The Plague of Stormhope

[jdd2035]

Cain's eyes focused on the tree line and caught the sight of seven black garbed assailants "Ha! I smoked you! There's a vanguard of seven men clad in black, two points to starboard, at random shot!". All hands prepare to repel borders!" Cain shouted as he drew his pistols. The mule he was on bellowed and squalled in an upset manner before circling on itself a few times before Cain fell off "mutinous lubber!" the Captain said taking aim at the attackers and firing off a shot.

The three tenths of an inch steel ball erupted from the barrel of his pistol speeding through the air at nearly twelve hundred feet per second, hissing through the black cloth of one of the seven raiders and into its flesh, with a hearty slap!

The mule squawked and mewled some more and stomped to the other side of the wagon as things started to get interesting.

Another shot rang from Cain's second pistol sending another ball wheeling through the air followed by seriousness slap! Cain pulled the ram rod placed it between his teeth and reached into a pouch on his weapons belt and pulled out a cartridge tearing it open he dumped powder, a wad and a round ball of shot in a most practiced fashion as he continued to watch the attackers.

Cain may have not been the best horseman but now he was more into his element aside from not being on a rolling deck he was quite familiar with fending off black guarded attackers looking for booty. He grinned as he pulled the ram rod from his teeth and drove home his shot and shouted his battle cry "Fill your hands!"

[Revenant]

Chaos erupted around the wagon and though William had seemed asleep, he sprang fully into motion the instant Remedy cried out. There was a smoothness to the act that was more than human, belying the simple mercenary façade that he’d put on. He bumped into Celeste as he turned to face their attackers, unconsciously shielding the young woman with his own body.

Celeste cried out as William jostled her, the blue fire sphere slipping from her hand as she reached out to steady herself. “Watch out,” she cried out and then flinched from the twin percussion of Cain’s pistols. William glanced back as her, not surprised to see a toothy grin spread across her youthful features.

“Come on,” she said, breathlessly and pushed past him, jumping over the side of the wagon to engage the Skulls. She pulled her sword free with a cry and charged forward to support Cain while he reloaded.

William grimaced and moved to follow Celeste but paused. He narrowed his eyes and scanned the scene in front of him, calculating. Remedy’s caravan had been on the road for the most of the day. Early twilight was the perfect time for an ambush, giving the Skulls enough light to see by but also plenty of shadows to hide themselves in. But this road was obviously not a major caravan road, which meant that the bandits had had lookouts to watch for traffic.

It was apparent that the Skulls knew what they were doing. They were old hands at this sort of thing. But skilled bandits didn’t charge a heavily guarded caravan without the weight of numbers behind them. It didn’t matter how skilled a combatant you were if the weight of numbers was against you. The element of surprise only went so far.

William cursed and spun around, knowing what he’d see before he did so. Another group of Skulls melted from the shadows on the caravan’s other side, now that the initial force had drawn everyone’s attention away from them. There were a dozen or more assassins melting from the shadows, far stealthier than the diversion force had been. And all of them had bows drawn, with arrows ready to fire.

“Archers!” William roared. William pulled his leather cloak he wore tightly around him as the archers loosed. A normal cloak would provide little protection from such an attack, but William’s cloak had been made from the hide of a monstrous creature the size of a barn. Experience told him that it was more than capable of keeping the Skulls’ arrows at bay. Assuming they weren’t magical.

An instant before the arrows struck, Remedy’s metal box rose sharply into the air beside William. It hummed with internal energy and flew apart into four charged coils. The device pulsed as the arrows struck, sending a wave of energy into the missiles and scattering them like a child throwing a hand of jumble sticks.

William would have appreciated the defensive screen a lot more if the device hadn’t also pushed against the metal in his breastplate, pitching him headlong out of the wagon. He pitched forward with a cry, spilling awkwardly out of the wagon. He tried to brace himself but found his arms caught in the folds of the cloak he’d hoped would protect him. The irony was lost on him as he slammed into the hard packed road with a loud whump.

A barrage of breathless curses spilled from his lips as he lay, dazed, in the dirt. Two of the ambushing Skulls sprinted from cover, seeking an easy kill. The rest of them, seemingly undeterred by Remedy’s device, silently knocked another set of arrows.

William managed to free himself in time to catch both Skulls charge. They assassins had dropped their bows and had drawn thin, triangular shaped blades. William had seen blades like those before and knew that though they weren’t very good in a drawn out fight, they were excellent at punching through heavy armor. Armor like the breastplate that William wore.

The assassins drove their blades forward in concert, seeking to puncture William’s heart in a single well-timed thrust. His hand snapped out to grab one, ignoring the pain that flared as the triangular blade bit straight through the flesh of his hand, down to the bone. The second blade, however, stabbed deeply into William’s side. The only thing William could do was to roll away from it, ripping a jagged hole open in his side and letting the tip lodge in his lung rather than his heart.

He reached out with unnatural speed and grabbed the first blade, ignoring the stab of pain as the steel bit into his flesh. Pain was a constant in his life. But there was no way to stop the second blade from biting home and William could only roll as the Skull stabbed down, the blade sliding easily between his ribs to lodge in his right lung rather than his heart.

Steaming blood fountained from William’s lips and he could hear someone yelling but the meaning behind it was lost as the red tide rose in his vision. He’d tried to play the veteran warrior, hiding his true power, but these damnable bandits weren’t making it easy. A sharp smile flashed at the Skulls from beneath bloodstained lips as William allowed the molten heat of his strength flood from his core.

And then the bomb that Celeste had dropped exploded, splashing up across the side of the wagon and engulfing William and his attackers in a ball of intense blue flame.

