Forsaken 337 BC

by Sharon Leslie

  "Our training will make you into soldiers not warriors. Soldiers who will fight for each other and the unit you are with. First we need to improve your fitness levels which will not take long. Then we will make you better fighters, fighters who belong to a unit, then a company, finally an army. Can anyone tell me how you fight when all of you, not only those still in your encampment but those in the city and port."

  Asking them questions about how they fought with larger numbers, Cain soon discovered they fought almost identically to what they showed. They told him, when their numbers grow to over fifty, they made a double line of shield and spear walls. They often went into battle in shield walls four deep, in groups of two hundred. Cain told them they would occasionally fight like they had in the past, or they would give the impression to the opposing forces, they were going to fight like normal. Knowing he had basically a blank slate, he broke them into groups of five, naming them Alpha, Beta, Charley, Delta and Echo.

  Cain asked Alpha group to attack the tree Daphne identified during his talk, by tying a spare skirt around a thin tree, thirty yards from where he stood. The five warriors of Alpha group made a single line, they marched over to the tree, each stabbed the skirt with their Dorus. He asked why did they not attack from a distance? They said they were warriors, not Peltasts.

  Cain then had each of the groups repeat the task, they all did and said the same to Cain's questions. Sophie produced a sand timer, so they could see how long it took for each group to kill the skirt on the tree. Group Echo were the quickest, they practically ran compared to the other groups after listening to Cain's questioning. Myrina stood with Cain as he asked his DreamBabes,

  "Will you please show us how you would kill the tree?" Toni, Lesley and Daphne equipped their recurve bows and formed up behind Bethany and Sophie who held their Aspis shields. Cain took control of the sand timer turning it before he said, "Start," at his command they moved three steps past the sitting Amazons, planted their shields, while Toni, Lesley and Daphne shot six arrows at the target, each shaft hitting the skirt tied to the tree, pinning it to the trunk.

  He turned to the seated Amazons and said, "The skirt is dead, look how fast they ended their task, a single finger of sand is all it took them. Echo you were the fastest of the groups yet took six full fingers of sand. Let's see how you manage facing each other. You will use blunted lengths of wood rather than your Dorus."

  Toni sorted the five units to face each other, Bethany found fifteen lengths of wood which were in the inventory to equip the Amazons. In the first head-to-head Alpha won a close fight against Beta while Delta won against Charley. The DreamBabes ruthlessly trampled Echo into the ground. Sophie healed the Amazons of the worst injuries as they sat and listened to Cain, who asked them,

  "You have seen the way my DreamBabes finished attacking the tree and how they trampled Echo in double quick time. Do you want to learn to fight the way we do?" When they hesitated, unsure, he directed all the units to fight him and his DreamBabes with blunted weapons, he gave Myrina the sand timer. It took less than two minutes to put each Amazon on the ground, none of the five DreamBabes or Cain, were hit by the twenty-five Amazons. He asked the question again, this time each unit demanded to be taught. As one Amazon said,

  "We want to show our sisters back in the camp just how much we will own them. I think Areto will be surprised how much better we will be under your training than hers." Cain told them there was to be no fighting tonight, they can fight after a full day of training.

  The Amazons worked with a fervour for the next eight hours, the time passed without notice as Cain and his DreamBabes taught the twenty-five new concepts of fighting. Such as how to move as units of five, to be mobile and flexible, joining and fighting with others though still as a unit of five. They then taught the women the basics of hand-to-hand fighting. For each unit Cain appointed a leader and a second. He took these apart from the others and gave them an overview of single unit and larger group tactics.

