Day 15 – The Farmer
Tiller crossed the white with nothing but trepidation. In fact, that wasn’t quite accurate. He crossed the white with nothing but trepidation and conversation. So much conversation.
“I do say, old boy, I do say, it’s a chance for a fresh start. I always fancied I’d make a dashing cut with a hoe in hand. Not the sort of hoe you’re used to seeing in my hand at that! Wot! Jolly good!”
Tiller cast a glance at Norris. “But… you’re an assassin… it’s literally there on your arm…”
Norris waved the thought away. “Oh, pish and posh on that. Working on poor Theodric’s memorial, my hands in the dirt, an honest day’s effort… old boy, it felt right! It felt like I was being summoned back to Mother Earth!”
Tiller walked on. The island their rough map was guiding them to was growing closer. He cast Norris a sidelong glance. “Listen, you’ve just been through a pretty big trauma, losing your brother like that… people can make hasty decisions. You guys seemed to really have, you know, a passion for assassinating people.”
“Oh, indeed. Without doubt. But the sun sets on every day and I fear my time with a dagger in hand may have passed. What is there to that craft when one must trudge forth in solitude? Assassination was not my thing, old boy. I say, it was our thing. Two brothers against the world, fighting for what was right.”
Tiller’s brow twitched. He didn’t utter the observation that they murdered for pay. “Well… um… just don’t be too hasty. Play with the idea, sure, but you were kind of put on this earth to kill people.”
“Oh, old sport. Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail!”
Tiller turned, startled. “What did you say?”
“Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail! Wot wot! Rather good, isn’t it.”
Tiller stuttered, “That’s Ralph Waldo Emerson. I had a plaque with that in my office. How in the heck could you know that one?”
Norris gave him a funny look. “My dear sir, I have never heard of Ralph Waldo Whatsit, but I can tell you that that was an original Norris! Ohoh!”
Tiller didn’t respond. He just walked on, thinking.
As they neared the island their conversation ceased. Norris may have been contemplating a career change for the worse, but he was still a professional. His movements became slayer and stealthier, he guided Tiller to move as quietly as possible. Barely audibly, he hissed, “I say, it’s the greatest bother, crossing the white when enemies lie ahead. Anyone looking sees you coming. But that’s a rather spacious-looking assembly of landscape. Lot of angles to be looking out for a single defender. Oh, and I say, there are the rest of our impetuous band!”
Clustered at the edge of the landform, crouching low, was an assembly of figures. Norris and Tiller ran quickly and quietly toward them, keeping low.
Cutter and Lita were there. Close to them was a female in the most inappropriate but fantastically revealing armor Tiller could have imagined. A steel bikini was nearly a more accurate description. He couldn’t see her face, but based on her shape she was likely an elf. There was a big Bufo with an eye patch, an ogre, a dwarf laden with a myriad of contraptions, a goblin wearing robes but also sporting a breastplate and pauldrons, and the compulsory elven archer.
When they reached him Cutter flashed a grin. Whispering, he said, “How’s this for a posse! It’s like a group raid! This is really cool.”
Tiller glanced nervously toward the landform. “Should we be talking?”
Cutter dismissed his concern. “Oh, yeah. Nothing to worry about. Huntress had a peek and the bastard’s asleep. Reader’s tied to a tree next to him. We nearly just went for it, but we thought this might be the right spot for your Goblin Assassin.”
Norris nodded and bowed.
Cutter said, “Right, so here are the lads. Huntress is the babe with the helmet, Flurb is the Bufo with the big axe, Thunk is the ogre—I think he’s from a different family to our, um, friends, so I think it means a slightly different naming scheme. This guy here piled up with the steampunk arsenal is Seamus, the warmage goblin is Richard. I know, right, Richard and Seamus! I guess this isn’t . And the Legolas-looking bastard is called River. I asked him if I could call him Legolas and he said no.”
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Tiller scanned the band. Barring Lita they were all stone-banded. “I’m honestly impressed. I didn’t think you’d be able to put a crew like this together. Not with the risks involved. Wait, you did tell them what we’re up against…”
Cutter looked wounded. “Of course I did! What do you take me for! No, if you’re wondering how I got them to come along… let’s just say it was expensive.” Then low, more to himself, he muttered, “Depending on the sigil the fucker drops it might be very expensive…”
Tiller said, “Okay… so, what now?”
