Chapter 18.2: The Best Laid Plans

Remi sighed, drawing his weapons and stepping forward to see exactly where this night would take him. Just as quickly, though, he stopped, squinting into the darkness. Mere seconds had passed, and already things were going differently than he’d anticipated. Humans and asura were indeed running out of the haven. The first of them had already crossed the road and engaged the nearest hylek, having not only passed a bandit lying face-up in the mud, but stepping directly between the two of them.

“Are they—” Herman started to ask, gawking.

Remi nodded. “They are. The idiots are helping us.”

“Defend the travelers!” Their commander yelled at the others. “Tekk, Daphne, down that witch doctor now!”

Remi shrugged and started into a jog. Herman followed.

In the short moments it took them to cross the clearing, bandits and lionguard together were making relatively quick work of the small host of melee fighters. Either force on their own would have had substantial trouble against the large, frighteningly agile amphibians. Allied, though, the two groups outnumbered the hylek by half.

Body after body fell, most hylek, but also some of other races, representing one of the other two factions in the conflict. Remi watched a trio of fighters bring a hylek brawler to his knees, slashing open its massive gullet as it collapsed. They pressed on, moving toward the spellcasters hurling some kind of alchemic magic from a nearby copse of trees.

Remi and Herman reached the lionguard commander as he drove his sword hilt-deep into the neck of another hylek fighter. The graying man in weathered armor looked up. “You with these other travelers?” he asked them. Remi nodded, his lips working to form a response. “Hold your thanks,” the man interrupted, drawing his sword back out of the hylek’s throat. Bluish blood burst from the hole, spraying the lion on the man’s chestplate. “Let’s finish these Cuatl bastards. Then bring your people into the haven.”

Remi shook his head, genuinely astounded. “Yeah— ah, yes,” he agreed, switching to a nod as they followed the man toward the pair of remaining nearby hylek locking blades with a bandit rifleman and two lionguard soldiers.

One of these was an impressive fighter: not as nimble as the first Remi had killed, but twice as strong and well trained. It seemed to float just beyond their peoples’ blades, sidestepping each thrust with precognitive precision and throwing that force back in bone-crushing blows. Joining the others, though, Remi, Herman, and the commander tipped the odds. Together, the six of them were more than enough to bring down the two hide-clad creatures, though not without the loss of a small asura lionguard who’d been crushed beneath one of the monsters’ stomping attacks. The spear had missed the dodgy, little figure, but the hylek’s feet and large mass had not; he’d simply imploded under it.

“There’s nothing we can do for Bexxe now,” the commander said flatly, turning toward those attacking the hylek spellcasters. He called out to the mixed group of lionguard and bandits already approaching the treeline, “Hit those elementalists, and let’s finish this!”

Remi’s men shot him curious looks. He shrugged, motioning them on with the two lionguard already at a run. If these people were really going to help them stay live, Remi wasn’t about to get in the way. His people obeyed, and the mixed force moved into the trees.

Remi holstered his pistol and counted the number of lionguard fighting through miniature earthquakes and roiling globs of poison. Eight of them. He looked back at the haven across the road; it’s gate stood wide open with only two little figures guarding it. Remi grabbed Herman by the shoulder. “Give Gregor and Ophelia the signal for the main gate,” he demanded. “Now!”

Eyes wide with sudden understanding, the young man drew a breath and released a sharp succession of Gendarran raptor screeches, nearly as loud as the bird itself might. Only a couple sets of eyes turned back to him. Most of both the bandits and the lionguard were too concentrated to question the sound, and those that did may have been confused, but looking at Herman meant they weren’t looking at the dense foliage to the north and south of the haven that was now swishing to life as the first shadowy forms crept out of them, loped gently along the turf, and rounded the open gates.

Remi watched intently, unaware of the grin beginning to curl his lip. He had no idea how they could get so lucky, but with a shrug he decided he also didn’t care. Among the clanging sounds of battle coming from that copse of trees to his left, not even his own men noticed when the two remaining guards were cut down on the threshold of their fort. Only the firelight from inside made it remotely visible.

