MQ: Arms of Gold

[Godhand]

Godhand gave a small smile to the girl and reholstered his Magnum. No matter how you sliced it torturing someone was always lousy work. He knew the ins and outs and what hurt and what made someone black out but to him it was still just a job; like climbing up a steep muddy slope. Back home they were people who majored in information extraction but when you were on the move you needed to know the right way to put screws into somebody's thumbs. You needed to be versatile - smart. These new kids, man. They did it all and they did it for cheap. You had to read up. Study the literature. All to keep up with a bunch of guys that got an earlier start than you. You had to. When was the last time anybody ever saw a hitman in a retirement home? No way to retire in this business. No way at all. Once you lose your step you're just like an old dog that gets sick; they take you out the back and shoot you in the head. Lousy way to go.

The mercenary was glad it didn't have to come to the really nasty stuff. He was losing his stomach for that sort of thing. No, that was untrue; he was still vicious when he needed to be. Godhand just didn't want to do that sort of thing to a girl. Never could handle that. Different animals, he guessed. A man just sort of bites down and takes it. You hack away but there's a sort of quiet dignity in your role and his and it's spiritually acceptable for both men. A woman, though. She just looks at you. Big doe eyes staring at you. Staring. Nobody could work under those conditions. Well, some men could but not Godhand. In the end she'd sensed that he really didn't want to have to go to work on her and fessed up. No use arguing with a gun. He crept out of the covered wagon and strode over to Djakara's jury-rigged meeting room. Pulling back the thick cloth tarp shielding the occupants from the cold, he spoke.

"She says we're going up against about a thousand people. I'm tough and James knows his stuff, but I don't know. If you got anything special stashed in the caravans Djakara, now's the time to say so."

[Crimson Rose]

Mariah was still shocked that Jame had healed her wound. She knew from experieince that it wasn't fully healed. But the pain had dulled enough for her to move. Looking up at Jame retreating back gratefully she called "Thank you! I appreciate your kindness!" The red haired thief then rose to her feet. . She paused testing her balance as she held onto the cloth tarp of the wagon.

She felt a bit dizzy and woozy from the blood loss, but her vision wasn't blurry anymore and she was at least able to stand. Taking a few slow steps forward, Mariah felt glad that she did not tumble down. She had seen in her time as the Guild's healer, thieves whose injuries were so severe that even after cauterizing and medicating the wounds they had, they still could not leave their beds weeks after.

She considered herself lucky that she was able to walk. Though she still felt very weak, as she used the tarp as a balancing measure, she soon carefully scooted her way off the first wagon. Landing in the cold snow, she begin to trek her way towards the last wagon. Her steps were heavy though, and her wound felt slightly itchy. Which meant that if she took one wrong step it might break open again.

As she passed by the third wagon, she paused, her throat feeling as if it was going to cough again. Waiting as a snowflake fell on her noise, she felt nothing. Shaking her head she murmurs "I just have to get to the last wagon, then I can rest. If what Jame said was true and an army is near, then I need to stay out of sight. I can't risk fighting and opening my wound again..."

She then continued her careful steps, passing the fourth wagon, she paused leading against the cold cotton tarp to catch her breathe. Each step had taken all the energy that she still had, it felt as if she couldn't walk anymore.

Panting a bit as she gulped in airfuls of the icy air, she wished that she had someone to carry her. Her love of romance novels had always told her that in times of need, a hero will appear to help out the lady in distress. But now, nothing of the sort had happened. In fact each time she had been injured no hero had appeared.

Groaning at her luck, Mariah pulled together all her remaining energy, pushing her hand off the cold cotton tarp, she soon had made her way to the fifth wagon. A burly looking dwarf was leading the horses there. He took one look at her and said sharply "I"m Leaves lassy and you don't look so good. Get yourself in the back of the wagon and hide. Master Djarkara told me the situation and he told me you should get yourself rest!"

Nodding Mariah ambled weakly into the back of the wagon. Her eyes fell on more weapons crates. Sighing she murmurs "I can't just be a lump to the rest. I have to try to help out against the on coming trouble."

The dwarf simply shook his head and murmured "Your crazy lass, but if you want to help there should be a shotgun in one of those crates! Find that and sit tight, don't use it unless its absolutely necessary!"

Mariah nods as she pries open one of the crates, throwing the lid aside with a dull THUD, she begins to search through it. Pushing aside simple pistols and a steel crossbow, she soon comes up with a twelve gauge shotgun. Pulling it out, she checks it and smiles murmuring "I can use this." She then grips it against her chest as she turns to lay gently on her stomach. Looking at the dwarf she murmurs "Just give me a sign when trouble is near us ok?"

