Chapter 7: Revelations Part 2

  Lord Tom’s men had not been idle while the healer had tended to the wounded men in his study. Like most military units throughout many worlds, many things had been completed with haste in response to the imminent crisis, then redone when a superior spotted how they did it wrong.

  Captain Lowry was overseeing the distribution of pikes and crossbows to his men at the entrance of the north gate. He directed the men with crossbows to man the walls on either side of the gates and the men with pikes at the opening of the partially closed gates.

  The walls surrounding the town were not exceptionally high, only about twice the height of a full-grown man, and a short space for men to patrol near the top. Not all of the walls were of stone. The conversion from a wooden palisade went slowly as the town developed. It hadn’t been that long since the barrier had been erected along the town’s border, maybe two years, containing four villages.

  Any city planner will lament to anyone who will listen and most who don’t want to about the cost of maintaining barriers. Quarrying the stone necessary to convert it to a more substantial obstacle for roving migrations and regular mob attacks was going slowly and more expensively than anyone wanted it to be.

  As Lord Tom approached the Captain, he handed off his inherited sword to a senior soldier and unhooked his vambraces.

  “Report, Captain.”

  His attention was distracted momentarily from his captain’s answer as he noticed a younger man seated at a desk near the gates. Lord Tom dismissed a random scribe as unimportant and returned his attention to the captain.

  “Lord Tom, I have a skeleton crew at the other gates with runners set at each to inform us of any surprises. The villagers at the farms and outlying homesteads have been collected. They are being moved to the shelters with the other civilians.”

  Donning his vambraces while listening to the guard captain’s report, Lord Tom secured the light armor to his arms with practiced ease. He took back his sword from the soldier holding it for him. The unusually placed clerk scribbled with an odd-looking short quill that shined metallic in the morning sun.

  “Very well, Captain, we have a sufficient stock of ammunition in place for the crossbowmen?”

  Lord Tom asked.

  “Yes, sir.”

  The captain replied.

  “Have the healers arrived yet?”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  The captain then called loudly,

  “Healers to the front!”

  Lord Tom was still distracted. The out-of-place clerk now bothered Lord Tom as much as an annoying fly. It would keep your attention as it buzzed around your food in a tantalizing display of, “screw you, buddy, I’m not supposed to be here.”

  What is he doing here?

  As the healers approached, Lord Tom observed this irritant closely. The man watched the bustling of bodies preparing for the imminent attack as he continued scribbling. Lord Tom was having trouble placing the man.

  Is he one of Joclyn’s new boys? Didn’t he say there wasn’t room in the budget for more scribes?

  The young clerk had clothing that seemed out of place amongst all the uniforms. A strange cut to the cloth and a shockingly unkempt haystack of red hair atop his head.

  Lord Tom again pulled his attention away from the irritant to the healers as they approached. Two women hurried up to the pair of uniformed men. They bobbed quick curtsies to the lord with a murmured,

  “My lord.”

  Healer Elokwa and healer Bagear were handsome women, respectively. Each had the medium-sized healers’ bags draped over one shoulder. Bagear sported a cream-colored ruffled shirt with a lightly embroidered leather vest, a blue skirt that fell below her knees, and practical boots.

  A metal brooch with the sigil of red adder was worn on her vest. Bright blond hair was bound in a sensible bun atop her head.

  Bagear, in contrast, was much smaller. A petite woman with close-cropped dark hair in a darker blue shirt and vest sporting the same brooch. Practical boots, par for the job, and a functional belt hung with various colored pouches completed her outfit.

  Each healer wore dirks at their hips for personal defense and aid in their trade but was otherwise unarmed or armored. As a result, it was much easier to move wounded without lugging around the extra weight.

  Lord Tom again noticed the young man at the desk as the strange fellow moved his lips in a murmur. The man was ten yards away, but Lord Tom heard him clearly over the shouting and bustling men around him.

  ”Soon enough, I think.”

  Looking back to his healers and guard captain, he asked,

  “Who is that man? What is he scribbling for when we have a migration coming?”

  “Who, sir?”

  The guard captain asked confusedly.

  Lord Tom gestured towards the young man, who was no longer there. Neither the desk nor the odd clerk remained.

