Thulkara and Blondie were busy getting feed for the horses.
They had even found and accepted the gift of a huge, hulking draft horse for Thulkara to ride, from the captured enemy horses, and located the biggest saddle they could find for her to use. It was a saddle that had been custom made for a big football player a long time ago, and it wouldn’t fit any other normal human being that Mason had ever heard of.
The giant draft horse was an enormous, ill-tempered brute named Goliath, and made all of their horses look like petting zoo ponies by comparison. But at least now, Thulkara could ride with them.
Of course, she immediately fell in love with the great beast. But she really didn’t care either way if she rode or not, and openly boasted that she could outrun most horses over the course of a day.
Mason and Blondie took her at her word.
Mason was quite surprised by bounty hunters suddenly appearing on the streets of the Princess City of Mishawaka.
Eight thugs with loaded crossbows suddenly stepped out of the shadows and doorways and surrounded Mason on the street. They had him from every direction on the compass and then some.
“You there, Pistolero,” the gruff leader of the band said, two loaded crossbow pistols aimed right at Mason’s gut. “Don’t move.”
Mason cocked his head. “Yeah?”
“We have business with you, mister.”
Mason cleared his throat and spat on the ground to his left, sizing them up. Half of them were scared. Two of them eager, including the leader. And the other two looked a little nuts. “And what would that be?” he asked calmly.
The leader sighed and shifted his weight. “A citizen’s committee in South Bend sent us after your murdering ass. You’re wanted back there to face a tribunal. They appointed us to bring you in. You’re coming with us, one way or another, to face justice for the people you’ve killed.”
That made nine crossbow bolts to dodge, what with the two pistols.
Quite a feat to pull off. Not good, the way they had him at close range.
“You’re vigilantes. You’re not the law. Jump straight to hell and burn there.”
But most people with crossbows didn’t shoot from the hip.
They took time to lift their crossbows and take aim.
That might give him enough time. Maybe…
“There is no law,” the leader said. “We’ve been paid to bring you in–alive if we can. Throw your hardware on the ground and we’ll tie you up.”
Take out the eager and crazy, first.
Then maybe the scared ones might run, freeze, or slip up.
“Like hell you will,” Mason told them. “So, you’ve been paid. That makes you dicks bounty hunters. But no one’s putting a rope around my neck ever again. So you and your precious citizen’s committee that paid you can suck ass.”
“I’m giving you to the count of three, Pistolero. Then we kill you right here where you stand. One–”
“Three!” Mason yelled.
At the same time he drew, spinning and turning.
He shot the leader right through his gaping mouth and out the back of his head.
He shot the other eager in the throat, almost taking off his head, and continued to whip around.
The two crazies–he shot the one on the left through the right eye, and the one on the right through the left eye.
He wheeled again. Crossbow bolts flew thick through the air by then.
Three stuck in his duster but did not hit flesh.
Mason put his back to the dead even as they dropped, and faced down the other four.
Two panicked and ran, tossing their crossbows away; one of them hadn’t even fired. The other two struggled to reload.
“Just stop it,” Mason said. He shot one of the crossbows and shattered it. The other guy still lifted.
Mason shot him in the right arm, nearly taking it off. “Dumbass, get the hell away from me and live. Get out of my sight. Stay, and I will kill you, sure as Death Himself.”
All of them were running after that. Mason shouted after them, “Tell those cowards not to send any more bounty hunters my way. I have no desire to waste my time killing fools. What, we don’t have enough enemies surrounding us?”
They had his blood up by then. Mason remained tired and hungry, and now he was royally pissed off, by asinine dillholes trying to murder him.
Thulkara and Blondie came running down the street.
“It’s all over,” he told them. “Get this. Now I hear someone has a price on my head.”
Blondie nodded. “In a barter system? What, you’re worth a pen full of chickens…or maybe a pig…or perhaps, a cow?”
Mason snorted. “Yeah, laugh it up, Blondie.”
“Mooo…Hey, hold still, Mace. I can add those crossbow bolts stuck in your coat to my lot.”
He went around to pluck them out.
Mason sighed. “Help yourself, Blondie. Sheesh.”
They left the dead bounty hunters where they lay. The local militia could take care of them, when they got around to it.
A crow cawed somewhere nearby. Thulkara laughed once more and studied the sky. “I think our dark uncles follow hard upon our road. The skies are troubled, my friends. Mark my words–there shall be more blood this night.”
Blondie groaned, muttering something about more useless, superstitious crap.
Yet, the next enemy attack did come later that night, when they had almost ridden out of Mishawaka, and returned to South Bend.
The troubled sky spat rain.
Things did not begin well, and turned worse from there.
First, a large host of monsters attacked, sweeping over the unsuspecting Mishawaka defensive lines. Most of the Mishawaka defenders had yet to be hit that hard, and they weren’t up to the test. Not yet, at least. It took a while to get used to.
Mason and his friends were close by and rode up to help seal the breach. Lightning flashed and thunder rumbled in the distance.
