by Nathan Jones
A chorus of relieved groans burst from his exhausted skirmishers. Brandon gave them a few moments to contemplate that, then quickly laid out his plan of attack. When he was finished he clapped his hands briskly. “That's it, then. Spread out, teams twenty yards apart. Reina, your team is farthest north. Pine, yours next, then Ray's, then me and Andy.”
With one of his people down and three more hopefully regrouped back in Camptown, he'd had to rearrange the teams a bit, leaving three teams of three and him and his friend to make a fourth. Hopefully, eleven people with automatic weapons captured from the bloodies would be enough to send up to four times their number of enemies either cowering or fleeing.
It hadn't worked so well for Trapper in some engagements, in spite of having closer to even numbers; Sangue troops were well trained, disciplined, and bloodthirsty as anything. It was hard to catch them by surprise, and even if you managed it they recovered quickly.
But his people were well trained too, if less experienced. And they didn't have a bunch of recruits dragged into fighting before they were ready, who would break and run at the first sign of trouble and completely wreck the ambush. He also hoped that they'd managed to wear the enemy down enough to make victory possible, and their superior position and striking at the right time would make the difference.
If not, things could go bad fast.
“Scope out an escape route first thing, then find a good firing position,” he continued grimly. “You know the signals for when to open fire and when to withdraw.” He leaned forward to clap a few of the nearest people on the shoulder, then nodded sharply. “Get going.”
As the others hurried away, keeping the ridgeline between them and view of their enemies to the east, Brandon led the way south with Andy following close behind.
“I'm all for getting in a good ambush,” his friend said quietly, “but how far do you want to take this? We're not here for pitched battles.”
“Just long enough to see if this is the straw that breaks the camel's back for our pursuers,” he replied. “Believe me, I'm giving the signal the moment things don't look to be going our way.”
“I say we should've just used your knowledge of the terrain around here to get away clean, then finally taken the opportunity to pass out,” Andy grumbled. But that was the last he said about it.
Brandon found a good outcropping, swathed on either side with thick underbrush that was perfect for seeing through while remaining unseen. He and his friend briefly conferred on an escape route, Andy deferring to his familiarity with the area. Then they split up to take positions north and south of the outcrop, shimmying into the bushes and preparing to fire.
Once Brandon was set up with his rifle firmly planted, and he'd confirmed that his scope wasn't obscured by leaves and offered a good view of the valley below and the far ridge, he settled down to wait for the enemy.
He was unexpectedly nervous, going into this. It wasn't anywhere close to his first fight, of course, and in some respects that's all he'd been doing for the last few weeks, either fighting or preparing to fight. But at the same time, after following the strategy of hitting the enemy with the plan to immediately bolt, even if there was a possibility to inflict further damage with minimal risk, led to a certain mindset.
Getting ready to dig in and really try to gun down as many of the enemy as possible, only fleeing if forced to, required an unexpected effort to switch mental gears.
At least he didn't have to worry about whether or not Sangue would see the narrow valley and avoid the potential vulnerable terrain, since only a couple minutes later he saw the first enemy scouts appear on the far ridge. After another minute or so they began easing their way down, while more and more bloodies followed them onto the steep slope, spread across over a hundred yards in loose lines bolstered by a screen of scouts and flankers.
Brandon waited until the scouts were nearly to the bottom of the slope, and Sangue soldiers were still creeping up over the ridge and making their way down, before taking aim on a man in the line near the front. He was already picking out his next target, the soldier just north of the first in line, as he pulled the trigger.
His shot was the signal to open fire, reinforced by the shriek from the Sangue he'd shot and cries of alarm from the others. Then ten more rifles along his ridge, some distant enough to be slightly muted, began popping off their own shots.
He got off half a dozen shots on as many men, a few missing as the enemy sought cover or simply hit the dirt, before pausing to shift positions. As he did so he assessed the situation and picked out new targets. From what he could see things were looking good; the enemy squads were returning fire, a deafening thunder of automatic weapons chewing up the ridgline he was on, but many had yet to find good cover.
Unfortunately, after that good start was when things went terribly, terribly wrong.
Brandon had just opened fire on a new bunch of targets, soldiers sprawled on a grassy slope hoping that a smaller profile and their body armor would protect them. From the angle he was firing from, and at a steep slope no less, he was cutting through them like winter wheat, getting a couple shots into each and focusing on hitting around the body armor.
He was about to shift locations again, maybe swap out for a full magazine, when he abruptly paused to listen as the roar of gunfire around him seemed to double in intensity. He felt the hairs on his neck starting to rise, some six sense telling him this was a seriously bad thing.
Were they echoes, bouncing back from the opposite slope? It almost sounded like the gunfire was coming from behind them.
It didn't take long to determine that those weren't echoes, and his ears hadn't deceived him; someone was shooting from farther west, on the slightly higher ridge across the gully behind them. Before he could decide what to do about this unexpected development, he heard a familiar woman's voice screaming in agony from the direction of Neal's team farther north, abruptly cut off. It was almost immediately followed by the bartender yelling Reina's name.
