Wallace

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Our pace increased as my eyes adapted to the dark, Valentine's delicate fingers clutching my sleeve as I led her through the darkness after the cuirassiers.

Modern living gives people the wrong idea about night time. Artificial lighting is great and all, and life would be very different without it, but its omnipresence means that your eyes never really get the chance to fully adjust to the darkness. True night adaptation takes time, and something as simple as a car's headlights passing on a distant road can ruin it, but once achieved, it is remarkable what the human eye can perceive.

With the landscape lit only by stars, each one tens or hundreds of lightyears distant, I could still make out the grass underfoot, the road where it rose up to our left, and the distant mountains. In fact, we were just now leaving those mountains behind us as we exited the pass, and I could feel a steady breeze picking up. There were a few trees dotted here and there, and the only sound that could be heard was the hush of their rustling leaves.

"Valentine," I murmured, "If the wind changes, do we need to worry about your friend catching our scent?"

"Doubt it," she replied, so quietly that she was barely audible over the rustling leaves, "Maybe if I started to use my pheromones, or if we had horses with us. But we should be fine unless whatshisname is right on top of us."

"Have you got their scent then?"

"Barely. There's a whiff of horse lingering on the air, but it's not the wind carrying it to me. They must be behind a windbreak."

"Also explains why I can't see their torches anymore."

"Have you any idea what's waiting for us down the road?" Valentine inquired.

"Hard to say, it might be a ridge or something, and they're on the other side. Could be another forest, is there any rhyme or reason to how the landscape gets laid out? Is there some pattern to the size of these zones, or what gets placed next to each other?"

"It's generally understood that like comes with like, so neighbouring areas have at least some relationship to each other. But that's always struck me more as superstition than fact," Valentine hedged, "I think people are trying to find connections where none are to be found. Besides, it's sometimes difficult to tell the line between one area and another. It's not always as clear cut as the cliff or road made it for us."

"And size?"

"Hard to say," she admitted, "In general I find it takes at least an hour to cross most unique features, sometimes much longer. But I've also seen single buildings, or even parts of buildings, jutting up out of landscapes they clearly don't belong in. I've yet to see anyone come up with a set of rules that isn't swallowed by its exceptions."

"Well if what's ahead is part of this same chunk of terrain," I mused, "Then it might be part of a human city."

I felt a sudden chill. If it was part of a human city, odds were good that there were going to be a ton of people. People that we had maybe twelve hours to round up and get moving before the tide tore through all of it. I didn't even know where to start. We didn't have anywhere near enough supplies, and that was not to mention the trouble of convincing everyone of the problem.

Valentine tugged at my arm, "It's okay Wallace, even if that is a city, which I doubt, there's no one living there. This world might be cruel," she acknowledged, "But there is some intelligence behind the mists. If it was inhabited, it would have been placed somewhere safe from the tides. Besides, whatever it is, it's been here a little over twenty-four hours. If it was a city, and people were living in it, we'd see fires of one sort or another."

"You don't think so? What part do you doubt, the humanness, or it being a city?" I asked, "Or part of one, I guess."

"It being a human city," she replied, "Deserted cities aren't common, but they're not unheard of. But before that gas station, it had been months before I'd even heard of someone finding anything human looking."

"Wait, so that was kinda a big deal then? Damn, I wish we'd had more time to stick around."

"Was there anything more of value we might have taken?"

"Well, maybe," I admitted, "Depends on what you guys even use as money, but there would have been a bunch of copper wiring running all through the building. Would have been useful for magic stuff at the very least."

"Mana," she replied, "Mana is the currency used by each of the cities. That's why the mana types present in metals and gemstones are known publicly, but little else is. It comes from the early days when people were trying to decide if gold, silver, and the like were still worth anything. Shortly after magic was discovered, it was realized that the existing coins were quite a convenient size for most spells, and word of what mana they contained became public before any of the burgeoning spellcaster class thought to keep such things secret."

"So metal and gemstones mainly, but in theory, anything can be money?"

"I suppose, but you're not going to get very far unless both sides are familiar with the mana involved. So metal and gemstones are the de facto currency unless you're dealing with another spellcaster."

