B00M0CSLAM EBOK

by Mason Elliott

  Another factor was continuing experiments with adding new components into the black powder of the loads themselves.

  Both practices seemed to produce wildly different results to different degrees, depending on what components, amounts, and combinations were used.

  Since some kind of strange magic was in fact at work, this resulted in a new kind of alchemy, specific to him and his firearms.

  If he didn’t figure out the secrets to it all, eventually he would run out of both powder and shot, and then be reduced to firing weapons that only worked on the lesser level–when he fired them dry.

  If he could only figure out the phenomena, he might be able to prolong and replicate it its effects, and perhaps even make it work for someone besides himself.

  Where did the energy come from? How did the magic in that glowing lake infuse itself into him, and his weapons and components? It appeared that they all needed to be saturated with it at the same time.

  Mason shook his head and yawned. He never imagined that he would be experimenting with magic. He was a mage–a pistol mage. Thus far, he could shoot small accurate blasts of energy from his dry weapons, and sweeping, destructive waves of devastating fire from his various loads and ammunition types, somewhere within the range of either fire or explosion.

  Was it possible to produce effects that were somewhere in between, or entirely different? He even began to experiment with small quantities of stone, wood, crystal, and even gemstones that the militia had obtained for him.

  The rain let up by the next day. Having the last watch, Mason let his friend sleep in, ate quickly, and saw to the horses first thing.

  After that, he and Ginger took his guns out early to a remote location in a valley to have a bit of target practice and record the results of his reloading experiments.

  Mason patted Ginger and realized that none of their horses were gun shy, which was also a very good thing. They had most likely grown up around hunters, or shooters at the very least. Firearms didn’t spook them, not even the Pistolero’s.

  Thing’s might not work out so well if their horses spooked every time he needed to shoot.

  Mason set up his targets and got out his notes and notebooks to record the results of his experiments.

  Small, precisely measured quantities of rose quartz, and especially diamond helped produce incredibly devastating explosions, which nearly engulfed him in the blast radius itself. The trade off was that the range of the shots was greatly and dangerously reduced. He could use those on enemies who managed to get right on top of him.

  Very intriguing.

  But his range of effects remained more or least constant–flame, explosion, or a combination of both. Not that he was complaining.

  As he expected, various types of woods and metals, especially iron oxide, aluminum, and magnesium, continued to produce various incendiary effects.

  He had also finally acquired one of those camping fire starters, thanks to his militia contacts. Magnesium turned out to be quite spectacular–just as he expected–and produced not only a tight, terrible explosion, but an instant blast of high intensity flame that ignited anything that might burn.

  Blondie was still sleeping back in the trailer park, if the nearby blasts didn’t periodically jar him awake. But he seemed to like to sleep a lot, given the chance to grab some extra shut eye.

  Mason collected his gear and led Ginger back to their camp. He tethered the pack horse, and double-checked the other horses, getting them ready to travel for the day.

  Then he pounded on the side of the trailer.

  “I’m up,” Blondie yelled from within. “Just getting dressed. I’ll be out shortly.”

  What, Blondie just didn’t sleep in his duds like Mason did?

  Maybe he was just changing his clothes.

  Then Mason heard the baying of strange dogs in the distance, very distinctively. Definitely hounds of some kind, but unlike any baying he had ever heard before. It chilled his blood.

  These sounds came from far off in another direction at first, southeast and well away from the nearby vale he’d been conducting his morning firearm experiments in. These sounds were far away at first, but seemed to be approaching rapidly from that direction. They grew louder.

  What in the hell kind of dogs sounded like that? And from their strange baying, they were obviously chasing something and growing closer to their quarry.

  Then one dog suddenly yelped in pain, actually more like a high-pitched shriek. After that it went silent.

  Also not a good sign.

  Mason mounted up on Winger. “Something’s happening in the distance to the southeast,” Mason shouted to Blondie. “I’m going ahead to investigate. Follow along and bring Ginger.”

  “Give me a few minutes, Mace, and I’ll just go with you.”

  “No, I’ve got a feeling we need to check this out. There’s something strange about it. Follow along when you can.”

  “All right. I’ll catch up and find you.”

  “I won’t be moving that fast, I hope.”

  It was daylight, after all. It couldn’t be the monsters. They didn’t come out until night time.

  Mason rode Winger cross country, avoiding patches of heavy mud from the rains. He tried to stay out of sight and under cover. He picked his way carefully through the fields, brush, and forest, drawing ever closer to the sound of those strange dogs in the distance.

  Then he noted rapid movement in the brush and trees near a hillside, above the edge of a muddy field. He spotted the amazing sight of a lone figure running very quickly for one so large.

  A female warrior; she was an absolute Amazon, seven feet tall if she was a foot. Dressed all in armor somewhere between Viking shield maiden and something out of Conan the Barbarian. This gal was tall, but perfectly formed and rippling with muscle, a warrior goddess if he had ever seen one.

  Just looking at her running in the morning sunlight took his breath away. Even his good buddy David would have been impressed.

  She simply bristled with all sorts of swords, axes, and daggers. She carried a round, bossed shield on her left arm and a throwing ax in her gauntleted right hand.