That wasn't the yell of someone calling for help for a loved one. That was pure grief and loss, and Brandon's gut clenched. For critical seconds he sat there staring when he should've been acting, frozen in disbelief.
How? They'd been keeping a watch on the bloodies, and certainly would've noticed if enough of them had snuck off to make that much noise behind them. On the other hand, he hadn't scouted this area the way he should've, there just hadn't been time. Although he'd at least looked over the surrounding terrain as they planned their escape route, enough to reassure himself that there wasn't a single thing larger than a rabbit besides them and their enemies to the east moving anywhere within sight.
Unless of course these newcomers had known exactly where the skirmishers were. The bloodies had radios, something he'd tried to plan around, but that wasn't always easy to do since he'd never really used a radio. He just didn't have enough experience with them to properly consider them tactically.
Was that why the squads pursuing them had acted like they were herding his people this way? Had they called in another nearby force to the west, one that had been moving to intercept them beyond the ridge west of them, and in the face of Brandon's attack had moved to ambush the ambushers?
He cursed himself for the world's biggest fool. They'd been skirmishing with this group for long enough that he should've expected the bloodies to do something. They weren't idiots, in fact were frighteningly professional and adaptive, and it was only a matter of time before they tried, say, the oldest trick in the book, herding their prey towards a trap.
He began backing out of his sniping position, putting fingers to his lips to blow the signal for everyone in earshot to get the blazes out of there, covering each other as they went. They'd have to flee along the ridge, and most likely the teams farther north would decide to split up and go that way to maximize their chances for escape.
As he started picking his way south along the ridge, doing his best to find cover from both east and west and ducking bullets
whipping past with every step, Andy caught up to him. “We're going south?” his friend demanded, giving him an incredulous look. “We're just going to split off from Neal and the others, after Reina's obviously been hurt and needs help?”
Brandon shook his head grimly, while urgently motioning for the man to keep up. “There's around two squads of bloodies we know about, and however many are west of here. Only a few of them need to maneuver around us to pin us down, and Neal and his people have that same narrow window to escape in the opposite direction. We need to get out, make sure Ray's team make it too if they followed us . . . until we get free ourselves there's nothing we can do for anyone else.”
Andy didn't like it, that was obvious, but he nodded grimly as they continued on.
Bullets whined around them, forcing them to scramble on all fours with the clumsy speed of the truly desperate. Brandon slammed against trees, scraped his hands on bark, skinned his knees on fallen logs, and at one time nearly gouged his eye out on a tree branch. All the while expecting a stray shot to slam into him, with his luck probably hitting something not protected by his body armor, and put him down for good.
Like Reina?
He couldn't let himself think of her, or his crushing guilt for leaving her and the rest of his people behind. They'd trained for this, they'd planned extensively for what to do if things went wrong, and the number one priority for each team was to get out, only covering their teammates. As for other skirmishers, if they were in sight and obviously in need of assistance of course help them, but only then.
Sitting around looking to see if someone needed help was a great way to end up shot yourself, or hunted down and captured. Callous as it felt, that wouldn't do anyone any good; they just had to trust that their teammates had their backs, and that the other teams were skilled enough to get out.
So he scrambled, not even trying to return fire and focused solely on getting himself and his friend out.
* * * * *
Tom could tell he and Mer had run into a real mess the moment he heard the gunfire in the distance to the west. Lots and lots of gunfire, and it showed no signs of stopping anytime soon.
They'd been following the trail of the bloodies who were supposedly pursuing Brandon's skirmishers, ever since finding it a day or so ago. Tom was actually a bit surprised how quickly they'd caught up to the enemy, even on horseback; skirmishers and bloodies alike must've run themselves ragged over the last week or so.
Not that he was doing much better, or Mer for that matter. Without Horse and Mary to do most of the heavy lifting in their hasty journey, they would've been stumbling along in pure exhaustion just like the people they were trying to find.
“Come on,” he hissed to Mer, nudging Horse into a trot to the south. He was assuming Brandon would try to lead the enemy away from Camptown as a first priority, which meant they'd be heading southwards if they had to flee whatever trouble they were in. With any luck he and Mer would be able to circle around the forty or so Sangue soldiers between them and their friends, and hopefully find an opportunity to help.
Although he hoped Brandon could manage to get away on his own, and all Tom would have to do was accompany his friend as they made good their escape. Two more guns wouldn't make that much difference in a fight, and the bloodies had already proven decisively that they knew how to use numbers to their advantage.
Even fighting even odds was a dubious prospect.
“Where are we going?” Mer demanded, urging Mary up alongside him. That was a risky move on the steep slope they were on, just one of many in this wrinkled blanket of a terrain, but the young woman's anger and panic were understandable.
Those were her friends down there. Then again, they were Tom's, too, and his son was possibly mixed up in this mess as well. Which was why his tone was more curt than it strictly needed to be when he replied. “Circling around the bloodies we've been trailing so we can help our friends.”
