Chapter 95: Ch: 87 Love Is A Battlefield

Ch: 87 Love Is A Battlefield

 

It was a long trip, in late winter no less. Dagget and Oster did not enjoy winter travel, preferring the comfort of their own small fortress in the badlands, beyond the fringe. The money was worth the journey, especially just to snatch one unranked orphan from a sleepy backwater hill town. 

All they had was a name and a description, Gary Ward, Orphan. Late teens, big, brown hair and eyes, pale complexion, abdominal scars. The sketch was less than helpful, it was a bland looking kid with regular features and a wide forehead. The only notes they had were that he was a musician, carpenter and enchanter.

“I still say this job stinks, nobody will pay what they offered for some normal rank kid. It’s gotta be a trick.” Jervis was a complainer, but the best pain compliance guy in the business. “Whoever heard of an orphan mage, never mind an enchanter… It’s gotta be a trap.”

 

Oster grumbled something inaudible as they got off to walk the horses for a bit. “What’s that?” Dagget asked, while stomping some feeling back into his legs.

 

“Somethings coming, pretty fast.” The taciturn warrior growled. “It’s weird.”

Soon they heard it, a merry tune whistled by a chorus of songbirds and a young man on a strange machine of wood and metal. He cranked his legs and rolled along at a quick trot on wheels of spun steel. The whistling originated from him and a small flock of birds, flitting from tree to tree as he rode along.

He gave a happy wave as he breezed on by, still whistling several parts of a complex song, with one set of lips.

“Was that… the guy?” Jervis asked, mystified and confused by the spectacle. “How is he not falling over?”

“Mount up, I’ll contact the other team.” Dagget ordered crisply, while unrolling a small scroll. He quickly scribbled a note on the document, rolled it up, and snapped the slender wooden rod the parchment was rolled around. The broken cylinder gave a soft ‘whoosh’ and vanished in a violet flame.

 

They rode at a  steady, unhurried pace back up the road, following the bizarre, whistling apparition up into the hills.

A mile and a half later they caught sight of him again, on the hillside a few hundred yards up the road. He was bent over his machine, wielding some kind of tool. From uphill, their six comrades were slowly moving in on the figure in the distance.

#

 

When the scroll tube flashed purple, Octavia knew this job was going to get complicated. Dagget never used one of his precious enchanted scrolls on simple tasks.

She gave a low, amused whistle as she read. “Look alive boys, the target is coming up the road, mounted on… something. Dagget and the others are tailing him. Let’s earn our pay. Lyonel, take point, we move in careful and snatch him clean.” The slender, graceful woman said sweetly.

Dressed as merchant guards and escorting a simple and unremarkable wagon, no one would pay any mind to their passing. The wagon bed held a load of bruised and slimy late winter beets in leaking sacks, so any bloodstains were not going to be an issue. “Preparation and planning are the hallmarks of a successful raid.” Octavia announced to her small band of slavers.

‘All in all, a well planned operation,’ She congratulated herself, as her crew got ready for action. “...and the lamb walks into the wolf den.” 

 

Octavia finished her thought aloud, as she watched a young man dismount from some insane contraption and squat down to work on it, oblivious to the world. 

A Hundred yards downslope their prey worked and whistled among a small flock of singing birds, scattered in the  bushes all around.

“Lyonel, Hardy, make sure, then take him, fast.” She whispered, holding up a fist to halt the others out of sight. Her two scouts slipped into the shrubbery and vanished.

They crept up behind the clueless youth and scoped him out. “That’s the one, take him alive…” Lyonel said, as Hardy approached with a leather bag filled with iron shot raised to strike.

#

 

Gary had been robbed and bike jacked so many times over the last years, it was a familiar feeling. He was a new Gary now, with a new attitude.

On instinct, he grabbed the frame of his bike and put his whole body into whipping it around, swinging for the fences. 

The tall, slim man with a blackjack in his hand caught the rear axle and gearset across his face. He did a graceful pirouette in a spray of teeth and blood, before sinking to the road with a gurgling moan. 

Gary kept his turn going as he vanished his bike away. He used the momentum to vault himself into the bushes like a frightened hare, vanishing in the thorny bramble.

