by RW Krpoun
“But the Red Dragon hates us generally,” Derek pointed out. “If we had night vision I would say wait until dark and then boogie.”
“Don’t have that spell. I will when we level up,” Shad noted. “Our animals complicate things-we can’t just rappel down the wall.”
“I bet a lot of enemies of the people are trying to bug out right now,” Jeff said, idly smoothing the wrinkles in his clean shirt.
“We’re pretty beat up and the kids are tired,” Shad decided. “We rest, level up, and first thing at dawn I’ll take the kids and recon possible escape routes.”
“You really don’t get your class,” Jeff shook his head. “I’ll do the recon.”
“No,” Shad shook his head. “If I run into trouble I can lay down smoke and fireballs and break contact. All you have is your swords.”
“And my bow,” Jeff pointed out. “All right, but you go long point, not recon. We can’t afford to get separated that much.”
“I should go,” Derek objected. “I am the best fighter.”
“And you are obviously an enemy of the people, unless you want to leave your katana behind,” Fred reminded the Radio Shack manager.
“Damn.”
“Where do you want to crash?” Jeff asked.
“In a Hilton with a fifteen hundred dollar a night call girl, but here we’ll have to bunk in the hay loft. The inn is trashed so we shouldn’t draw many looters,” Shad decided. “We’ll post a guard. Derek, get red cloth off the dead.”
“What are you thinking?” the Ronin asked.
“We might want to get close to the Dragon tomorrow.”
“You want me to start looking over the material we got on the next step?”
“No, let’s stay focused on getting out of the city. I’m going to focus on the Nightlands and Otherworldly Lore; you guys go with what you feel is best, although we could use some boat handling.”
“I’ll take Otherworldly Lore,” Derek offered. “My core combat skills are tied to my class.”
“Take Nightlands-you don’t have the History prerequisite. I’m going to grab some sleep. You guys sort out the watch rotation.”
In the pre-dark chill the Black Talons gathered around a fire as Fred put the finishing touches on breakfast. “The leveling place looked like a dojo,” Derek observed. “I stayed in class, took two points in Nightlands.”
“Stayed in class, two points in Otherworldly lore,” Shad blew his nose. “Damn, still snotting up scabs.”
“I stayed in class, and two points in Small Boats,” Fred started filling the children’s bowls.
“I stayed in class and put a point into Humanoid Lore and one in Bow,” Jeff poured tea. “Shad, anything interesting on the spell front?”
“I hit a little harder, and I added a night vision spell. More anti-Undead ability,” the warder shrugged. “The class-based jumps are better in my class; I picked up more power going from seven to eight than I ever have before.”
“We’re breaking into the big league,” Derek explained. “In the Prison the bravos kept levels inflated, but here the social structure is so restrictive that things stay pretty static. Level nine represents a mature career. I doubt there are many level tens or higher outside of the clan courts and the border areas.”
“Everywhere I go I am a badass,” Fred nodded.
“Well, let’s try to get home before level nine. I am ready for the tedium of modern life,” Shad shook his head.
“Me, too,” Jeff nodded. “I may quit reading fantasy when I get back.”
“I’m thinking of trying to write down all of our outings,” Derek got more tea. “Like a novel.”
“What would you call it? Four Assholes At Large?” Shad grinned.
“Nobody would believe it,” Jeff scoffed. “The premise is too lame. Nobody would buy into it; I’m here and I’m still having trouble buying it.”
“If you have a book in you, stick with a thriller,” Fred advised. “Terrorism is always hot.”
“And zombies,” Shad jabbed a finger at the healer.
“How about a terrorist group releasing a zombie virus?” Jeff suggested “Make the lead a military man, three genres for the price of one.”
“I would read that,” the warder nodded.
“You guys just don’t get the…well, amazement of this place,” Derek persisted. “We are using magic, seeing other cultures, seeing social upheaval…this is a once in a lifetime experience.”
“We saw social upheaval in Iraq,” Shad belched. “It sucked. Everyone hated us there, too.”
