Ch: 242 Ride The Lightning
Two tiny figures in common clothing rode together on a single horse, down a narrow seaside road, cantering a few miles ahead of a gathering thunderstorm. A young couple sat the saddle together sharing it; she sat in a comfortable sprawl across his lap. He sat, relaxed and whistling a gay tune at the cloudy skies above.
They clattered up to a simple wooden drawbridge over a creek; barring entrance to a small, lightly fortified village on a sheltered cove. Only when they were on the bridge landing did the gate guard notice that the couple were normal sized, their mount was absurdly large.
“Jerimiah and Killeen Maus, itinerant Adventurers, just passing through.” The woman announced when challenged by the guard.
“Seeking shelter from the storm we brought along.” He added with a grin that accentuated his extraordinarily fine mustache.
Swarthy, dark haired and handsome, he radiated an aura of calm confidence from the saddle, the air of a leader of men.
His companion held up a journeyman Adventurer’s badge with a smile that gave the gate guard a chill down his spine. Her face was pretty, not beautiful, with short, lustrous dark hair… one one side.
The other was a curdled mess of rippling acid scars, around an eyepatch of soft leather. Tattooed on that puckered, cratered face was the visage of an alien moon, bearing the image of a whimsical bunny in its shadows and contours.
“This village has no inn. Ride on.” The guard barked.
“Surely someone has a spare room or an empty barn…” The smiling man raised his palm to indicate the lowering skies and incoming rain.
“No. Ride on, travelers.” He snapped once more, as he withdrew behind the palisade.
“They’re gone… let’s get inside before the rain starts, shit weather again.” He grumbled to his leader. “Aren’t even any decent women left in town… when are we finishing in this pest hole?”
“We’ll work them a little longer first… a week maybe.” The man with an outlaw’s face brand said with grin.
#
The two grumbled and complained, but they rode away, taking a branching road leading inland, away from the farmlands and village.
In a deep, shadowed grove a quarter mile away, they joined a troop of anxious armored warriors and their restive mounts.
“It’s them. Give us ten minutes to get ready, we’ll hit them when the storm does.” Khan grumbled crossly. “I hate using a fake name…”
“That’s sweet, darling… I’m sorry you’re famous… Unlike poor forgettable Luna.” She sighed with gentle mockery in her smile. “Now get ready, I want some blood on my spear before bedtime.”
Wilkes stood and grabbed Wendel by the shoulder. “Time to test your new sword arm brother… You’re ready?” The big, taciturn swordsman simply nodded and flexed his gleaming bronze gauntlet on the hilt of his sabre.
Six figures in dark leather armor slipped from the grove, trotting silently over the fields and through the small streams and paddies as the rain began in earnest. Ten minutes later, a troop of twenty light armored cavalry burst from the trees, thundering for the drawbridge through the mist, rain and actual thunder.
Luna and Wilkes were first through the creek and over the wall, in absolute silence. With the cover of a roiling thunderstorm, they might as well have been invisible. A pair of ropes sailed over the palisade and four more warriors swarmed over, nearly as quietly. Inside the palisade, the carrion reek of the town was disgusting, even in the rain.
They moved through the village, peering through unglazed windows, into darkened, empty homes. Life and activity could only be seen near the mayor’s house and the warehouses by the small docks.
The empty homes were uniformly in wild disarray; toppled furniture, broken goods and shredded bedding lay scattered around, even in the muddy streets. Luna stepped over a shattered hope chest, still stuffed with shredded quilts, cut to pieces in a search for hidden coins.
A soft sound drew Luna’s ear, from a large darkened house by the square. Furtive movements in the otherwise silent neighborhood caught her attention between rumbles of thunder. She and another woman slipped away from the others, with a nod at Wendel. The four continued to the drawbridge and gate on their mission, while she vanished into the house.
Here the chaos and disorder was less obvious, the home of a prosperous family had been looted thoroughly. Blood was splashed here and there, but otherwise the home was largely intact. A faint glow from the main room revealed a basement door; light shining around the jamb in the otherwise dark house.
She listened carefully, then slipped the door open in utter quiet. On silent, leather soled slippers, they descended the steps and emerged in a lofty, well lit basement. In crude cages all around, crumpled forms shivered wept or lay comatose. Some were pitiful, naked human children and teens, others were furred or feathered, but no less wretched in their captivity. They were all children, mostly the very young of both sexes and a number of teenaged girls bearing the marks and telltale signs that one would expect…
Seated against the far wall at a table, leering over the remains of a fine meal, a pale, portly man in leather seaman’s gear sat, picking his teeth with a short knife.
A teenaged girl lay at his feet bedraggled, naked and sobbing. “...Lucky for you the captain wants you all unspoiled and unmarked…” He sneered, while adjusting his trousers.