Leaves smiled warmly at Mari as he murmurs "Sure thing lass."

[Leon Adalbert]

Click, click. Click, click.

Leon sat listening as the Freiherr and the mercenary discussed the tactics of the battle, and upon hearing Godhand's proclamation of the enemy's numbers, he looked up sharply, wide-eyed. He ceased his fidgeting and stared around at the other three.

"A th-thousand?" he stuttered, fear shaking his voice and his resolve. Can we stand against such a force? he asked himself. He knew the answer didn't matter, however, because whether they could stand or not, an army was coming. Leon Adalbert was not a religious man, far from it, but he hoped he would be forgiven for that by whatever divinity might be watching.

Looking down at his new weapon, he wondered how effective it would be in a full-scale battle. Pistols like this one were designed for duels. They took time to load and could only fire one round before being reloaded. He didn't like his odds running into such a force with just his rapier, either. No, he needed something special, a trump card to make the firearm more effective, despite the reload time.

Jumping up, the opportunistic merchant looked around at the crates in the wagon, noting the labels on each one in turn. Finally he settled on a smallish one marked Enchanted Ammunition, DO NOT JAR OR OVERTURN. Prying the lid open, he found ammo for all sorts of guns, including revolvers, the state-of-the-art automatic pistols, bandoleers full of crossbow bolts, and more. He dug through the box, grasping hands finally taking hold of a small box, no larger than his fist, and pulling it free.

He cracked the lid, and found three tiny orbs of some strange material that resembled glass. He looked at the label on the side, and read aloud "Kiramaini Blast Bullets." He grinned, taking the red, blue, and yellow orbs and stowing them in a small pocket of his jacket, away from his other bullets.

This pistoleer had his trump card.

[Call me J]

Right before Jame left, he overheard Godhand’s mention of there being 1000 men waiting for them. He nodded. That sounded much larger than what he had seen, and made their chances of any kind of a retreat even less likely. Even if they tried to head backwards towards Alerar and to approach Raiaera by the Twilight Mountains, their chances wouldn’t be too good. Jame wondered how long it would be to Knife’s Edge, and how many more challenges there would be to getting the weapons where they belonged.

As he transformed, he wondered if he’d be able to negotiate with the church soldiers. They may have been eager to see that the weapons didn’t reach the monarchy, but Jame doubted they would want to expend the same energy to stop them from reaching Raiaera. By the time he had transformed into a dragon, he realized that as ideal as a negotiation might have been, it wasn’t going to work that way. There would be no way that he’d be able to prove he was telling the truth, and with an entire force in the dozens, he knew that a thousand people wouldn’t negotiate. The only thing they could do was fight their way through. People might not have been afraid of a small army, but they might fear a giant beast.

“We’ll see what happens…” Jame thought. Regardless, he knew what he’d need to do. He couldn’t afford to wait for the rest of them. Jame was going to have to start the attack first. With the blessing of Aglarlin on his side, Jame was confident that he could hold out indefinitely. However, he didn’t know how much he could protect the rest of the caravan. Though they were no great allies of his, they would be needed.

More than anything else, Jame couldn’t forget the look that Mariah had given him before he had walked away. It was a desperate appeal, as if she was begging him to do something, because she was so desperate that she didn’t want to die. Jame wasn’t sure if there was some guilt there over the way she had reacted when he’d threatened to hit her. The utter terror in her eyes may have compelled him to help her just a little.

The face of Maia Kristel was even heavier in his mind. He regretted having left her in Eluriand, especially after he had been called on to help her. When they had left Aglarlin, he had been told the key to defeating Xem’zund had been with Maia. To save the entire world, he was supposed to have saved her. He’d failed there, and he was frightened that she wouldn’t survive because he’d ended up teleported into Salvar.

As he flapped his wings to take off into the sky, he took one last glance as the dead dwarf who had been gored to death by Dantalion. Everyone had been so concerned about the battle oncoming, he hadn’t been offered a proper funeral. Jame looked on regretfully as he rose up to the sky. By the time he was in the air, it had begun to snow.

