Law of Blood- Chapter 3 (Patreon)

Chapter 3- Fortuitous Timing

As my eyes zoomed in on the dust cloud, I saw what looked like a stampede. Instead of buffalos or other grazing animals, it was comprised of what looked like the love child of a lion and a scorpion. There had to be several hundred of them and they were headed straight or a farm.

My first instinct was to start racing for the farmstead. I could see pigs, some crops, a barn, and a nice little farmhouse. Then I saw wagons were already leaving the farmhouse. If I really strained I could see men fighting to slow the stampede but they were simply swallowed up by the mass of bodies.

There was nothing I could do for the farmhouse, maybe I couldn’t even help the wagons, but I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t try. They used to tell us all these cute little sayings about how it takes a special kinda person to run towards danger when everyone else is running away, but that is just bullshit. The last thing I wanted to do was run that way, except that is what a man does. He does what he doesn’t want to do because it’s his job and if he doesn’t do it then you can be damn sure no one else is going to.

I summoned stone horse while shouting to Denne. “We need to see if we can help those wagons.”

“Help them? Help them how? That’s a beast wave. I’ve never seen one before, heard of them, but never seen one.”

“Hopefully it loses some of its momentum when it hits the farm. The wagons have a few minutes head start, near as I can tell. We have to see if we can rescue any of the people or just get the wagons out of the path of the stam.. er beast wave, whatever it’s called.”

“And here I thought signing up to be a deputy would be less risky than fighting as a mercenary,” Denne said, but that didn’t stop him from spurring his horse forward at a gallop.

I had a ton of questions about this so called beast wave but that would all have to wait. I felt I needed to let the girls know what was happening, but also didn’t want to interrupt them or for that matter have one of them end up trying to charge out here to help me. Rava, yeah Rava, she was the best choice. She was the one least likely to be emotional about it.

“Rava, I need to tell you something, but I don’t want you to panic or let the others know until it’s appropriate.”

I could tell she got my message. In that way telepathy was better than a text, but I also sensed hesitation on her part. “Is something wrong?”

“Your son is healthy.”

Her words hadn’t answered my question but I didn’t have time to dig into it now. A thousand different scenarios of panic began to spin through my head, but the hundreds of monsters ahead of me was enough for me to handle at once. My son was just about the most important thing in the world to me but sometimes a man has to know the difference between urgent and important.

“That is great and any other time, I would want to ask you what you aren’t saying, but for now I’m dealing with a beast wave. Hopefully it doesn’t head for the city, but you need to have Daria and Mursha get the city ready. Only tell Josie and Lina if they can handle it, but something tells me they have their own things going on. Above all, no one can come outside the city looking for me. Denne and I are safe.”

“I take it as a compliment that you are telling me. You must think I’m the one with a clear head. I’ll honor your instructions for now, but don’t think this is over. And yes, there is more to talk about but for now, we just need you to get back to us in one piece,” Rava replied.

Again, I wanted to ask her more, but we were almost upon the wagons so I left it at just saying, “Thank you, my love.” Maybe I shouldn’t have said the last part as it elicited a telepathic gasp, but a man says things when facing potential death. No time for holding words back.

When we reached the wagons, they were full of women and children divided between to wagons. I saw an elf driving one wagon, a bunnykin driving the other, and a foxkin sitting next to the elf clutching a baby close to her. The wagons had three and four children in them respectively who matched the race of the woman driving the wagon.

I snorted as I saw a number of household possession. Trust a woman to load up on things while fleeing for their lives. Then I bit down on that sentiment. I had never had to flee my home or start from scratch- even when Sativa sent me to Olimero, I had help.

“Ladies we need to get all of you into one wagon, then I’ll attach it to my stone horse. We need to get out of here. We can replace your belongings but not your lives.”

There was a bit of ruckus when they realized who I was. At least none of them questioned what I was doing. They glanced from me to Denne before the elf stood up. Even in this high pressure situation, she personified the grace that I had come to expect from elves. “Thank Sativa for sending you, Sheriff. We will do what you ask, but can you do anything to save my husband and his farm hands?”

I grimaced. No one wanted to tell a woman, let alone three, that their husband was likely already dead. So, I did something stupid, something driven by emotion. I justified it in my mind as what I would want someone to do for Josie, Lina, or Rava.”

“No promises, Ma’am, but if you work with my deputy here to get you all in one wagon then I’ll do my best.”