The rest of his little speech drifted into a gasping wheeze, as a spear blossomed in his belly, hurled from the shadowy stairway.
Luna stepped into the light and smiled sweetly at the dying man. “Well now… My captain asked that I mark and despoil as many of you as I can… unlucky for you.”
Her smile remained just as bright and charming, while she slit the pinned slaver’s throat with a slender dagger. She wrenched her spear free, even as the light fled his narrowed, piggy eyes.
“Journeyman Brenda, I leave them with you… I’m off to join the party.” She whispered, as the children began to stir and the slaver crumpled to the floor.
“Hush now, children… The duchess has sent her warriors… all is well.” The other woman in dark armor swept in and had the teenaged blonde girl out from under the table and away from the splashing blood, before the body finished falling.
Brenda’s gift for soothing and calming the emotions of others made her invaluable on missions like this… With calm efficiency, she shoved the corpse into a corner and began releasing the kids from their cages. Luna smiled at her friend as she strode upstairs looking for trouble.
Brenda’s ferocious skill with knives and daggers made her invaluable in other ways as well, any slaver coming down those stairs was going to find out all about that.
Luna danced up the stairs in anticipation, the troop hadn’t even rung the front door bell yet and the kids were already secure… Her wide smile grew even wider when a burly figure lurched out of the mayor’s house, dragging a sobbing woman with him into the darkness.
“Quit yer screamin or I’ll slice you up when I’m done!” He snarled… for the last time.
#
A red eyed, ragged and bruised woman stumbled down the steps into the basement, joining Brenda’s little creche with a sobbing embrace for a few of the children.
Luna vanished back up the stairs, silent as a ghost; while the first of what promised to be a number of tearful reunions began in the shitty basement. Her smile of fury and anticipation grew wider, as the sound of hooves rang on the fallen drawbridge.
The screams of women and helpless children had been echoing through the lonely village for a while… Now the screams of men rang out, as a troop of cavalry ripped through the town, impaling anything that moved, with a few yards of very pointy lance.
“For Lemur! For the duchess!” They shouted in chorus, as they wheeled their mounts and ran down another lane, cutting off any escape to the ship moored on the pier.
Pirates and slavers had boiled from the mayor’s house when the ‘alarm’ went up. In this case, the alarm was the screams of a sailor pinned to the dock with one of Luna’s spears, right through his pelvis. He kept at it for a while, propped upright by the shaft run through his tenders, until Wendel topped him at the shoulders with a flick of his saber a few minutes later… His head landed at his own feet, looking up at his own pinioned corpse and the bronze handed warrior that stalked off into the town, looking for more prey.
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
The cavalry rode up and down the two main streets in two six person teams, dominating the small village and running down the slavers who tried to fight or flee… It was grim and grisly work. Wendel’s bronze gauntlet flashed and glittered in the lightning strikes, as his saber clashed with a falchion in the hands of a young pirate.
“I won’t kill you kid…” He growled as his point flickered three times in rapid succession, while he did something confusing with his brass handguard.
The lad leaned forward eagerly, sensing hesitation or weakness in his opponent, only to fall face first as the pain from the neat cuts in the large muscles of his thighs hit him full force. He landed firmly in the mud, his cutlass lying so close, but unreachable with his bleeding and unresponsive right hand.
Another warrior dragged the wounded pirate off, while the bronze handed man strode calmly towards a knot of eight or so pirates, clustered in a narrow alleyway, hiding from the horsemen.
“I won’t kill the first three who surrender.” He announced in a voice that rumbled like the thunder still overhead.
Three swords and a spear came clattering out onto the street, followed by four pirates eagerly sprawling on the muddy roadway.
The remaining four tried to back away down the narrow lane and found it blocked by a pillaged chest of drawers, along with assorted other broken furniture.
“Come on, it’s wet out and I have mud in my boots.” He grumbled as he stalked the nervous slavers through the alley.
#
Orlando’s sabre flashed in the dark, as another slaver jumped from the palisade and tried to flee into the distant forest. He and his three companions rode in a complex formation, quartering the fields and paddies in an inescapable net of horses, men and steel. Armand rode another down, trampling him into the paddy silt with steel shod hooves, before moving on.
Two short sharp blasts of Khan’s horn called the outriders in to help with the cleanup, after a few more minutes of ominous quiet, aside from the noise of the storm.
#
On the ship moored in the cove, dark armored forms moved and struck, illuminated only by the flash of lightning, seeming to appear and vanish at will.
A few lightly armored men and that terrifying, omnipresent spearwoman, wrought carnage on the pirate ship Avarice. She had been stalking the decks and companionways with murder in her eyes, searching for the captain.