[Hysteria]

I aimed my pistol towards the tree line and the archers within. I could just make out their darting figures, loosing arrows that smashed ineffectually against my electrical barrier. The field shuddered, and I knew in a moment or two it would collapse. I pulled the zap pistol back to my face, letting the spinning electric charge in the pistol’s glass chamber cast dancing lines of light across my face.

“Thanyes damn these arseholes! Hawkes! The tree line!” I screamed to the knight. She pulled the reins of her horse and diverted away from the melee fight and initially back down the road we had come. She pulled the reins again, her horse arching up onto its back legs and launching into the tree line and disappeared with her sword trailing behind her.

A heard a few shouts of surprise coming from the Skulls in the treeline, but I didn’t have time for that. I grabbed the contraptions Celeste had handed me and clicked it onto my belt. I leapt towards the electrical barrier just as it collapsed and landed with a crunch on the road. I still had the reins of the horse in my hand, and I pulled them tight and wrapped them around the side of the wagon. There was no way I was going to get the horse bolt.

I still had my doubts about the hired swords. Celeste was as absent minded as I feared, and William managed to be caught in both the electric shield and the blue blaze bomb. I had images of me caring for the old fool all the way to Stormhope and back. For now I needed to focus on turning the tide of the fight while the meat bought me some cover. I pulled out another flat device from the dispenser on my side and flung it into the middle of the road. It burst open, sliding metal on metal to form a one metre by one metre, slightly curved wall. I ducked behind it, hopefully drawing any wayward arrows to me and away from our horse. I lifted my pistol towards Celeste and focused. She brought her sword down, but the Skull caught it against his own and with a flourish caused her to stumble backwards. The moment she did I fired my pistol, a stream to white hot electricity arcing from the tip of the zap pistol, into the Skull’s weapon, down his arm and then it cascaded from his limbs into the ground. Celeste seemed shocked, but less than Skull. The moment the electricity stopped she stepped forward and brought the sword down across his chest with spray of red.

A shift of movement came from the smoky area William and the two assailants had been engulfed by fire. I jammed my pistol back into its holster to recharge and point my other hand towards the movement. At a moment’s notice I was ready to unleash a direct blast of blaze blue flame from the nozzle on my wrist.

[jdd2035]

Cain was busy reloading his second pistol when ~THWACK!~ an arrow embedded itself near his foot causing him to stammer backwards with a second arrow finding its place where his body would have been an instant before hand. "Bloody hell!" Cain exclaimed he didn't have time to finish reloading his second pistol as two masked assailants closed in their unique swords drawn intent on skewering him. The Sea Captain raised his loaded pistol aimed it at the nearest of the two attackers and fired. The ball penetrated the mask and flesh behind it leaving a large hole out of the other side of the attackers head. The second attacker thrust his specialized blade at Cain causing him to parry with his just fired pistol.

To counter attack Cain shoved the barrel of his partially loaded gun into the masks eye and pulled the trigger. Even with out a ball the exploding powder and flames shooting out of the barrel with in the mask was more than enough to cause carnage and mayhem with in it. The voice inside the mask was a gurgling crying scream muffled by his own mask. Cain grabbed the second attacker and charged toward Remedy's barricade both of them rolling as yet another arrow ricocheted with a loud ~GONG!~

"Got you a live prisoner!" Cain said a crooked grin on his face as he fished for a pair of charges to reload his pistols. Finding a special kind of shot covered in ruins his grin grew ever wider and he reloaded.

[Revenant]

Blue fire filled William’s vision. The heat of the blast enveloping both him and the two Skulls that he’d attracted. He was surprised by the explosion, but unfazed by its chaos. It was only heat, after all, and heat was his life’s blood. Literally.

William rose through the flames, tossing the charred, lifeless corpses of his attackers to either side. His eyes blazed full with the power of his molten core, shimmering a bright orange which pierced through the dying blue light. But even though the flames themselves left no impact on either him or his gear, which had been specially treated to resist his own fiery temperament, William’s sight hadn’t fared quite as well.

Bright motes of light twinkled in front of William, a blurry afterimage swimming in front of him. He reached out to rend it apart, fingers momentarily curling into jagged splinters of razor-sharp blackened bone. A quiet gasp and a sharp intake of breath played from the shape before another gout of flame washed over him. The burst of flame, like the explosion before, washed harmlessly over William and he cursed himself as a fool. He’d taken the figure to be another of the Skulls who’d come to his comrade’s aid. He hadn’t counted on his own comrades rushing to assist him in that manner. After all, he’d downplayed his abilities throughout this entire journey. How were they supposed to know that he wasn’t in any real danger from a couple of thugs and a bit of fire?

“That’s enough,” he hissed at Remedy through clenched teeth. He swiped at the flames before her hard and fast enough to splash them away from him, human skin once again taking the place of twisted claws. He glared at the tinkerer for a moment before swiping his thick cloak in front of her, deflecting three of the arrows that the snipers had fired at her. Two of them pinged off the titanium breastplate he himself wore beneath his outer garments, but two of them caught him mid-thigh where he’d swept his cloak up to protect his employer.

“See to the others and then get the wagon back on the move,” he commanded. It looked like the initial distraction attackers had been taken care of anyways, between Cain’s rapid pistol reloads and Celeste’s blade.

Remedy’s eyes blazed in indignation at his command but before she could speak William tore out the warped blade that the charred Skull had left inside him and threw it aside, turning away from her as he did so. The sizzling blood on the blade smoked where it struck the matting of dead leaves beside the road. A single tongue of flame briefly licked up from beneath it before puffing out in a burst of smoke.

The bandits were shouting at one another as they prepared another volley, this time training their shots solely on the man who so casually shrugged off fire and steel.