[Dark Temptress]

The seductress let out a long and slow breath that she’d been holding the entire time the man had been pointing that large gun in her face. She just couldn’t argue with that and she couldn’t even move fast enough to get away from it. All he would have had to do was pull the trigger and then her brains would be splattered all over the carts of this caravan and as much as she didn’t want these weapons in Salvar, her life was more important than they were. Not to mention living to fight another day. By Solomon, what had she gotten herself into?
As the warrior strode from the tarp-covered caravan with his precious information, A’rai began looking around. There were crates piled all over the place, their pale wooden construction covering the contents from her peering eyes. Not that they would do her much good right now. As she searched, she realized that the mercenary had left the flame and all of his little torture implements on a crate just a few feet away from her. If she could get over to it, she might be able to break herself free and then get the hell out of here and leave them to their fate. It was too late for her to try and summon any more demons, that window of opportunity was gone. Now all that was left was for her to retreat.

With her hands and her legs bound and connected by a long piece of rope, moving was much harder than the noble wanted to admit. After all, she didn’t exactly have practice getting out of tightly knotted ropes. But still, wriggling across the rough surface of the caravan floor, she slowly began heading towards the other crate. If the mercenary came back before she could free herself, she had no idea what he’d do to her, but she didn’t plan on being around when he returned.

Ruffians, the lot of them…

At the crate, the seductress reached up and wrapped her fingers around the blade of the knife, the same one he had threatened to slice open her hamstring with.

Bastard, tricking me like that. If I ever see him again, he’ll regret his actions.

Attempting to turn the blade around in her fingers, A’rai ended up slicing open her palm with the sharp instrument. Gasping, she nearly dropped the blade as a warm flood of blood began to seep through her hands and drip to the caravan floor. Ignoring the pain as best she could, she began cutting away at the ropes. This knife was much sharper than her own and ended up cutting through the coarse, braided material with relative ease. Once her hands were free, she cut the rope tying her ankles together and then quickly removed them from her person.

Standing, the seductress held on to the blade as she moved to the thick, flap of material that consisted of the entrance to this place. Pushing on it a little, she peered outside just in time to see a large dragon take off into the sky. Allowing the material to close and cut off the cold and the sight, A’rai moved to one of the crates and removed the top, leaving a trail of bloody fingerprints on everything she touched. Inside she found a number of different kinds of guns, most of which she had never seen before and couldn’t even fathom how to use. After a few seconds, her hand came to rest on one of the new automatic weapons. She had seen one in Markus’s house before and he had been more than pleased to show the weapon off to everyone in Kings and Shadows. Wrapping her blood smeared fingers around the handle, she picked it up, surprised by just how heavy such a small thing was. Then she reached inside and grabbed a few black… things that were sitting beside it. She knew that within them were bullets, but she wasn’t entirely sure what to do with them. Markus had shown her once, so she knew they loaded into the handle, but there appeared to already be one inside and she didn’t know how to get it out.

Stuffing the black things into an inner pocket on her cloak, the seductress once again moved towards the flap of material and peered outside. Snow was beginning to fall from the sky, too gentle and soft looking for what was happening around her. Taking a deep breath, she jumped down from the caravan, her forest green eyes glancing all around her to see if anyone had noticed her departure, but it appeared they were busy elsewhere. Spotting her horse Firnin not too far away, A’rai smiled and began running towards the animal. Her long skirt and cloak dragging against the dirt and the rocks on the ground as her hurried feet took her closer to closer to a possible freedom.

[Djakara]

Djakara blinked in disbelief. He didn’t know how one thousand peasants could have been assembled that quickly, even in the middle of a Civil War. He shook his head in disbelief, and could barely say anything as both Godhand and Leon Adalbert asked him for a plan. Now, his idea of spreading the five wagons apart from each other seemed completely petty, and that instead of working on a plan for them to win, they should have been working on a plan to survive.

“Maybe we can move all the goods out of one cart and send it loaded in with dynamite,” Djakara thought. “That Mariah seems simple enough to do it without knowing what was in it, she’s naïve enough to make it work. No sense wasting one of the better fighters on a suicide mission when she’ll do.”

Before he could verbalize his thoughts, he didn’t much care for that idea. It might have had some potential, but by the time it would take to assemble the dynamite wagon, the church’s soldiers would already be upon them. He looked at Godhand and Leon Adalbert regretfully, glad at least that the pistoleer had found some expensive bullets that might give him a slight advantage.

He knew he needed to say something, even if he didn’t have a complete plan just yet. “Jame has gone ahead to scout,” he said. “He’ll be able to tell us if there are any weaknesses out there that we’ll be able to exploit. Until he does that though, I’d sit tight. It’s hard for us to know what we need to do, so let’s just find the weapons we need…”

Suddenly, he remembered something that might make the job a great deal easier. It was in the fourth wagon, and over half of the crates there were a part of this large weapon. Djakara smiled. He was glad that he had suggested that Alerar include the Gatling gun. He smiled appreciatively, using it was going to be fun.