Captain Kiriniks danced back across his own aft deck, dodging among the familiar lines and spars with fear in his eyes. Even in his own literal back yard, just steps from his cabin, she pressed him relentlessly, as though it were her ship.
Rain, thunder, slippery planks and darkness should have given the veteran pirate every advantage, even without the unsteady roll and pitch of the deck. “You bitch…You cut our lines!” He gasped, while desperately parrying yet another effortless series of feints and jabs from that deceptive, flashing spear.
“Don’t fret, we dropped your anchors too… can’t have you shits sailing away.” She smiled in a way that made her hideous scars even worse, especially in the dark.
“My captain ordered me to take you alive, pig. That’s the only reason you are not sinking into the sea with an anchor chain around your neck and your guts binding your ankles.” She spoke calmly, cheerfully, sweetly, while making him dance to her tune.
He already bled from a profusion of minor wounds in tender locales, each one inflicted with effortless ease by the smiling nightmare before him. “Bitch, I’ll rape you with a sea urchin before you die!” He gasped, while his strained and terrified face said quite the opposite…
“Wrong answer. Too bad for you, he wants you alive, not whole.” The swirling, dancing demon woman vanished from sight for a moment, as she slipped behind the mainmast. Seconds later she appeared beside him, already in motion. Her spear lashed out and he felt a sting across the middle of his back… and nothing else below the waist, as he collapsed bonelessly to the deck.
“I clipped the cord that carries life and sensation to your lower body… nevermore will you trouble anyone with that thing between your equally limp and useless legs.” She said cheerily, while disarming him through the simple advent of removing his right hand at the wrist, with a careless flick of her spear. “Give me any more trouble and I’ll take your left hand too.”
She deftly bound his stump with a filthy rag, staunching the bleeding for now. “Don’t struggle or you won’t be able to answer for your crimes…” She sang happily, when a mustachioed warrior joined her in looming over the fallen captain.
“Is this our captain?” He asked calmly, looking down on the maimed and bleeding man.
“Yes indeed. He’s still mostly alive, just like I promised.” She kissed the man passionately and giggled. “I got eleven tonight, twelve including the one guarding the kids…” She boasted, hitching up her pants in a cocky display of bravado. “Though, I slaughtered him purely by surprise, he doesn’t count.”
“What happened to taking prisoners, Luna?” He asked gently.
“Ask me that when dawn comes… and you see what I see.” She whispered, as her husband slipped her eyepatch back into place and kissed her cheek tenderly.
She reached down, grabbed the stricken slaver captain’s collar and dragged him roughly down his own deck, leaving a streak of blood and his severed hand behind.
“Let’s go get warm and dry.” She murmured softly. “I miss those baths and the inn already, but this has its own pleasures.” She hurled the crippled slaver over the rail and onto the pier with a rattling crash, even over the noise of the storm.
The ship had drifted away a few yards on its anchor chains, so they had to leap to get onto the dock beside their prey.
“I left this shitbag crippled for life…” She told Khan happily. “The boy talked about cords and structures in the body that carry light and life to the limbs, that got me curious…”
She gave a little skip of delight, while her husband dragged what was left of the captain down the muddy streets by his limp, useless ankle.
“You did what?” He asked, through a soggy and wilted ‘stache.
“I severed the life from his legs and cock. He won’t be able to hold his shit or piss either…” She cackled happily. “I asked Tawny what Gary meant by ‘nerves and ganglion’ and she explained in some detail… I love this new learning!”
“Hmm, best we not tell her how you used her teaching, my love. She is a gentle soul.” He dragged the captain over a cobblestone village square and into the warehouse where the slavers had been keeping their males. With disdain on his face, Khan pitched the bloodied wreck into one of his own cages and locked the door.
#
“It feels good, just being out with the team after so long.” Gary murmured as they bedded down among the kids and Becky. Everyone was up in their room from bedtime tonight, so it was pjs and early sleep, rather than enjoying a little Gary and Shai time…
“Aye lad, let’s enjoy it while it does last.” She murmured softly in his ear.
After so many nights of dreamless and uncomfortably troubled sleep, he drifted away and landed in his other home with a gentle tingle of familiar wakefulness, while still sleeping securely among his kids. The dream world was abnormally active, with avatars of himself and Shai busy everywhere, while versions of Becky and the kids scampered around their little cluster of cottages.
DJ NotGary was still at the turntables and Velvet was at the only remaining aperture into the void, checking his list of invited guests. The rest scurried about actively working on seemingly random tasks. Many were planting, harvesting, tilling and pruning in the garden… Someone was patching a section of cracked plaster on the house, while others were cleaning the rain gutters or painting.