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The vague shape on the horizon resolved itself as we drew closer, revealing itself to in fact be a city of sorts, a subdivision in fact. It was hard to tell how far it stretched on to each side as the buildings grew more and more indistinct the further I looked, but I decided it was safe to assume that it was large enough that we'd only lose more time if I tried to go around.

The place had the repetitive look of post-war GI Bill housing. Every street and every house looked just the same as the ones before and after it. There were a few variations. This house would have grey siding and brown shingles, the other beige siding and grey shingles, and there was occasional variety in the style of trim. It was as if the developer had just taken whatever colours and style his supplier had in stock that day.

Control C, Control V, a couple hundred times.

We stayed out of the street and hugged the buildings to one side. With the whole neighbourhood as level as a chessboard, the sightlines were long enough that I thought I could see clear down the street to the far end of the subdivision. My hope was that if one of the cuirassiers stepped out onto the road, we'd have the time to duck into a yard or behind a house before they spotted us.

"Gods damned servant," Valentine swore, "I would have liked to spend more time searching these houses. Just one of these metal carriages would be worth a small fortune in Metal mana."

I grimaced. The houses I could take or leave. Aside from the possibility of finding another firearm, there wasn't much of actual value within. At least if you considered only what we could reasonably carry away with us. Novelty, absolutely, at least to Valentine, but not value. But with every truck, car, and van we passed, we were leaving behind a resource that could trivialize the rest of our journey.

But I was far too large to fit in the driver's seat, and Valentine obviously didn't know how to drive. Neither did I know how to hotwire a car, and while it was safe to assume that the keys to at least one of the vehicles would be waiting on someone's nightstand, how many houses would we need to search before we got lucky?

The silence was suddenly broken by the baying of dogs, first off to our left and a little ahead, and then spreading out like ripples through the neighbourhood.

"Ah fuck."

"What in the name of all that is holy was that?" Valentine hissed.

"Dogs, think wolves, but a little better behaved. If we're lucky, they're all still locked up in people's back yards. But if any are loose we're gonna have a problem."

I heard Valentine undo the zipper of her flight suit, and looked down to see the dull shine of brass clutched in her other fist.

I unlimbered my poleaxe and held it point down, with the shaft against my forearm, "If we get into a fight I'm gonna need my other arm," I told her.

"I won't get in your way," she promised.

I stayed low as I approached the next intersection, crouching in a driveway between the house on the corner and an old van that sat in the drive. Peering down the crossing street to the left I caught the faintest glow against the black asphalt of the road, perhaps a reflection from one of the torches the cuirassiers were carrying, perhaps my imagination. From the right, I saw neither light nor movement, so I lead Valentine that way, trying to put another street between us and her friends.

I checked ahead and behind as we stepped onto the new street, or rather the lawn beside it, but evidently wasn't observant enough. We hadn't even made it across the driveway to the next lawn when I heard the dogs coming for us.

A couple of small yippy dogs, maybe a chihuahua that had gotten out of someone's yard. That would have been a problem, a big problem, in fact. What would I do then? Boot someone's purse dog so it wouldn't give our position away? Well, at least I didn't have that moral conundrum to contend with, as whatever was coming after us was big, bassy, and pissed right off.

I swung my head around, wide-eyed, as if that would somehow let in more of the limited light. There, movement, coming around the back of a house across the street.

Damn, they were fast. I had only a moment before they'd be on me, but knew how to spend it. I grabbed the back of Valentine's jumpsuit, and one-handed, threw her onto the roof of the old sports car in the driveway.

Valentine yelped, but it was immediately drowned out by a siren as the car's alarm began to howl.

I would have cursed my luck, but hadn't the time.

I swept the axe across the ground, not really expecting to hit anything, but hoping to give the dogs pause. The three of them leapt back, and the instant the first lunged at me again, I struck. The poleaxe's top spike drove into its back, just between the shoulders. The alarm drowned out its whimpers, but it continued to thrash, even as its legs gave out.

Valentine's torch came alive, and a breath later there was the hissss... BOOM of Valentine's wheellock and the second dog went down in a gout of smoke. The last dog was undeterred by the violence and lunged before I could get my axe free of the first dog's carcass.