“If they didn’t before, they did after you came through,” Jeff pointed out.
“Magic is over-rated,” Fred distributed the remaining breakfast to the children. “I would give a lot to have my M249 again.”
“Vehicular mobility,” Shad sighed. “With mounted heavy weapons.”
“Integrated communications,” Jeff nodded.
“I miss explosives,” Derek admitted. “Frags, M203s, C-4, direct and indirect fire support…that was magical, too.”
“All right,” Shad knelt to get to face level with the children. “Nobody takes any risks. One, Two, and Three scout ahead, no more than half a block ahead of me. If trouble breaks out, head back to the main group; if that doesn’t work come back here and wait, we will come for you. Understood? Two, if you can’t find the main group, where do you go? Right. One, how far ahead? Good. Three, are you going to take any risks? Right. Now, Four, you are my flight recorder: you stay a few feet behind me, and if a fight or confrontation breaks out you run back to the main group and tell them what you saw. Understood? Any questions? Great. We’re heading to the riverfront, and we aren’t in a hurry, but we won’t loiter, either. Safety is the plan. Let’s go.”
The kids quickly impressed Shad: they slipped through the early morning gloom like ghosts, pausing at every turn and twist of the street while one of the trio raced back to advise the warder of what they saw.
The morning light revealed a Litam that suffered greatly. Only a few fires still burned, but there were great gaps in the cityscape that were now just blackened beams, beds of ash-coated coals, and smoking debris. The streets were littered with corpses, discarded loot, and the debris of fighting. Snow was starting to sift out of the sky, and Shad was grateful for the cold as it cut the smell of hundreds of Human and animal corpses. It appeared that the Hiemin mobs had run amok during the night; there were scores of insensible drunks sprawled amidst wrecked wine shops and inns, and hardly a building boasted an unbreached door.
Shad obtained a long ribbon of undyed cotton set with pins from the street debris, and spiked the touch-holes of any muskets he found amongst the unconscious revelers. Catching Four’s puzzled look. “The spark won’t reach the main charge, but the way I’m pushing with a second pin they’ll never figure it out. They’ll die snapping the action of a useless weapon.”
With the help of the orphan scouts the Black Talons avoided any unwanted contacts, although few of the looters were up and stirring after the night’s revelry. The Red Dragon loyalists, on the other hand, were clearly in action as was evidenced by the sound of gunfire at the city center and the walls.
The Black Talons assembled in the mouth of an alley next to a gutted spirits shop littered with passed-out Dragon deserters.
“I noticed our kids are much more burdened,” Jeff nodded to the quartet; Four was wearing the helmet of a Samurai officer of the city garrison and all four had acquired plump knapsacks.
“They are go-getters,” Shad muttered absently as he finished spiking a musket. Dropping the eleven-pound weapon on the unconscious body of a hongman, he jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “The river front is one block over, and the Dragon are busy there. I need three small Dragons with moderate wounds and a handcart.”
“Dear Lord, you have a plan,” Derek sighed. “This bodes ill. Where are we supposed to get wounded Dragons?”
Shad jerked his chin at the intoxicated hongmen. “You have a knife,
don’t you?”
Shad strode imperiously down the side-street leading to the warehouse-lined road that followed the riverbank, trailed by a handcart loaded with wounded Red Dragons being pushed by four children. “You,” the warder pointed at a half-asleep Hiemin leaning on a spear at the corner of the nearest warehouse. “Where is the collection point for wounded?”
The peasant, who was weary-looking and smoke-grimed, started. “What, sir? Oh, one warehouse down,” he gestured south. “How is the fighting going?” he asked nervously, tugging at the red silk scarf around his neck.
“Poorly, where I was at,” Shad shrugged. “The new weapons are misfiring frequently. We are hard-pressed.”
Leading the handcart, the warder turned south on the riverside road. He noted a work detail moving cases of paper cartridges and stacks of muskets from a river boat into the near warehouse, and rows of wounded spilling out onto the road from the next structure. Spotting the hongman in charge of the work detail, he waited until the man had a moment. “Excuse me, are you in charge here? The dock master?”
