Battalion Banished

by Nancy Osa

  “There is none! And you won’t see a pebble until you get back down that hill with a full minecart.” Bluedog thrust his chin in the direction of the tracks. “You can leave that packhorse here as security. Now get going!”

  *

  “Are you sure it was smart, lying to a crook like that?” Rob said as the horses picked their way up the steep hill.

  “Smart and necessary’s two different things,” Turner replied.

  “It’s just that I think honesty is usually the best policy. . . .”

  Stormie blew out a breath. “Good grief, Captain! Haven’t you ever heard of little white lies?”

  “Your goody-two-shoes ways is what got us into this mess in the first place,” Turner accused.

  “That’s just not the kind of Overworld we live in, Rob,” Stormie explained gently. “It’s the kind of world we want . . . but we’ve all had to put our principles on hold just to stay alive and keep fighting for it.” She paused. “Look at Turner. His good side’s been on hold so long he can barely find it anymore.”

  “Hey. Fella wants to deal with the likes of Bluedog better hide his sweet, sensitive side. Heck, Cap’n Newbie here’s so pure, prob’ly the worst thing he’s ever done is enable cheats to teleport farther.”

  “Cheats to . . . what?”

  Frida let them gang up on Rob. She had done her best to educate the one-time cowboy in the ways of Overworld survival. Making it alone, she could do. This working-together group thing was not her specialty. She did know that if you went up against individuals as volatile as Bluedog and Lady Craven, you had to fight fire with fire.

  Stormie saw movement on the tracks above them. “Here comes Mad Jack. If you feel a bout of truthfulness coming on, sir, I suggest you keep your mouth shut.”

  The weathered supply train driver coasted onto the small, flattened ledge with the cart brake on, bringing the conveyance to a crawl. “Salutations,” he greeted them in his old-fashioned manner—which Frida believed to be a front for a much sharper edge. “I’m pleased to take up with such able bodyguards. Now I can breathe a little easier.”

  The riders split up and positioned themselves around the cart for the downward journey, the women beside and the men behind the driver.

  “Somebody following you this time?” Frida asked.

  “As always,” he said. “Never see ’em until they strike.” He gestured to the load beneath him—the large chest he was seated on and three more. “They’s several parties interested in this booty.”

  “I can imagine.”

  Turner appraised the load, fishing for details. “Looks like . . . one, two, three—four villages ransacked this time around.”

  Mad Jack scratched his belly. “Don’t know where it come from, and don’t want to know.”

  Rob could learn a thing or two from this old codger, Frida thought. It paid to listen closely to one’s enemies . . . or friends of one’s enemies.

  “I rarely exercise my curiosity,” Mad Jack continued. “When I do, it’s to a purpose. That which produces rare stones.”

  “I admire a man with the right priorities,” Turner complimented him.

  “Greed makes the Overworld go ’round.”

  “You can say that again,” Stormie said. “I once saw a woman trade her own baby for a creeper head.”

  “Perhaps you met my ex-wife,” Mad Jack quipped, then wheezed a laugh. He increased the brake pressure as the trail dropped off sharply and stepped downward in blocks, past dead spruce trees once more. “Say. Bein’ from here and there—as you say you are—mebbe you know the whereabouts of some associates of mine. Might be I owe them a small parcel for a past endeavor.”

  “Who’s that?” Turner asked, perhaps hoping for a cut off the top.

  “Brother-and-sister team came out this-a-way. Made quite a name fer themselves in the forest hills biome buildin’ fancy houses.”

  Turner grunted. “What was your truck with ’em?”

  “They was fencing high-end goods from a job they was working on. I managed to secure a willing buyer, but I never did see them two again to give ’em their due.”

  Frida’s ears were burning as she listened, trying to sort the truth from the cart driver’s story. This sounded too much like their virtuous captain’s mentality to be coming from a man who admitted to a corrupt lifestyle.

  “We haven’t seen anyone like that,” Rob piped up, sounding for all the world like a certified fibber. “What’re their names, in case we do?”