“Ok, I guess things are a little messy still…” He murmured, when Shai and the kids appeared. “I’m gonna try and concentrate on balancing out, so I don’t get all sideways again… Keep an eye on me, ok kids?” He was speaking to Shai and Becky mostly, but Amy and the boys had worry on their little faces. With a brief effort of Gary’s Will, the diffuse, sourceless starlight all around became stronger, warmer, more summery.
“Come on, let’s go play on the shore.”
#
Come on, let’s go down to the shore… Brenda said softly to her herd of battered and traumatized survivors, it was a herd. They followed listlessly, or scrambled at the edges of the group in nervous agitation, others were sullen and nearly immobile until gently prodded into motion by the young woman’s subtle gifts and quiet voice.
She deftly and gently guided the people down onto the dock and aboard a waiting ship of the ducal navy.
Hermione, the ducal warbarge of Lemur was slow and ponderous, making for a poor assault craft. She made a fine transport though… The barge lumbered out through the remnants of the storm, headed for Port Sunderland with both survivors and the few prisoners they’d taken.
Sailors from the barge got the captured ship under way, sailing after the huge armored vessel.
Most of the troopers were somber and withdrawn on the long ride back to Port Sunderland, speaking little and brooding. They made camp in a meadow as sunset approached, forming a well ordered and tidy little hamlet of their own. Luna and Khan produced a startling bounty of foodstuffs and strange comforts from their saddlebags, far more than the finely stitched and elegantly embossed leather packs should have held.
Soon, most activity centered around the strange magical campstove and samovar, working on dinner and chatting quietly.
“Come gather around… debrief time.” Brenda called, when she had finished setting out rugs and a few cushions in a ring by the firepit. “For most of you, this was your first battle against humanoid foes…” She said softly, once the entire group was seated, save Luna and Khan.
“We should speak openly and honestly about our feelings, here in the group circle.” Brenda’s gifts washed over the group of young warriors, gently tugging at complex emotions.
#
“Debrief? Group circle?” Luna asked in a confused whisper once they were a discrete distance away.
“This is a new thing… Angie has been working with Thirp, discussing ‘mental health care’...” Khan shrugged and smiled. “It can’t hurt.”
“Why aren’t we included?” She asked tartly.
“Luna, my love, my beloved wife… many of them are deeply shaken by what they witnessed from you, as much as what the slavers were up to…” He spoke very gently to his fierce wife. “Thirp has asked to meet with you personally, for some ‘one on one counseling’.”
He tried to smile, but it was weak, very weak indeed. “I’m told it’s nothing to be embarrassed over…” He trailed off lamely.
“You want me to take one of the boy’s magic cuckoo pills and talk to an alien spider goddess about my feelings, in a place outside our world…?” She asked flatly.
Khan nodded soberly, as did Annie. “I love you Luna, I’d never… The woman you were last night was very… hard.” Annie stamped her hoof in agreement.
“Ok, I did feel like I enjoyed slaughtering them a bit too much… was it really that bad?” She murmured.
Man and horse pulled her into a silent embrace, out beyond the firelight, where the youngsters were talking through some things.
#
“Your name, please?” The man in Healer’s robes asked gently of the ragged, battered creature sprawled bonelessly on the bed; one of so many survivors brought in on the barge.
“Renth…” He gasped. “Irdall Renth, journeyman woodcutter.”
“You are safe now, journeyman Renth… no one will hurt you.” The man’s gifts rolled over his agitated patient, soothing battered mind, body and soul with Healer’s gentle aura. “I have no wish to trouble you further or increase your discomfort, but I must ask… tell me how you fell into the hands of these people.”
He leaned closer, placing a hand on the trembling wretch’s shoulder. “We wish to root them out and end their crimes, for that we need information. How did your ordeal begin, please?”
The man looked up from a gaunt, hollow eyed face and sighed softly. “Almost a year ago, I lived in Wheatford.” He gasped. “I was an upstanding and respected craftsman in my trade hall. Until the day I met that terrifying incubus demon boy whore, with his magical knives and clubs…”
Darren, acolyte of Healer closed the door behind himself and secured it. With regret, he marked in chalk on the chart: ‘Insane, delusional. Do not release.’
“He seemed pretty far gone…” Sam, his sister acolyte murmured, when he’d finished writing his diagnosis. “Did he tell you about some magical catamite too?” The young healer asked her colleague. “The other survivors say he wouldn’t shut up about some evil boy whore that’s supposedly stalking him.”
“Yeah… I think this guy was in bad shape before he got caught… ‘Magical butt boys with vanishing whorehouses’… poor creature.” Darren shook his head sadly.
Sam sighed as well, clutching her hand to her fulsome breasts in despair. “Maybe if the duchess’ new friends come back through, we can soak him in their curative baths…”
#