For more than an hour, they fought a pitched battle as it rained harder and harder.
Mason acted as the artillery, blazing away into the monster ranks as they surged forward just as they always did.
No. That wasn’t right. Something was wrong. Even the monsters in South Bend didn’t fight this way anymore.
They weren’t that dumb.
Something was wrong; this was far too easy.
Then they heard a whooshing sound in the air from a distance.
“Incoming!” Mason yelled.” He dragged himself and Blondie under a nearby picnic table.
“Archery barrage!” Thulkara yelled to the troops. “Shields and mantlets up. Pass the word. Turtle up and take cover!”
It had to be the merc archers, openly working in conjunction with the monsters for the first time.
Arrows covered the exact area where Mason and his friends had stood. The shields of the militia troops and the picnic table were all riddled with them.
Many of the remaining monsters up front were also cut down. They were obviously expendable.
The enemy was trying very hard to take down the Pistolero, and perhaps Blondie and the Thul as well.
“Shift forty yards to the right!” Thulkara shouted. “Hurry. Run for it. Put out those damn torches and lanterns!”
Less than an instant after they finished moving, two fireballs, a red lightning bolt, and some kind of magic blast hammered the area they had just occupied, leaving the ground blackened and reduced to smoking craters and ash.
“They’ve brought at least four mages with them,” Thulkara warned. The wind picked up and the rain increased as the thunderstorms rolled in.
“Did you see where they fired that magic from?” Mason asked. He knelt down and struggled to reload in the gloom during the lull.
“You can spot a mage in the dark, by the magefire or glow on his hands before he unleashes his attack,” Thulkara warned. “Watch for any strange lights and report them. Sometimes the military uses black canvas screens on poles at n
ight. They move the screens around and shoot magic from behind them. Then they shift again, just like we did, and attack once more. Everyone keep watch in the darkness for any strange lights.”
“I hate to say it,” Blondie said, “but we aren’t going to spot them until after they’ve already attacked us once more.”
“We’ve been in one place too long, again,” Thulkara warned. “Everyone, pull back forty yards from this position.”
They were only halfway there when they heard the whooshing sound in the air once more.
“More arrows. Take cover.”
“The monsters are bunching up to charge our lines again,” someone shouted.
Spells came at them in the sky from two separate directions.
“I see spell lights,” Thulkara shouted, looking over her shoulder, still on the run.
Other troops chimed in. “So did I.”
“Me, too.”
“Where?” Mason demanded.
Their people screamed and grunted as the last portion of their lines took casualties from the sheets of incoming arrows feathering the position they still attempted to flee from.
A trooper jumped in front of Mason, motioning with his hands and arms. “Dead ahead–make that twelve o’clock. I saw lights at the ten and one o’clock positions.”
He grunted, taking a stray arrow through his left leg, and dropped down. “I’m hit!”
“Mace,” Thulkara shouted. “I don’t know what that fellow meant, but cast your magic on either side of the positions he noted. Most likely, the enemy is in motion after each attack, just as we are. They will go left or right, forward or back, and they can only move about as far as we can.”
Mason gauged the ranges and fired rapidly to either side of the noted positions. His blasts struck several spots. They heard screaming from one area.
“Shift again, troops,” Thulkara ordered. “Forty yards left and forward.”
They were already moving.
More spells pulverized the area around them.
Several troops were engulfed in an exploding, magical fireball and reduced to charred skeletons, with their screaming skulls frozen open in death.
“Only three spells that time,” Thulkara said. “We must have taken one of their mages down. Good work!”
“Three and eleven o’clock,” spotters shouted.
Mason cut loose on those areas.
To make things even worse, the heavy thunderstorms continued to rage right over the battle.
Mason did his best to blast the areas the enemy spells came from, as they played their game of cat and mouse.
The enemy wizards seemed very close now.
“The enemy’s charging in on us!” Thulkara shouted.
The next two enemy spells came from only twenty feet away.
But now the foe seemed down to only two mages.
The earth both exploded and rolled up on their left, flinging a score of militia back and injuring them.
Black bolts of energy pierced several troops in front of them, and those people shrieked as their bodies began to boil and dissolve.
Mason had seen that spell at work before–from a necromancer.
He dove to one side, blazing away all in front of him to the right, now that the path was clear.
One of those enemy black bolts hit Thulkara’s shield, but her shield either absorbed or negated it. She yelled a Thul war cry and swung her battle-ax down at a big merc.
Mason had never seen a person split cleanly in two like a chunk of firewood.
But the two enemy mages charged in with forces swarming all around them.
Blondie rose up from reloading his crossbow and shot the mage on the left in the right lung, cutting him down. A dying monster collapsed on top of Blondie, knocking him over.
Mason and the necromancer on the right unleashed hell at each other right at the exact same time.
The guy was fast–just as fast as Mason.
A burning dark cloud of writhing black and red vapors shot out toward Mason, enveloped by an exploding, diamond-laced round from his pistol.
