John could only scowl at the retreating form of Jacob. He refused to acknowledge that man as his son. The thought sickened him and brought back memories he preferred not to think about.
Back before he was conscripted, Jennavieve had been his fiance. Their marriage was set to happen later that year. Back then he had loved her with all his heart. Jennavieve had been an amazing woman with a heart to match. Much like her mother, Jen was raised to be an herbalist and midwife.
When the Irtishian Empire’s conscription troops came through his small village, they rounded up all the men of fighting age, but they also took any women with knowledge about healing.
Not wanting to be separated from each other before confirming their vows, they snuck into the town’s church that night and roused the priest to officiate their ceremony. The man had been miffed about being awoken in the dead of night, but he understood their rush and agreed. After that, they consummated their marriage. It was the last good memory he had of the woman.
Once they arrived at the training camp, John was in the group selected for the serum trials. What he didn’t know until later, was that Jennavieve’s skills were labeled as useless by the other medical professionals. Instead of sending her back home, she was added to the trials as well.
The abusive training and serum broke men’s minds. It was designed to make them compliant and follow orders. It did the same to his wife. Her once-loving demeanor was shattered and twisted, making her one of the most effective weapons the Empire had to draw upon. Jen no longer had any fear or sympathy. He wasn’t sure if she could even feel emotions at all after that other than hate or spite.
The first time he saw his wife released onto a battlefield was toward the tail end of the war, the remaining Irtishian forces were trying to push to safety while being pursued by multiple other armies from the other kingdoms. One of the armies managed to flank their force and tried to cut off their retreat. When he saw his once caring wife butcher men while laughing, something in him recoiled. It was such a visceral reaction, that it broke through the conditioning the Irtishian Empire had driven into the irregulars.
John killed the remaining irregulars within their dwindling forces before he tried to kill his wife to free her from the same hell. He was no match for her bloodthirsty nature and she left him a broken mess on the battlefield before leaving with the rest of the army. John didn’t know why she let him live. She could have easily killed him. That was when Jeziah Novarez found him.
He heard from Jeziah that those remaining forces were surrounded and destroyed completely. So he assumed his wife had also fallen. She must have somehow slipped through and survived to give birth to Jacob.
John took a deep breath to collect himself and banish those memories. Seeing no immediate danger, he put his pneuma pistol away and slid down the broken bridge and into the water. He splashed through the freezing waist-high water and retrieved Sherrif Blackwood’s body.
Wyatt deserved a proper funeral instead of being washed away by the current once this fight was over.
After pulling the man up the bank, John did his best to remove as much water as possible from his clothes. He couldn’t afford to be slowed down, especially when he was nearly out of ammo.
He closed Blackwood’s eyes and covered the man with his overcoat. He wished he could do more, but he needed to hurry toward the other side of town.
When he arrived, he found the battlefield to be complete mayhem. Hensley’s forces had pushed through the earthen barricades, but the traps had been effective at reducing their numbers. The walkers were all down, and only five armored suits remained. But that four-legged walker was still tromping forward, and John heard it firing its cannon.
It wasn’t firing at the Ember Creak defenders though, it was firing at the hundreds of drugged-up Harc’otti that were streaming from the north. The savages weren’t only attacking Hensley’s men though, they were attacking the town as well.
It seemed the battle had turned into a three-way free-for-all. He could occasionally hear the rotary or their small cannon firing, but most of the people were locked into close combat with the warriors. The only upside to this situation was that Hensley’s people were in a similar situation. Especially the ones on foot.
A crack of a cannon going off made him turn his head and he spotted Jacob pushing out of the treeline to the north. His shot slammed into the four-legged walker, sending wood fragments flying.
The automaton fired back, but Jacob’s suit of armor was much more nimble than the ones Hensley had. He easily dodged the long-range cannon shot.
As much as John would like to sit back and watch, the defenders needed him. He needed to push the tide of Harc’otti back and find a way to deal with the remaining automatons.
As he rushed into the thick of things, he swung his borrowed hatchet down on the neck of one warrior who was close to overpowering one of the defenders. The warrior dropped to the ground and the man thanked him. John didn’t stick around to help any further, he quickly moved across the line, giving the defenders a chance to catch their breath. He made it to the raised position with the rotary and helped clear off the warriors who had managed to break through to attack them.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
“How much ammo do you have left?” he huffed out as he tried to catch his breath.
One of the surviving operators hurried over to the ammo and held up two of the sticks. John swore internally but kept his visage clear of any despair. “I want you to use it on the armor.” The man looked like he wanted to say something but John cut him off. “I know it won’t penetrate, just distract them long enough for the Harc’otti to rush in and pull them down.”
He needed a way to eliminate as many of the automatons as he could, and he couldn’t make it to the cannon that was mounted on a building farther behind the line. He was also hoping to save the cannon for either the four-legged walker or Jacob.