I saw the relief written on her face. She held it together even though I suspect she already knew the truth. The bunnykin was openly crying as she pulled her children out of the second wagon. I looked at Denne and tossed him the stone horse pendant that I wore. “This should let you control him. Get them out of here while I check on the men.”

The cacophony of destruction just a couple miles away was overwhelming. As I had hoped the beast wave had crashed against the farm. It actually worked better than I had expected as it seemed to come to a complete stop as they killed every living thing and then destroyed every structure on the farm.

Denne said, “You must be insane. There is no…”

I cut him off, “It comes with the job.”

He shook his head. My sister is gonna kill me if something happens to you. But you’re the boss.”

I nodded in appreciation and then turned to the farm. A last minute thought hit me. “Hey, do you still have Mactosh’s latest version of the shotgun?”

“Yeah, dad hasn’t gotten that new metal you gave him to work, but he has made some improvements. This one likely won’t blow up in your hands, at least till you’ve fired it a few times.”

Then he tossed it to me. It was about two feet long, double barreled as the earlier iterations. The wood stock was well made and shined to a high gloss. The metal was lighter than before, but hopefully Mactosh had taken to heart our discussions about what was necessary for a gun to work. The metal had a strange hue, almost like gold. It didn’t look proper for a gun, but I trusted that Mactosh knew more about metal than I did.

After that Denne tossed me a bandolier with a variety of shells. “The black ones are standard slugs. Red is fire, blue electric, green a poison gas, the gray one I haven’t used yet, and the yellow one is a bunch of tiny bits that explode. The gun may not be ready, but your wife is an absolute terror with alchemistry.”

I caught the bandolier before slipping it on. “Don’t I know it.” Then I raced off towards the house.

As I ran the couple of miles I looked for any signs that any of the men had escaped. My mind also ran over a strange though. The elf had thanked Sativa. It was awfully lucky that Denne and I happened to be out here just now. Was it simply coincidence or was there more to it? That question left me with a second uncomfortable concern. What if any role did Nimeera play in this or was she just a pawn too?

That thought fell away as I hit the edge of the farm. The monsters hadn’t reached this side yet, as they were still killing all the pigs. I didn’t see any men moving and didn’t even hear any screams. The noise of the beasts roaring and the pigs squealing was bad enough. I knelt beside the fence and looked on. None of them had noticed me so far, but that was only going to last so long.

Part of me wanted to engage with these monsters. I could get a better look at them now. They were essentially manticores. I didn’t remember them being on the list in the quest that Sativa had given me but I would check on it when I returned to the office. The one thing I was glad of was that they didn’t have wings. In fantasy books I’d read them described both ways and that would have definitely made it harder.

The smart thing would have been to leave them be. I could simply wait long enough and then report back to the widows about their loss. That just wasn’t who I was. If I had gotten a quest about monsters coming out of the Untamed Lands and now was seeing one only half a dozen miles from Yonderton, I knew this was going to be a problem. Better to start dealing with it now.

At least they were smaller than I had expected. Their bodies were probably on the small side for lions, meaning they likely only weighed three hundred pound for the few males I had seen with their manes. The females couldn’t have been much beyond two hundred pounds. Definitely larger than a mountain lion but not a full African lion either.

Of course they also had the three foot long scorpion tails extending off their back sides. I watched as more than one pig was killed when one of those stingers plunged into their heads. I couldn’t tell if they had venom or were simply being used like spears, but it was safer if I just assumed they were venomous.

I felt my confidence grow as I took stock of the creatures. They were acting ravenous but completely uncontrolled. They would often fight each other over a kill and it looked like they might not move on for a while. Hundreds of pig carcasses must be enough to sate them, at least temporarily. That didn’t tell me what had pushed them out of the Untamed Lands or why so many predators were together.

What little I knew about predators from Earth, made me think this had to be unnatural. Then I saw one get pushed off from a kill. A larger male claimed the kill and roared at the smaller one. It snarled back but then backed down. It was good to know they had some type of pecking order, although I wasn’t sure what I would do with that information yet.

The smaller one started to wander in my direction. It was time to fish or cut bait as my grandfather used to say. I wasn’t ready to run, but also didn’t want it to find me. So, I needed to decide what to do. Despite it being a creature from a horror show, I wasn’t scared. That was one of the differences in Olimero. Animals or in this case, monsters, were not vastly stronger than people. I was willing to bet that I was stronger than it. Not that I planned on letting it get close enough to confirm that.