When Finn came back to himself, the sun was lower in the sky behind him, and the Rangers had veered off the beaten track to take a small one-lane road unfamiliar to him. After three decades of post-fall growth, the old highway was reduced to a narrow path that only just allowed the horses with trailers to file through one by one, while young pines and shrubs reached in and scratched at the Ranger’s clothing and faces. The horses didn’t appreciate that too much, aside from Saul’s gelding who happily munched on all passing greenery. The road was there, but it was more of a suggestion of old gray with a brown carpet of pine needles over top, and every once in a while there was a mature pine jutting out of the middle of the path, cracked and broken asphalt laid around it as if the tree had just erupted from the earth a while back.
The yellow streaks in the sky had turned into thick smears of gold, another point in the bad weather column if one were keeping track, which Finn was. What must it have been like to have weather satellites, when Earth was just Earth? Finn had a good imagination, but to speak on such things as the weather a hundred miles away with certainty was almost frightening to think about, considering how far they’d fallen.
“Hey. You sure took your time in there,” Saul said, handing Finn back Eggo’s reins. Finn didn’t remember handing them over, but he supposed he did while he was out. “All that for a little blister?”
Finn rolled his shoulders, twisted at the waist, and shook out his arms and legs. He felt refreshed, the soreness and fatigue mostly gone with a gnawing hunger taking their place. “I’m back to a hundred-ish percent. I’ll even take first and second watch tonight.”
“You’re really selling me on letting you heal yourself from now on. I love me some sleep. Still, you were in there for a few hours, so I guess I got my allotted watch duty making sure a roc didn’t snatch you and let its chicks peck at your bait and tackle.” Saul said.
Finn chuckled… because that’s what a tough guy did in the face of giant penis eating birds. He checked the chamber on his rifle to make sure he was red, with red meaning ‘round chambered and safety off.’ Rangers tended to use a lot of old world military terminology, mostly because the OG Rangers were U.S. military vets, but also because it gave them a sort of shared dialect that separated Rangers from the rank and file like the Guard. The rifle’s action revealed one of its cartridges, a lead payload the size of a pinky nail propelled by c-infused black powder.
“It’s not a focused ability, Saul. No prioritization. I zone out and my body just goes to work fixing itself. It doesn’t take nearly as long when I have a quiet place to sit and do my thing. It’s also not a replacement for sleep, but it can take its place from time to time.”
“Nice. Not gonna complain if it gets me out of watch.”
“Hold!” came a hoarse call from Cap, his thoroughly Texan accent drawing out the pronunciation until it was two syllables. His voice was rocks in a tumbler rough, and it carried like a landslide. “Rangers, I want defensive traveling posture, porcupine formation, rifles at the ready, rounds chambered for minimum response time to threats. Call out threats as you see them, but hold your fire unless you are fired upon.”
Cap’s words were… utter nonsense. There was no such thing as “defensive traveling posture.” The Rangers lived and breathed the prospect of bringing maximum violence to anything that presented itself as a threat. No questions.
Once, when Finn was on a long scav run into old West Virginia, the Rangers blew a dozen bloody holes into what looked like a white-tail buck blocking their path just because it “felt wrong” to Carl. Of course, when they inspected the body, the thing had a mouth that nearly split its head in two, complete with sharp, yellow, inward facing teeth, some of them hollow like fangs. Still, it looked like a deer and got its innards turned to outards because it seemed (credibly in hindsight) like a threat. They even harvested a good sized c-core from the body, meaning Carl’s hunch was a potential life-saver.
So, if Cap was giving nonsense orders that they all knew were nonsense, he wasn’t speaking to the Rangers at all. The column was being watched and being watched by sapients. Carl was no longer scouting, instead sticking to the front of the column looking menacing. Everett had his slugger at the low-ready. Saul had moved over to the left side of the column, pulling back the lower part of his cloak to reveal the iron on his hip. Finn made a show of checking the action of his rifle again and adjusting his armor so his sword scabbard didn’t get caught up in any of the straps.
Now that Finn was looking, down the road and a little off to the right were barely visible, thin columns of smoke stretching up into the sky, potentially an encampment or a settlement. People were a complicated engagement for Rangers out in the field. Standard Operating Procedure dictated that they offer any human that was still human shelter in New Hope, but it had been years since any significant number of people took them up on their offer. That offer precluded allowing Wildlings, Grins, Dwarves, Greenskins, or any of the new offshoots to enter the city, and it had been a source of conflict among the Rangers for a while now. Rangers, having spent much of their time outside human civilization tended to view the new humanoid folks as just people with visible Gifts as opposed to the more subtle ones the Rangers had, but New Hope and the goddess had their hangups. “Shun the mutant and keep humanity pure” as they put it. To Finn, it sounded like a desperate need to hang on to something long gone. Humanity now would probably be barely recognizable to pre-fall folks. Then again, he’d also seen what uncontrolled exposure to chaos energy did to people not lucky enough to turn into one of the stable breeds of mutants. Those poor souls needed a helping hand, but he was unable to give one without being exiled from his home.
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Even so, most outsiders had already heard of New Hope, and they’d heard about their policy on mutants. Either they were still human and already found their way to New hope, or they’d stayed away for their own reasons. That meant most humanoid settlements saw the Rangers as puritanical outsiders, interlopers, or invaders that came to carry away much needed members of the community no matter how much said member wanted to leave.
