am-books BECMI Chapter 482 – The Road and the Horde
BECMI Chapter 482 – The Road and the Horde
The second caravan reached us tiredly about four hours later. They’d covered a lot of ground, but we didn’t let them stop… but we did allow them to go slow as we turned around and headed back to Zanzyr.Cirru finished her sweep by then. Two caravans heading to Federyn and one coming this way turned back safely enough, and a patrol of Federyn cavalry was available to escort them out.
She turned back in our direction, swinging wide north to see what was happening away from the road.
She reported larger and larger hordes gathering urgently, now reaching thousands in numbers and starting to move west.
Duum’s scouting likewise revealed hordes closer to Zanzyr then we were now, roused and hungry for blood as lesser warbands joined the greater ones.
We walked, slow and steady and constant, not hurrying, just eating up the miles at a normal pace the animals could take and we could maintain without effort. The hills were alive with horns and drums, spooking the civilians and some of my men, at least until I reported that they were talking to one another, and weren’t anywhere close enough to bother us for the moment.
My people thus relaxed, and if Duum came zipping down out of the sun to occasionally pick up a goblin or kobold spotter and launch them down the steep side of a mountain, well, that was entertainment.
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“Okay, we now have a situation developing.”
Tired and twitchy drovers jerked upright fearfully, the merchant’s guards and riders clutching at their weapons nervously.
I pointed ahead and to our right. “There’s a warband of about a thousand goblins and kobolds on the other side of that peak. They know we are here and are waiting for us to pass.”
I shifted my pointing finger to the next mountain over. “Those of you familiar with the Trade Road know there’s a bridge over the Shortfang River ahead. On the other side of that river, a similarly-sized warband of hobgoblins and goblins are waiting to the sides to saturate the Road and stop us.
“Then intend to catch us in between them in the middle of the river, with nowhere to go, box us in and do whatever their busy little minds picture them doing.
“That, of course, is .”
The curses starting to rise stilled in their throats as my people began to laugh and nod slightly, not really all that worried about matters, carrying their rifles confidently.
“We are going to walk casually into our seeming doom, right across that river, where they can only attack us along the Road, and not from all sides, like they could if we stayed here.” Protests died in their throats as the merchant trains looked at the terrain on all sides, and realized goblins and kobolds could be climbing the slopes below us even now! “Then we are going to kill them all as a sort of message to whoever else might be trying the same kind of silly tactic while magic is down. Because while some magic is down, other magic is up.”
They’d seen us pick off a dozen Bleaker scouts and watchers from range over the last fifteen miles, very impressed at the range of our shooting, if a bit unnerved by the Mule taking up position at the back of the two trains, trotting silently and with mechanically catlike tread after the wagons. Sergeant Chuco was riding in it, along with a couple of the heavier and most valuable items on the wagons, helping the horses out, as the Mule didn’t complain about weight.
“Can you kill them all?” the tall, sallow merchant Gwardio asked, eyes sagging with a lack of sleep and worry. Knowing you were on the menu was a hard mindset for many people to deal with.
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“Yes,” I answered calmly. “Plus they seem to have forgotten the dragon that swept down the road earlier. She is going to be back overhead of us in about twenty minutes.”
That earned sighs of relief from the all the merchants. Unexpected as it was, they were more than happy enough for a dragon to rescue them.
“Did I but have my spells, I would send these bastards to running by myself!” the portly and sweating Fuireze merchant Canolphus swore indignantly, more to reassure himself than truth, as he was but a Ten and would have gotten off maybe two spells before running away by Teleporting or Flying away. As it was, he could whack things with a staff, maybe, or draw a dagger and prove mostly useless, even his backup Wand able to do nothing for him. As a Zanzyran Wizard he was used to being looked up to, not considered a fat piece of lard slowing everyone else down and not able to pull his own weight.
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He was also looking at our rifles with undisguised avarice, but that wouldn’t do him any good, either. They were all gene-locked and Rune-Marked for tracing as part of their circuit diagrams. The very few people who’d managed to run off with one of our firearms or sabers hadn’t lasted a day before said weapons were back in our possession.
He also realized we were far more skilled than he was, and he’d guessed who I was, even though I wasn’t introduced. Might have had a little bit of reputation attached to me for some reason, somehow.
“I notice you only have two people guarding the rear!” the fat Fuirezan went on quickly, naturally concerned because that’s where his wagons of fine Federyn furniture, wood, and porcelain were at!
“Sergeant Chuco is manning the Mule. The Mule can handle the back all by itself, Master Canolphus,” Ranger Karista answered firmly in my place. “If you don’t trust him to do the job alone, you are welcome to go back there and join him.”
Well, that wasn’t going to happen. He stood a much higher chance of dying if he was in the back lines now, didn’t he? He kind of shrank down and shut his mouth after that.
