Tarnished Chapter 51 (Patreon)

John hurried over to his ostrich but waited a minute for the chaos outside to die down and the mercenaries to split off after his two acquaintances. Once the sound of shouting got softer, he made his move.

As he tore out of the barn, he saw that not all of the men on foot had abandoned the protection of the walker. Too bad for them they were looking in the wrong direction.

He fired the cannon almost immediately, striking the walker that was stationed by the broken gate. His round wasn’t as accurate as he would have liked, but it still clipped the underside of the platform, sending the automaton tilting wildly as a spray of wood and pressurized water jetted out from the impact spot.

His target had been the control area, but that worked just as well.

The people on the ground turned to fire at him but John already had his revolver out. As he angled the ostrich to the right, he fired all six rounds from the gun. Each bullet found its mark and the men on the ground were no longer a threat.

Something whizzed past his head and he turned to see the group who had chased Seline had doubled back around the house and were now firing at him. The angle and speed were a bit too awkward to return fire so John simply increased his speed and tore past the walker that was starting to sink toward the ground.

More bullets whizzed past him and he even heard a metallic tink as one hit the side of his mount.

There was no time or place to stop and see if the bullet had gone into the machine, he simply kept going until he was nearing a small copse of trees.

During his flight, he heard both of the other ostriches fire, but he couldn’t be certain of the outcome.

Once John was out of sight, he slopped as quickly as he could, jumped off the machine, and reloaded the cannon with another solid shot. He wasn’t too worried about the men on the ground, he could deal with them using his pistols. Before getting back on the ostrich, he reloaded his weapon and stuck it back in the holster.

Then he turned around and raced back toward the farm. Their element of surprise was gone, so speed would need to be his priority.

As the walker he disabled came into view, he could already see the people inside exiting the machine. He wasn’t sure that would have been his first choice, but if they figured he had more cannon shots, that metal-reinforced wood, designed to stop small arms fire, wouldn’t do much to protect them.

They saw him coming, they would have to be stupid not to. As shots came his way, John turned toward the house, taking a long curving path around the outside of the fenced-in section of the property.

He needed to see where the other walkers were before the final four showed up. Considering how fast the automatons were, that wouldn’t be very long.

The walker behind the house lay on its side, partially against the broken side of the building. Seline had shot it in the leg, causing it to fold outward. He could hear banging as the men trapped inside tried to get the hatch open, but it was wedged against the broken wall.

Doing his best to avoid the gun slits facing outward, John raced past the downed machine and toward the back side of the barn where Blackwood had gone.

What he found wasn’t encouraging.

There was no downed walker and it took him time to find the path the machine had taken in the hard dirt. He tore after it, knowing both Blackwood and Seline would be in trouble if they didn’t have time to reload their cannons.

The trail went over a small hill and John was forced to turn sharply as that hill abruptly ended at a ten-foot ledge. He circled around and saw the remains of the walker, broken as it had failed to turn in time to avoid the unseen obstacle in the dim light of the morning.

“John?”

He looked past the destroyed walker and saw Wyatt and Seline waiting on the opposite side of a small stream.

He rode over to the pair, splashing through the ankle-deep water. “What happened?”

Blackwood grumbled. “Missed my damn shot, then the bastards started chasing me. I knew I couldn’t stop, so I led them here. Stopped here once when I came to settle a dispute for the farm owner. I knew it was a hidden ledge because I nearly rode over it on a horse. Figured it might do the trick of getting them off my back. I thought they would stop though, not barrel over the side. I guess it worked out. The farm owner’s not going to be happy when he sees the damage to his farm.”

“Better a little damage than being in a pine box. You two reloaded yet? And what about the men inside the walker?”

They both nodded at his first question.

“Knocked out or dead,” Blackwood shrugged at the second.

“Should we make sure?” Seline asked.

John shook his head. “No time. We have four more walkers coming, and now they know what to expect. We need to hit them together before they can group up.”

He led them in the general direction of where the closest walker was spotted. It had moved from that point, but they quickly found it. Unfortunately, it had met up with another walker and they had spotted the trio.

“Go wide and angle in, we can’t let them focus fire.” He pushed the ostrich ahead at full speed, covering the low-rolling grassland east of Ember Creek. He made sure to weave erratically to throw off the aim of the men running behind the walkers, but even so, a few shots pinged off his ostrich and him.

It was painful, but he was far enough away still that the rounds had little effect. He hoped his mad dash was pulling most of the fire, the others would have a much harder time avoiding a volley of fire than he would. When John was at five hundred feet, he fired the cannon. One of the walkers halted its forward advance, trying to throw off his aim. Had he actually been aiming for that one, it might have worked. John heard the metal ball ping loudly off the other walker before ricocheting into the group of men behind it.

Even he had to wince at what a one-pound ball of steel did to a man.

When the walker he struck tried to take its next step forward, the joint gave out and it pitched sideways, almost hitting the other walker. It did force the machine to lurch sideways, giving Blackwood a clear shot as he raced in from the left.

The man fired and the shot hit the leg, but it hit too high up. The machine wobbled unstably for a few seconds before settling down.

Return fire erupted from the gun holes a moment later and John saw the Sheriff curse and duck low on his mount as he did his best to avoid getting hit from so close.

The only thing that likely saved the man was the swaying of the walker. There was another loud metal ping as Seline’s shot came in a moment later. She had swung much further to the right, coming in at almost a ninety-degree angle to the walker’s legs. That seemed to be the trick though, as the leg joint buckled inward, pitching the machine back and to the right as it crashed to the ground.

They couldn’t stick around though. The surviving fighters on the ground were already closing the distance, and they hadn’t let up firing the entire time.

John grunted as one bullet slammed into his vest. That was going to leave a bruise. He returned fire with his revolvers as he covered the retreat of the other two.

They raced away to that same little section of stream. The other two walkers must have grouped up by now. They could take them normally, but by now they would have gathered any surviving men on the ground. The volume of fire would simply be too much to get close again.

“You both ok?” he asked, grunting slightly as his bruised rib twinged.

“Bastards shot my hat three times,” Wyatt cursed, as he poked a finger through the hole on his hat.

“I’m ok,” Seline said shakily. “Seems they didn’t want to fire on me for some reason.”

While he was glad the young woman was ok, the fact they had chosen not to shoot at her didn’t bode well. He didn’t picture the people of this group to be the chivalrous type. Either they had a darker motive for not harming her, or they knew who she was.

“Let's top off our water and head for the next farm. This isn’t over yet.”

Wyatt grunted in annoyance, placing his hat back on his head as he got off the ostrich and began the process of filling the water. John had to snap his fingers at Seline when she just kinda sat there staring.

“You ok?” he asked.

“…Yes. It’s different than when I fought the Harc’otti.”

John nodded as he dismounted. “You fought them in the dark didn’t you?”

She nodded slowly as she got off her ostrich.

John knew the issue. All of Seline’s fighting had been at a distance up until today. It’s one thing to shoot someone you can barely see, it's another to watch them look at you in surprise or shock up close. And she had certainly been close enough to see the men die today. Now that the rush of battle was wearing off, it was finally hitting her.

They finished topping off the water and he had the Sheriff load a canister of grapeshot while he and Seline reloaded with the cannon balls. It was likely they would all be using the grapeshot after the next encounter.

-------------------------------------------------

Tarnished will be on hiatus next week.