“I’m in charge of this boat,” the man admitted, eyeing the red cloth on the warder’s arms and waist. “I am Shouta, boat master and fisherman.” Shouta was square-built and big, looking as if he had a strong dose of Samoan stock in his ancestry, dressed in well-worn shipman’s clothes, with a pair of hand axes tucked into his broad red sash.
Shad shook his head angrily. “I was told to meet the dock master and secure a boat large enough to move at least ten wounded at a trip, but no one here seems to know who that is.”
“Where do you need to take the boat?”
“South,” Shad pointed. “Our group is trying to clear out a barracks, but it is hard on the men’s morale to see their wounded comrades dying without treatment. The streets are filled with looters who will steal carts unless a strong escort is provided, so we hoped to move them by water.” The warder waved the children to wheel the cart to the warehouse being used as a casualty collection point.
Shouta sighed and rubbed his ample belly. “Things are not very well organized,” he admitted. “We were supposed to be delivering these new weapons to a band of warriors, but no one was here when we arrived. Too many are out getting drunk and carousing instead of fighting.” He sighed again. “We took in tow a fishing boat, a small one, when we ran the north river defenses. Half the boats being sent down-river are being sunk or their crews shot to pieces by the war engines of the river forts, which were supposed to have been taken yesterday. You can have this boat; it won’t hold more than ten unless you stack them, but it is a short trip. Do you have anyone who can handle a boat?”
“Probably not,” Shad raised his hands in an expression of helplessness. “You know how it is.”
“Unfortunately I do. I’ll give you one of my men, he’s young and eager, always pestering me for more action.”
“I am very grateful.”
“Anything for the Cause.”
The loaned boatman, a red-haired youth named Daiki, stood proudly in the stern, guiding the fishing boat downstream via the long steering oar. Within the city the deep banks of the river had been sheathed in stone, and built-in stairs and cargo ramps led down to the docks, with the flanking streets standing about twenty feet above water level.
“Why did they build the bank so high?” Shad asked, mainly to shut Daiki up; the youth was eager to hear about the fighting.
“The river rises with the spring thaw, often within a foot of the roadway, sir.”
“Oh.” The warder moodily contemplated the patches of blood that marked the final moments of the last crew of the boat. “How hard was it to get past the river forts?”
“Terrible, sir; we had to run them at night, and luckily the chain-boom had been cut. We were one of four when we set out, and ours was the only one that made landfall.”
“So they are sinking everything on sight?”
“Pretty much, sir, although the south forts are less aggressive, but they can afford to be; no one is going upstream with a full cargo with hostile forts in place. They were supposed to have been secured yesterday, too.”
“So your boat is stuck in the city?”
“Yes, sir, unless we can trick the south fort. They are only letting boats with a Samurai in charge leave the city.”
“Interesting. You see that dock? That is the advance guard for my group on it.”
Daiki hesitated. “Sir…they aren’t wearing red.”
Shad half-turned to straddle the bench and put the tip of his sword against Daiki’s trousers just above his groin. “I’m afraid things are not exactly as I indicated, Daiki. You are going to have to walk back to your ship.”
The youth’s face darkened. “You are the enemy!”
“Pretty much,” Shad winked at Four. “It isn’t your fault: the Red Dragon is badly disorganized. I just need the boat, so once we reach the dock you will be free to go off and fight to your heart’s content.” Shad hesitated. “Daiki, I have seen a lot of fighting. I know you believe very strongly, but the Dragon is going to lose. Don’t waste your life on a hopeless battle.”
The young man’s jaw could have been used for an anvil. “The Cause of the Common People is my life.” The capital letters came out loud and clear.
“It will likely be your death, too.”
“I am not afraid.”
“I believe that. Listen, some years ago I was a soldier, a bushi, trained for war. We invaded a country, and the leaders opposing us sent young men to face us in battle, young men from far and wide who believed deeply in their cause. We cut through them like a hot knife through wax, because courage and faith are nothing unless paired with training and organization. Stay alive, and you will do far more for the common folk in the long run.”
