Tarnished Chapter 54 (Patreon)

Not one to sit by while others did the hard work, John joined in on the digging. By the time the sun was setting, they had covered an area of about a hundred feet to the east of town with randomly sized holes and pit traps. The torn-up nature of the area from the fighting had certainly made it easier to cover up the dirt work.

 As for how effective they would be, he couldn’t say.

One of the rotary guns was moved to this side of town, as well as the small cannon. That left the other to cover the only bridge. It wasn’t ideal, but it was all they had. He had wanted to ask Travis about building another, but from the sound of things, the man was irate with him for getting one of the ostriches destroyed.

Blackwood had offered his to him, but John turned the man down. He would be more effective as a sharpshooter than as a rider. Seline had left Bertha with him, and he had his rifle as well. Not that he had much ammunition left for it. Once that ran out, he would be down to pneuma rounds only. And the remaining ammo for his revolvers wasn’t looking much better.

John resolved to not use his guns if the Harc’otti attacked tonight. He would have to rely on the Pneuma pistol and rifle.

As night fell, and fires were lit, he could see the advantage of the dirt berm. At first, he thought people would be posted up behind it, but that wasn’t the case. It made it so anyone trying to attack would have to come over the dirt, making their silhouette easy to spot even in the darker areas.

But as night carried on, not a single Harc’otti came into view. He was about to go see if they were massing behind the berm when there were the sounds of gunfire and explosions in the distance. The sky flickered around where the airship had crashed as something happened out there.

There was a creak on the ladder behind him and John turned to see Blackwood climbing up.

“You don’t think the Harc’otti were dumb enough to attack the airship, do you?”

While he didn’t want to give out false hope, it seemed like the most likely option. “Unless Pappy managed to convince his kin to do it, I don’t see who else it could be.”

The sounds of distant battle went on for a few hours before petering off just before sunrise.

“You may want to get ready, I doubt Hensley’s people will hold off another day after the attack last night.”

Wyatt grunted. “Good luck.”

After those two words, the man climbed back down the ladder. John turned back toward the East, wondering why the Harc’otti had turned on Hensley.

With the sky lightening, John swapped his rifle back to the normal rounds. It didn’t take long to see the first traces of dust kicked up by Hensley’s army.

They were moving slowly, but they were moving. It took three hours for the army to come into view. Leading the forces were over a dozen armored suits. They had far fewer walkers than the last time John had seen them. It seems the Harc’otti had finally done something good for a change and winnowed down the enemy's walkers to three.

But there were far more ground forces than John had seen. The man stated that only three hundred came with them. But there had to be at least three hundred people on foot. And behind all that came something new.

The four-legged automaton was shorter than the walkers, but not by much. It was also twice as wide as a carriage, and twice as long. The boxy-looking automaton also sported a cannon on the front and one on each side. If John had to guess, it also had one in the rear. Being the most protected, that had to be where Vernon was located.

The question was, how to get near it? The cannons weren’t nearly as large as the ones on the airship, but they were larger than the swivel cannon that Ember Creek had. If John had to guess, they were probably ten-pounders.

It seemed Travis wasn’t the only one with the idea to mount a cannon on an automaton. He studied the contraption as the army grew closer. If it had the same weaknesses as the walker, it should be easy to disable, even from a distance.

His gaze dropped to the leg joints, but he frowned. The exposed gears he saw on every single other walker were covered by a metal plate attached to the top of the leg. There looked to be a gap at the bottom where the leg moved back and forth, but that would require someone to get close enough to fire up into it. That wasn’t going to happen.

The feet also appeared wider, making trying to trip it with one of the pitfalls unlikely. That left fire. The wooden top looked to be made of some much darker wood. John would bet the wood was treated to resist fire somehow. It would still burn, but he needed something that would stick and burn for an extended time to make that happen. He didn’t have anything like that handy.

“The hard way it is,” he grunted as he leveled his rifle.

The steam-powered suits fired first. Each had a large barrel rifle, instead of the steam cannons that the Harc’otti had used.

