Beam POV: Day 41

Current Wealth: 0 silver 0 copper

Current Debt: 6 gold 44 silver 20 copper

I wasn’t sure, exactly, how Xangô managed to wrangle us a few weeks of free food and housing, but he did. I wasn’t sure how he managed to convince that deal to hold, after Hengrard saw that we were each eating about double the usual amount, but he did. The situation was dire- a fight against 3 for every 2 on your own side usually was- but it was a hell of a lot better than starving had been, and it was something we could actually influence. None of us were planning on simply idling while it approached.

The road from Jhigral to Wolney was long, winding and, according to Hengrard’s report, predicted by Elementalists- magi specialised in influencing and weighing the weather- to be made impassable with snow for at least a fortnight. So we’d had a bit of wiggle room to prepare, recover and prepare ourselves.

We used it well.

Bread and porridge was easily acquired, but I insisted on bargaining for a ration of meat, too. Some mutton and goat flesh from Hengrard’s stores, just a few ounces each per day, but it had enough protein to make at least some difference when combined with our other measures.

As we saw it, our main priority was physical power. We were haggard and worn thinner than ever before, so getting to a fighting condition would be hard. But I’d trained harder in the past. Compared to the pain of seeing my body wither away in this world, the effort of pushing it back up to “merely” exceptional barely even registered.

Push ups, squats, sit ups and lots of running. I did them by the hundreds, by the mile. Jumping and sidestepping, improvising support beams for pull-up bars, callisthenics until the cows came home. It was oddly comforting. Even as I felt aghast at how difficult the simple exercises had become, I realised I was essentially back to my roots, working just as hard and just as slow as I had when I’d first started seriously trying for the Olympics all those years ago.

That, and it was amazingly fun to watch Solitaire and Xangô fail alongside me.

My friends swore, begged, bargained and bitched, and I didn’t let them get out of a single exercise. Pushing them right alongside myself, taking motivation from the knowledge that they’d use my stopping as an excuse to quit themselves. All the while we prepared, we were practically inhaling eggs and meat, porridge and bread, guzzling water to hydrate our tortured bodies and resting only as a reluctant concession to the logistics of muscle-building.

By the end of the second week, we’d gained most of our mass back. Not all as muscle, though. Our bodies, apparently, had adjusted to starvation and started piling a bit more fat on. That was fine- if anything fat would help, Solitaire politely let us know that it was better than any other soft tissue for stopping a blade- but it was disheartening.

So we worked even harder for the third week.

It ended quickly, time compressing amid our focus, and soon enough we heard word that a large number of men had been sighted moving to Jhigral from the numerous roads connecting it to Wolney. Time was up, and the fight was on us. All we had left was to see how well we’d prepared.

For his part, Hengrard was more than competent at outfitting us. We all got thick woollen clothes, warm, but more importantly coiled and tough enough that they might stop a knife. Our own weapons were ones we’d already practised with, and of comparable quality to what most of Hengrard’s boys would be using anyway, but we had the chance for a few choice surprises, too.

Solitaire, back on the very first day after our deal, had asked for a giant pile of horse shit. Literally. I hadn’t known why, hadn’t asked, and he’d just giggled when Xangô had. I figured we’d find out soon enough. Sooner than I liked, actually, because it was on the afternoon of the twenty-third day since our deal, and the forty-first day since our arrival, that we were called on to ready ourselves for it.

As modern humans, it was nothing new for us to see the assembly of people. They were countable in the dozens, on our side, and that was nothing at all back home. Solitaire would’ve seen two, even three times as many every time his year assembled in highschool- Xangô probably saw even more just occupying individual market streets in Nigeria. Me? Fuck, I’m fairly sure your average football or baseball game in the U.S filled its stadium with easily a thousand times as many.

It was a different thing entirely, though, to know that they were all on our side, all armed, and all ready for a fight. And that was what let it all sink in. This wasn’t some bar brawl, it was a fucking war. And we were on the outnumbered side.

Solitaire spoke first, among the three of us. He wasn’t as good with people as Xangô, definitely wasn’t half the businessman, but he was king when it came to killing people.

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“They’ll be attacking, right?” He asked. Then continued before anyone could answer.

“Advantage us, if you had enough spies to hear what Wolney’s Elementalists were saying then I’ll guess they have enough to know what’s happening here and where we’re hiding out. So they’ll be cutting in through the Ratpass to reach us as quickly as possible with all their forces concentrated.”

Hengrard hesitated, thought, then nodded.

“...Makes sense.”

