I quickly addressed our noncombatants.

“In this fight, you won’t be a help, you will be a liability. Xeng, take them up into the hills and then circle back towards town. You need to leave as soon as possible. Go to town and don’t come back unless you get a message from me or, if I fall, another one of us. If you don’t get that notification, keep moving and find someplace else to settle.” I turned to one of the woodsmen. “You need to lead them,” I said. “Please keep them safe.”

Then, I dashed into my room and grabbed a pouch full of gems. Pressing it into Mariam’s hand, I told her to hold on to the pouch because we would need it to rebuild, or they would need the funds to start a new life.

While they were preparing to leave, I was trying to get everyone organized to fight. Sadly, I was out of tricks, not that a few tricks would matter against a force of that size.

“We are going to fight them inside the house,” I said. “I don’t think they will be able to burn us out unless they have oil or something else highly flammable. The weather has been too wet and we have a good slate roof. In here, we have an advantage. If their force is similar to the one who came calling before, many of them will be armed with spears. It is much more difficult to use massed spears in the confines of a building. If they want us dead, they are going to have to root us out.”

“But Mister James, won’t your fine new house be damaged?” asked one of the young orcs who was carrying a pitchfork.

“Our house can be replaced. I don’t want to have to explain to your parents why I prioritized the house over their son’s life.” I saw several people nodding in agreement.

It looked like Xeng was ready to leave with Jahhaf, Mariam, Mero, Helvia and Werner and Goulug’s wife and children. “Go now,” I said. “Keep moving until you are safe.” I was a bit surprised that Lapina had decided to stay but there she stood, nervously grasping the rapier. I heard the backdoor open and shut. Turning my attention back to the people who were staying, I continued.

“Patrick, can you still shoot?”

“I can,” he said.

“I know we don’t have many rounds left. Just ten. Please make them count.” I turned to address my gathered force of plateau dwellers. “Patrick has a weapon that came from another world. It has limited uses remaining but when he uses it you will hear a loud explosive sound. Do not be alarmed. There are three doorways into the house. Split up and cover them all. Use the hallways to your advantage. Limit how many can approach you at one time. We will not try to defend the great room. The ceiling is too high and there is room to maneuver. But we are going to make them bleed for every inch of the rest of the house. Oh, and if anyone wants a spear to use, we have some from the last round of bandits. Do you all understand?”

I received a chorus of agreement from the others. They were a very mixed bag, chosen for their stamina and not their fighting ability. Except for the two hunters and their bows, none of them were particularly well armed. It looked like they had prepared for war by trundling down to the local hardware store and raiding the tool section. Staves, wood axes, pitch forks and the like would have to stand against trained killers, and nobody took my offer for a free spear. I guess they wanted to stick with the familiar. They had come with me without question, though, and for that I was so very grateful. I hoped that we wouldn’t lose anyone. I also knew that if I hoped in one hand and shit in the other the hand that would fill up first.

I roughly divided them into three sections. I would handle the front door, Aleyda had the one at the side and Bowen was in command around the back. Of course, Aleyda and Bowen couldn’t communicate verbally with their troops. They would need to lead through sign language and by example. I told Patrick, Goulug and Lapina to roam and pitch in where they thought they could do the most good. Everyone was eating and drinking on their feet, trying to get a little fuel into their bodies while it was still possible.

Time passed. Tom Petty was right. The waiting was the hardest part. Every moment of quiet amplified the nervousness, and for some people it was worse than others. We waited. Then we waited some more. The tension was so thick you could drown in it. I am sure when most of these young people, nearly universally orcs, originally signed up for this expedition they felt pretty safe. Strength in numbers and all of that. Now the cold reality of facing a better trained and equipped force of nearly equal number was working on all their minds. The little seeds of doubt, the little whispers, even insinuated themselves into my own thoughts. Should we all have run? Should we have just grabbed the valuables and sacrificed our house and our herds to the bandits? The answer was probably yes, but it was too late now.

Just as my ruminations were reaching a fever pitch, both of the scouts came bolting into the yard, interrupted them.

