The wind was twisting pleasantly through the clearing of tents and lean-tos. Men and women were milling about doing their late day duties around the camp. Lame Larry was deep in the cup already and he refused to hide it like the rest of them. He leaned against a heavy oak cask of wine and raised a goblet up to his lips; his eyes were gleaming from the flicking fire. Larry was a man of singular misfortune, and ugly as well; though it was difficult to determine whether his ugliness was the root of his misfortune or the other way around.
A lush curly black beard masked half of his face, but the other was marred by a large shining scar that prevented any hair from growing on the left side of his face. A Reonite missionary tent had caught fire after a pot of grease began boiling over; this was unfortunate. What was unexpectedly unfortunate was that Larry warned them not to leave the pot over the fire for too long, yet they did not listen and he was the only one injured. He hated mentioning the fact that the Reonites had come to his village to deal with a strange plague, of which only he was afflicted and all it did was rot half his teeth away.
Larry twisted the ankle of his lame leg; stretching out the discomfort of the injury he obtained when lightning split a tree that crossed down upon him. The fractal scarring that grew like roots across his body were the result of the sky deciding a man struck by a tree was also one who should be struck by lightning.
“When’s the last time any of you had a good hog roast?” He asked with a stupid grin. Most of them were still reeling from the decadent feast they had just ravaged.
A woman lying beside the fire lifted her head lazily and clutched her stomach, “Oh, I think ‘bout six years ago.”
“Fuck . . . I think me an’ Seev had one once,” said Neev one of two blonde twins.
“Neev, I told ya we don’t
really know what nothin’ about that year,” Seev barked through the billowing smoke of the fire.
Larry raised his thin eyebrows, “What is that s’posed to mean?”
“One of them Lunar re-in-carr-nate-ion cults went an’ moved into Seev and Neev’s town,” Old Roger lisped as he rubbed oil across the blade of an antique billhook. He said it was good for catching cavalry men, but there wasn’t a net on it so Larry really was not inclined to believe it would do anything. “That cult had the whole darn town drunk on Moon Berry Wine for the best part of a year.”
“That was definitely the best part, yeah,” Seev said wistfully.
“Yeah, yeah! Until we had to burn down the town o’course,” Old Roger gave a wheezy laugh, “Then we got our own hog roast to celebrate the liberation.”
“Oi! We might be uncertain ‘bout our own hog roast-,” Neev interjected dropping the bloody tunic he was scrubbing, “-but you
liberators just slaughter Missy Petunia’s pony and roasted her up. We was all a little upset ‘bout that!”
Lame Larry swished the sour wine in his mouth, “Is that why you joined good Jeremiah’s band?”
“Well yeah, our town got burnt as hell. Ain’t much work to be had in a burnt down town,” Neev picked the tunic back up and resumed scrubbing the same spot he had been for the past hour.
“That might just be all of us, Mary Matilda Merryl said from her spot on the ground, “I was a fish monger, but the local lord decided to dam up our river and he wanted to charge us all for a fishery license to use the pond! It cost more than I earned in two years!”
Larry pushed off from his barrel with inspired confidence and pointed at Mary with one of the three fingers remaining on his goblet bearing hand, “That’s just it! That’s the heart of it Mary! Centrally planned bureaucracy and economics is only beneficial to the dominant hegemonic forces in the land-”
Darios the miller groaned from between the piles of wool gloves he pilfered from the last village they raided, “Here we go again . . .”
“-there is socio-economic collusion between the upper classes in an effort to maintain a perception of superiority!” Larry continues, “Take my home village of Little Luttle Lutefield. Poor as dirt! I lost the geographic lottery! Little Luttle Lutefield was smack in the epicenter of every foreign war, tax rebellion, cult uprising, necromantic apocalypse, and dwarven pyramid scheme of the last five hundred years! We were so impoverished, the beggers of Tennelberg would come to our little town just so they could be treated like royalty for a week,” He paused for a moment, “They also spent so much money that they would destabilize our economy with hyperinflation. And why are they so rich?”
“Why Larry?” Seev and Neev asked in unison.