“There is this really large machine gun,” he began to explain. “It needs to be assembled, but I’m sure I know how to do it. It’s a rather large weapon, none of us will be able to carry it, but we’d be able to mow down people without even needing to try. It has this crank, and it spits out bullets really quickly. I’m not sure really how to explain it better until you have a look at it, but trust me, once we get it going, it’ll work. We’ll have to pull one of the wagon’s covers off and then we’ll mount it on there, we’ll have a driver and then one of us can shoot. It’ll have to be someone who can aim, because the weapon is tough…”

Djakara was trying to position to be the one shooting the weapon. He figured of all the people who’d be involved in the fight, it would be that gunner who got the most kills, while being one of the safest people involved in the fight. That met both of Djakara’s requirements, it was a chance for him to get his respect back, and it would be easy enough for him to survive.

[Crimson Rose]

"Lass?" Leaves said as his dark brown eyes scanned the snowy backdrop. "I think I see something through these flakes, a glint of gold. I can't be sure, but it might be a person."

Mariah blinked as she had finally settled herself on top of a soft cloth bag, her wound was nestled in just a way where it wouldn't open. Frowning she murmurs "Are you sure? I didn't see any blonde person in the caravan."

"Yes lassy. I.." squinting his small eyes, the short dwarf saw the shadowy silhouette of a person trying to sneak off the second wagon. A thick cough escaped his lips as he grunted "Yeah looks like a person, might be another lass like yerself. But, I know you be the only girl Master Djarkara took in. She might be a prisoner that someone caught."

Mariah's heartbeat quickened again. Gritting her teeth she moves to unlock the safety on the shotgun. If this person really was a prisoner to the wagon, then that meant that they had information that was necessary for their survival. Moving to cock the shotgun she aimed it at the shadowy female. The snowflakes obscured her vision so that she had to readjust again to make sure she was aiming at the woman who was trying to sneak away under the cover of snow.

Pressing her finger firmly against the trigger, Mariah steeled her heart as she shouted in a firm voice "FREEZE! OR I SHOOT!" Just to make sure the woman knew she was serious, she gave the trigger a little pressure so that the barrel made a small sound to let her know the bullet was ready to fire.

Grimacing as she had to do this cruel act, inside Mariah's heart she thought This is so cruel..to hold a woman hostage. But... recalling the demon that had mercilessly injured her, her pity for this woman lessoned as a new thought came to mind she might have been the one who sent that horrible demon after us. So in reality she may deserve being held prisoner, someone who attacks people just for the sake of killing does not deserve any pity or solace. With her heart steeled she waited for the woman's reaction. If she tried to flee still, Mariah would shoot her where she stood, it would do the caravan no good if the woman got away and managed to alert the army to their presence.

[Godhand]

Godhand wasn't really in any sort of condition to help with apprehending an escaped prisoner. You hear shit like "a thousand men" and the number doesn't really dawn on you right away. You understand it, of course. You understand it on a vague conceptual level. But the visceral feeling of knowing you're stacked up against a thousand people doesn't get you until later. You're polishing your knife or reloading your gun or something and it just drops on you like a piano from a window. No way of fighting a thousand people. That shit was silly. There was the obvious comparison of a bear getting taken down by a pack of wolves but the numbers were so disparate that that wasn't even the case. It was more like a scorpion getting killed by a nest of fire ants.

A nest? Is that the right way to call that shit that's like a big dirt mound? You step on it and then a whole fleet of those horrible little bastards spring out. Oh God I'm rambling.

It was true. He was. Djakara was talking about a gatling gun but apart from maybe The Paris Gun or perhaps an array of naval cannons there was nothing that could really turn the tide. Doesn't matter how powerful the scorpion's venom is if he haves to take the ants down one at a time. Too many. It would be like trying to punch out the ocean. Before his employer was even asking him for his ideas he was already trying to figure out a way to get them the Hell out of there. Screw the gun shipment and making money; there were better off just breaking the caravan and sneaking it out of Salvar piece-meal then try to take on an army of religious nuts. Those guys kept coming at you no matter what. You could have the biggest gun in the world, a license to kill and infinite ammo and it didn't matter because God was on their side. It was almost fascinating to see how far they'd go to kill you. It was a lot like tearing the legs off a cockroach. No matter how much shit you pulled out of it it just kept struggling. Now they were staring down an army of the Goddamn things.