Convinced that the slavering short-snouted dog was about to bite me between the legs, and with my weapon stuck fast, I brought my knee up and caught it right in the nose. The dog stumbled back, but kept its footing and came around to strike again. I was strong enough to swing the axe around, even with it stuck in the dog, but not fast enough to do anything of consequence. I fought the fear, like a fist clenched in my guts, and kicked at the thing while I tried to free my weapon. I knew all it would take was one solid hit to put the awful creature down for good, but it was just too damn quick for me to land anything more than a glancing blow.

The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

I was weighing the risks of ditching the axe to try to grapple the dog when Valentine, like a god damn lunatic, leapt off the roof of the car and onto the dog's back.

I could scarcely make out what was happening as the two of them rolled around on the ground tearing at each other, the both of them growling like wild animals.

I dropped the axe. The dog was nearly as large as she was, and I had to get it away from the crazy noblewoman before it tore her throat out, even if it meant the dog tried to rip my junk off.

I dropped a knee on the dog, and with it fixed in place, I could finally make sense of the mess. Even with me crushing its ribs, it still had its jaws locked around Valentine's forearm. Wild-eyed and with teeth gritted, she headbutted the dog in the snout, but it refused to budge.

I got my hands around its jaws, top and bottom, but before I could force it to let her go there was a pak pak pak and the dog went still.

Valentine kicked herself free of the corpse, the front of her jumpsuit bloody, and the little Saturday Night Special held in one clenched fist.

"Thank me later, we need to move," she growled, her expression stoic, though anyone could have read the pain in her voice.

With the alarm still screaming and fearful that one of the cuirassiers might use the noise to cover their charge, I kept looking over my shoulder to watch for their inevitable approach. We'd made it maybe halfway to the next intersection before the first of the group rounded the corner and came galloping after us, bellowing all the while, his partner not far behind.

"*Here," I urged, "Between these houses."

There was a fence, sturdily built, and about five feet tall. Valentine didn't slow down as we ran for the gate, and only stopped when she thumped up against it. She grabbed the handle and shook, but it was locked.

"If you throw me over this fence," she said quickly, already halfway over, "I swear I'll shoot you."

I turned away from the gate, but the first horseman was already entering the narrow space between the two houses, his spear levelled at my chest.

He urged his mount onwards, and I braced the butt of my axe against the gate. The space between the houses was barely wide enough for me, let alone the horse. I had no room to dodge, either this was going to work, or I was going to get run through.

I waited till the last possible moment, lest the horse rear back, and brought up the tip of my axe. The horse's own momentum drove it onto the nine-inch spike, and half a ton of man and horse shattered the latch on the gate like it was made of glass. I stumbled backwards as the horse went down, and after the experience with the dogs, made sure to get my weapon free before it could be twisted out of my hands by the dying animal.

I hopped back a step and swung, just as the rider, thrown forward over his horse, started to get up. The small hammerhead caught him in the side of the helmet, and he went right the hell back down.

With the immediate threat dealt with and the entrance to the yard blocked, I turned to see that Valentine was already atop the next fence. She had her other wheellock in hand, and a determined look on her face.

"Go" I insisted.

Heavy as I was, I knew there was no way in hell I was getting over the fence before the next rider got through, but the first guy had given me a really terrible idea. So without anything better coming to mind, I decided to do my best imitation of the horse, and charged at the fence. I aimed right between two of the fence posts, and hit the top rail shoulder-first.

It burst apart, and splinters and fence slats were thrown across the yard. I nearly tripped on the bottom rail, but found my footing and chased after the waiting Valentine, who was already holding the next gate open.

We sprinted across the road, and Valentine scrambled over the next gate. A moment later, it opened, and I slipped inside. She brought the torch down to its lowest setting, and I scanned the yard. There was a fire pit, a miniature playset of the sort that I would have loved as a six-year-old, had I not already been too big for it by that age, and much more of little consequence besides. But the one thing that did show promise was a wide stone bench which rested against the back fence.

It was sturdy enough that I was able to step up onto the backrest and vault the fence, Valentine following shortly after. We again left the yard and crossed the street, this time paying more attention to stealth than haste, and again she climbed the gate and let me into the yard.