The rounds tore into the buildings and sent wood flying, but there were no screams of pain. That’s because everyone had moved back from the first sets of houses.

John’s first shot went straight into the little window on one of the walkers where the driver peaked out.

The walker jerked sideways so hard the leg buckled underneath it and it crashed to the ground with a resounding boom.

More shots riddled the buildings, but they hadn’t yet located him. He took careful aim and fired at the second walker. The machine bobbed back and forth erratically but soon stabilized. He tsked. The walker he shot at rotated away from him, making it impossible to shoot into the little gap.

The third walker was beginning to turn as well, but John fired into the opening before it could turn away. When nothing happened, he grew annoyed, but then the walker just kept turning.

Two out of three wasn’t bad, and he had to quickly abandon his roof as the suits started firing his way.

He hurried down the ladder and ran out the back, where Seline and Wyatt were waiting. “You’re up. I took two walkers out. The third is turned away. But you don’t have much time before the suits realize you’re coming. Watch out for the big four-legged walker to the rear, it’s got some large cannons on it.”

They both thanked him and hurried off on the ostriches.

If they came in from the sides, they should be able to take down the walker.

He didn’t have time to worry about that as he scrambled to find another elevated position to fire from. He was crossing over toward the north end of town when he heard shouting and then the rotary going off. He skidded to a halt and ran toward the bridge. The only reason for the rotary to fire over here was if the Harc’otti were attacking.

“Dammit!” he cursed. They attacked Hensley and his people, why would they also pick now to assault the town?”

More shouting, more screaming, and the sound of pneuma rifles firing punctuated the air as John ran into a scene of chaos as the folks guarding the bridge did their best to hold back a flood of Harc’otti screaming and shouting as they pushed their way into the chokepoint that was the bridge.

John almost stopped to gape at the scene. There had to be hundreds of the deranged barbarians just throwing themselves into the gun’s fire.

He started firing into the crowd as he moved closer. None of the warriors had ranged weapons, they all had either spears or hatchets, and their faces were painted ash grey, instead of the normal white with blue face markings that the warriors normally sported when they weren’t trying to blend in.

There was probably something significant about this change, but John didn’t care to figure it out, he simply fired his rifle into the crowd until it ran out, and then he switched to his revolvers and fired them until his ammo ran dry. The rotary unloaded two more times until the barbarians finally managed to cross the bridge. Their foothold didn’t last long as the locals shot them down before they could get to the gun, but it gave the rest of the ones behind them time to stream across.

“Leave the rotary and run!” John screamed. But he couldn’t be heard over the shouts of dozens of enraged tribesmen.

The three people manning the gun fought back as best they could, but the Harc’otti hacked them to bits with a vicious glee that John had never seen from them before.

John avenged those folks by putting those three monsters down, but he had to backpedal as he shot. The hundred or so Harc’otti racing across the bridge were just too many to deal with.

A pop preceded a scything cluster of lead that cut down a dozen of the warriors. John looked to see Wyatt. The man quickly jumped from his mount and reloaded another canister of grapeshot.

He wasn’t going to make it though. The warriors were bearing down on him. John shot, picking off the ones closest to him as he ran over to cover the man.

Blackwood shoved the canister into the barrel and fired, not even getting back on the thing as he did so. He was about to reload again before John picked him up and tossed him into the saddle. “Go you fool!”

The man looked hesitant, but he turned and hurried down the street. John unloaded the rest of his Pneuma pistol and picked up the fallen weapons from the Harc’otti.

He cut down the first man that came at him, taking a good look at the eyes. They were dilated and bloodshot. He had seen looks like this before on patients in hospitals. These warriors were pumped full of something. But instead of making them docile, it turned them into vicious, single-minded killers. This made them easy to cut down as he slowly retreated but there were so many of them, that he was barely keeping ahead of the slavering faces as they tried to hack at him, uncaring if they cut into their own people by accident.

If he slipped, he was dead. If he tripped, he was dead. All he could do was hope Blackwood got clear, was able to reload, and came back. Going by the increasing sounds of battle coming from the East, he couldn’t rely on that happening.