People were unpredictable, dangerous, tribal monsters even before the Fall, but out here the rule of law was what you could get away with. Cap’s tough-guy words of warning would allow their stalkers to play the wait-and-see game without looking like cowards. Saving face was a huge part of survival where weakness invited death, even among your peers.
“I’m off to be dark and mysterious,” whispered Saul. “You should try scowling or something.” He nudged his horse back to his nine o’clock position.
“It’s true,” came Everette’s low basso from behind Finn. “You always look like you’re seeing everything for the first time. Wide-eyed and slack jawed.”
“Hey. This is just my face. We can’t all have that ‘Dolph Lungren as an Easter Island head’ look you’ve got going on.” Finn said, pretty sure he was scowling now if he wasn’t before.
“And it’s always a guy that looks like you that gets it the worst in war movies.” The position of Everett’s voice kept changing like he was looking in a different direction with each phrase. “Like ‘Ooh, I’ve got a girl back at home I love so much. We’re having a baby, and I’m only one week from going home to see them both. Gee golly that’s gonna be swell. Hope nothing horrible happens to me.’ You’ve got that kind of face.”
Cap cut into the conversation. “Kindly keep your chatter to subjects that are operationally relevant,” he drawled. Finn wondered how the man could give briefings without his commanding officer going insane. The extra syllables alone made sentences take twice as long.
Finn kept his eyes on the trees and brush. Human watchers meant the brush is where the bullets would come from. Meanwhile, the smoke in the distance had resolved itself into little columns, probably from chimneys..
“Them war movies are bullshit anyway. If anyone’s getting shot first, it’s you, big man, Finn’s bambi looks aside.” Cap’s words carried with them a good humor not at all born out on his worn, craggy face.
Carl dropped back for a moment, cutting through the center of the formation to go check behind for threats only he could see. When he was done he galloped back, stopping briefly next to Finn. “I like that. Bambi. You really know how to capture the essence of a man, Cap.” Carl didn’t look at Finn when he talked, but he did that a lot. If Finn grew up with metaphorical eyes in the back of his head, he’d probably forget to meet people’s eyes from time to time as well.
Finn had to jump in now. With Cap’s implied blessing, Finn’s Ranger nickname might be cemented in the next few words. “Well, if we were in a war movie, it would make the most narrative sense to shoot Everette first. He’s big, well armored, and could take a round or two and still stick around. Saul is a tempting target because he’s good with a capital G. Carl’s safe though.”
Carl turned sharply in his saddle, a questioning look on his face. “Why am I safe?”
Finn rocked his head back and forth, pretending to search for the right words. “Because, you’re an asshole.”
He could see the gears turning in Carl's head, probably recalling every war flick he’d seen. He nodded twice, as if coming to some kind of conclusion and grinned down at Finn. “Fair. I’ll get got in the end or grow into a big hero.” He gave Finn a quick salute and rode on ahead of the formation again.
The fact that being saluted just before a potential ambush made Finn a more tempting target for shooters was not lost on either of them. It was just Carl’s way of getting the last word… potentially getting Finn shot… which was a very Carl thing to do. Finn was pretty sure Carl considered painting a target on one of his fellows a little good natured ribbing, and for a man with such honed perception he was completely oblivious to others’ will to live without death dogging their footsteps.
Around a slight bend in the road, the Rangers came upon what used to be a bridge over a tributary stream, long dried now. The crossing was a twisted wreck of rock and rusted metal, but some enterprising locals had made a sloping dirt path down from the old road into the creek bed, using the relatively smooth surface as a road of sorts, one that the horses and trailers could navigate fairly comfortably. The thick, leafy branches of the trees overhead cast the creek-road in pleasantly dim shadow and saved Finn from having to watch for flying monsters.
Tracks of various sizes of humanity, adults, kids, and somewhere in between, were everywhere, dense enough to trample down what little vegetation seemed brave enough to grow here. The canopy of oaks and river birches shifted and swayed in the wind up above them, making the ground a kaleidoscope of crawling green. The still air and gentle motion might have been comfortable under different circumstances, but right now, it was too much. Finn also didn’t like how the rocky sides of the creek bed kept rising until the only way in or out of their path was pushing on ahead or making an awkward three point turn with their cargo. Doing so under fire would be an absolute nightmare.
“Gentleman, we’re coming up on a village named Fitshollow. I’ve been down here a handful of times over the years, and our visits have been fairly cordial,” Cap said, keeping his voice low. “Now, when I say cordial, I mean they’d slit our throats if we presented an easy enough target, but that hasn’t happened yet. Keep your weapons at the ready, but try to be friendly with the locals.”
A disjointed chorus of “roger that” or “got it” was the reply. By this time the rangers’ previously unseen followers were now mostly visible on the top of the creek bank ten or fifteen feet above. Twelve stalkers in total. All wore crude leathers stained and scuffed to blend in with the woodlands. Most of them held old-world break open shotguns or bolt-action rifles, but Finn saw a couple bows in the mix as well. To a man, they all wore brown, cloth head wraps that obscured their faces, leaving only their hard eyes visible through the slits.