John jerked the ostrich to the left as an explosion of dirt appeared on his previous heading.

After their first attack, the three had repositioned to the next farm, but the mercenaries hadn’t taken the bait. They simply waited and gathered their forces with the intent to move forward as one group. It was a smart move on their part, but it didn’t help the three of them very much.

To top it off, the airship had moved in to support them from the air and was firing down on them, driving them closer to Ember Creek.

That didn’t mean they hadn’t hit back.

They took out two more walkers despite the enemy gathering together, and he wasn’t sure how many men on the ground had fallen to the grapeshot from the Sheriff.

“We need to do something about that airship!” Blackwood shouted as he pulled up alongside him.

“I’m open to ideas. If we stop to reload, they will simply fire on us, We can outrun them but we’re going to run out of space between the town and them sooner than I would like. If the rest of those walkers make it to the town, a whole lot of people are going to die.”

“I have an idea!” Seline called out as she appeared on the other side of him. “You think you could reload my cannon on the move?”

John looked at the young deputy like she was crazy. It was hard enough riding these things, and she wanted him to try and reload a cannon while they were going faster than a horse at a full sprint. He paused to think about her plan. It wasn’t the craziest thing he had ever done. Could he do it though? Maybe. He certainly had the best chance of pulling it off.

“Wait for them to fire again and then lock your speed in. I’ll give it a try.”

They heard the roar of the ship cannon and all three of them spread out to ensure the cannonball wouldn’t hit all of them. Hopefully, it wouldn’t hit any of them but you couldn’t predict anything in a fight. At least they were outside of grapeshot range, or they would have been dead already.

The cannonball hit behind them, sending dirt into the air. The angle and soft ground made it so the cannonballs didn’t bounce, which was also appreciated.

John pulled close to Seline and did his best to match her speed while being slightly ahead of her. Shoving the ball into the barrel was the easy part. Getting the ram to push it down was not. He had to completely release the reins on his automaton, grab the barrel of Seline’s with one hand, and push the rod in with the other. A task made infinitely harder because when he pushed, it started to push the two automatons apart.

He managed to push the round all the way in, but when he pulled the rod out, he started to lose his balance. Seline tried to reach for him and John tried to grab for his reins but both missed as he slipped off the side of the ostrich. He tucked himself into a ball and barely managed not to get stomped on by Seline’s mount as it raced away along with his.

Most of his fall was cushioned by the tall grass they were riding through, so he wasn’t hurt too badly. There would certainly be some bruising though. He cursed his luck as he stood.

When he heard the next cannon shot, John looked up and tracked the incoming round. He grunted in annoyance and ran to the side. The twenty-pound ball barely missed him as it impacted the ground five feet away. That damn cannon was more accurate than it had any right to be. John watched the group of walkers quickly close on him. If he was going to die, he was going to go down fighting.

***

“John!” Seline screamed as she could only watch in horror as the man fell from his saddle. It was her fault. If she hadn’t suggested such a risky maneuver, he would still be on his mount. When she glanced back, she saw him standing up. He looked mostly unhurt, but he was going to be in trouble very soon.

She started to slow and turn to get him but Wyatt yelled at her. “Keep going! I’ll circle back and grab him, you secure his ride.” She reluctantly nodded and increased her speed to catch up with John’s mount.

***

Wyatt didn’t know what he was thinking when he decided to go back for John. It was suicide. It was why he told Seline to keep going. Wyatt also knew that the town didn’t have much of a chance without John or Seline. The unfortunate truth was that Wyatt, even though he was the Sheriff, was the most expendable.

With that in mind, he pushed the ostrich faster than he was comfortable with. The airship was focused on John, but some of the walkers were firing his way as he made a big loop back. John was firing at the openings on the walkers, but Wyatt couldn’t tell if he was actually hitting anything from this range.

“John! Grab on!”

The gunslinger glanced in his direction with a look of surprise. But the man never stopped firing his pistols. Once Wyatt got to within twenty feet, John holstered his weapons and stuck an arm out. Wyatt grunted as John grabbed his outstretched arm. John launched himself off the ground and behind the saddle before he could pull him off the ostrich as well.

***

“You shouldn’t have come back,” John stated as Wyatt did his best to not crash or get them both shot.

“Yeah, well, you’re welcome.”

The pair quickly left the pursuing walkers behind. After failing to kill John, their enemy was slowing their pace, likely to let the men on foot catch up. John could see why, some of the buildings of Ember Creek were visible in the distance. That meant the town was less than ten miles away. It sounded like the airship had stopped firing at them as well.

This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

John turned to see what was going on. What he saw was not comforting. The airship was descending to the ground. With a good look at the top of the ship for the first time, John could see rows of gleaming metal. It was likely what had caught his eye the first time he spotted the ship. Those rows of shining metal were dozens of suits of armor. He couldn’t say for certain if they were steam-powered, but he would bet his life they were.

“We can’t let that ship land.”

“What? Why?” the Sheriff asked as he concentrated on not running into something.

“It’s full of steam-powered armor. If we let them land, there’s no way we’ll be able to stop them all before they reach the city. I don’t even think we have enough cannonballs to take them all out even if we could stop them all.”

The sheriff grunted, “And how do you propose we get close enough to that ship? They were firing at us with one cannon and had us on the run, how much you wanna bet they have more cannons along the side?”

That was not a bet John would make. He knew Vernon Hensley would have wasted no expense protecting himself. And if he was on the ship, it would be nearly impossible to get close to it.

The only real hope was to approach from the front or rear. And they didn’t have time to circle around behind the massive ship.