  Mad Jack shook his head deliberately. “Names can be changed, sir. Nope, you’ll want to hunt for a blond-haired couple, him tall, her short. She don’t say much. He talks with an accent, though I can’t quite place it.”

  “Should be easy to identify,” Stormie said evenly. “Can we tell them where to find you?”

  “No, no,” he said hastily. “Let me know where they might be, next time we meet.” After a moment, he added, “I’ll surely make it worth your while.”

  “Of course,” Stormie said.

  They walked along without talking for a bit. Horses and riders paid special attention to the footing on an area covered with loose gravel. Then Mad Jack began to sing an old tune under his breath, a song about a lonely adventurer looking for a pot of gold.

  “That little ditty reminds me of riding the range,” Rob said conversationally. “In fact, you’d fit right in there, Mr. Jack. Have you ever done any cow work?”

  Frida thought she saw a smug expression flit across the driver’s eyes.

  “Done ever’ kind of work under the sun . . . and under the Overworld, if you get my meaning. Cows, as well. Which range have you rid, if you don’t mind my asking?”

  “He does mind,” Turner said abruptly. But Rob, delighted to talk about his old life, launched into a description of his old horse, Pistol, his old dog, Jip, and his work on the roundup.

  “Now that’s a place I do not recognize,” Mad Jack said mildly. “Where is it you’re from?”

  “High desert country, out West,” Rob answered, exactly as Turner had coached him not to do. “That is, before I dropped into this world. West doesn’t seem to mean the same thing here.”

  “And what brings you to this line of work?” Mad Jack prompted him.

  Frida could almost hear herself, Stormie, and Turner screaming at their leader to keep it to himself.

  “I’m in charge of this battalion,” Rob said proudly. “We’re arming ourselves to do battle with Lady Craven.”

  “You don’t say.”

  If a pin had dropped, it would have made a thunderous clatter over the soft scrape of horse hooves, as the other members of A Squadron momentarily lost their voices.

  Then, to change the subject, they all began talking at once.

  “But that might never—”

  “What he means is . . .”

  “Lovely weather we’re having, ain’t it?”

  Everyone, Mad Jack and Rob included, knew the damage done. The troopers’ true identities had been divulged, as well as their ultimate goal. Those were two very valuable pieces of information—intelligence that would be in great demand.

  Frida’s head spun with worry. Bluedog would be in the market to buy and sell the news. Legs and Dingo were, no doubt, still looking for whoever might have infiltrated their zombie operation. Worse, Lady Craven and her griefer army would want to finish what they’d started at the Battle of Zombie Hill. At least, when Colonel M had helped the battalion escape to this remote region of the Overworld, nobody knew who they were or what they were trying to do. Now, that anonymity was gone.

  Still, the group pretended as though nothing unusual had happened. They met Bluedog at the Nether portal after the last leg of their trip and watched him open the chests and pour the enormous piles of loot into some unseen receptacle. He reserved a few measly blocks of iron and gold ore and lobbed them into Rat’s empty cart. Mad Jack said nothing in particular as the three parties agreed to the same rendezvous the following week, with Rob’s contingent dr
iving the cattle they were to collect.

  Again, the squadron waited until they were out of the other men’s earshot before discussing the turn of events.

  “I know what you’re going to say—” Rob began.

  “What part of shut up do you not understand?” Turner shouted.

  “I promise to stay behind next time.”

  “Thought you promised to play it on the QT this time,” Stormie said tersely.

  Frida drew a shaky breath, trying to damp down her anger. She liked Rob—maybe even loved him. But he’d just put everything they stood for on the line. He’s not from this world. He doesn’t know how easy it is to die, she mused.

  And then, more unkindly, she thought: maybe I should let him.

  CHAPTER 11

  FRIDA’S GUILT OVER HER ANGER AND DOUBTS about Rob caused her to avoid him as they returned to the cold beach and made ready to break camp. It was easy to stay busy. The full battalion spent an hour at target practice, followed by several more hours crafting arrows and repairing weapons.