  Cain's HUD timer notified him of the time he'd allocated was gone, spent training they jogged back to the camp, joining in the singing of Sophie's DreamBabes song; none of the warriors collapsed this time. When the arrived back at the Amazons camp the five support staff told him they had made, sixty straw manikins and four hundred Doru. Cain asked their designated leader to stop making manikins and Doru, and concentrate on arrows. He also asked how much gold was left, the person said,

  "I still have nine gold bars, three Drachma and a few Obol. Stopping with the manikins and Doru is easy making arrows less so. We will probably make a thousand arrows a day as we are not skilled like a fletcher. If we had a fletcher we could easily make four or five times as many." Cain asked them to concentrate on making arrows until he told them to stop. He handed over both types he had made so the men had exemplars to work from.

  Leaving their twenty-five warriors and support staff at the palisade camp, Cain followed Myrina back to Cybele's temple in Agiasobele. "The sun will set in a hand and a half span," Myrina told Toni as they entered the walled city.

  [Approximately two to two and a half hours before most of the people will retire for their night meal and sleep,] Rahab told Toni, who messaged the information to the DreamBabes and Cain. As they walked through the citadel gates the same male voice shouted out from Erebus' temple doors. The shout followed by the same push of dark sickly magic, trying to pull not only Cain but any nearby male inside.

  Cain found it easy to ignore the seductive pull as they continued on toward Cybele's temple. Since they had entered the temple previously and were working for Cybele they were allowed to enter without reeving a blessing. Once inside they made for their rooms located under the temple, it was as though the temple had a sentience of its own. Upon reaching their rooms, Cain and Sophie grabbed a sofa and wedged it against the door, they followed the others and made straight for Bounty. Inside they all sat around the table. A note appeared on the table which got everyone's attention. Sophie read it saying it was a supplies requisition for Bounty, for her to keep working optimally.

  :I wonder if the requests will change when we use Bounty in the different zones?: Cain asked Enoch, who stayed silent on the thoughts.

  Cain realised the requisition was a good idea so he added bars of iron, copper and bronze to the list, knowing he wanted to create more recurve bows for the Amazons. Toni thought it would be good if they could collect as many cured leather hides of cows, sheep or goats too. On the fabric side, Toni wanted a mix of the extra fine style of fabric similar to silk along with the thickest fabric style they had come across, something like a strong Hessian.

  Cain and Toni headed for the workshop while Myrina took Sophie, Lesley, Daphne and Bethany out shopping and checking over the town as they walked to the market area of Agiasobele; they took with them a copy of the requisition list. Cain sat at the work table, accessed the design interface and started to work on the fifteen recurved bow parts, while Toni offered to assemble them.

  They worked at a steady pace yet still took Toni and Cain nearly an hour for them to craft and assemble the parts of the bows. Toni placed each recurve bow on a weapons rack which was not in the workshop the previous day. Cain looked over the recurve bows, saying,

  "Now we can equip fifteen of the twenty-five warriors, with practice they will become mobile and deadly. These original twenty-five women, will become the template for other warriors we collect, upon completing quests for Cybele and her temples. They will provide the model unit and change the way Amazons fight, making them a mobile and powerful fighting force," :Enoch, where are you in hacking Jason's server and are there any problems in the world we need to know of?:

  {John said to say, you no longer have any shares in SPQR, he sold the last of them one hour ago. He told me to inform you about your new holdings, you now own the company that makes the Nanogel normal PODs use. He has invested half of the money as you wanted in start-up companies and housing developers which help ex-military.

  {John has bough
t separate civilian security teams to provide 24/7 discreet security on your team members, those not in the safe house. He says he has also made inquiries for the Paris team, run by Marcy. Their last person of interest moved to the London office, Marcy‘s team are on an enforced break. From an internal SPQR memo they will soon be let go.

  {He is hoping Marcy will come over and join you, but she is demanding a face-to-face meeting before she comes onboard. We have not picked up any mention of your players, and he has prepared the other PODs should you need to move at a moment's notice. In his spare time he has made two EI cores attaching them to two travel PODs, should you need to provide retrieval transport.

  {Rahab and I have reached 18% of the codes in the hard crack on Jason's server. Rahab thinks we are missing something, she believes the code may not be worth the processing time we are allocating,} said Enoch.