The resulting blast canceled out both effects in an instant. They imploded and vanished, harming no one. Both combatants staggered back.
Mason realized at that moment that it was possible for him to directly shoot down enemy spells and magical attacks. If he could spot them quickly enough after they went off, before they struck.
The necromancer in the iron mask lifted his black-gloved hands, both of which became encased in dark flame.
Mason shot off the left and the right side of the necromancer’s skull mask, leaving the rest looking like a bloody, chewed-off apple core.
The corpse dropped back and flopped on the ground, spraying blood.
Then the dead body consumed itself and imploded as they watched.
Another third enemy mage rose up on their right and nailed both Thulkara and Mason in the back with some kind of red lightning that transfixed them and quickly drained their strength.
Mason was helpless. Thulkara moved at half-speed, resisting the effects.
The mercs rushed forward to either kill or seize them both.
The white-blue lightning from the sky suddenly thundered down like a net, roasting several foes where they stood.
Blondie rose up, both hands glowing with white fire.
He called the lightning down to himself and fashioned it into first a veil, and then a wall.
He walked that wall back into the enemy under his direct command.
Everything living that the lightning wall touched exploded in blasts of light, fury, and death. The enemy mage tried to counter it, and screamed. He vanished in a bloody detonation.
With their mages taken out and the rest of them facing such horrific destruction, the enemy ranks broke and fled in terror.
Blondie pitched forward onto his hands and knees, spent and catching his breath.
The enemy had failed to take down the Pistolero and his friends, thanks once again to Blondie…or was he back to being his old self Shaeddor by now?
No one knew that. Not even Mason. He wonder if Blondie knew.
Thulkara spat on the necromancer’s shriveling remains. “Those bastards never go to hell easy,” she said.
It was all they could do to keep Thulkara from finishing off the enemy sorcerer with the lung shot. She wanted his head very badly.
Mason and Blondie wanted the guy alive–another enemy mage for questioning–once they could get him healed up enough.
Thulkara saluted Blondie once more with her gory ax, looking at him with new respect and even a little worry.
So did Mason.
“Good work, Sylurrian,” Thulkara told him. “You continue to regain more of your powers. That is well. You are a mighty ally.”
Blondie stared at his hands, looking both pleased and still slightly confused. He shrugged and rubbed one temple. “Indeed, I keep recalling more and more of myself and my past…all the while.”
29
“Someone check on her and keep Jerriel safe,” David yelled. “The rest, in with me!”
The big gozog shielded the remnants of his guard within a shimmering half globe of blue-green energy. Its light faded as the flames went down.
The leader wore gold and lapis gauntlets. They glowed with runes just as Jerriel’s staff had done.
The enemy also wielded magic. It had somehow shielded them from Jerriel’s attack. It also deflected arrows and crossbow bolts.
David’s militia troops fell upon the enemy bodyguards hand-to-hand.
He squared off with the big leader–the one that had injured Jerriel.
“You’re mine, jerkweed!”
The big gozog swung his great hammer swiftly and with skill. This creature knew how to fight, and use magic.
David ducked under a hammer stroke and sprang to one side. The hammer slammed into the ground where he had stood not an instant before.
He slashed his longsword deep into the gozog’s massive forearm above
the gauntlets. The leader roared in pain and booted him aside with the sweep of one iron-shod foot, as big as David’s chest.
David flew back as if hit by a charging rhino, and landed among his troops. They caught him. An arrowhead nicked his right arm through his armor.
Nothing felt broken. He just had the wind knocked out of him.
The leader flattened and swept troops away to the left side, killing many with that huge hammer. Behind their unstoppable leader, it looked as if the monsters might break out toward the northwest.
David staggered forward with his troops and caught his breath. Then he rushed the leader again.
He avoided the swooshing hammer and slipped behind the leader. With a diving, two-handed stroke, he cut through the back of the leader’s right leg. Black blood sprayed everywhere.
The leader staggered and went down on his injured leg, spinning around, killing more troops with that accursed hammer. David charged into the opening and rammed his longsword into the big gozog’s neck. A sweep from a massive backfist clipped his helmet.
David chopped at the huge arm with his tomahawk, sinking it into the bicep like hitting a tree trunk. The weapon jerked from his hand.
He pulled out his other tomahawk and cast it into the face of the leader, burying it in the left eye. Then he drew his katana and wakizashi.
The leader turned at bay, his vision damaged, smashing anything nearby. David cut, sliced, stabbed, and dodged.
The gozog suddenly fell forward toward David, attempting to flatten him, like a hill of stinking flesh.
David sprang back and thrust his swords into to the leader’s right eye up to the hilts and out the back of the head.
The big gozog finally convulsed and sagged forward, dropping its deadly hammer out of its twitching hands.
David yanked his swords free and sprang back.
He surveyed the battle. Pockets of fighting remained, but his troops had the area secured. Very few of the captives had been injured or killed. Good.
But from the looks of them, many would prove too weak from terror and exposure to walk back to safety under their own power. They would need to be carried or trucked out.
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