  There could be no slip-ups with the next job. More hands were necessary to collect the herd of cattle from its owner and drive them over three biomes to Bluedog’s Nether portal in the foothills. Because the trip would require several days, they would also need more fire power to survive and safeguard their prize at night. Rob petitioned the recruits to participate, spinning the risky mission as a diversion they might relish.

  Judge Tome thought it over. “I always did want to go on a real roundup. I’ll do it.”

  De Vries and Crash were also game to try their hands—or, in Crash’s case, pickaxe—at working cows.

  No one mentioned Mad Jack’s interest in finding the brother and sister. Rob and Jools put their heads together and planned to let them and the judge ride along just as far as the base camp on the mesa plateau. The criminals would not be the wiser.

  The crafting session went late into the night, safely indoors in the palatial ice shelter that Crash and De Vries had embellished while A Squadron was gone. Kim took on the special task of crafting lariats from spider string and adding hooks to the saddles to hang them from. Chaos ensued as the troopers tried to lasso each other—a more difficult feat than they had expected. To everyone’s surprise, the judge was deft with a rope.

  “Might want to study harder at aiming a weapon, then,” Turner grumbled. The judge’s skill with blade and bow had not improved by much.

  Judge Tome pursed his lips. “Usus magister optimus, I always say.”

  Crash cocked her yellow-capped head at him.

  “Practice makes perfect, dear.”

  Rob noticed Frida’s uncharacteristic aloofness and tried to draw her into the conversation. “Say, remember when you first tried to help us tame those horses, back before we met Kim? I’ll bet you didn’t think you’d ever be part of a cattle drive.”

  Frida had never been on a horse before the day they’d come across Saber and his herd. She had been unable to mount one of the wild animals, let alone stay on and ride it. “Thanks for bringing that up, Captain.” She turned her back on him. “Did you ever think you’d be commanding a cavalry unit that you sent to their deaths?”

  Shock silenced Rob.

  “If I remember that last charge right, you got Stormie killed and the rest of us run up a hill to a dead end. All because you wanted to reach the vantage point that you thought would get you home.”

  Everybody else in the ice-block room froze.

  She turned back toward Rob, on a roll now. “Oh, you could’ve ordered a battle formation across the incline. . . . That would’ve let us evade the zombies and take cover to fight off Lady Craven’s diamond-clad skeletons. But you wanted to go home, instead!” Frida’s gaze drilled into Rob’s. “If it hadn’t been for my bright idea, placing that Nether portal ahead of time, we’d all have been massacred and the Overworld lost for good.”

  No one had held Rob accountable for the cavalry’s bad fortune in that fight, not even Stormie, who had lost her life. But Pandora’s box was open, and the accusations kept coming.

  “Truth hurts, doesn’t it, Newbie? You let a lot of villagers die that day.”

  Now Turner cast the captain a sidelong glance. He had led the villagers’ squadron and felt their loss harder than anyone knew. Stormie sobered at the memory. Kim and Jools thought back to that day and began to wonder if their allegiance had been misplaced.

  Frida crossed her arms. “So, my answer is no, Rob: I never thought I would live long enough to ever go on a cattle drive. And certainly not one led by you.” She waited for a response, but none came. “Permission to be excused, Captain.”

  The hurt in his eyes made Frida feel a sharp twinge of remorse.

  “Permission granted, Corporal.”

  *

  A shaken Battalion Zero left the beach camp the next morning and rode through Spike City once more, to gather food and drop off Rafe’s share of their last take. The cut rate did not go over well with him, either.

  “Whether you bungled the job or not,” he said to Frida, “you still owe me a full emerald. I got you the work in good faith.”

  Frida regarded her purple-robed brother, whose career as a cleric was nothing more than a front for his black market work. “I don’t believe good or faith are in your skill set, bro. We’ll cash you out after this next gig.”

  The riders left town immediately, attempting to reach their old mesa plateau shelter before the night grew too thick with mobs.

  As the sun slipped low in the sky, Turner appeared energized at the prospect of fending off hostiles instead of irate villains for a change. “When night falls, bodies fall,” he said almost jauntily. “Say, how’d you like that one, Judge?”

