sword in the other. She weaved across the open space, dodging spiders and skeletons’ arrows handily and taking out zombies two at a time.
A chicken jockey bounced toward her. Sh-oop! She knocked the baby zombie high in the air with her axe, sliced the chicken’s legs off, and rearranged the pair—the remainder of the chicken riding the crawling baby zombie . . . for about ten seconds. Frida faded back and lit a TNT block with flint and steel. “Fire in the hole!” she cried, and lobbed it at them, destroying the rest of the nearby skeletons and spiders with the same charge.
The mobs were depleted, but Frida’s fury was not. She circled in the grass, searching for more targets and yelling, “You want a piece of me?” No more hostiles dared spawn.
Finally, she felt a hand on her elbow. She jerked away, but the hand grasped her more firmly and began pulling her toward the house. “It’s over, Frida,” Kim said in a small voice. “You got them all.”
Frida shook her head, looked around, and realized they were alone in the night, save for the bewildered horses at the fence.
“Is there something you’d like to talk about?” Kim asked tentatively.
“No!”
Frida stormed back into the cliff house to the cheers and applause from her battalion mates stationed on the watchtower balcony. With no enemies left to battle, Rob ordered the group downstairs to go fetch the useful drops.
“Dang. What got into her?” Stormie wondered.
“Who cares?” Turner bobbed his head in admiration. “She’s cute when she’s mad.”
CHAPTER 10
FRIDA SLIPPED AWAY AT DAWN THE NEXT MORNING to scout out the terrain ahead, which cooled her anger from the previous night slightly. She returned with a likely route in mind. Then the battalion mounted and rode off by threes in squadron formation. De Vries and Crash had recycled their building materials and given Stormie’s TNT vault an extra layer of cobblestone. Rob ordered Jools to stow half of their excess supplies and gems there, too, to fund their eventual return to battle with the griefers.
“Tell us some more about your campaign against Lady Craven,” De Vries prompted the veterans as they moved off toward the east.
“Yes,” said the judge. “The Overworld hasn’t had an organized army since the hostiles’ pitiful attempt to strike back after the First War.”
“Who led the rebels?” Rob asked.
“No one person,” Jools answered. “It didn’t even rate a full sequel. They called it War 1.5. It was all over in a few days.”
“But Lady Craven’s another story,” Stormie said. “She played second-in-line to Dr. Dirt for ages, biding her time until she could assume sole power.”
Turner grunted. “I ran into Dirt, his man, Legs, and Lady Craven from time to time when I was boundary hopping. They was taking advantage of late-night travelers by lining the borders with their minions. Got so I was havin’ to fight off mobs just to get to my next job.”
“So did I,” said Stormie and Jools together.
“Me, too,” Frida said. She waved at the other troopers. “Once we all met up by accident, we put two and two together. The griefers were
clearly out to sweep through the whole Overworld, one boundary at a time.”
She recalled the moment when she realized what was going on and resolved to fight back, a drive that had consumed her—and consumed her friends, as well. “Most folks who kept to one or two biomes didn’t notice or didn’t know what was going on.”
Crash pointed to herself and her brother.
“That’s us,” De Vries said. “I think everybody learned the hard way not to try to cross borders at night. Pretty soon, daytime travel seemed just as uncertain. That’s why we were looking for a chaperone.”
“I got wind of the trouble by what I didn’t see,” Judge Tome responded. “Although I’d heard of boundary attacks and pillaging, I wasn’t seeing any of the boss griefers in my courtroom. Just the unaffiliated, small-time crooks. I knew somebody big was being protected.” He turned to Kim. “What about you, Corporal? How did you get wrapped up in this noble quest?”
“It was . . . personal,” she said bitterly. “Dr. Dirt rustled some of my horses and turned them into equine zombies.” The horrific affair came sailing back to her. “We attacked the skeleton jockeys without even knowing they were mounted on my herd. By the time we found out”—her voice shrank to a whisper—“it was too late.”