The rotary opened up as soon as John left the position to rejoin the front line. John did his best to keep tabs on the armor but he was forced to focus on the warriors. The front line was shrinking as people fell under the pressure of so many attackers. The entire front line would have collapsed already if the people weren’t fighting for their lives and the Harc’otti weren’t in a drug-induced rage that made them far less skilled than they would normally be.
As the line slowly collapsed, his vantage point rose. He was glad Ember Creek was situated on a small hill. The slight elevation finally gave him a view of the battlefield. The enemy was now down to two of the armors, and one was being swarmed by Harc’otti as the man inside desperately waved a large blade to ward them off. The second fired a spread of grapeshot at point-blank range, tearing through the seemingly endless number of deranged warriors.
That gave the form with the sword a moment of reprieve until there was a loud pop to John’s right. When he glanced over, he saw a furious Seline bounding across the dirt berm with her ostrich. The small cannonball tore into the back of the armored form without the sword, and the man staggered forward before collapsing to one knee. The form didn’t get a chance to get back up as the Harc’otti rushed him.
He wanted to cheer Seline on, but he could see her goal. She was heading straight for Jacob and there was nothing he could do to stop her.
Even if he could somehow fight his way through the mass of bodies, he could never catch the ostrich on foot.
John only caught glimpses of what happened next as he fought off a fresh wave of warriors as more turned toward the town. Seline somehow reloaded without getting off her ostrich, the cannonball ricocheted off the back of Jacob’s armor, leaving a sizable dent, but failing to penetrate the metal.
The man whirled on her faster than he had ever seen the armor move. One of his arms smashed into the ostrich and sent both it and Seline flying through the air. They vanished behind the sea of Harc’otti.
She would be another person he would have to mourn after this was all over. As the battle pushed past the outskirts of Ember Creek and into the streets, he lost sight of Jacob and Hensley’s fight. From what he saw, he suspected Hensley was going to lose.
Then again, at the rate they were being pushed back, there likely wouldn’t be anyone left in town to witness the aftermath. The Harc’otti were steadily driving the townsfolk back, and they were already halfway to the river when some of the warriors simply dropped in their tracks.
John got to witness this up close. The man he was fighting had his eyes roll up in his head and he fell over. All across the line, warriors dropped. The people cheered and rallied, slowly pushing into the warriors still standing.
He didn’t know what was going on, but he could guess. It seemed whatever Jacob had given the Harc’otti had some very nasty side effects.
After less than an hour, only a handful of Harc’otti were left standing. And they looked like they had aged forty years in that time. The townsfolk hurried through and finished off any left standing. The battle wasn’t over though. John told the people to take cover, while he went to survey the battlefield.
He was sure he wouldn’t like what he found.
John cautiously approached the edge of town. After the constant clamor of battle, the silence made his skin crawl.
Occasionally he came across a Harc’otti standing and staring blankly into the distance. He made sure to put them down when he did.
When he reached the edge of town, he sighed. Jacob was sitting on the remains of the four-legged walker with a well-dressed man dangling lifelessly from one of his metal hands. There was no point in hiding because the man was staring directly at him.
“Are you proud, Father?” the man chuckled darkly before tossing the body of Hensley toward him. The corpse bounced off the dirt berm and rolled to a stop with his face up. John turned away from the corpse and watched as Jacob strode toward the berm.
“Now what?” John asked.
The man chuckled inside his suit. “I already told you. Now I’m going to kill every single person here. And I’m going to make you watch while I do it. And it’s not like you can even stop me if you want to. The Harc’otti performed flawlessly by making you waste all of your ammunition.”
John flicked his eyes to the building that had housed the cannon but saw the corner of it had collapsed and the gun was no longer there. John focused back on the monster in front of him. He could probably outrun the armor and escape but John would never be able to live with that on his conscience. “How about you step outside that suit and we fight like real men?”
The man stopped and laughed loudly. “Do you really think I’m that stupid?”
“Worth a shot,” John shrugged.
“We’ll see if you feel that way after I’m done with the people here. I was going to kill them off quickly, but your impudence pisses me off. Now I’m going to make them suffer.” The man’s words turned dark and he increased his pace as he stomped forward.
John threw the spear he held, trying to jam it into the leg joint on the armor to try and slow it down, but it simply shattered against the metal.
The man laughed one more time as he bore down on John’s location. There was a loud pop and Jacob grunted and stumbled forward. He whirled around and John saw a hole punched into the armor where Seline’s previous cannon had impacted.
“You whore!” Jacob shouted as he turned toward a disheveled figure rising behind the berm.
It was Seline!
“That’s for the Sheriff, you piece of shit!” she yelled back as she reloaded Bertha.
John thought he was going to watch the girl get squashed by the towering suit of armor, but Jacob staggered to a halt and grunted in pain.
He moved again but stopped once more. He didn’t move after that. Not even when Seline fired another round into his helmet.
John hurried over to the woman who collapsed to the ground not long after that. He heard her whisper something before she passed out, “I got him for you Wyatt.”