The next two days saw us travelling like this, avoiding main roads and the occasional patrol. The patrols weren’t Fennimore’s men thankfully, but rather the local men-at-arms doing their rounds. Still, being seen by them would be bad, they had surely heard of what had happened back in Ritodunum.
I wish we knew what the actual local politics were like. Medieval politics like the ones in this region were usually very… loose with their allegiances. Lords within the same kingdom were known to go to war with each other over lands and resources sometimes. It was kinda nuts how much was allowed between the nobility.
For this reason, we might be able to find a sympathetic lord or two who’d be able to help us in some way. I’m sure there was someone who’d love to throw a few coins at us just for wounding the guy. Especially given the fact that this wasn’t even his nation we were in right now. Sure, their capital cities were a day’s trip by river barge away from each other, but that might not mean much politically.
That day as we plodded wearily along, we began to grow suspicious of the number of patrols going past us. They were all riding or marching hard in the same direction we were going, but the weird part was that they barely spared a glance in our direction.
It was about the time that a full forty armoured men on horseback rode past with lances held high that we realised that this wasn’t about us. The eyes of the riders were hard, but many also wore expressions of dread. Which begged the question, what were they worried about?
“I don’t like this,” Troy said, calling us to a halt. “There’s shit going down up ahead.”
“Do we try and go around it or what?” I asked, looking down the road like I might be able to catch a glimpse of what was happening.
Troy frowned and did the same as me, his expression deep in thought. Finally, he sighed, “We’ll continue until we know for certain what’s happening. I have a feeling we’ll want to know what’s going on rather than get blindsided when it rides us down. Information is key to us right now, and anything we can observe here might be useful.”
With the decision made, we continued, although guns were loosened in holsters and helmets were put on. For my part, I had worn my magical disguise, which also had the added benefit of telling me that at least those plants were still alive. Now I put on my physical disguise too, wrapping the scarf tightly around my face.
Around us, the farms were quiet as the folk who usually tended them were making for their houses and closing up. They had realised that bad things were happening too, it was difficult to ignore the steady stream of soldiers riding in the direction we were talking. Even the very air seemed to thrum with the tension of it all.
Wait.
Was that thrum just tension? It seemed just a little more physical than simply my imagination. Something was making a very odd noise up ahead of us, and for a moment I was trying to listen for whistling, but caught none.
“Do you hear that?” Grace asked in a hushed whisper.
“Yeah,” I nodded. “It almost sounds like… like a swarm of bees having a fight with a chainsaw.”
“That is an incredibly… accurate description actually,” she said with a dark laugh.
“Bodies,” Troy interrupted simply, and we all jerked our gazes forward.
I gulped and quickly looked away almost as soon as I saw them, but it was too late. The image was burned into my brain. A pair of farmhands were burned and in multiple pieces, each cut to their bodies having been cauterised as it was made. It reminded me of how lightsabers made wounds but it was more… visceral in person.
We all looked to Troy, who just nodded us onwards. I was a little terrified now, what the hell had caused this? Was it a mage? Who just killed random farmhands like that though?
As we turned a corner on the road around a line of trees, a small village came into view, no more than twenty or thirty buildings in total. Many were on fire in small ways that threatened to become a blaze to level the whole place if it wasn’t contained. At least a hundred or so soldiers stood a ways back from the entrance to the place, the mounted knights and men-at-arms we’d seen earlier off to the side, but no one was making a move into the village.
Soon a group of villagers ran out, ten or so of them, women with babies in hand, children following. They rushed towards the gathered men with tear streaked faces, eyes wild with fear. I saw no men. I held my breath as they neared the massed soldiers, but they weren’t cut down like I’d been suspecting. Rather, they were directed to the back and given water and first aid by a small gathering of retainers.
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We approached quietly but without guile, stopping some twenty yards from the villagers and retainers. I could make out their terrified rambling from here, and what I heard was chilling.
“There’s none left, we’re… they all died, it killed everyone else!” one woman was wailing, clutching at her confused and scared looking toddler.
“You’ll stop it right, you’ll stop that thing?” a teenaged looking kid was asking, his face stained with ash. “It killed my dad! It killed my dad!”
“We sent for a mage, child. There was one back at the Angenver inn, but… we don’t know if she will deign to help us,” one of the retainers said. “We will keep you safe in the meantime and try to hold it back.”
