Chapter 48.1: Circling the Wagons

“Mercy!” The asura had started to sob, staring up at Christoff and scrambling backwards across blood-spattered dirt on heels and elbows. “Mercy.”

Christoff glared down at the little person, pride and disgust warring for expression inside him. He thought this asura was a female, with chin-length curls of black hair and a voice slightly squeakier than others of her kind. In all his time here, though, Christoff still hadn’t gotten a good sense of the difference between the sexes. They were all big eyes, bigger heads, and uniformly childish bodies milling about and giving infinitely more lip than any of them deserved to.

The asura continued clawing a path away from him, though, past a dead comrade and into the shadow of the wagon they’d all been trying to keep the humans away from.

“You have my regret,” he said, leveling his rapier down at her, “but you’re in my way.”

With a flick, he split the creature’s throat. She fell back gracelessly, her hands flying to the blood that gurgled from her neck.

Veritas scanned the near landscape as he stepped over the dying asura and into cover behind the wagon, keeping clear of the spurting blood. Several other asura lay dead nearby: two sprawled out from behind the foreside of the wagon and a few had fallen where they’d come rushing across the open field. A body or two also lay visible alongside stone outcroppings they’d used as cover for ranged attacks. To the bandit lord’s annoyance and the asura’s credit, several of the humans had died in the conflict as well. He could name maybe half of them, and those were genuinely a loss to their cell. The others? Well, they’d served their purpose.

Now his remaining gunmen had taken points along the edges of the ravine and were providing suppressive fire against asura still positioned between them and the southern wagon. Gregor and Emorund, the heaviest of their heavyweights, took up positions alongside the jade wagon, defending it from any hand-to-hand attackers too arrogant to stay away.

Veritas ducked below the edge of the wagon bed, out of sight from the remaining asura, and raised a hand to lift the corner of the canvas that covered the huge pile of power-siphoned mursaat jade. Reaching in he gripped a small handful of jagged, crystalline shards, and grinned so broadly, it creased his scar.

Remi appeared beside him, sidling up to the back end of the wagon. “Is this it?”

“Indeed, it is.” Christoff cast a glance at the beak-nosed man. “This is only the jade, though. It’s worthless without the power of the Unseen Ones.”

Remi frowned uncertainly. “And that’s— somewhere else?”

Flashing him a cold look of scorn, Christoff leaned out beyond the wheel and ran a finger along his puckered scar, plotting. They had to reach the second wagon while also holding the one they’d already gotten.

His people had taken out maybe a dozen of the asura so far, but he knew that was only a slice of their full number. And of those they’d put down, maybe half had been true combatants. In the initial chaos caused by their appearance in the courtyard, even asura engineers and stooges had engaged them with whatever makeshift weapons they could get their fat hands on. Once the alarm had stopped blaring throughout the complex, though, those same engineers and lackeys—those who had survived, anyway—had fled right back into the shelter of the buildings at the canyon’s edges, leaving the real fighters to their work. However, Christoff had a feeling they’d return before long with whatever weapons they could amass inside their labs, making up for their incompetence with sheer firepower. That gave him and his people only the meantime to reach the second wagon, its tiny golems, and the immeasurably precious magic inside them.

Considering his options, Christoff put a hand to the edge of the wagon and pulled. It moved an inch before settling back into its ruts. With some muscle, whether golem or human, it could be moved, and Christoff’s biggest muscle was right there with him. He just had to determine where to take it—hell, he had to know where to take both of them.

He scanned the landscape again: behind, beside, and before them. North, he knew, was where he’d find those pylon-turret defenses they’d mistakenly encountered upon entering the facility. Getting one wagon out that way would be an achievement; two would take an act of the Unseen Ones themselves. They could possibly drive the wagons south, but by the time they reached the end of the ravine, the asura would have certainly caught up to them, the very thing an escape was meant to avoid. If not escape, they had only one option he could find: hunkering down in a narrow gap between buildings for a war of attrition. They could whittle down their opponent until a break could be made, but that would require manpower.

He looked to Remi. “How many do we have left?”

“People?” Remi asked. “Eight. Nine if you count Gregor.”

“Hey, I heard that!” the big man grunted.