“Because they are from the capital! A place that the economic hegemony displays their power for the rest of Thaln! This is central planning at its heart! The closer to the center you are; the more they give a shit about you!” Larry was swaying back and forth between his disproportioned legs and enrapturing the attention of his fellow bandits. “I was a barber donchaknow? I used to cut hair like the best of them! And I was the best, let me tell you, I was good. Every hair style I studied, and by Reon we had so many hair styles, but I knew them all.” He gestured back and forth shrugging and nodding to what he is saying, “That is, until the upper classes decided to start wearing their hair long with unkempt beards like they was a bunch of damn rangers. Then no one got any haircuts! Not any more than once every other year! It drove me to poverty! All the barbers went poor! Some of them had to become surgeons! Can you believe that? Even I had to learn some surgery because I wasn’t making any money cutting hair anymore! So when good ol’ Jeremiah came around raidin’, I joined up! We can make good coin raging against the beast of classist domination, and we can live much better than playing at their game where they decide who does and does not make money!” Lame Larry finished with an emphatic swing of his arm which sprayed wine like confetti over the fire.
“Ah . . . Fuck off Larry,” Darios mumbled through the twilight gloom, “I don’t know shit about no social echo-gnomes and their relations to hedges.”
“Listen! It is because you are still indoctrinated into a system that favors the few with wealth over the many who produce,” Larry said with self-dignified smartness. “Also, I thought I told you all this, but my name is Lewis.”
“Lame Lewis don’t roll off the tongue the same,” Mary Matilda Merryl replied; she was the closest thing to an expert that they had in matters of alliteration.
Larry’s shoulders sagged. He would never be able to get through to these people. He could not blame them either; they just wanted money so that they could live the rest of their miserable lives in comfort. What did they care about the big picture of their plights? They could kill, get rich, drink all day, and save up money for their children’s and grandchildren’s education. Retreating back to his wine cask, Larry sipped sullenly.
I am a bad bandit, I can’t even kill anyone. Larry was in fact a singularly bad bandit, but perhaps not as bad as he was at being an existing entity. Always he went out on their expeditions with faux vigor; banditry was grim and the most he could really commit to was yelling at an old monk,
“The Church is but the paved road for which oppressive ideologies ride!” He did, however, say it with an impressive candor, and the monk had surrendered a box of scissor and ivory combs; enough for him to reenter the barber profession as a well-equipped journeyman.
“You know . . . If ya think your story was a pain in the bung–” Darios stood up, raising a gloved hand. “–lemme tell you all what happened to me kids and I when Phoran Cal had us levied! First we marched off to – What was that?”
There was a commotion somewhere toward the edge of camp. Lame Larry lowered his goblet from his face and squinted through the shade, “Oh fuck.”
“Loose arrows!” A high feminine voice called, and the rain of death was upon them.
Darios was felled by an arrow to his neck, and dark blood gurgled from his throat in grotesque bubbles. Larry tried turning away, but Mary Matilda Merryl had rushed to stand up and had stumbled over the fire, kicking up a cloud of ash and sparks.
“Run! Run! Run! Run!” Seev screamed grabbing Neev and scramming. Old Roger stood up and waved his billhook in a way that might have been considered menacing if not for the fact that he was completely turned around. Larry was scrambling; he reached for a stick but recoiled from the burning fire. He settled for a long iron tent stake and rushed to follow his friends.
“Charge!” The voice shouted, and from the forest a wall of armed soldiers and knights surged.
“Go the other way! Go the other way!” Larry shrieked leading his companions north. They weaved through their fellow raiders who were a mess of panic and confusion. Through the tents they ran, until they were at the far end of the camp stooped over and gasping for air.
“Those were Iron Rosees! I saw their sigil!” Neev was coughing.
“Dammed Iron Roses! Thems folk always do a number on us privateer types,” Old Roger beat his chest. He had always bragged of being the brother of a Bandit King named Evan, but no one had ever heard of him. “Not today thought! We gotta fight back!”
Old Roger’s confidence was truly short lived as the air crackled and filled with the sounds of deep booms. They turned to witness their palisade freeze solid and then collapse onto itself.
“Now!” A young knight shouted. From the treeline, dozens of his fellows swarmed into the camp and killed with indiscretion.