#

 

Octavia cursed and flogged her troops into motion, leaving one to lead the wagon. “Lose the wagon, lose your balls Vic.” She shouted as the woods swallowed her.

They crashed through the forest in pursuit, following the sounds of the boy’s clumsy flight. After a moment, the headlong flight stopped, bringing the pursuers to a halt, listening and searching the forest.

 

“Do you hear that?” Spencer asked softly, getting shushed for his trouble. A high gentle sound was slowly filling the forest, the sound of a flute, played quietly from somewhere nearby.

The warriors crept forward in a wide semicircle, prodding shrubs and thickets with the butts of their spears and catchpoles. They closed in on the sound, a sweet drone, accompanied by a higher, atonal buzzing.

They caught him in a small thicket, standing among the trees, hiding in the shadows. They surrounded him fully as Dagget and the others came puffing up to join the ring of armed kidnappers. 

“Come out boy… if you do, maybe we won't be too rough on you…” Octavia crooned in her sweetest voice, that usually worked on kids, especially dumb ones.

He  just stood there in the shadows, playing that weird buzzing flute, until she had enough. “Take him.” 

Oster and Dagget waited with her, while the crew closed in on the fool. They prowled in like stalking cats, ready for any trick or desperate gamble.

Lyonel took the lead, he swung his sap at the shadowy figure’s head… and passed right through. The figure burst into gray motes, flitting, fluttering motes of spongy, dark gray… “Spore wasps!” Lyonel shouted, then screamed, shortly before they all started… 

While the warriors of her band stomped, swatted and screamed their way out of a swarm of flitting, fluttering, stinging vermin, a dark red form shot out of the bush nearby. A man in dark red chitinous armor paused only long enough to hurl a glass orb at the watching officers, before dashing into the woods again.

The glass orb smashed at their feet, releasing a cloud of stink so noxious, it was visible as a gray brown haze that clung to everything it touched. They choked and gagged in the funk, eyes stinging with vomit and pungent, reeking filth. 

Several of the warriors staggered into the cloud, bringing their spore wasps with them, in their attempt to flee. More chaos erupted as the stinging vermin and stinking cloud of putrescent filth combined.

# 

 

Gary, always one to enjoy a good show, pitched another stink grenade. This time, into the mass of figures currently enjoying his spore wasps. With his short spear in hand, and his latest personal stink ring on his finger, he stepped into the woods and vanished.

 

He had his stealthiest gifts dialed in as he slipped into the shadows, fleeing the scene. 

Finding a nest of spore wasps was just luck, using his flute to pile them into a decoy Gary was so stupid it should have failed hilariously. His manic giggle drifted into the pale spring sky as he scampered through the woods. 

The bike was shot, there was no chance of riding for it, running would not help much either. He could hear their horses, unhappy with the stench of their riders, thundering closer as he fled. Even at maximum sneaky, they stayed with him, closing the gap steadily as he leapt over bushes and through brambles. 

The woods were too open to hinder the horses much, but too thick to really get a good lead on them. He ducked under a low hemlock bough and slipped into the dark recesses of the tree in desperation, as a horse and rider broke into view.

“Come out boy, we will catch you, our tracker has your aura’s scent. No stink bomb will hide you from him.”

Once again they ringed the boy in, leaving no escape. “Come out, no tricks will save you this time.”  Dagget called.

 

The only reply from the darkness under the tree was a loud, shattering, screaming wail of metallic strings under strain. 

Something brown and shaggy moved high up in the tree, drawing their gaze, The boy was perched on a bough, twenty feet up. Naked save for long, stringy, matted brown hair. His face was mostly the same, but feral and bestial with fangs jutting from his lips. He clutched a guitar of some sort in his clawed hands, making the horrible wailing music. He opened his mouth and howled into the sky.

 

Screams break the silence

Waking from the dead of night

Vengence is boiling

He's returned to kill the light!

 

Then when he's found who he's looking for

Listen in awe and you'll hear him

Bark at the moon!

 

He lifted his face to the sky and let out a lupine howl that carried for miles, as a loud, percussive crash began nearby.