My people could have been out for an afternoon stroll, wisecracking, telling jokes about nifloids and some of the boneheaded things they did, some of the clever things they did for counterpoint, and then some of the absolutely crazy things they did as warnings not to underestimate them. It wasn’t beyond them to do wave attacks and try to overwhelm us with press of bodies, but they had no idea how horrible a tactic that was against automatic weapons.
It gave the drovers and guards heart, as we obviously weren’t worried about this. They kept tilting their heads back, trying to catch notice of Duum and Cirru, but the two were way up there and in the sun, looking like dots or distant eagles at that distance.
Hardly stopping them from being able to get down low and in support in under a minute, of course!
For now, they just watched the two hordes and relayed their positions to us as we walked along.
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The bridge across the Shortfangs, the same bridge where we’d heaped up a bunch of dead yesterday, was less than half a mile ahead of us. I called out that the horde behind us was moving urgently to cut us off, while the horde ahead was on the far side of the roadway and trying to stay out of sight of us as we came up on the bridge.
We didn’t slow down, we didn’t change pace. We ignored the widened rest stop area near the bridge and kept pacing forwards, heading out onto the quarter-mile span of it. We had obviously seen the horde racing after us from behind, trying to get us to flee onto the bridge at speed, but we didn’t change our pace in the slightest.
Still, the goblins and hobgoblins on the far side boiled up out of cover, howling and yowling and screaming and shrieking as they surged onto the Trade Road to block our path forward.
“Keep forward, same pace,” I said calmly, holding at rest. “Their bows have shit for range and can’t do anything above a hundred paces. Sergeant Chuco, you are cleared to open fire at thirty meters and not a moment sooner, and do not take your finger off that trigger until you are done.”
“Affirmative!” the Vanguard scout grinned cheerfully.
“Karista, join your Daisho at the back.” The Ranger immediately peeled away to join her dwarven partner Holgurs back there. “Forward crew, rack bursting grenades as they draw up the archers they are trying to rank ahead of us. We deploy at the edge of their arrow range, then start single-shot fire.
“At fifty yards, or if they charge, we switch to automatic fire. I will be on the central path, everyone else concentrate on numbers.
“If any of the guards want to come up and contribute missile fire, as you please. Sweep any that get by us, but that number should be small, and do make sure anything that is not in pieces stays dead.”
The cold lethality and utter confidence in my voice did far more to reassure them than any flowery words. The closest drover just swallowed and whispered, “They really are going to kill all of them, aren’t they?”
“They seem pretty confident of it,” the man riding crossbow next to him whispered back. “Them Eismark people have reputations for being right nasty when provoked. You know even Delpha steps around them carefully?”
“Yeah, well, probably running around with their tails between their legs right now,” chuckled the drover under his breath, not looking at the portly Fuirezan merchant on his overly-gilded coach behind them, which wasn’t floating serenely along above the ground like he preferred it to do. Apparently it had to stay ‘on’, and the fool had turned it off last night when they’d stopped to rest, not thinking about the consequences. As a result he had to roll along on the ground on the floating coach’s resting/back-up wheels, enjoying the bumps and rattles with everyone else, although the Trade Road was probably the finest road they’d ever traveled on.
There was lots of talk about getting Erendyl Cryptomancers to make equal trade roads across Federyn, or maybe the Moorian Dwarves who were setting up shop next to them could do it. Apparently those dwarves could use Earth Magic!
The cost was high, but any merchant who’d traveled this incredible road, cutting right through such hostile territory, couldn’t help but dream of having something equal in much safer and more hospitable locations!
“Don’t flaunt it. Nobody knows how long it will last, but nobody thinks it is permanent.” The crossbowman nodded at the Eismark soldiers ahead of them, checking to make sure his own bolts were ordered and ready to be used. “Now, be ready. This should get interesting rather quickly…”
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We let go with the grenades about two seconds before their massed arrow volley went off. The grenades used a much lower arc of fire than the arrows, weren’t trailing flames or anything, and once as they covered the distance to the squads of goblins and archers pointing their bows at the sky and waiting to rain death on us.
The grenades crossed the distance in sets of two,
Sure looked like , but nope, just plain ol’ excitable chemistry and some alchemy to make the flames cling a moment longer. Oh, and Vivic, from the Weapons.
Walking them back through the lines of archers, any hint of an arrow volley was completely destroyed as the packed archers were torn completely apart by the grenade detonations. Burning corpses were launched in all directions, and if they were reduced far enough, vivisized in a flash of heat and mist that didn’t leave much beyond the metallic scraps behind from my final, wider-blast shot.
There was precious little smoke and mist left behind, as the carbonizing bodies were vivified instead, and the road was clean and unmarked by the explosions, just a swathe of white mist calf-high left behind.