  Lord Tom opened his mouth to say something as a scout from the guard tower shouted,

  ”Sir! Enemy sited!”

  Captain Lowry shouted in reply,

  “Positions!”

  The healers retreated. The few men that had recently received their pikes hurried to their place in formation before the gate as the sergeant in charge of the platoon of soldiers hollered,

  “Move! Move! Pla-toon, ready arms!”

  The three ranks of men in pike formation lowered their pikes to form a bristling face of deadly steel plugging the gate entrance.

  The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  The crossbowmen on the walls finished loading their crossbows and rested them against the top of the wall for a steadier shot. Healers Bagear and Elokwa moved quickly to positions near the men at the gate.

  Lord Tom and Captain Lowry hurried up the stairs to the top of the wall to better observe. Lord Tom placed his sword leaning against the wall with its gleaming runes and took up a spare crossbow.

  The bad-girs had indeed arrived. Several large animals had emerged from the brush along the road’s edge. They stood on all fours, staring at the gates.

  The biggest, almost the size of a horse, had a purple crest of fur ringing its head and looked particularly displeased to see the huddled mass of soldiers blocking the entrance to the town. The town had so many tasty morsels inside. He was a hungry boy, as were his brethren.

  It snorted and scuffed the dirt, pawed at the road with its claws, and made growling noises audible from as far away as the walls Lord Tom stood on. Then, after a few moments, it tilted its head back and made a warbling cry.

  The group of bad-girs around it also lifted their throats and imitated the cry in an eerie echo that was oddly musical—a chorus of hunger and frustration.

  This strange call increased in volume, and the animals began shuffling their feet in time to the odd melody. Crashing and crunching could be heard coming from behind them in the woods.

  The soldiers bearing pikes shifted in place. The sergeant leading the formation spoke clearly,

  “Easy, lads, not yet.”

  Two giant conifer trees bent to the side at the forest’s edge behind the bad-gir. They gave way to a site Lord Tom would not have believed if told it by another. The large milling mass of black and silver striped animals rolled from the woods lining the northern road in a ball the size of a small cottage.

  Lord Tom didn’t understand how they were keeping the shape of the thing together, but he understood what it meant for his men down below. An inconsistent thought ran through his skull at the odd sight,

  Dancing bad-girs portend doom. Why do I have a craving for mushroom soup? At least there are no snakes.

  Hollering in his best parade ground voice, he put the spare crossbow he had taken up to his shoulder as he issued the only orders appropriate for this bizarre situation,

  “Pikes Brace for a charge! Crossbowmen, open fire!”

  As the lord and his men on the wall released bolts in a staggered volley, the twang of the crossbows mixed with the warbling cry of the bad-girs and the shouting of the Sergeant to form an even stranger harmony with a syncopated rhythm underneath. Captain Lowry, barely audible to Lord Tom over the din, hummed the tune from a nonsense adventure tale often told in the common house during festivals,

  “Dun dadun duhn, dun daduhn.”

  Lord Tom started laughing at the odd song despite the dire situation and stooped to re-cock the crossbow, controlling his chortling at the hysterical silliness he was feeling. Captain Lowry grinned before focusing back on his crossbow.

  The gigantic, growling ball of furry fury picked up speed despite losing several of the bad-girs to the volley of crossbow bolts.

  It didn’t seem that the animals were phased in the slightest by losing some of their brethren or sistren, though the growing harmony of the melody did take on an angrier feel to it.

  Lord Tom wasn’t sure if the ball was composed of males or females and had no inclination to sex an angry bad-gir the size of a sheep from any distance. They could be whatever they wanted, away from his province, preferably.

  The bad-gir boulder of doom and probable rabies was closing on the pike men at the gate swifter than the men on the walls could reload for a third volley. The few barricades the guard had erected to funnel the bad-girs into a killing field before the gate were crushed under the weight of silver and black bodies rolling over them.

  The barriers did little as they broke apart. As a disillusioned temp worker hired for summer work, they put in a token effort and then gave up the ghost. Most of their effect was to partially break up the mass of whirling fur into individuals of the enemy.