 

The boy was shirtless, seated on a boulder higher on the hill, behind some elaborate drum set. He crashed and hammered at the instruments, picking up the other creature’s music and carrying it higher. Somehow, the beast was still in the tree, balanced on a limb and playing wildly as it sang. 

 

The boy stepped from behind a boulder nearby, dressed all in black, wearing a crumpled leather hat and a ridiculous muttonstache, while playing an enormous bass guitar of odd design. His low groaning voice joined the beast in the tree in its song, as the bass thundered in their ears.

 

Those that the beast is looking for

Listen in awe and you'll hear him

Bark at the moon!

 

Hey yeah, bark at the moon!

Hey yeah, bark at the moon!

Oh, oh yeah, bark at the moon!

 

“Harker, drop that beast. Oster, Lyonel, the drummer. Dagget and I will take the bass. The rest of you, watch that tree, he does not escape.” Octavia gagged, as she swatted away a few flitting mushroom wasps. The slender woman and her burly second trotted off, out of the noxious cloud, up slope to confront the mysterious drummer. 

Harker, a small man with dark features and a sharp nose, drew a cased bow from his shoulder and quickly sent a feathered shaft into the arboreal wolfman’s heart. The arrow passed through without visible effect and vanished among the trees.

“Illusion! It’s just a trick!” He shouted, as a glass sphere exploded directly in his open mouth. Harker gagged and choked on broken glass and teeth, while vomiting explosively.

The red armored man darted through the cloud of stinging stench as though he were immune to its noxious, gagging filth. He drew back and struck Harker a savage blow across the temple with a heavy, bronze headed baton as he passed by, sending the archer into a bloody heap with a musical chord. 

He paused only long enough to hammer his heavy baton into the fallen man’s shoulder with a ringing sound, accompanied by the crack of breaking bones.

 

The red blur vanished into the woods with a chiming metallic song, as the wolfman and the others began a new tune. A low, thudding bass sound filled the woods while a staccato riff ripped from the wolfman’s guitar.

“Ignore the musicians, get the one in red.” Octavia shouted at her bumbling, fumbling idiots. They stumbled and staggered about like they had all left feet and no sense. 

 

“He has a confounding charm! It's hidden in the music!” Lyonel shouted, while pointing out the fast moving red blur, skittering down the slope. They lit out in hot pursuit, as the red figure slipped into the treeline.

 #

 

Gary slipped from beneath the hemlock tree as Ozzy and Bonzo joined Lemmy, back in his shadow. He felt a lot less woozy with them back on board. He set off at a run for the West Road, leaving his pursuers to chase his shadow.

#

 

Ziggy Stardust took a leisurely run through the woods, pretending to dodge obstructions and barriers, rather than simply passing through. The boy wanted the trick to last, it was good fun too, leading these people into the forest. He lept and capered to the tune his brothers played on the hillside, until the music stopped. 

He turned at bay, backing up to a sheer embankment as the men and women surrounded his red clad form. With a wink of his eye and a smile on his red and white painted face, Ziggy dissolved into spicy scented shadow stuff with a sassy wave bye, bye. 

 

“Lyonel, what happened to your infallible tracking gift?” Octaia snarled as the illusion vanished with a spicy scent, somehow the pleasant aroma made the lingering foulness of the boy’s attacks even worse..

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“That was a person, not an illusion, I’ll swear it!” He shouted as they thundered back toward the West Road.

 

“If that kid gets past Vic and makes it to the city we are fucked. How about that?” She shouted as her spurs dug into her horse. “We kill him, half bounty is better than failure. Lances, to the fore!” They hammered across the meadows and through the woodcutter’s forest, pounding after their quarry.

 

They spotted the boy, tearing through a vacant pasture at a shocking clip, thudding on a tiny drum as he ran for his life.

 Lyonel got a line on the boy first, careening past from the right rear. His lance struck an armored plate with a shivering crash, making the fleeing boy stumble and scoring a long gash on his shoulder. The lad recovered and kept running, taking the warrior's lance head with him, lodged in his back.

Lyonel dropped the shattered lance and drew his saber, wheeling for another pass as the lad slowed, breaking for a dip in the landscape and a grove of trees. 