  :Thanks for that Enoch. Can you and John tell Marcy, the meeting is at the place where a lift preceded three kisses, a case where Sherlock would say, 'How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth? Say to her 'This Marcy is the truth. Wheels are a bygone mode, when legs are more amenable,': said Cain.

  Chapter 16

  DreamBabe Death

  Stringing the last of the recurve bows then hanging it with the others, Cain ran his hand over each of the completed bows. His eyes taking in the exquisite curves and construction of such deadly weapons, which Toni had assembled and he had strung. Cain said,

  "What wonderful—no, deadly—pieces of killing art, you assembled Toni. Once we finish playing Forsaken, we could get work as bow builders as we whittle away our years," he joked with Toni.

  "One supposes, you could be a string fitter, though I don't know of many jobs which need stings fitted, do you?" laughed Toni.

 

  Cain and Toni ran from the workshop area, their eyes scanned the rest of the message. They left in haste as Bounty's still-open door flapped behind them as they dashed across their sitting room under Cybele's temple. Jointly they took the stairs two steps at a time, reaching the main floor of the temple as Bounty's door closed. Cain shouted for a priestess as they ran, one priestess hearing their call ran down the temple's main aisle, catching up with Cain and Toni as they reached the main door. Cain knew where the other DreamBabes and Myrina had gone, he was in such a flap he forgot to check his HUD map to locate them.

  "Can you tell us where in the market is and the fabric shop? Are there any short cuts to reach there?" Cain asked. The priestess gave them rough directions for how to get there, including taking two narrow alleyways as short cuts. Thinking clearer, Cain input the information on his local map and spun it up on his HUD. He noticed the flashing destination icon indicated a distance of six hundred and seventy-four yards. :Idiot, why didn't I think about using my map skill earlier.:

  Around the marker were five green icons of his DreamBabes and over twenty red icons. Together Toni and Cain exited Cybele's temple, ran down the incline inside the citadel, passing the other temples, first Athena's, then Erebus'. Oddly, no voice called out, or pulse of dark sickly magic, taunting and trying to manipulate Cain.

  They passed the three guards at the citadel's gates and kept running toward the market and their women. Eight fighters blocked the citadel's narrow approach road, thirty yards from the main junction. The designers built houses on both sides of the road; they had to go through the eight men, there were no options to avoid them. Toni scanned the men, all were players. She let Cain know.

  ^T^ Players, not NPCs. ^

  ^C^ Thanks, I'm guessing this is to do with Jason and the JW Killers clan. ^

  "I don't know who you're playing for, but if you don't move you will spend two hours respawning," Cain said, controlled anger threaded through his voice. The eight men, pulled out their Xiphos swords and laughed, taunting Cain and Toni.

  "How do you think you two can beat the eight of us? Do you think you are superheroes or we will be such a pushover?" one of them said.

  "No, we're not superheroes, because superheroes would bind you up for the justice system to deal with. We don't care about justice as such, move, or we will be your death. First and last warnings, move or die," Toni said, still running with Cain.

  ^C^ Drop behind me, I'll go high you go low. ^

  ^T^ OK, when you're ready. ^

  Cain spoke to Toni in their minds, ^C^ Now,^ as he ran toward the left hand house wall. Using his legs to their full ability, he ran up a house wall easily reaching seven feet high. Cain leapt up higher and over the line of men. Each head and all eyes followed his jump. As Cain landed, he bent his knees absorbing the landing before changing direction and he leapt backward, back over the line of men. His the second jump lower and Cain relieved two of the men of their heads, with a gladii in each hand.

  Toni followed Cain in using a house wall on the right of the road, she pushed herself from it's windowsill. Keeping her jump low at chest height on the men, men who were transfixed by Cain's acrobatics. She hit the chests of two men, while their heads were focused watching Cain's second leap over them.