“Run away!” Old Roger squealed.
Lame Larry limped half a stride behind the rest with the iron stake grasped in his sweaty palm. This was unfortunate, very unfortunate. Through the carnage, he could only wonder if he would have time to get his scissor and still escape.
“I think we should go the other way!” Larry shouted after Mary Matilda Meryll who guided their retreat.
“No! This is the best dir–” It was like a flash; Larry looked to the forest on their right and spotted a third charging mass of soldiers led by a knight with an unwieldy blade, thick antiquated armor, and a spear that pierced fully through their stomach like a spit. A quick motion pulled the spear from them and javelined it into Mary who flew half a dozen yard before being pinned to the ground.
“Not the best direction! Absolutely the worst direction!” Larry cried out pushing Neev away from where the knights embarked on their blood lusted odyssey. They saw a host of characters that engaged in the wholesale evisceration of their merry band. There was a hundi that wielded duel tower shields and a crossbow. Seev tried throwing an axe at him for the hell of it. A woman that paused mid-battle to ignite Jeremiah’s throne. He also could have sworn that he saw a plague doctor reaping their way through the camp like an agent of death.
I think one of their leaders is a little girl! Larry ran with confusion on his face.
The cowards sprinted past a woman who was stooped over, reloading a crossbow as a shield wall enclosed upon them, “Stop! Stop! Anne! Not the time to reload!” Larry yelled as they ran by, but it was too late. Anne had been run through by a spear. It took them just half a minute to come across a large number of bandits hiding behind the canteen tent gripping whatever weapons they could gather.
“Okay listen! On my count we will charge!” Blind Barry was standing astride two barrels with a sword held aloft.
“Oi! We didn’t vote for ya!” Neev integrated into the crowd.
“Yeah! Who put you in charge?” Seev echoed.
A woman among the bandits piped, “If anyone should be in charge right now, it’s me!”
This was an unpopular suggestion.
“Katherine you are a gossiping bitch!” A voice replied.
“I’m the oldest here! I am in charge!” Barry wrestled for control of his audience, and Larry had a pang of sympathy for him. He too had an alliterated name. His actual name was Bernard. Or was it Brandon?
“You old fart! I’m older!” Old Roger was a red hot fire of criticism, “Do you even remember the eleventh winter skirmish war?”
“Shut up Roger!” A chorus replied.
Larry suggested surrender. This was received with mild and polite head nodding.
Just then, a horn sounded out from the only direction that they had not yet been attacked from. The sound of cavalry was thunderous and fast approaching.
“I thought you said cavalry couldn’t get into the camp!” Lame Larry turned on Big Cloud, their Master of Strategies whom had once read a book on war partway through.
The man threw up his hands in a defeated shrug, “I only thought stubborn bastards would do it!”
“Yeah! Well lookie hear boys, this stubborn bastard’s got another thing coming!” Old Roger whooped a war cry and charged forward with his billhook before all was chaos.
A lance shattered on Big Cloud in an instant, and then Larry was knocked into a foot-over-head roll which turned the world into a kaleidoscope of green and brown and red. A hoof caught him in the hand, and at one moment he was confident he had twisted in such a way that he was smelling his own ass. The flurry of pain and colors ended in a second and Larry found himself face down in the mud.
“Hah! I got one!” He heard Roger’s jubilance over a low symphony of moans. Larry spit up dirt and blood and looked up in time to see Neev plunge a dagger into a fallen soldier’s visor.
I’ll be damned, I guess that hook does work. The rest of the bandits did not make out particularly well, and at least a dozen or more of them were dead. Blind Barry still stood on his barrels nonplussed by the carnage and coolly he said,
“I agree with Larry. Let us retreat.”
The survivors mumbled in agreement.
“No! Not retreat! Surrender!” Larry yelled as his friends began limping off. “They’ll be less forgiving if we run off!” But they were gone: Old Roger, Neev, Seev, Blind Barry, Drumming Darrle, Anastasia, the Comedic Louis, Richard the Almanac, and surprisingly Mary Matilda Merryl who was nursing the spear that pierced her shoulder. Larry hesitated to stay, “Well! Fine! I’ll surrender by myself!”