Nine. It was fewer than Christoff had estimated and far fewer than even a best-case scenario would require, however skilled he knew them to be. Lose any of those men, and they wouldn’t be able to move the booty at all. He needed to crush the asura more fully than his people currently could, or he needed to lighten the load they carried back to Queensdale.

He froze, recognizing a fourth possibility, a plan that had the potential to both crush the asura and lighten their travel load. It was an audacious stretch that could fail magnificently, but no more so than any other of his current choices. At this point, success could only come by audacity, and Christoff Veritas was ready for it, ready for something that would propel him to the heights of his family name—to the very heights of the White Mantle! He would be the first man in generations to raise a jade construct. And he would do it today.

Veritas grabbed Remi by the collar and pulled him close, locking eyes. The man’s confident nonchalance was often an asset, but sometimes he had to be reminded when things really mattered. Christoff threw a thumb at the wagon. “We need to get this into position beside the other wagon.”

Remi’s eyes widened, but Christoff had no time for it. “Move our remaining people in that direction with as much mobile cover as they can muster: barrels, planks, fallen golems—I don’t care. We’re putting them together, and the cell is buying me time.”

The twist at the corner of Remi’s mouth fell. Pawing the chief’s hand off his tunic, he spun to glance around his side of the wooden wagon, then snapped back again. This time his eyes were hard. Passivity fled from his voice. “I don’t think you’ve looked at that other wagon recently, boss.”

Christoff all but snarled at the derision cooked into the address, but he’d learned to take backtalk from this man more seriously than he did from others. He stuffed the fury and stood up, stepping up on the footrest below the wagon’s driver seat and focusing beyond the canvas-covered wagon bed and on down the road. The scene made little sense at first.

Half the other wagon was down in the dirt, its wheels destroyed on the left. The hulking, dome-topped golem that he’d seen approaching it minutes ago was now tottering around the vehicle and slamming fat fists into the ground, repeatedly missing a figure that was deftly avoiding the clumsy attacks as she struck back with axe-blows of her own. This person, a human woman, wasn’t one of his—she didn’t look or fight the part—but he couldn’t pin whose she was. Just behind her, a man fought with a pair of asura, and he was also not a member of Christoff’s Mantle cell, though something about that one looked agonizingly familiar.

Christoff squinted, and it hit him. This second person, the man, was all but naked. He was  orange and jagged like a fallen tree limb. It was that damned sylvari.

The bandit lord’s eyes nearly burst from their sockets, and the leather wrap on his sword hilt squeaked under his cinching grip. He fell back to the ground beside his lieutenant, stabbed his rapier into the dirt, and wrenched Remi forward by his collar again. “How long has he been there? How long?!”

“A few minutes, maybe,” Remi replied, not shying away from Christoff’s enraged gaze. “He and his girl stopped the golem from dragging the thing away.”

“And you didn’t think to tell me?!”

Remi frowned. “He’s been at it in the middle of a courtyard, boss. I thought you’d seen it.”

Veritas could feel the blood running hot through his veins, and for a moment he had half a mind to run his blade through the gut of the most useful man in his employ then and there.

As he thought about it, though, a smile drew tight across Christoff’s face. He left thoughts of Remi, turning back to the sylvari instead. Inconvenient though his presence may have seemed, perhaps it was a gift of the Unseen Ones. After all, the infernal shrub was dispatching Inquest forces as they spoke, and taking what was rightfully his would now also require Christoff and his men to handle the Vigilman once and for all. Perhaps there was some justice in the world.

He returned his attention to Remi, sniffed, and released him. He drew his sword back out of the packed earth, and worked to retain his haughty grin. “It changes nothing, except that we’re finally ridding ourselves of that shrub. Get everyone moving.”

The gaunt gunman huffed, shaking his head, but did as he was told. He turned aside and cawed bird-call directives to the men and women scattered around the ravine.

“Gregor!” Veritas barked, turning to the big man who kept watch on the darkened doorways of the western complex.

“Yeah, boss?”

“You and Emorund start pushing this toward the other cart. Position them together.”

Gregor actually turned to face him then. “Together?” he asked, somehow blending incredulity and stupidity into a single tone. “But boss, I—”

“Does no one here listen to me anymore?” Christoff snapped. “Just do it!” His eyes shot back and forth between the two men. “The faster we take that wagon, the faster every person in this place—asura, sylvari, or otherwise—will know what real agony is.”