It did, at that. The Ratpass was a long stretch of trench about fifteen feet wide that cut right through the city’s centre. Apparently it had once held a redirected river, but long since fallen out of use. These days it was just a good shortcut. Solitaire grinned.

“Then let’s go and meet them there.” He announced, setting off at a walk. “Their numbers won’t be as good in there, they won’t have as easy a time surrounding us, and I have a little surprise stashed away just in case.”

That got him a lot of sceptical looks.

“The base is…Fortified.” One man brought up. Solitaire shrugged. “It can’t hold all of us, who’s waiting outside?”

Hengrard was quick in speaking then.

“Reserves.” He snapped, “Ready to ambush them when they try to break in.”

Solitaire grinned.

“Then lend ‘em to us, and we’ll ambush them when they’re trying to approach, instead.”

It took some convincing, but apparently Hengrard wasn’t particularly attached to his men in the first place. He probably didn’t think any of the ones not inside could do much good, probably hoped that the lack of encirclement would do a lot of heavy lifting. Maybe he was just stupid. I really wasn’t sure how Solitaire and Xangô managed it, but we were soon moving in to fight a hundred men with barely twelve on our own side. We hurried, moving almost at a jog, and soon we were on the Ratpass.

Soon, we saw the enemy moving down it further ahead.

There were a lot, and they were moving with a purpose. Whether it was a hundred or not, I really couldn’t say, but the crowd seemed at least a bit bigger than ours had been in full, and a lot bigger than the group we had now. They were almost to the end of the Ratway, now, just fifty yards from scaling the big slope at the end. When they did that, they’d be on us.

Solitaire stepped forwards as if those hundred paces were a hundred miles, moving to a large pile of planks and rubbish, shifting it aside to pull something out. A barrel. He grinned.

“What…Is that?” Xangô asked him, concern palpable in the question. Our friend didn’t answer, just pulled out a tinderbox- probably loaned from the gangsters- and lit a big fuse protruding from the top.

It was that, at last, that made me realise the obvious.

“You didn’t!” I gasped, and he looked over his shoulder, laughing.

“Why do you think I needed the SHIT?!” He sneered. “God, do you know how long I’ve waited to do something like this?” He turned his eyes to the group at large. “ALRIGHT BOYS AND GIRLS, EVERYBODY STEP BACK, THIS IS GONNA BE A SPLASH ZONE.”

Our enemies must’ve seen us, because they were running faster now. Barely fifty feet away, and closing by the second. Solitaire tipped the big barrel down the ramp into the Ratpath, watching as the wooden keg- maybe half his height and two feet wide- rolled and bounced and thudded hard into the stone floor down below. The fuse kept burning, flame now an inch from the base. By the time it disappeared into the wood, men had already surrounded it all.

Explosions were common in modern earth, but, oddly enough, being near them- let alone near them regularly- was not. The first thing that hit me was the sheer dirtiness of it, smoke and soot blowing out in all directions at once, like a mushroom cloud. The second thing was the pressure.

My teeth rattled, ears ached, eyes watered as heat and force battered me at once, sending me back a step and looking away while the screams rang out below. I heard Solitaire laughing, barely, over the din. Then the air was clearing, and I risked a look back to watch the result of his work.

Limbs, everywhere. Most were within twenty feet of the epicentre, some scattered far enough that they’d landed past the scorch marks. The atmosphere was full of churning smog, all white and grey, a smokescreen I could barely even look past. Behind it bodies were strewn about, ten, a dozen, twenty. I could only estimate it as a significant portion of the enemy. More were wounded, lying and screaming, clutching ruined faces and gushing ears. There was a terrified tremble running through our team, and then Solitaire was roaring out another cackle.

“COME ON, WHILE THEY’RE REELING, OR ARE YOU BOYS TOO SCARED TO FIGHT EVEN WITH A WIZARD ON YOUR SIDE!?”

There was something different about him, and it was infectious. A sudden animalism to his voice, a savagery to his eyes, an eagerness to the way he started running down the slope, knife clutched hard in one hand, length of wood tighter still in the other. Solitaire barely took two paces before I was after him, and not even three before the rest of the men were charging down, roaring and laughing.

Our enemies were still reeling when we reached them, else we’d probably have been cut to pieces, and I felt all the old reflexes start taking over as we closed in. My spear went through one of their necks before he even knew I was there, and this time I had the chance to rip it free before stabbing another, gutting this one with a twist of the shaft and letting entrails spill out like worms in a corpse as he fell.

An instant later, the rest of our men crashed into theirs, and everything became chaos.