It was perhaps wiser to go off in a disorganized retreat with the cowardly band, for, at that very moment the air was filled with a great WHOOSH, and a flaming tree thudded upon Larry’s already trampled arm.
“No! No! No! Nonononono!” He babbled incoherently as he ripped and twisted his manged arm out from beneath the great tree. The heat was unbearable, and he could feel his hair singeing as pulled his broken arm from beneath the inferno. It had not been his head, but that did nothing to alleviate the raw ache of pain that emanated from his shattered and burned arm. “Okay!” Larry bounced to his feet, raising his arms to the best of his ability, “I surrender! I give up! No more please! We are defeated!” He witnessed bandits still charging about at the knights, and he could have sworn he heard the chilling voice of Jeremiah over the rumblings, “Well . . . I surrender.”
“No. No. NO! NO! YOU FUCKING DON’T!” Someone roared.
“No! I swear I do surrender!” Larry shouted as he turned a corner and spotted a knight who ripped his helmet from his head and gave a preternatural cry.
That sounds familiar he thought unexpectedly. It was like sinking into warm nostalgia. Childhood wonder and good memories. His face flushed into a smile,
that man reminds me of my youth. He drifted in thought for a moment. In that time, the knight unsheathed his sword and began hacking a path through anyone who crossed him. It definitely seemed and sounded familiar. “Ah . . . Hill tribe raiders,” He muttered with enlightenment as Valdoth Thorn came upon him. “I surren–” he tried to call out, but a sword swing took his right arm off at the elbow and he stumbled back crying, “I surrender!”
Larry did not realize that he was on his feet again until he was stumbling onto his collapsed tent groping for his bag of barber supplies. “Nope, not today. You’re not going to die this day Lewis! You did not survive a tooth plague for this!” He cut a strip of cloth from his tent and tied it tight around what was left of his elbow as a tourniquet. Digging deep into his pack, Larry pulled out a collection of old rusted calipers and he used them to pinch his wound closed. It was blinding agony, but he was not entirely sure if it hurt worse than the tooth plague had. “Not today! Lewis you’ll be quite alright!” He screamed out.
When the bloody business was complete, the man stood with a contraption of calipers, tourniquets, stitches, and bandages on his stump. “Right . . . That should do it.”
All around him the camp was in absolute chaos. A veritable army of elite knights were charging for King Jeremiah, cavalry was tearing apart any sizable group of bandits that stood and fought, the lines of pikemen were capturing prisoners or killing left and right. Larry sighed and picked up the stick he tied a white flag to and began waving it, “I surrender! Hey! Please! I’m done!”
--
Eadwig’s shield arm was clenched tight to his torse squeezing the arrow that pierced his shoulder tight. His knuckles were aching from clenching his horse’s reins so tightly.
“Sir, are you okay?” A rider beside him had moved to aid him, but Eadwig glared daggers at him.
“Aye, keep formation.” The forces alongside him were making good progress. Any that stood against their line of pike were quickly dealt with by spear and arrow. “Prepare to sortie!” Aethelmund barked out raising his sword, “And . . . char–”
“Move out of the way!” A voice screamed out and everyone became aware of the massive tree that was falling in a pillaring conflagration.
It became every man and woman for themselves. Horses scattered to and fro, and the pike men and archers split as the tree fell right in their direction. The echo of its collapse bounced hollowly across the forests of Thaln. A great wall of flame roared up into the sky the moment the trunk impacted the earth. A cloud of black smoke, dust, and dirt was kicked up obscuring the battle field. Eadwig could hear his heavy breathes, in and out, as his mind became focused on survival. He pulled hard on the reins guiding his horse through a rain of burning debris that fell from the sky. Split wood, and splinters exploded around him as he rode. His ears rang and his shoulder throbbed as he searched for respite in the cloud of darkness. A low roar gained in intensity as he realized he was being charged upon by two bandits.