  If this vision wasn’t amazing enough, suddenly the dogs in question shot out from the edge of the brush and loped over the open field, snarling and leaning forward as they gained on their quarry. They growled as they hit a patch of mud and it slowed them down.

  These weren’t your average hounds.

  These were monster dogs–four feet at the shoulder, lean but with powerful hind legs and short, bobbed tails. They had enormous, wide-splayed front paws. Their block-like heads sported short ears and wide, vicious maws filled with gleaming, bone-crushing teeth.

  The damn things were bigger than ponies, and much stouter and powerful, built for running prey down over long distances at the lope. They made the biggest, nastiest pit bulls look like mere puppies. They had weird furry hides that were short, mottled bluish-red coats mixed with purple and black.

  Wicked, iron-spiked war collars bristled around their thick necks.

  The warrior goddess realized they were closing on her.

  The lead dog was almost on her.

  Even as she kept running, she halted slightly. Her throwing ax whirred through the air. Mason could hear it from where he was, many yards away.

  Smack! The ax sunk into the thick skull of the lead monster dog and not only dropped and slew the beast, but flung it backwards with the force of the impact.

  The great hound rolled end over end and lay dead.

  The other three encircled their prey and closed in: heads bent, ears back, and eyes narrowed.

  The warrior goddess kept her shield on her left arm and drew a broad-bladed, short stabbing sword and switched it to her left hand, point down.

  She slipped one of the double-bladed battle axes from the carrier on her back and hefted it deftly in her right hand.

  She voiced a war cry that seemed to split the very air and turned at bay. Not waiting for th
e onset of the monster hounds, she charged them, wheeled and swept her weapons around in what looked like an elaborate, violent dance.

  The armored boot of her foot crunched into the face of the next hound while she scythed him open with her battle ax the next instant. The great stroke laid open the beast’s chest and ribs. The woman warrior kept moving past the severely wounded creature.

  The second dog sprang at her to drag her down with its weight.

  She smashed it to one side with her shield and stabbed it in the guts with her sword, tearing intestines free.

  With the third monster, she ducked low and smashed right into it head-on, rolling, cutting, and slicing at the wailing beast as they tumbled together.

  She sprang back up to her feet and stomped on its thick head, mashing the skull into bloody pulp as the legs kicked and went still.

  The second hound was horribly injured and dying, but tried to drag itself and its entrails away from the warrior woman in whining terror.

  The Amazon stabbed it through the heart without thought or hesitation. The creature stiffened and went limp.

  The first tough beast still had some fight in him and sprang at her throat. She yelled another war cry and whirled completely around, splitting its vicious face wide open–like chopping through a length of wood.

  She fell back into her long, loping run, now that she was free of pursuit. She skirted some trees that led up the hill to help conceal herself. Mason would have done the same exact thing.

  She no more went out of sight when two score strange men in plain helms and studded armor or light field plate raced onto the scene to encircle the hill and close in to trap the warrior woman. They still had a few of the monster dogs like the others on chains with them, held back in check.

  To Mason, this did not at all appear to have the makings of a fair fight.

  He skirted the nearby road and went down into the dry, leafy sloughs that crisscrossed the roads and the various farm fields.

  If he kept low and then used the heavy brush and thick trees, he might reach the next hill’s crown before the menacing riders overtook the Amazon.

  Boy, could that girl scramble. Incredible. And she did it with all of her armor and gear, as well. Here he was, traveling pretty light and riding flat out–on a horse.

  Mason wasn’t any slouch at running, either. He had completed a marathon six months before and placed seventeenth against good competition. Not bad for an amateur runner, winding up in the top twenty.

  At the moment, he was worried that he and Winger might not even catch her at this rate. The warrior goddess was that fleet of foot.

  He saw her glance at the wide-open terrain extending out in front of her.

  She instantly turned away and chose to make her stand around the large oak tree at the top of that forested hill, and among the rocks, lesser trees, and brush crowning it.

  Mason saw it, too.

  Even with her speed, she wasn’t going to get much farther. If she remained exposed, out in the open, the riders would run her down with ease.

  More than half of those two score riders carried various spears, lances, and shields. Most of them also had horse bows.

  Mason’s primary question was, who was in the right, here? And did these riders want to kill, or capture this woman? That would remain to be seen.

  He charged Winger up the backside of the hill, and the horse labored to get up quickly, making its way toward her.

  The Amazon wasted no time preparing her defenses.

  Some small dead trees lay up to slope to one side, possibly taken down by a wind storm and then moved up there with a tractor at some point.

  The Amazon grabbed them and dragged them over in front of the big oak, forming a hasty, V-shaped picket in front with the large tree at her back.

  Mason grinned.

  So, not just fast and powerful, she was smart, too.

  That way, the riders couldn’t simply charge in at her in waves from several directions and sweep over her.

  But she was still up against forty to one odds. Pretty stiff, even for a warrior goddess. He wondered how she was going to even those odds.

  Mason fully intended to see if he could do something about that, as well, if he could get close enough to her without the Amazon splitting his head or body cavity open, just as she had done to those monster dogs.