“If it weren’t for Colonel M,” Rob added, “we’d never have been able to save the zombied horses Dr. Dirt left back at Kim’s ranch.”
“But how do the griefers enlist the hostile mobs?” De Vries asked. “Skeletons and zombies aren’t known for their loyalty.”
“Enchantments,” Stormie supplied.
“Some kind of magic that even I don’t comprehend,” said Jools. “All I know is, it can be used for good or evil.”
Rob spoke up. “That’s right. We saw Colonel M use his powers to tame the wither skeletons. They’ll do whatever he says. And he managed to undo the zombie curse on Kim’s horses. The colonel is a good man.”
“What I don’t understand,” De Vries continued, “is how the hostiles can tell the griefers apart from the rest of us.”
Frida knew the answer, but said nothing. The identifying medallion that warded off the mobs lay buried deep in her inventory. If it fell into the wrong hands, there was no telling what might happen.
“Mebbe it’s based on handsome,” Turner mused. “Not a one in that griefer crowd is as good-lookin’ as me. And they just won’t leave me alone.”
“If that’s the case, then we know intelligence isn’t a factor,” Jools said wryly, then he grew serious again. “There’s one thing we do know that works on them, and that’s subterfuge.”
“Yep,” Stormie said. “Frida, here, was able to trick them into thinking she was a griefer type. She pretended to fall in with their gang and managed to lay some traps before our last big battle.”
“You know . . .” Jools said, his mental wheels turning, “what we need is someone else who appears innocent enough to get in close. Close enough to help us take Lady Craven out.” He turned in his saddle and gave the judge a meaningful stare.
“Don’t look at me. Those griefers have powerful magic and no respect for the law.”
Jools thought a moment. “But they might not notice a couple of neutral wolves.” He glanced at De Vries, who rode next to him on Velvet. The builder turned around and eyed his sister.
Crash whirled her pickaxe atop Roadrunner, causing Nightwind to sidestep out of reach on her right. Kim legged him back into line.
“You don’t have to decide right away,” Rob said from his post on Saber at the rear. “Think about it.”
They rode on, crossing into the cold taiga, where the landscape seemed to chill the conversation. A recent snowfall had coated everything with a sparkling white fairy dust. The low terraces resembled frosted layer cakes, and flowers poked from the ground like sugar-coated lollipops. All the troopers could hear were the crunch of hooves on snowy ice and the sound of Rat’s cart wheels bumping over the blocks.
At the edge of the taiga they stopped for a quick snack, then turned northward along the cold beach that their vanguard had scouted. Snow-covered sand stretched across the wide swath in every direction. The air smelled of frost, but not salt water.
Crash got Frida’s attention and moved her rein hand up and down like waves.
“We won’t see the ocean until we make camp,” Frida announced. “This beach narrows down, off toward Spike City. We’ll have a waterfront campsite for you folks to explore while we’re away on business with Bluedog.”
Mentioning the syndicate boss’s name set her on edge. How were they going to explain bringing only half of the pumpkins and none of the wheat they’d been sent to collect? More importantly, what would Bluedog do about it?
*
Night was coming on when they finished their long trek up the beach. As Frida had foretold, the wide shore narrowed, and the ice plains spread out from the west. An ocean stretched toward the eastern horizon, its blue waters rapidly deepening to purple-black in the fading light.
“Brings back memories, huh, Newbie?” Turner asked Rob, referring to the cowboy’s entrance into the Overworld not so long before.
Frida glanced over her shoulder. The sight of the sea had made Rob halt Saber and Rat. He stared at the water, seemingly paralyzed by his emotions. Frida was sure he couldn’t help but recall his fall from the airplane into the waves on his first day. Both she and Turner had been impressed with his ability to survive and make it to shore near the jungle biome, where Frida had found him—alone, hungry, and vulnerable.