“They’re here,” one said, running inside. The second one also entered and shut the door, then unlimbered his bow.

“Alright, we are in a defensible position and you all know what to do,” I said, trying to speak in a confident tone. “We need to buy as much time as we can. Help is on the way, but it might not be here until this is all decided. But the longer we draw this out, the closer that help is to reaching us.”

Peering out the door, I watched the bandits march into the yard. While our group had moved with little discipline, an unruly mob, the same could not be said of the bandits. They marched over the ground in a three abreast column. I quickly counted them. There were nineteen of them. Fifteen carried spears, while the other four were armed differently. Two were clearly the unit’s scouts. Unarmored, with heavy crossbows slung over their backs and hatchets at their hips, they flanked the column looking for signs of ambush. The other two were better equipped. Both wore chainmail similar to the last group’s leader. One was a short, squat, heavily muscled orc who gripped a vicious looking battle axe. The other, much larger but no less imposing, had a two-handed sword over his back.

There were nineteen of them, and thirty one of us. I didn’t love our odds, even with a defensive position and the few rounds we had from the pistol. Patrick was beside me. I turned to him.

“If you get a clear shot, I need you to take out the armored ones and the two with crossbows. If you can eliminate their leadership, we will have a better chance.”

“I’ll try,” he responded. “I don’t have enough rounds to guarantee it, though.”

“Do your best,” I replied.

The spear carrying bandits deployed into a battle line, eight in front with a rank of seven behind them. The two orcs with missile weapons sprinted towards the barn to make certain that there were no forces laying in wait there. Throwing open the doors and peering inside, they must have concluded that there was no ambush because I heard one of them call out to the main force.

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“Barn is clear.”

“Hello the house.” the larger armored orc called out.

“What can we do for you?” I yelled back.

“We’re looking for some men we sent out in this direction yesterday. They were soliciting donations. You haven’t seen them, have you?”

“Yeah, we saw them. They wouldn’t take no for an answer. We fought. They lost. Now they’re on the wrong side of the dirt, which is where you’ll be if you don’t get the hell out of here. But I think you knew that already. You aren’t here looking for your men. You’re here looking for revenge.”

“You have me there,” he replied. “We did come here to spill some blood. If you are such mighty warriors, why not come out and face us and we can settle this?”

“No. We’re fine right here,” I said. “If your lot is so tough it should be no problem for you to come in here and lay waste to a few farmers.”

One of their scouts was studying the ground. After a moment he rose and approached the leader. They had a low conversation that I couldn’t overhear.

“My scout tells me that there are more than a few farmers in there,” he called out. “Why don’t we see whether you have the courage to protect your property.”

He gave a series of orders to several of the men, who promptly wandered over and started slaughtering our livestock. Soon the oxen were dead, the chickens were dead, the elan lay bleeding out on the ground, and the hogs were killed. Of course, the animals spooked at the smell of blood and the screams of their fellows, but we had done too good of a job with the enclosures. There was no escape. I was horrified at the waste, the wanton cruelty, but a part of me was thankful. While they were killing the animals they weren’t killing us. Every minute of time was precious. After it was done, the orcs who had performed the slaughter laughed with each other, glorifying in their cruelty. The orc leader spoke again.

“Ah, well. It seems you are not brave enough to protect what’s yours. I can’t say I am surprised. It looks like if you survive you are in for a lean winter.”

I chanted a mantra to myself over and over. Don’t get angry. Don’t take the bait.

I just stood there and watched in silence. Seconds passed. Eventually the bandit leader became impatient and spoke again.

“Are you still alive in there, or did you all decide to take your own lives to save us the trouble?”

“Oh, we’re still here,” I replied. “We’re inside this nice, sturdy, warm house. You are out there in the cold. Night is falling. The temperature is dropping. I guess you can sleep in the barn like the filthy animals you are.”

“Soon the house will be very warm but not all that sturdy,” he said.