Daiki didn’t answer; in the bow Two and Three had caught the rope Jeff had thrown and belayed it, and Fred was pulling them to the dock side.
“I tried,” Shad said, half to himself.
“So we have a boat,” Derek gripped the gunwale nervously as Ula and Durbin shifted. “Now what?”
“We stop out of range of the river forts and you go forward to arrange our passage. Once out of the city we find a place to lay up and read up on step one.”
“I liked the barge in the Realm a lot more than this boat.”
“So did I, but we don’t have to go far. Once outside the walls we can walk.”
“You know, this is the first plan Shad came up with that didn’t involve killing anyone,” Jeff announced in a surprised tone.
“Unless some of the drunk Dragons we sapped and cut up die,” Derek pointed out.
“Still, it is certainly his least violent plan ever,” Jeff argued. “Almost the work of a normal mind.”
“Laugh it up,” the warder grunted. “I’m trying to reduce the number of battles we have to fight.”
“Speaking of plans that never worked, remember in the zombie campaign when Derek had his character do the snatch-the-pebble stunt in Dubai?” Jeff chortled. “The guy was a Japanese intelligence officer, he lays the ‘snatch the pebble from my palm to prove you are worthy’ right out of Kung-Fu, and Derek falls for it.”
“Poured every plus he had into that one dice roll, and ends up holding a booby-trap that injects him with a slow-stage poison” Fred nodded cheerfully. “We had to pull another job for that bastard just to get the antidote.”
“That was not my fault: I was running a martial artist. I finally get to run a martial artist, and Shad pulled a bait-and-switch and dumps us into a zombie apocalypse,” Derek protested. “I finally get a martial arts challenge, and it turns out to be a trap.” He slapped the bench disgustedly. “It didn’t help that a week after we started that campaign Carradine was found dead dressed in a teddy.”
“I really didn’t think you would fall for that,” Shad admitted.
“That was a good campaign,” Fred sighed. “Except for Derek whining.”
“I was not whining,” the Ronin threw up his hands
in exasperation. “We had a cartload of Rolexes and gold literally right in front of us, just a handful of zombies around, and Jeff decides that grabbing them wasn’t part of the mission!” he told an uncomprehending Two. “We were in Mexico, exempt from all the salvage regs. We could have been rich.”
“It’s the copper wire all over again,” Jeff grinned.
“Don’t get me started on the copper wire,” Derek warned the Shop teacher. “You and Fred screwed that one up. We could have been warlords. We could have had vehicles. We could have carved out an empire in Darwin’s World. But noooo, we left it.”
“Don’t forget you got hired to guard the site while someone else got rich off the copper,” Shad reminded the Ronin.
“Here he goes,” Fred shook his head. “We’ll be hearing about this for the rest of the day.”
Chapter Ten
The angry goat twisted in Fred’s hands and butted him squarely in the groin. Cursing feebly the big man released the animal and slumped to the ground, clutching himself.
“That is definitely a botch on an Animal Handling roll,” Jeff grinned, deftly stomping on the goat’s trailing rope as it raced past. “C’mon, Billy, let’s get you tethered. Derek, how are you doing?”
“Lots of effort, modest results,” the Radio Shack manager observed. He was supervising the orphans as they ran down chickens and returnedthem to the coop. “This is beneath my dignity.”
“So you say.” Jeff finished tying the goat’s lead to a handy fence while fending off the animals horns. “Feisty little bastard, aren’t you?”
“Where is Shad?”
“Taking a nap. That fight with the Kyonshi took a lot more out of him than he will admit, and his nose keeps bleeding.”
“We were outside our weight class,” Derek nodded.
The Black Talons had abandoned their boat a mile south of Litam and struck out on foot. Two more miles south they had found four Dragon deserters pillaging a freehold farm; the four were now occupying a convenient hole while the Talons tried to put the farm back into order as best they could.