He’s come a long way since then, she thought. But that doesn’t make him hardcore. His handling of their recent jobs showed weakness. If Bluedog or Lady Craven got a taste of that, he and his troops were dead meat. Although his gentleness and caring had once drawn her to him, those very traits now put her and her cavalry mates in danger. How could she change the cowboy’s fundamental nature?
“Chop, chop!” Jools called, jarring Frida out of her daydream. “We’ve got to make shelter before the ice zombies come out.”
The surrounding snow and frozen blocks called for another of De Vries’s shelter designs, which used the landscape to advantage. Before the others had finished seeing to the horses, Crash had tossed Roadrunner’s reins to Frida and begun excavating a glorified igloo.
A snow house may not have felt as secure as those made of more solid blocks, but it was as soundproof. Nobody knew whether mobs roamed the area until the next morning, when the prints of a lone creeper showed that it had wandered off as the players remained warm inside.
At dawn, A Squadron, plus the battalion captain and the packhorse, headed toward the ice plains, leaving the rest of their party to investigate the oceanfront. The riders would skirt the city on their way to the weekly rendezvous with Bluedog and Mad Jack.
Frida had pondered the situation overnight. She wouldn’t abandon the task she’d signed on for . . . but she didn’t know whether she could trust Rob to conduct himself safely. Not only did they have to make up for the short payload, they had to perform another successful run up and down the extreme hills with the supply train and its talkative driver. Frida appealed to Turner to take the captain aside and lay out the don’t ask, don’t tell rules in his forceful style.
At least, we’ll be armed if things get ugly, she thought. The rest of their crew and their supplies would be securely out of sight and maybe out of mind. Frida didn’t know how much Rafe had told Bluedog about the battalion’s actions, apart from what she’d felt comfortable relaying. Her brother likely had ears all over the city, but perhaps not beyond it. He was a villager, not a griefer, after all.
The meeting with the syndicate boss would be as dicey as their jaunt through the recent thunderstorm. Frida wondered how close lightning would strike.
“Let me do the talking,” Turner said to the captain as they approached the boundary between the ice plains and extreme hills. “And put on your tough skin,” he instructed. “We need these here jobs.”
“We’ve got to
convince Bluedog all over again that we can come through for him,” Stormie added.
Took the words right out of my mouth, Frida thought.
The horses seemed to step more carefully and the wheels of Rat’s cart to squeak more insistently as they neared Bluedog’s Nether portal.
Stormie, riding up front, peered at the foliage lining the edge of the extreme hills. She soon spied the minecart tracks and then the frame of the Nether portal. “There it is!”
Bluedog stood waiting, tapping his blue-and-white striped foot impatiently. Beside him, the box of captive silverfish was hidden under its woolen sheet, like a birdcage covered to help a canary sleep. But Frida could hear the mob clicking and buzzing within, and she cringed.
Bluedog surveyed the cart that Rat had hauled such a long way. He narrowed his already beady eyes. “One chest! Where’s the rest?” he demanded.
Rob opened his mouth to answer, but Turner cut him off. “Scattered from here to kingdom come. We had it all loaded and locked down when we run into a lightning storm. Lost all but the one chest.”
“So . . . you failed,” Bluedog concluded ominously.
Turner didn’t falter. “Act o’ God.” He cocked his head as though daring the extortionist to challenge Fate.
Bluedog’s facial stripes turned purple. “I pay you to get around such difficulties.”
“We can’t control the weather,” Rob pointed out.
Frida held her breath.
“That’s your problem! We had an arrangement.” Bluedog pulled the sheet off the cage of silverfish, jolting them awake. The ill-tempered, eight-legged mobsters increased their warning sounds. “If you don’t want your lives to end in an endless stream of silverfish,” he warned, “you’d better make the next pickup count. I want to see a full herd of cattle here this time next week.”
They were to collect payment from a ranch on the far mesa, which gave them seven days to make the lengthy round trip.
“Meanwhile . . .” Bluedog stroked the top of the cage. “I’ll dock your wages today by half.”
Turner appeared to accept those terms reluctantly. “Where’s our advance?”