  “Somehow, I doubt it translates well in the Latin,” Jools murmured.

  Due to Judge Tome’s poor aim, Rob had him switch positions in line with Crash, putting her rear center and him in the middle of the three rows of three riders. This kept the judge protected when the unearthly groans and nervous bone clacking signaled mobs spawning nearby. The horses had grown so accustomed to successful skirmishing that they simply trotted forward across the icy plains as their riders put up a defense.

  In almost rhythmic fashion, Stormie, De Vries, and Jools loaded bows and sent projectiles at oncoming skeletons, whose arrows rarely found purchase. Frida, Turner, Kim, and Rob kept their swords at hand and slashed at any zombies that were swift enough to keep up with the horses. Crash made a game of it, sitting backward in Roadrunner’s saddle and chopping at the quicker baby zombies that clutched at the horses’ legs like children running for the fender of a moving minecart.

  The band arrived at their original rock dwelling. Its caverns still reached into the mountainous hillside, requiring only slight fortification to enclose them safely for the night. Torches placed all around the horse corral ensured a peaceful sleep for the animals.

  Frida, however, tossed and turned in her bedroom. She had been awfully hard on the captain at dinner the night before, even though her description of the battle outcome had been accurate. She wasn’t one to lie to uphold anyone’s image, but saying nothing was not quite lying. Me and my big mouth. Only she had known Rob’s real motive for advancing up that hill. While he hadn’t sworn her to secrecy, she had crossed some invisible line in sharing it with the battalion—especially the new recruits, whose respect he still needed to cultivate.

  Then he shouldn’t have gambled our lives on his ambition, she argued with herself.

  Still, she worried that she might have permanently damaged their relationship. She had never had a friend who was not a sparring partner. She had never wanted one before.

  Again, Frida wondered if she was losing her survivalist’s edge. And if it was worth keeping sharp. She sighed impatiently and rolled over again next to the bed that De Vries had crafted for her. She was not often given to indecision.

  Her thoughts drifted to the incident that had triggered her irritation. Mad Jack had known exactly what he was
doing when he loosened Rob’s tongue. But . . . the old minecart operator had said something earlier that had been gnawing at the back of Frida’s mind. Where had his interest in De Vries and Crash come from? Was his story about stolen building materials even remotely true?

  If so, the recruits themselves could not be trusted. If not, someone else might be paying Mad Jack to locate them. Who? And why?

  Frida had believed the brother and sister’s reason for joining a travel party while still not knowing much about their past. But nobody in the Overworld these days could afford to be fully up front about his or her history. Maybe it was time to learn more about the industrious builder and miner. She decided to pay extra attention to the pair, to see what she could find out. As for Rob . . . well, she’d have to play him by ear.

  But the captain would have nothing to do with the vanguard as they set out across the plateau the next day.

  “Turner! I’m reinstating your sergeant’s stripes. Tell the squadron corporal that her services will no longer be necessary at the war table.”

  Turner’s expression indicated that there was no war table to remove her from.

  “If and when the time comes, Sergeant! If and when. That’ll be all.”

  They camped that night in a thicket of small trees on a forest plateau. Crash dug a shelter out of the dirt blocks that decorated the surface of the sandstone. Stormie and Turner whacked a few cows that spawned in the area.

  “Might as well eat some beef now,” Turner reasoned. “Won’t get to munch any of Bluedog’s herd.”

  Frida ate to fill her food bar, despite a lack of appetite.

  They traveled all day and into the next in the extensive plateau biome, enjoying the shade trees but little camaraderie. Turner went back to lording it over Jools, who was still a private since he had never sought a promotion.

  Jools and De Vries were on the outs, having squabbled over the shelter design the night before. Friction still divided Stormie and Frida, the vanguard sensing that the adventurer was getting too close to Rob. Even the mild-mannered judge’s nose was put out of joint at Crash’s pantomimed complaint about following the flatulent Norma Jean in the rearranged line.