Jervis swept past him, wielding a catchpole with the noose fully extended. As the smaller man on his pony cut in to snare the boy, a spear appeared in his hands, jabbing for Jervis’ vitals. The noose settled around the red armored man, just as he turned and lept full force into the charging pony’s face. 

With a hideous shriek, the animal panicked, stumbling on the slope. Jervis and his mount ran through and over the boy, in a screaming, bloody tangle. The whole mess tumbled into a shallow dell, man, boy and pony all together. 

They rolled to a stop at the base of a tree among the leaf litter and fallen twigs. Somehow, the boy came up clutching his red drenched spear and mounted on the pony. Poor Jervis slowly deflated on the ground nearby, leaking his entrails with a glazed look on his slack face. 

The boy whooped madly and wheeled his stolen pony, riding clumsily into the dell, raising his drenched spear in triumph as he fled.

“Wu-Tang aint nuthin to fuck with!” He shouted for some reason, as his blood and Jarvis’ was trampled into the forest floor by his pursuers.

#

 

“Gary’s fighting.” Amy said quietly in the common room.

 

“What’s that love?” Shai asked, checking Wilford’s letters on his slate.

 

“Gary’s fighting. Somebody hurt him.” She said more loudly, pointing out into the garden, where the bath was surging and sloshing in an unwholesome way.

“Becky, stay wi the kids, Dannyl! Sound the bell, I’m fer riding!” She was on Tawny’s pony, Magnus and out the gate, riding bareback as her armor and weapons appeared around her on the move. The bell began to sound, carrying the alarm all over the town, as Shai clattered down the road .

 

As her mount’s hooves clamored on the quiet streets of Wheatford, she shouted into the town. A wordless call of alarm and fury lifted from her throat, as her bells and thundering hooves played a martial song all their own.

Khan and Luna caught her on the West Road, heading for the orchards at a punishing speed. Happy, pudgy Magnus was giving her all he had, but the duo caught her easily, even riding double on mighty Annie.

“Someone or something attacks Gary, dae ye hear him?” She shouted over the horses and armor. In the distance, a wild frantic drum beat hammered over the rolling hills. As they rode closer, the bass and screaming guitar became audible over the alarm bells.

“Who’s with him? Ivy and Tallum?” Luna shouted over the noise.

“He were alone an he left fer a workout an some practice wi a new gift.” Her reply came in cadence with the music, as her boy’s gifts embraced them and folded them into his magical song.

 

They caught sight of her boy, armored and mounted on a strange pony, spattered with blood and heaving desperately as they ran. Four strange figures ran beside him, effortlessly passing over and through obstructions, as they hammered on their instruments and chanted.

 A figure clad in wildly colored clothes was in the lead, he wore a wide collared, silky shirt and wide bottomed pants, above elaborate heeled boots. He wore Gary’s face, but a stranger’s expression of intense concentration peered out from beneath a mop of wild curls. He picked, plucked and strummed a shadowy gray stratoblaster like Gary’s, as he barked his strange words.

 

There must be some kind of way outta here

Said the joker to the thief

 

There's too much confusion

I can't get no relief

Another person replied, in Gary’s voice, from Gary’s face decked out in close fitting black clothes and a purple cloak. He had a bass drum slung, pounding away with crushing rhythm and volume.

 

Business men, they drink my wine

Plowmen dig my earth

 

None will level on the line

Nobody offered his word

Hey, hey

 

A figure in bright red leather and face paint chanted along, while capering with martial glee and strumming a guitar. A naked hairy wolfman guitarist and a bassist in a rumpled leather hat and enormous mustache kept it going. They were all Gary, but shadowy and strange… stranger.

 

Well, uh, outside in the cold distance

A wildcat did growl

 

Two riders were approaching

And the wind began to howl, hey

 

All along the watchtower

 

  He kept up the bass heavy rhythmic chant, scattering words of violence around the area, as his music entangled his foes, making them clumsy and inconsistent.

 

Annie and Magnus barely noticed the corpse of Jervis as they thundered by. Shai did, and her shout of fury and rage drew the attention of the rearguard of the pursuing force, just as they chased their prey into a small grove of trees.

 

Luna’s first arrow slammed into a large man’s back, just above his belt, he rode a few more yards before tumbling from his saddle, skewered through something important. 