  Toni barrelled into two men, her momentum gave her twice her weight, she left her right hand gladius in the chest of one man caught between his sternum and ribs as it pierced his heart. Her left hand gladius slashed open the other man's throat. The man fell to the stone flagged street with Toni on his chest, his carotid artery spraying blood through his fingers, as he tried to stem the flow; failing miserably.

  Now on the street she kept low and thrust a gladius into the lower back of another man who stood open mouthed. As he was following the bounce of two heads after Cain’s reverse jump. The power of her thrust ruptured the man's kidney and the split his inferior vena cava, while using another gladius taken from her inventory, she hamstrung a second man who was also watching Cain jump back over the line.

  The eight ambushers were down to two able-bodied, one man bleeding to death and one on the ground hamstrung by Toni. Cain landed on his reverse jump then shoulder charged one of the two standing men, blocking the man's sword thrust as his shoulder hit the man with the force of a rhino. The impact threw the man off balance as he lashed out feebly at Cain, whose own gladius removed the man's sword hand. The man fell to his knees screaming as his stump spurted blood everywhere. Cain thrust his gladius upward, through the bottom of the screaming man's mouth up into the brain and ended the scream mid pitch.

  The gladius became stuck as it piercing the skull, letting go Cain turned to face the last man left standing. Cain watched as though it was a slow-motion film, he noted the anger on the man's face as he took a wild swing at him. In one motion Cain dropped to his knees letting the Xiphos pass over his head. He ran his second gladius up the inside of the man's exposed legs, parting skin, muscle and femoral artery with ease. The man turned with the force of his wild swing trying to bring the sword to bear, but he dropped to the stone flags as Toni jammed one of her gladii into the man's lower back, severing his spinal cord. The man fell like he'd been pole-axed, his legs no longer had the strength to hold him upright, as he bled out from the femoral artery.

  Cain stood, pulled his stuck gladius free of the man's head then he noticed a man who was on the street dragging one leg behind him as he crawled away. Cain took three strides and stabbed him through the heart. The man who bled from the femoral artery was dead, Toni removed his head. One quick hug and kiss, then together Toni and Cain continued toward the blinking destination marker, five hundred and twenty-six-yards distant.

  They both received pop-ups, which listed the players they killed, they dismissed them as they ran, their strides unbroken.

  {You killed those eight men in under one minute. The game system will post that as a perfect ambush and tactical response. You need to stop showing how de
adly you and your DreamBabes are Cain. I know it is all hard wired, especially in you, but occasionally do you think you could take some damage. If not people, the wrong people, may be able to work out who you really are,} Enoch said.

  The distance under the destination marker on Cain's HUD reduced as Toni and he turned the last corner into the market zone. They could hear fighting up ahead, NPCs clustered around the market square watching the fight. Without giving his actions conscious thought, Cain deselected one gladius, equipping a medium knife in its place in his left hand. Toni had two gladii equipped, one of them covered in blood. Silently, like predators, Cain and Toni descended upon the players engaged in fighting their DreamBabes.

  ^C^ I'm going left, can you take the right? ^

  ^T^ Yeah, done and dead. ^

  Moving through the crowd of NPC watchers, Cain slit the throat of one man aiming to throw a javelin into the shop, while Toni ran another man through the back. She twisted her wrist on the thrust and her gladius quartered his heart. Both men dropped to the ground, their companions not noticing their deaths. Cain ran between two more men, his gladius and knife cutting their carotid arteries as he ran into the shop toward his women. Toni hamstrung two more men, then removed the left hand holding a large Aspis shield of a third man as she followed Cain into the shop and joined her sister-wives.

  The men attacked with more fervour urged on by a deep voice, a voice Cain recognised as the man from Erebus' temple. They threw four javelins into the shop, as one the men turned and tried running away; being cut down by one of their own. A death notice flashed on Cain's HUD.

  "How can that be? Emily, Elise can you do anything, can you heal Susan?" Cain asked, seeing Bethany's body with a javelin through her chest.