Mary snorted in mild alarm as a hoof slid on the slope, but Mer stubbornly kept up with him. “That might take too long!” she protested. “What if we hit the bloodies from behind, draw some of the heat off the skirmishers?”
For one thing, they weren't even sure the fighting up ahead was the skirmishers. Or at least Brandon's group. Considering the location and what Tom knew it seemed almost certain, but assumptions could be dangerous. For all he knew another group of refugees like Gray's people had made their way into these mountains, and that's who the bloodies were fighting.
Which was beside the point. “Better to take a few extra minutes to move to a position where we can help whoever's fighting up there, and also meet up with them if they manage to get away.”
“What if Brandon and the others don't have a few minutes?” she muttered.
Tom paused, ears picking up a decrease in the firing up ahead. Not by a whole lot . . . maybe a dozen or so weapons. As in Brandon's skirmishers breaking away from the fighting while Sangue kept shooting at them?
Biting back a curse, he urged Horse to the fastest safe pace on this slope, holding his rifle ready for use. Either to peer through the scope in search of the enemies ahead, or to return fire quickly if they came under attack.
After a few more minutes of tense riding, Tom caught sight of figures ducking from cover to cover on the ridge up ahead: Sangue soldiers, making their way south shadowing someone the next valley over. They were the source of the gunfire Tom continued to hear, or at least part of it since he heard more coming from farther north, and still more from farther west. Much farther, probably not the next slope over.
Had Brandon managed to get himself pinned between two enemy forces? If so, he was in bigger trouble than it had seemed. And it had seemed pretty blasted bad.
“Now?” Mer hissed. Her rifle was already braced against her shoulder, and she was maneuvering Mary to give her a good angle for shooting.
Tom looked around, then guided Horse behind a low rise and dismounted. The young woman with him eagerly hopped off her horse as well, joining him looking over the rise. “The moment we start shooting, those dozens of soldiers are going to be after us just as hard as Brandon and his people,” he whispered. “So make the shots count, then get ready to bolt.”
She nodded, face pale but expression determined, even fierce. “Let's kill some bloodies.”
Tom's priority was giving the skirmishers some breathing room so they could get away, but at the moment the two went hand and hand. So he aimed for one of the darting figures a hundred or so yards to the west, anticipated his movement, and squeezed off a shot at his lower back. The man dropped with a shriek of surprise and pain, but Tom was already shifting aim for another figure. Beside him he heard Mer join in at a slightly slower rate.
The nearby Sangue troops all ducked behind cover as if they thought the shots had come from Brandon's people, which left their backs exposed to Tom and Mer for several more critical seconds as they downed a few more people.
Finally, he saw soldiers beginning to figure it out, pinpointing the source of their gunfire through the deceptive echoes. They began to shout and find new sources of cover, turning to return fire.
Tom shot at a leg visible around a fallen log, not sure if the enemy yanked it back behind cover because he hit it or the man realized it was exposed. But he got his notice that it was time to go when he heard the whine of a ricochet off a nearby rock, loud and close enough to make the hairs on the back of his neck stand straight up.
He ducked down and started to shimmy down the rise, then paused when he realized his companion was still up there blasting away at the bloodies. “Mer! Let's go!”
She reluctantly slithered back and joined him as he ran in a crouch back to their horses.
They rode hard south down the valley, their surefooted mounts picking their way over difficult ground with impressive speed. It helped that he knew this area almost as well as the ranch valley, and Horse and Mary had been all over it. Tom watched their back trail the entire time, in case the enemy was more daring
in pursuing them than any sane person would be, but he didn't see anything.
That didn't mean there was nothing there, so he wasted no time skedaddling and hunched low over Horse's neck to make himself a worse target.
At a high vantage a bit south by southwest of their position, Tom had them pause to scope out the terrain between them and where he thought the skirmishers would be. He caught his first sight of Brandon alive and well, moving along a ridgeline at a stumbling run while moving from cover to cover, and not even trying to dodge the sporadic gunfire coming their way from both east and west.
The sight of the young man was a huge relief, although tempered by the fact that Tom only saw three other people with him; where were the rest of the skirmishers? Had they been separated, forced to flee north while the others fled south?
If so, there wasn't much Tom could do for them now. He didn't like it, but all he could do at the moment was do his best to get these four skirmishers to safety.
Speaking of which, he was also able to see the Sangue pursuing him and Mer, as well as those chasing Brandon's group: maybe ten just north of Tom and his companion, hot on their trail, ten to the east and northeast of the skirmishers, and ten to the west and northwest of Brandon's group. The nearer groups of soldiers looked just as exhausted as the skirmishers, slowly falling behind, but the ten to the west were really hounding Brandon and his people hard.
Well, that made picking targets a bit easier. “Focus on the nearer group gunning for your people,” he told Mer, dropping behind a rock and setting his rifle's bipod for a solid mounting. “I'll get the guys on the other side.”
The young woman shot him a dubious look as she found her own covered firing position. The group she was targeting was roughly two hundred yards away, a fairly easy shot for Tom but probably stretching the limits of her abilities in combat conditions. The ones he was going after were over four hundred yards away.