The shadows of Ophelia and Gregor’s forces swept into the gates. A single moving torch on the ramparts was thrown from the side, but beside that, Remi heard and saw nothing. Their remaining defenses must have been even thinner than expected. How the idiots held this haven at all was a mystery.

His focus was broken by the voice of that lionguard commander. “My gods,” the man panted. “I’m not as young as I once was, but the deed is done.” He raised his voice to a call, “Lionguard, escort the wounded and these travelers back to the haven!”

He turned back to Remi and Herman, wiping a cloth up and down the length of his blade as he approached. “Battle: not a thing for the faint-hearted. I’m sorry you all had to witness that. Those froggy bastards have been after us for the better part of year, raiding always when we least expect them. I’m sorry you and yours were caught up in it, but you’re safe now. Collect your things. You’ll be safe within our walls.”

Remi eyed the man disbelievingly. “I know we’ll be safe,” he agreed, giving a quick look back at the people spilling quietly out of the little fort. His voice turned icy. “You on the other hand…”

Stalking around the courtyard inside of the haven, Remi Melicent had taken to cleaning the chamber of his rifle as his people did the heavy lifting, literally. The gunpowder in the ammunition supplied by those asura back in the moors was clean, very clean. It was probably cleaner than what he found in most human-made rounds he’d used. They flew straight too. Clipping that one lionguard who’d tried to slip off into the trees was an easier shot than he’d anticipated. One pop, and he’d put a bullet through the figure’s head at two-hundred paces: dead center, no second tries required. Remi didn’t particularly care for the smug, ugly, little asura, but he’d have to find more of their rounds when all this was over with.

The grind of wagon wheels churning the soft earth drew his attention. Gregor approached, pulling a wagon by himself. There were two more men pushing from behind, but they clearly weren’t responsible for the bulk of the load. In between them all, on the deck of the wagon was a series of sacks filled to bursting with more of those rocks that the chief and his new, undersized associates were so infatuated with.

“You sure the boss wants those rats alive?” Gregor asked, stopping beside Remi.

“Once again, yes. I’m positive,” he replied. “The boss wants witnesses.”

Perplexity contorted the big man’s face. “But we never want witnesses. It don’t make sense.” How it took Gregor so many identical conversations to really grasp this situation was beyond Remi, but Gregor continued processing. He looked around the courtyard. “I mean, all the others is dead.”

In that, the nitwit had a point. All that were left outside the gates or inside the courtyard were bodies: a couple unlucky members of their own ranks, but mostly lionguard. The one exception was the pair of skritt they’d intentionally locked in an inner chamber of the storeroom. They were the only survivors of what would clearly be chalked up as the attack of some nameless, human bandit faction, with no possible ties to any group of asura, let alone the Inquest. It was the way Veritas wanted it, so it was the way Remi would do it. A job was a job, and he really didn’t need Veritas lecturing him.

“Like I told you,” Remi said yet again, glaring at the man. “This time we need them to blame bandits, humans, not the little weirdos we’re working with. They’ll never know who we were, but they’ll know it was humans. That’s all that matters.”

Gregor considered it a moment, noticing an uncleaned splatter of blood on his heavy hammer and wiping it away onto his leg. “It don’t make no sense,” he said, shaking his head.

Remi sighed, slinging his rifle over his shoulder. “Doesn’t matter. Let’s just get all this purple stuff back to the boss and that little runt he’s working with.”

Gregor started again. “But—”

“Doesn’t matter,” Remi repeated.  He couldn’t let the ogre start in on his reasoning again. Besides, the men had already gotten the wagon to the gate. Things here were finished, and it was well past time to be on their way. There was no telling what those asura up the road were doing in his absence. “You and Herman just worry about cleaning up the wagon tracks for the next few miles,” he went on. “If anyone tracks us, the boss’ll lose it. You want another of his lectures?”

Gregor shook his head. The big child of a man had always been strangely fearful of Veritas’ rage. Remi shook his head as well, walking past and toward the gate. “Right. Let’s get a move on.”