This time, she turned off the torch completely. The house lacked a back deck, and instead, there was a simple concrete pad with a patio set. But I didn't trust my weight to the cheap plastic furniture, so I settled myself with my back against the wall of the house. Valentine sat pressed up against me, a reassuring presence in the dark.

Neither of us spoke. Hell, we barely even breathed, just listened. The alarm could still be heard, a couple streets over, and it may have been my imagination, but I thought I could make out breaking glass as they tried to quiet the awful din. Hoofbeats could be heard a little while later, two or three horses it sounded like, pounding down the street on the other side of the house. It was several minutes after that before either of us dared to speak.

"If we can get into this house we can turn that light back on and get a look at your arm," I breathed.

"I'm fine," she whispered curtly, "The dog didn't bite through the sleeve. Now hold this," she instructed, and pressed one of her pistols into my hand, "Barrel up," she insisted.

I did as she asked, and she proceeded to load the pistol and re-wind the mechanism, blind, as far as I could tell.

While she loaded the pistol, she spoke, "We can't out-wait them," she explained, "Or we can, but by the time they need to give up, we won't have enough time to get to the location I spotted, and the tide will get us."

"Have you still got the little navigation thingy?"

She re-capped her powder horn and handed over what might have been a large compass, if not for the fact it pointed the wrong way. The top was textured, and could be used by feel, but my eyes had adjusted once again, and I could see which way it was pointing.

"This thing is just giving angle, right? As if we were still back in the city?"

"Yes, I set it while I was in the tower taking my sightings so we'll need to correct eastwards, but otherwise it points the way."

I took another look at the not-compass. It wasn't quite parallel with the grid layout of the subdivision, in fact, the roads were angled a bit more east, but judging from what she'd said, that would suit us just fine.

"Come now, Wallace, share your deep thoughts."

"The road network is a uniform grid," I explained, "A rectangular grid, but a grid. In between are these houses with yards more or less like this," I recited, gesturing vaguely at our surroundings, "Which are not very quick to cross."

"And I'm getting tired of climbing over fences," Valentine added.

"Right, and for me to get over them, it's either noisy or inconvenient or both. Not just that, but we have no way of telling where your friends might be patrolling. They've probably split up, and are searching all over the place, groups of two, three, it doesn't matter. So, I have a straightforward plan," I pointed back to the gate we'd come through, "We get the hell down this road as quickly as we can. We'll check that the way is clear at each intersection, but otherwise, keep up as quick a pace as possible. We've got no way to predict when they'll happen across us, and in these rows of identical housing, no one street is going to be any better than another. Best thing to do is just to clear out as quickly as possible. Trying to be sneaky, hopping between streets, is just going to mean we spend more time in the target area."

It was essentially the same strategy used by second world war bombers. You could manoeuvre to avoid flak on the way in, but once you were in the barrage zone, there was no point in trying to evade. They didn't much care where you were or how you flew, they were just filling the sky with flak shells. Best thing to do was fly straight and fast, drop your bombs, and get the hell out of the danger zone. Now I didn't have any bombs, which was a damn shame, but this neighbourhood was just as unpredictable and nearly as dangerous, so I figured it was sound reasoning.

Valentine finished seating the ball and put the ramrod away, "And when we happen across another pair of mercenaries?" she asked.

"Same thing we just did. We can get through these yards faster than the horses can. We keep cutting across until we lose them again. After that, we'll need to come up with something new. I doubt the same trick will work a third time," I grimaced.

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The next several hours damn near gave me heart palpitations. While we never did get into another out and out chase, more than once, warned by approaching hoofbeats, we found ourselves huddling between a pair of houses to wait as a pair of elves on horseback passed down the road.

As much as it worried me, I had no idea how Valentine managed. Like the elves, she couldn't see a damn thing without a light to guide her and had to trust that I knew what I was doing.

But after a few hours of panicked cat and mouse, we eventually made it to the final row of houses. And behind those houses...

"Goddammit," I sighed.

"I don't see a problem," Valentine frowned, peering out across the same plain as myself, "Just land and sky."

"But you can make out the horizon?" I prompted.

"More or less."