  21

  The wind turned sharp and cold in the later hours of the morning. Another dark mass of enemies swept David’s way and toward the hotly contested intersection.

  Yeah, the main body of the enemy would catch sight of him any second.

  Then the line of bushes and trees behind David sprang to life.

  An entire flight of camouflaged militia archers rose up. They must have crept forward, concealed from view.

  More than a hundred compound hunting bows thrummed in unison. Razor steel broadheads ripped through the enemy like a sheet of whispering death.

  The enemy advance withered and collapsed under deadly, point-blank, concentrated fire.

  A second rapid volley nearly eradicated them, before they could even react.

  Still gasping, David staggered to his feet. The archers marched in, ready to shoot again.

  Fred and young Steven Hayward, more longtime MHS friends, stepped out and took him by the arms.

  “Dave, we thought that was you.”

  David swallowed hard. “Thanks, Fred. I was about to die again. You guys just saved my ass.”

  “Die...again?” Steven asked.

  “Finish catching your breath,” Fred told him. “The intersection’s ours. We have to push on toward the house! Get your people together. There’s heavy fighting all through out this area.”

  “There’s worse coming our way,” David warned. “They’re going to throw everything they have at us, here. We might very well get overrun.”

  “You mean they haven’t done so yet?” Fred sounded worried. “How do you know all this?”

  “Trust me.” No time to explain about the pool or everything he had seen. He still didn’t understand all of it himself. “Have you guys seen Jerriel?”

  Fred leaned on his personal longbow and shook his head. “She’s been in and out with Belle and Rose, Dave. She went searching for some kind of glowing pools everyone’s been worried about. I got kinda mad at them, and told them to stay put near the house. But you know them women–they don’t always listen so good. Not to anyone.”

  Young Steven looked worried. “Dad, I wanna go protect Mom. She could be in real trouble.”

  “We will. Trust me, son. But we have to get more people to go with us.”

  “I’m with you,” David said. “Dirk sent me here to do just that.” He thought of Jerriel’s pretty face once again. “Fred. Put your archers on our left flank and behind us. I’ll send two squads to guard our rear.”

  David called to his remaining forces. They and many others rushed toward him.

  More militia troops poured in, thankfully.

  Dirk rode up, an arrow through one arm and another sticking out of his armored thigh. “Let’s go, guys.”

  David warned him about the impending enemy counterattack–even more massive than what they expected. “The enemy is going to throw everything they have at us right here.”

  Fred immediately looked to Dirk’s wounds, and then glanced at David’s leg again. “Dave, you’re bleeding, too–from the back of your leg.”

  “It’s just a flesh wound. I’ll be all right.”

  “Steven, bandage that up for him like I showed you. Dirk, hold still, dammit.”

  “We don’t have time for this, Fred. Leave me be. Aaughh!”

  Fred pulled the arrow out of his leg and pulled the armor aside for a moment. “That one barely nicked your thigh through the armor. I’ll plug it up with some superglue and a bandage.”

  “Damn, that hurts, Fred. Leave it the hell alone!”

  “Belle will kill me if I let you bleed to death, you ornery bastard. Quit your complaining. You�
�re no good to us bled out. Now hold still, you idiot!”

  David winced as young Steven finished bandaging up his leg tight where the militia field arrow had struck him.

  Fred used a Multi-Tool to cut off both ends of the arrow in Dirk’s arm. “If I pull out the rest of the shaft, any punctured arteries and veins might bleed free. We can leave it in to plug you up for now. It’ll hurt, but you should be able to still fight for a long while.”

  Dirk gritted his teeth. “Oh, I can fight all right. Just wrap it up good and tight and let’s go.”

  David retrieved more bikes for them.

  “Fred, you and your archers protect that northern flank and catch up to us when you can!”

  David and Dirk rode back up toward the front.

  “General Blackwood, Captain Pritchard!” their troops called out. David still wasn’t used to having rank. He didn’t know if he deserved it.

  “We heard you were both badly wounded,” someone said.

  “We’re okay. Just banged up a bit.”

  “Great to hear it.”

  “Glad to have you two back with us!”

  “We can’t stop now, people,” Dirk said. “We’ve got a bunch of the enemy trapped. But there’s a massive counterattack on the way. Now we have to finish this batch off before their friends bust them out. And they’re going to fight like hell to break out any way they can.”

  “They’re not going anywhere but straight to hell,” David said. “But they’ll still throw all their reserves at us. That’s what I’d do–all in and go for broke.”

  A bunch of troops moved an enemy cart up along side, ten men pulling it.

  “Commander Blackwood. Look at this! We captured a cart of their firebombs. It’s almost full!”

  Dirk’s pained face brightened. “Great job, people. Outstanding! Bring up some of those lawn torches and keep them handy! We can use their own firebombs against them. Let’s go. Wahoo!”

  A cheer went up from the defenders. “Hey,” David said. “Keep a few of those bombs aside so that Kevin or someone at the college can study them afterwards. You know, to see what they’re made of and how to make them.”

  “All right, sir. Will do.”