  The remainder of the ball, now roughly the size of a small house one would build for a dear relative if one made it out of furious bad-girs, that is, crashed into the pike formation. The men tried valiantly to hold the line, but it crumpled in the center. The sheer mass of the animals was too much to stop, with only three ranks braced.

  Lord Tom reminded himself to spend some of his next quarter’s military budget on more shields and training in their use for these brave soldiers. He thought a shield wall would do much better next time if they all survived this. He would also have to send an update about this ability to the adventurers guild. A giant ball of spitting rabies-ific death was not currently listed among their known abilities.

  The bad-gir sphere collided with, then mainly through the formation, breaking into individual animals as its cohesion was lost. The bad-gir song faltered. The sergeant raised his voice to call a command,

  “Abandon pikes! Out swords! Prepare for melee!”

  As the enormous furball of deathly hate diffused into individual creatures, they started to claw, scratch, and bite. The sergeant called out an unnecessary order,

  “Pikes away! Close quarters!”

  The veteran soldiers in the group had already abandoned their pikes and had stoically drawn their short swords. The more green members of the platoon had varied expressions of relief at being directed mixed with some annoyance at how obvious that order was. Pikes clattered to the ground as the soldiers paired off with their foes.

  Sheep-sized carnivores required some teamwork to deal with, after all. The battle song of the Bad-gir resurged in volume as Lord Tom called to the men on the walls,

  “Reserve action! Reinforce the gate!”

  The men on the walls, including Captain Lowry, drew their swords and descended the stairs to the melee. Lord Tom, who had dropped the crossbow he was wielding and took up his family sword, hurried down the stairs after the captain.

  Bagear and Elokwa were darting in and out of the melee as men were downed to retrieve them. They would treat their wounds in the rear of the conflict and make more room for the other soldiers to maneuver.

  The growling, thwack of swords into flesh, and screaming of men overpowered the eerie song in volume. The din of the battle carried out top where some of the leaders of the bad-gir had been observing. The largest crowned bad-gir, seeing the battle sphere had served its purpose, growled loudly to silence the others near him.

  This stopped the warbling, leaving their leader to gaze at the scrum in the gate. As the song faded to silence, the ferocity of the attacking monsters reduced. The crowned bad-gir deemed this acceptable as a group of sheep sized pissed off bad-gir should suffice to stall the humans.

  The other bad-girs that had hung back with it huddled closer to the crowned creature. One of them spoke in the growling language of the bad-girs,

  “We could help. More pressure would cause the humans to be crushed in our jaws.”

  The other bad-girs, beside the leader, grumbled in agreement. There was a lot of food walking around inside that town. They had been traveling for days to find just that. It seemed a waste to let only those selected for the battle sphere have a chance at it.

  Brett, the crowned battle leader, spoke back in the gruff tones of the royal bad-gir court he had assembled for this expedition,

  “Our brothers and sisters aim to keep the humans from following us to our new home. The attack was to do that for us.

  “If they are victorious, they will bring much meat to us in our new home. If they fail and we waste their sacrifice, how will we face the clan who sent us?”

  Dissatisfied rumbling issued from Brett’s court at this pronouncement. He continued,

  “No, we continue the journey. There will be plenty of meat at the interloper’s settlement.”

  There was continued grumbling at this. They were hungry. What could a short delay cost?

  At his subordinates, showing reluctance to leave the source of such a bounty, Brett swiped viciously at the closest with his claws. He left a trail of four bloody furrows across the flank of one of the protesters.

  Continuing to harass and drive them forward with sharp growls and heavy-pawed blows, Brett eventually got the other six large bad-girs moving to the east around the town. They all knew the route.

  The strangely unkempt but fabulously dressed human that had visited the conclave had made sure to share the knowledge in front of many bad-girs. Sensing that the rat’s nest of a bearded human was up to something, Brett had gathered as many as he could.

  The humans were persistently and dangerously underhanded. Brett was sure that tactic had led some of his kin to rush off without support. His people could be an impetuously independent lot.

  Brett had stepped up. He was sure his leadership would help his pack succeed. He was tired of the elders spouting caution. Even the patriarch, his father, had mewled cowardice disguised as advice to him, then bit him on the ass. He wanted to shuffle into his rightful place as a clan head. After all, bad news travels swiftly, but bad-girs move faster when feeling hungry.