Annie leapt his crumpled form and closed with his undirected horse. Luna leapt from the broad back of her friend and seized the fallen reins, as Khan handed her back her bow. 

Poor Magus puffed and stomped along gamely, caught up in Gary’s familiar magic, but not enjoying the scent of blood and violence on the wind. Shai’s wild whoops of fury and bloodlust did little to reassure the placid animal.

#

 

Terror and adrenaline had Gary in a strange place, mentally. Every part of him was screaming to ride for town like a madman… 

Except that cold, hard, frigid place in his center that wanted to make shit happen. At the bottom of the dale, he slipped from his exhausted new friend and put his back to a small shed among the trees.

“My friends are here… you guys are fucked!” He yelled over the music his mad apparitions continued making. 

They leapt and capered in front of the spooked animals, balking any attempt to close with the madman. Immaterial and horrifying, they gibbered and pulled faces while battering the confused warriors and their mounts with punishing volume and deranged lyrics.

“The alarm bells in town are ringing…and my woman seems angry.” He shouted at them, as a warhorn sounded behind.

#

 

Khan’s warhorn let out a call, as his sword gleamed in the dappled sunlight. The furious smith woman came charging close at his heels, a long, curved blade in hand. 

Luna’s bow thrummed again, transfixing a burly figure wielding a catchpole. The feathered shaft buried in his shoulder sent him careening off on a tangent, straight into a low hanging bough. His horse carried on alone, keenly interested in being somewhere else.

 

“Only three! Kill them!” The leader shouted over the sound of the awful ‘music’. 

 

Oster dismounted, drawing his broadsword and buckler, squaring off with their gasping, sweaty and bloody prey. 

“I have this.” He said to his leader with a smile.

 

“If you want it, come and get it… but you better hurry, cause it’s going fast…” The boy sneered, as the music shifted again, making their horses jerk and stumble. His spear shook and trembled in his hands, despite his bravado.

 

“You are going to pay for this boy.” He snarled, cutting at the lad with an overhand slash. Bronze and steel rang together as the lad parried clumsily. 

Oster took another slash, at his leading leg this time, scoring a shallow cut through the surprisingly tough carapace armor. The boy staggered back, thick, dark blood sleeping from the split in his armor. 

“You die, they die.” The man said casually, with a slight smile… as a tiny, beautiful blonde girl stepped out of the small shed the boy was backed up to. 

“I will take her with me for my trouble…” He said, smiling even wider.

 

The swordsman flicked his blade side to side, battering the unsteady spear point aside and flashing sunlight into the boy’s eyes as he lunged. Aiming to skewer him through the navel, Oster stepped close, inside the spear’s considerable reach with a savage grin on his face. The slippery kid turned enough for his strange armor to deflect the thrust, with an almost animal squeal. 

The kid tried to bring his spear around to reply, but Oster was safely inside the long weapon’s reach… He brought his sword back into play, driving for the boy’s unprotected groin. His expression of triumph became a confused burble, blood and foam spilled from his mouth as strength fled his legs.

Gary wrenched his shortspear free and stretched it back to full length, gagging on the stench of fear and death, but still game.

 

Shai was on her feet, trading blows with a short, stocky man armed with a spear and his partner wielding a pair of hatchets. 

She slipped and danced around the pair, hips swaying in time to the pulsing music Jimmy, Ozzy, Ziggy and Lemmy had going. Spear kept getting tangled up in Hatchets, every time the music shifted tempo, at Shai’s command.

 

Dio was busy using his cape and scepter to distract the mounted lancer trying to get a run up on Shai. 

Gary gave a whoop of challenge at the mounted woman, who turned to face him, looking less confident.

“Come take me bitch, while my lady butchers your boys!” He yelled, shrill and furious, brandishing his spear.

 

A short shriek came from the battle behind her, as Shai took the initiative. Hatchet lost an eye and one of his weapons to Shai’s shorter blade. Her longer sword slid down the spearman’s haft, clipping a nice bouquet of fingers off his leading hand. 

She danced back from the bleeding pair and flicked her blades clean with a grin. “Come dance wi me boys, I hae enough steel fer the pair o ye.” Her ferocious grin left the desperate pair few options.

 

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