“Back!” Eadwig commanded the men as he kicked at the sides of his horse, “Regroup!” He yelled swinging his sword down onto one of the bandits below him. The sword glanced off of the haft of his axe. A menacing bandit side stepped Eadwig’s front and swung a club only to find purchase on the old knight’s shield. He winced and spun the horse around quickly; catching an axe blow to his shield before his blade tore through the neck of the clubber. The axe man hesitated just long enough for Eadwig to spin and whip his sword upward fast enough to catch the man across the chest and face. “Regroup!” He cried out again sounding his war horn, and riding back to where his soldiers had previously stood.
Six of the pike men and eleven of the archers were picking themselves up from the ground, when he rode upon them. Sir Athelmund gritted his teeth; their forces had been cut in two.
“We’ve lost one of our,” Dame Efelia rode to him; the rest of the cavalry began to regather, ten of them in total.
“Who was it?” He masked the anger in his voice.
“Arthur sir,” another horseman said.
“We lost another three,” Sir Indrew said grimly from afoot. Eadwig bowed his head and placed a fist to his heart. The others followed suit for a silent moment.
“Form up!” He said grimly, “Pike hold the line and follow us. Cavalry with me!” They galloped hard around the tree with men in tow. They made a wide path around the burning branches of the tree, and on the other side they bore witness to total anarchy.
Captain Danbalion was locked in battle with a colossal man at the edge of the forest. They fought at the roots of the fallen tree, parrying between each other deftly, but it seemed as if Danbalion was only surviving by chance. Eadwig’s heart fluttered and a gasp caught in his throat seeing her alone, but the other knights had moved quickly. Sir Garrett was sprinting like a bull up the hill, and Dame Julianna and Dame Sult were hot on his heels. Dame Tyaethe too had climbed the burning tree and charged like a flaming demon into melee with a tremendous swing of her sword at the man who could only be King Jeremiah. In the camp, things had descended into a brutal hand to hand combat. Many more bandits had been forced to this side of the burning tree than the side he had just come from.
There were only three pikemen on this side and two archers. The rest had either perished beneath the tree, or two the onslaught of raiders that they were now fiercely engaging. “Go!” Sir Aethelmund raised his sword, and the cavalry rushed unto a swarm of bandits like a wave; hacking and slashing through them with savage abandon. The old knight fought with every strength he had; his sword carved a path, and his pommel caved in helmets. His horse would rear and kick any that came near him. A heart beat passed, then two, and the bandits were in flight.
Eadwig breathed heavily and his shoulder throbbed painfully from the exertion. “Form up.”
His eyes scanned the battlefield. Marianne’s cavalry and Sir Tiral’s forces were ripping through the field skillfully, and it looked to be that they were pushing the fleeing bandits toward the flank that he intentionally left exposed. “Excellent work you two,” Sir Aethelmund whispered as his pike and archers regrouped and reformed before him. Any that came upon them would be destroyed, and those that ran would have to contend with Sir Bernhard.
“Sir Aethelmund! Over there!” an archer pointed to the hillside where some Tyaethe’s forces were being pinned between an ambush of crossbowmen and the main camp.
He stole a breath. Sir Rhydderch was leading a charge against the ambush, but the two knights he left to guard their flank were struggling to hold their flank against a growing surge of bodies “Sir Indrew, hold the line. Fire upon any that do not throw down arms. Cavalry! We move to reinforce Sir Rhydderch!”
Across the field, the knights had driven off the ambush, but they were becoming surrounded as they fought off an emboldened force from the camp.
“Form up!” The knights were double ranks of five, and Aethelmund gave a signal and the soldiers rode with the banner of the Iron Roses trailing above them. “Shields up!” He bellowed as a light rain of arrows struck at them. Like a stampede, they flattened the loose formations of bandits caught between fight and flight.
“There’s too many, break through!” Sir Rhydderch rumbled charging into his opponents with Sir Bors and Sir Gawain in tow. A moment passed and the cavalry crashed into the mob.
Eadwig’s boot rammed the back of an enemies head with a crack. His shield was a drum of impacts that were silenced when the second line of horses silenced the drummers. A lance felled an outlaw to his left, and Eadwig stabbed forward into a distracted foe. Their blows were an iron rain falling steadily to clear a path for their fellow knights.
“Did you need help?” Sir Aethelmund’s voice echoed through his visor.
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