"We need to get the Hell out of here. These guns aren't worth dying for; Hell, they aren't even worth risking it for. There's probably a better way to ship the damn things but it's certainly not through that stampede of lunatics. Now a force that big can't move that quickly and it sure as Hell can't move for more than maybe two miles before losing interest. I figure we can leave them a wagon to play with, take out the good stuff and take whatever's more than, say, fifty times it's own weight in gold with us. But if this is gonna work, we need a decision now. Your call, chief."

[Dark Temptress]

A’rai stopped dead in her tracks as the words echoed throughout the cool air and rang in her ears. Her heart stuttered within her chest as if it were some kind of frightened creature that stared death in its face and knew there was no escape. The gun she had stolen from the crates was still in her hands, but if whoever had yelled that was prepared to shoot her first, there was no way the seductress could react fast enough. Or even if she would be able to aim true enough. She had never used this kind of weapon before and though it seemed simple enough, she doubted it was. Swords seemed easy enough, swing, cut, kill, but there was a lot of skill behind each stroke that each warrior put behind them and guns were most likely the same way. Instead of skill though, one just needed to have really good aim, which A’rai doubted she possessed.

Releasing the stilled air within her lungs in a puff of smoke, the seductress turned in the direction the yell had come from. Large flakes of snow were beginning to softly fall from the overcast sky above her, obscuring her vision but she could still just barely make out the two people in the caravan. Though she could not exactly see the weapon that the woman held in her hands, it was quite clear from her position that she was indeed pointing something at her.

Knowing it was a long shot, but possibly the only way she had to get out of this mess with all her parts still attached and no new holes in her body, A’rai tried to appeal to the girl in the only way she could in such a situation.

“P-please… don’t hurt me!” She changed the sound of her voice, making it come across as shaky and fearful, which wasn’t very hard considering what she’d just gone through. “I… I just want to leave, I don’t want to cause any trouble, please!”

Funny part was, that was more or less the truth now. She could care less about this caravan and its contents now; she just wanted to get the hell out of here intact. Her window of opportunity had passed and now she could only retreat. The outcome was not supposed to have been this; her Belial should have been able to take care of the humans, if not him than Dantalion. But that silver haired freak had been too strong for both of them.

“I didn’t do anything… I don’t know anything, but that silver haired, red eyed barbarian doesn’t believe me and I don’t want to be tortured anymore!”

Or tricked into thinking that she was being tortured. Smart bastard, but A’rai was bleeding from the gash upon her hand. The thick, crimson liquid was dripping from the end of the gun she held, and falling to the ground and the pristine snow that was beginning to gather there. If the woman thought that it was a by-product of this torture that she had received, than A’rai was not going to correct her. She just hoped that her words would be persuasive enough to let her go; otherwise she didn’t know what she would do. Standing out here in the open and arguing was only going to get her caught sooner or later and she’d rather take her chances running then go back to that caravan. They’d probably only kill her in the end anyway, after all she’d told them everything she knew, well except for the fact that they were currently on her property, the church belonged to her family and with a single word she could probably call them off. But probably was not a certainty and she didn’t plan on doing that anyway. These men had made their beds; it was time they laid in them, possibly forever.

[Leon Adalbert]

Djakara took a long exhale, as if he was delaying the decision for as long as possible. "Yeah, I don't know," he said. "Lets just get out of here, if you think we can. We'll send one wagon forward to buy us time, load it with some dynamite. We'll send the red haired girl to lead it, she hasn't been of any use and she's hurt, she might as well buy us time now..."

Leon looked up upon hearing this, eyes wide. We're just going to leave her there to die? he thought. True, she hadn't been much help thus far, and she likely wouldn't be any help in the battle, but that didn't mean she needed to be left behind to be devoured by those wolves. The dirty-blonde merchant pushed himself to a stand, his eyes narrowed in anger and hatred at Godhand and Djakara. Godhand...I respected him...and now this. His left fist clenched, his right tightening around the hard, curved handle of his gun.

Then he remembered the way those two fought. Godhand's immense strength and seemingly unbreakable resolve to win. It was obvious he had earned his name, with near-divine force. He had heard rumors, too, about the young Freiherr who could command the power of electricity, but Djakara was beyond what was told of in those myths. Going up against those two was suicide, and he knew it.

That girl's only hopes now lay in the possibility of good news from the shapeshifter, Jame. Fly fast and come back to us, he thought, turning to stare out the front of the wagon at the dark skies full of white flecks.

(Bunny of Djakara Fraye approved by Djakara)