"And there's our problem. We silhouette ourselves against the sky, and they're going to spot us, darkness or not. And I don't see an end to it any time soon. There's a road over there," I pointed, but I don't see a drainage ditch like we hid in on our way here."

"I see your point. Perhaps a distraction?" she suggested, though from her tone she seemed as sceptical of that plan as I, "Though I don't see how we'd pull that off and still get away."

I led Valentine back so I could look down the row of houses we'd just passed.

"This whole time we've been walking, I've been thinking that life would be a hell of a lot easier if we had one of these cars. You'd need to drive though, since I'm not going to fit up front."

"Is there a reason we haven't taken one already?"

"We'd need the keys, and I don't know how many houses we'd need to break into, and how much noise we'd made doing it, to find the keys to one of the cars. If the people aren't here, it's just as likely that the keys ended up with them instead of in one of the houses. It's risky, but at this point, I don't know what the hell else to do. I don't want to try crossing that much open ground when a bunch of horsemen are after us."

Valentine ran her fingers across her timepiece, "Six or seven hours until the mercenaries absolutely must turn back. We could wait them out. We'd have to skip our next sleep break, but we could just make it," she offered, "I say we try to get one of these cars, they seem like the sort of thing that would be useful regardless. If that doesn't work, we hide out and get what rest we can."

"Alright, well I see an old pickup truck down the road here. Let's give it a shot."

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We went in through a basement window in the back yard, or at least, Valentine went in through the window. I'd found a little gardening trowel, and used it to lever open one of the windows, too small for me to fit through, but more than enough space for Valentine. Safely inside, she lit the torch, and a minute or so later the back door swung open. I ducked inside.

I searched all the usual places, the nightstands in the master bedroom, the closet near the door, but to no avail. Which left the truck itself.

I glanced up and down the street, but seeing no lights, dogs, or horses, decided it was safe enough for the time being. I tried both the driver's side and passenger doors, to no avail. The truck was old, or perhaps contemporary to the neighbourhood, as I was beginning to suspect, but old to me at the very least. So I figured some old school methods would probably work.

The suspension creaked as I hopped into the bed of the truck, and I froze, but truthfully it wasn't loud enough to carry very far. I splayed my hand against the back window and tried to slide it left and right.

It moved. Just a little, but it moved.

Bit by bit, I slid the pane of glass until there was a gap wide enough to get a finger in. With that done, I pulled the pane to the side, and reached an arm in to unlock the driver's side door.

I was cautious as I got out of the bed, gradually letting my weight off the truck so it wouldn't creak too loudly, and went around to the front to open the door I'd unlocked.

I flipped both of the sun visors down, but it seemed that Terminator Two had led me astray. Neither were there keys in the glove box. Or gloves. Or a gun. Just some miscellaneous papers, a packet of tissues, and a manual.

I considered how much time I'd just spent. Maybe thirty minutes to search the house and truck? How many more homes would I have to search before I found what I needed?

No, the truck was what I needed, I just had to find a way to make it work for me. I wasn't going to fit in a car, and clinging to the roof wasn't a great long term strategy. If I could have picked one vehicle in this whole subdivision to take with me, a pickup truck would have been my first choice. Fixing it would be simple, it was the most practical, the best off-road, and most importantly, I could fit in the back.

I thumped the gear stick absently, and it wobbled back and forth.

Trouble was, aside from not knowing how to hotwire a car, I didn't know how to drive manual either.

I took another look up and down the street, and decided I was right about this truck being right for the neighbourhood. Most of the other vehicles I saw sitting in driveways looked to be of about the same period, late seventies, early eighties. If such a categorization even applied to wherever we were. Odds were, they'd be manuals too.

"Manuals," I muttered to myself, and opened the glove box back up.

There was the manual, written in perfect not-English.

Flipping through, I found a wiring diagram. The labels were as incomprehensible as the rest of the text, but the symbols were plain enough.

I'd have to teach myself how to hotwire a car, and Valentine how to drive stick, without ever having done either myself. The task seemed daunting, but when I imagined the average car thief, I didn't exactly see a genius in my mind's eye. And if any idiot could learn to drive a manual, then surely I could figure it out if I just sat down and gave it a good think.