Tom – that was the pickup driver’s name, as he’d come to find out – dragged him out of the pickup and threw him to the ground. “What in the fuck were you doing in there, asshole? You were supposed to be some all-powerful wizard! What, were you too much of a coward to deal with a few mutts? You wanted to leave us all to die!”
Florian wanted to respond, but he had all the wind in his lungs rush out when he’d collided with the hard asphalt. Tom took his non-answer about as well as Florian could have guessed, and the man threw a hard kick into his ribs. A sharp pain blossomed on his side, and Florian did his best to scramble away, but it was to no avail. Tom just followed, the pain of his blows only increasing with their frequency.
He looked to find help from the other traders, but they all regarded him with the same dark expression. There would be no rescue from this punishment. “I didn’t have any magic left!” Florian yelled as loudly as he could, putting his hands up in the air as he scooted backwards.
“After what, four Hellwolves? You’re even more useless than I realized. I knew. I just knew that that good-for-nothing Jones was full of shit,” Tom spat at him. Another kick found its way into his bruised ribs. Florian felt the air whoosh out again, and he was rendered mute, unable to respond as Tom rained blows upon him.
He didn’t know if he could reason with Tom, Florian realized from his turtle position on the ground. But even if he could, Florian didn’t know whether he wanted to. A part of him felt that he deserved the pain, knowing full well that he might have been able to save that woman at least, or somehow stop the giant before it destroyed their caravan. But he’d been too afraid to risk it.
His emotions warred within himself, and they didn’t stop even when the kicks and punches finally stopped coming. By the end of it, there was no part of his body that didn’t hurt, but it felt like he could move everything. His ribs were especially tender, and he wondered if they might have cracked. But even if they had, there was nothing he could do about it.
“Get in,” Tom had said, his voice calm once more. There was an undercurrent of disappointment and hatred, but it looked like Tom had mastered them for the moment. “We can still make it before noon if we drive hard.”
Florian nodded, not trusting himself to say the right words. He climbed back into the pickup, careful not to step into the puddle of vomit that lined the floor in front of his seat. A few of the traders quickly heaved themselves up and into the truck’s bed, and then they were off. Driving past the wreckage of the first two trucks, Florian saw the remains of the traders and fought back another wave of bile.
This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it
They drove a while longer without a single word between them, something that Florian was glad for this time around. The road to Tonbridge was a lot shorter than Florian had imagined, and he realized with a dawning horror that their ambush had taken place quite close to one of the human bastions. If those giants were some kind of new monster… he wondered if anyone could fend off an attack of scale with those behemoths in them.
It was a bit before noon when they came upon a giant fortification: Tonbridge Castle. A giant structure with twin towers guarded a large set of gates, with a fortified building and wall lining the rest of the perimeter. But despite its size, there was hardly any movement at the top of the towers. As they drove closer, Florian noticed a set of wooden stakes lining the fortress’ walls, no doubt in an attempt to skewer any Hellwolf that dared approach them. It was a smart design, and while they surely wouldn’t repel all of the monsters, they might take down a sizable number of them before they even became a threat.
There was no need to stop before the gates; they were opened ahead of time for them, and so the pickups just rumbled in on a makeshift dirt path that clearly hadn’t been there before Worldbreak. With the pickup’s windows unrolled – the smell inside the cabin had become nearly unbearable – Florian heard shocked whispers from the guards that stood at the interior of the gates. Instead of the proud traders that had entered Leeds Castle, those who returned home returned as a funeral procession.
They stopped in the center of a patch of makeshift buildings. Florian noticed the familiar shape of a blacksmith’s chimney, and he noticed multiple warehouses. There was some kind of barracks structure, too, but it seemed that everyone slept there, for there were no tents or any other kind of residential structure.
Despite its large size, Tonbridge was far less populated than Leeds or even Dover had been. “Get out,” Tom demanded, turning the engine off and exiting the vehicle himself. Florian didn’t wait to be told again, sliding out along with his spear and wincing when his ribs flared up at his landing.
“Welcome to Tonbridge. The bathroom’s over there,” Tom pointed at a row of small, outhouse-like structures, “and you’ll be sleeping on the ground wherever you find space. Try not to get crushed.”
And then Florian was left to his own devices, the traders focusing on unpacking the few wares they had managed to bring back. The few people that walked about looked at him with some interest, but they were all receptive of the grim atmosphere, noting the glares that their friends lobbed Florian’s way whenever he was within line-of-sight.
He would leave the following morning, he decided. Finding a small tree in the corner of the clearing between the walls, Florian laid down to rest. It came with great difficulty, visions of green eyes, an unmoving Wesley, and a woman with a rifle dangling from her hands plaguing him until his exhaustion overcame them.