“Get me to my ostrich so I can reload, I have a plan.”

“Riding to your death doesn’t seem like much of a plan,” Blackwood muttered, but he pushed to join up with Seline who was waiting ahead. Now that they were outside the range of the ship, she had stopped. She should have kept going.

John hopped off Blackwood’s ostrich and hurried over to his own as he quickly reloaded the cannon.

“What’s going on?” Seline asked.

“John thinks he can stop the ship from landing somehow,” Blackwood answered for him.

“If I can hit the cables connecting the balloon to the ship, it should tip it sideways and dump the suits of armor overboard. Anything falling from that height will be damaged.”

“Is that all,” Blackwood said, “Here I thought you were going to do something crazy. But it’s totally reasonable to hit a one-inch wide rope from a thousand feet away while on a moving cannon.”

“What!” Seline exclaimed. “Can’t you just shoot the bag? It’s filled with hydrogen, it should explode and send the thing crashing to the ground.”

John shook his head. “Unless your bullets can spew fire, that won’t work. We could shoot holes in that bag all day without causing the ship to crash.”

“How would you even know something like that?” Seline asked him.

John chuckled. “Trust me, I know. This is not my first encounter with an airship. Although this is by far the largest.”

He reloaded the cannon and got back on his ostrich. “You two head to Ember Creek and warn them. If this doesn’t work, they are going to need to be ready.”

“What if you fall again?” Seline asked worriedly.

John glanced over at the Sheriff, who was also reloading his cannon. The man gave him a knowing look. “He’ll be fine, Seline, let's go.”

John nodded to the pair and only waited long enough to ensure they were riding back toward Ember Creek before he turned around and raced at the slowly lowering ship. He had one shot at this and he wasn’t even sure it would work. Severing the balloon from a smaller ship worked to break the rest of the ropes, but he wasn’t sure if it would work on this large of a ship.

He didn’t need it to completely fail, he just needed it to list sideways and dump the armor overboard. If he could manage that, he would have done everything he could to save Ember Creek.

The problem was the walkers. They had made a semi-circle around the front of the ship and he could already hear bullets whizzing past him as he raced forward.

He would need to get past them before he was in range to fire his cannon. That also meant he would be in range of the enemy's cannon. If they had swapped out for grapeshot, he may not even get close enough to get his shot off. Only one way to find out.

John reloaded and fired one of his revolvers, while he used his other arm to pull the ostrich left or right to dodge return fire. The shooters in the walkers were still trying to adjust to his speed, but they were getting closer with each shot. John was already putting rounds on target though. As his bullets vanished into the dark opening of the armored boxes, the guns would either vanish or fall from the opening.

Soon he was past the line of walkers, and a new set of shooters started shooting at his back. He couldn’t risk turning around though. A round hit his armor and he grunted as he felt the metal give under the impact. When he reached back to the spot, it came away wet with blood.

If he survived, digging that out was going to be a nightmare. More rounds struck him, a few hit his legs, one tore through his ear, and a second slammed into his back armor again. That one would have punched a hole in his heart if he wasn’t already beyond the effective lethal range of the guns to punch through his armored vest.

John was close enough to see the men manning the cannon on the ship now. They were rapidly cranking a wheel to adjust their aim toward him. He just needed to be a little closer. And now!

John sat as far back on the ostrich as he could, causing the front end to come up at a steep angle at the same time the enemy cannon fired.

His small cannonball zipped through the air, while a much larger one flew toward him.

There was a cacophonous shriek of metal as the enemy cannonball impacted the front of his ostrich. If John hadn’t been perched on the back of the machine, the abrupt stop would have thrown him from the saddle. He still barely managed to jump clear as the large cannonball tore the machine apart, sending metal shards flying in every direction. John was peppered by a few of these shards, but the leather saddle actually absorbed a good chunk of them as it was torn apart.

He was smiling as he hit the ground though. His shot had been on the mark, the rope or cable had snapped under the strain and the ship tipped slightly. He crossed his fingers for the additional strain to cause more ropes to break but they didn’t. And when he looked up, he saw the men at the cannon loading grapeshot.

“You always wanted to go out in a blaze of glory,” he muttered as he took in a deep breath and pulled out his revolvers. When he opened his eyes, another ostrich steaked past him.

It was Seline. She mimicked what John had done and fired at the ropes attaching the balloon to the ship. Her round hit the rope, but it was off just a bit, the rope was only cut halfway through. Before he could yell at the girl for being stupid, Blackwood raced past. When he fired, it was aimed at the cannon.

The round struck the cannon right after the man had lit the fuse. The small ball didn’t do much other than shift the heavy cannon downward, but when the cannon fired, the grapeshot went mostly into the deck of the ship, the rest fell well short of their position. It wouldn’t stop them from firing again. And now they were all easy shots for the ship.

“I told you two to warn the town!”

“You don’t get to sacrifice your life for us, John. Ember Creek is our town!”

He wanted to say their sacrifice was in vain, but he heard a loud snapping sound. When he looked up, he saw the rope Seline had hit had broken. The rope behind it was starting to snap as well.

People on the ship were yelling and trying to halt the damage, but it was too late. The third rope went, and then the fourth broke quickly after that.

The ship listed sideway and gleaming bronze sets of armor began to tumble over the edge. And not all of them were empty.

“We need to go. Now!” John rushed over to the closest ostrich, which happened to be Seline’s, and hopped on the back. “Go!” He pointed to the side that was listing. The cannons wouldn’t be able to hit them and the walkers were out of place to block their retreat in that direction.

As they were making their getaway, he heard the first suit of armor crunch into the ground. More followed quickly after that one.