Yeah, he was going to try to burn us out. It didn’t really surprise me. It’s what I would do in his situation. Why assault a structure when you could make people come out to meet you in the open? I hoped my gamble about the wet weather was about to pay off. Not only had we received a blanket of wet snow, but some of the snow had melted, dripping off the roof and running down the sides of the building. Apparently, gutters weren’t a thing in this world, or at least this part of it. Also, the exterior sides of the house were fashioned from split logs instead of fully finished lumber. It was still a little sappy and green. When it dried it would shrink a little and that would create some finish problems that we would have to repair, but at the moment I was looking forward to fixing those problems. If we had to fix them, it meant the house was still standing.

The leader gave some orders and the back rank of the spear wielders went running into the barn. They were in the barn for several minutes and I couldn’t see what they were doing, but whatever it was couldn’t be good for us. The bandit leader didn’t say anything else to me and I didn’t try to talk to him either. The time for talk had passed.

Finally, the bandits reappeared. They shoved one of my wagons out into the yard. It was laden with straw and hay that we had stockpiled for our now nonexistent livestock. The contents of the wagon were dry. They would certainly burn. I bet right about now they were regretting killing all the oxen because moving the wagon over the weather beaten ground was slow going. There was a lot of slipping and swearing. From time to time, one or another of them would fall down. But the distance between the house and the barn was not great and within the span of ten or twenty minutes, they had shoved the wagon up against the front porch.

That’s when I realized I may have miscalculated a little bit. Maybe I miscalculated more than a little bit. While the sides of the house were not finished lumber, the porch floor and roof were. If they got hot enough, they would burn. The question was whether the fire would spread to the rest of the house. The porch roof was low and separate from the main roof of the house, so its not like the fire could spread up the eaves of the porch to the rafters of the main house. Still, a little planning never hurt.

“Patrick,” I said. “They are going to try to set the porch on fire. We need a breakout plan just in case. Watch for me here. I’ll be right back.”

I ran to the two other groups and explained what was happening. I told them that if the house was engulfed, we would all break out of the rear door and head up into the hills to try to find advantageous terrain to make our stand. Then, I ran back and explained the same plan to the people at the front door. I received a bunch of grim looks in return. I think everyone knew I was making this shit up as I was going along and were none too happy about it.

While I had been absent running to other parts of the house, the bandits had not been idle. They had lit several torches, the flames dancing and licking out in the newly arrived darkness. At the leader’s command, half the torches were tossed into the laden wagon.

The straw and hay, dry and protected from the elements by our new barn, caught fire easily. Soon, smoke was pouring from the bonfire that had erupted in the front of my house. The wagon started to burn, adding substantial fuel to the flames. Soon, those flames had spread to the railings and floor of the porch. The fire was smoky and the porch roof limited the directions the smoke could escape. Much of it vented to the front, embers riding with it, popping and spinning into the darkness. Much was not all, however. Soon the inside of the house itself started to fill with dense smoke, pouring in from the cracks in the doors and windows. If we died from smoke inhalation we would be just as dead as we would if we burned to death. I should have anticipated this, I thought. I should have issued everyone wet cloths to breathe through.

Time passed. It was getting hard to get a breath of clean air. That’s when it became clear to me. My plan wasn’t going to work. We were going to have to take our chances outside.

I pulled everyone from the front door and we ran to the side door to gather the people there. Then, we headed to the back. The air was a little clearer in the back of the house, so I gasped out a few sentences of a plan.

“We bought some time. That means the main force is a couple of hours closer than they would have been otherwise. But our time in here is up. At all costs, we need to stay together. If we get separated it will be easy for them to run us down piecemeal. When I open this door, we are going to head up into the hills. I will lead. I don’t know if they have anyone stationed outside this door but we have to assume they do. We need to overwhelm them quickly if they are out there. Then, we need to find someplace to make our stand, to bleed them. Do you all understand?”

I received a smattering of affirmative replies. Many of the young orcs looked shocked or dazed. I am certain that they were regretting their life choices that brought them to this moment. I knew exactly how they felt. My hope was that my inexpert leadership hadn’t just created a new remember the Alamo moment.

I threw open the door and we went charging into the night, trying not to fall on our asses on the cold, hard, slick ground.