Before I could relay this back to to my friends… “it” came crashing through one of the external houses. It stood at almost two storeys tall, made of a shining silvery metal that was pitted with age and ancient battle scars. Four legs extended crablike from a central chassis, their outside surfaces broad and aesthetically curved into what looked like steel shields capable of stopping even armour piercing rounds from a modern Earth military.
The central chassis was shaped like a wedge to deflect projectiles, and sprouting from the shoulders of the thing were two arms of similar construction to the legs. On their tips however they bore the distinctive barrels of projectile weapons. The head of the thing was a small football shaped lump of metal sitting deep within the shoulders. It bore no sensor equipment as far as I could see, but it was turning and rotating as if surveying the massed troops. This had to be a steel one!
I was running forward before the others even realised it. I didn’t really care if the soldiers were our enemies or our allies, but I knew that I didn’t want to see them slaughtered.
“Ryn!” Grace cried from behind me, her feet pounding on the dirt of the road in an effort to catch up. “Shit, Ryn!”
Idly, a small few of the mounted men turned to watch me as I ran. None of the massed soldiers in the way made any attempt to move though, every one of them standing transfixed by the enemy in front of them. I heard that terrible raw thrum again, rising in pitch, and I looked across the massed heads to see energy building in one of the cannons protruding from its forearms.
A beam of deathly red energy lanced out from the weapon, running an arc through the massed troops, cutting every one of them it touched as though they were sliced by a huge molten blade. I wasn’t in the path, but two dozen people must have just been cut down by that beam, and I staggered to a halt just behind the last of the ranks, staring at the mess of bodies in awed dread.
People were shouting around me, the knights were now charging it from the side, crossbows were firing, their bolts ineffectually bouncing off the metal hull of the terrible mechanical death machine. Some men were turning to flee, others charging headlong into the path of the second beam just as it fired.
Atop the steel one, the chassis opened at the shoulders to allow two extra twin guns to rise on smaller arms. They took aim and began a rapid fire hissing as they hosed the crowd of men down with buzzing bolts of energy. Half of the men before me were already dead or dying, their wounded cries for help crashing into my psyche like the projectiles that had taken them.
I had my will though, my power of mind. Being a mage had taught me that, and I focused, pushing the horror of massed human suffering out of my mind. I was a damned mage, I’d crush this awful thing into a scrap of tinfoil and pass out bleeding from my ears if I had to.
Pulling my disguises from my face, I raised my arms towards the steel one. I sent my mind-vines rushing out towards it, lashing them around each of the four weapons. Gripping tight, I yanked them upwards with all the strength of will that I could manage and simply held them there. As soon as I had my vines on it, I’d realised my mistake. I wasn’t powerful enough to crush it. This was all I could do, keep the weapons pointed away from the poor men around us.
The knights saw their enemy mysteriously waylaid and rushed again, hacking at it with swords that did nothing but ring uselessly off its steel hide. They needed to go for the joints, damn it! They might be able to fuck its joints up, but their current approach wasn’t going to work.
“Ryn,” Grace gasped from beside me, staring at the carnage around us in horror.
“They need to go for the joints!” I ground out through clenched teeth. “Their swords are useless if they keep hitting the damn armoured plates.”
“We should be leaving!” Troy replied hotly instead, coming up on my other side. “But… since we’re committed, we’ll see what we can do. I can see a few points that our guns might do some damage too, but I’m not confident. Keep that thing’s weapons pointed away and we might have this.”
“I’m sorry! I just… these people!” I cried guiltily, feeling tears running down my cheeks at all the misery around us even as my head began to pound in earnest. Shit, had my stupid actions gotten us all killed?
Troy gave a grunt and nodded, “Hang in there kid. The rest of you, come on, it looks like we’re playing hero.”
“A little warning would have been nice, but yeah… it’s the right thing to do,” Grace sighed, her voice tight as she finally looked up from the bodies. “After you boss.”
“Sorry,” was all I could manage through the increasing pain in my skull. “But please hurry. This really hurts.”
They were off, rushing towards the evil death robot across the carpet of bodies between. I watched through the narrowed slits of my eyes as Troy raised his gun and took careful aim, popping off shots at some small area I couldn’t see. The others joined in, gunshots ringing loud even over the cries of battle.
It didn’t take long to see that the bullets weren’t working, nor the swords of the knights, and certainly not the pathetic crossbow bolts fired by some of the soldiers. Nothing was doing anything, not even my vines could crush it. Instead, my powers simply bound it helpless but impervious. That is… until my grip on them failed.
With one large spike of pain, my vines fell away into nothing, and the arms of the ancient machine fell back into position, weapons humming with promised death.