Huntress spoke. Her voice was husky but distorted by her helmet. “We move fast before he has a chance to wake up. The assassin and me will get in close. We’ll try to attack him while he sleeps. In the meantime the rest of you take up positions. There’s a small lake in the clearing so you’ll come from both sides, in two groups. Don’t get too close until we make our move. None of you have stealth sigils and we don’t want to lose our advantage.”
Tiller swallowed hard. He’d really only partaken in violence twice since he’d arrived. Once had resulted in providence saving him from a raptor… the second had been providence, in the form of Cutter, saving him from Bonk. He realized uncomfortably that he hadn’t acquitted himself very well so far.
Cutter whispered. “And we’ve been talking about you. Your earth sigil is the business. You can stay back with Legola—uh, with River, and use the Earth Sigil to either smash him or put up cover for the rest of us.”
Tiller breathed a little easier. “I… I could do that…”
Cutter patted his shoulder. “It’s okay, pal. With a crew like this there’s no way you’ll need to get up close and personal with that shovel.”
Tiller watched from the tree line. He could see the Finality soldier. He’d missed him at first, only seeing a jumble of black robes, like a heap of discarded cloth. He could see Reader as well. The human seemed alert, poised. It would make sense for the man to be on edge, given his circumstance. But there was something about his position that made him seem almost ready for something. A staff was propped against another tree which Tiller assumed belonged to the latest human discovered on Scape.
Tiller stood with River. The ogre and Cutter completed their unit. Two up-close hitters and two ranged, counting his earth sigil as a ranged attack, distance combatants. The opposite tree line was supposed to be hiding the Bufo, the dwarf, and the warmage goblin. Bufo was of prodigious girth and bore a sigil called, almost too succinctly, Tank. Lita had gone with them as well. His clay sigil meant that he was the weakest of the fighters, but his near indestructibility promised protection for their ranged fighters. The warmage was clearly going to be hurling spells. Tiller understood that the dwarf’s class was engineer. He wielded a selection of tools that operated remotely or fired projectiles and so he was also best suited to the back ranks.
Tiller peered at the opposite tree line but could discern no trace whatsoever of the other unit. This, he considered, was probably a good thing. They were supposed to be concealed.
So they waited.
And they waited.
The time crawled forward. Tiller had a sense that it was the tension that stretched the moments so far. He felt like an elastic band pulled too taut. He felt like he would snap if the pressure wasn’t eased.
There was no forewarning of the action. He stared at the slumped heap of robes. He watched, acutely aware that at any moment he would see Huntress or Norris appear behind it. But he missed it. Rather, they seemed to materialize. One second they weren’t there, the next Norris was on top of the heap of robes, his dagger plunging down, then rising, plunging again, in a rapid and honestly horrifying expression of frantic violence. Stab, stab, stab, stab.
Huntress was in motion as well, her sword flashing from the other side of the robes, cutting savagely.
A curse, Norris’s voice: “A skeleton! Poison is useless!”
Simultaneous with the cry, the robes billowed with motion. Norris and Huntress were sent flying. They rolled on the sandy ground, cast aside with ease by the motions of the Finality soldier.
Tiller was frozen. It had all happened in heartbeats. The dread that had been growing blossomed into true fear. Death might be the outcome of what came next. This was supposed to be an iron-banded fighter.
Tiller may have frozen, but the others did not. With a cry there was motion all around him. Cutter racing forward, glaive held high, maniacal pleasure seizing his face. Thunk, lumbering behind him, club raised. River was up, loosing arrows beside Tiller. He could hear the buzz of their passing, feel the wind whipping at his ear.
From the far side of the clearing the other four charged as well. A black sphere sailed through the air from the dwarf, a bolt of lightning cracked from the goblin’s staff.
Cutter roared, “No bombs! It’s a fucked rescue mission!”
Arrows perforated the cloak of the dark figure. Lightning struck it, setting the robes ablaze. The bomb landed in the sand by its feet. The little black bomb actually had a fuse, sizzling away, as though Wile E. Coyote was making war here.
The Finality soldier wheeled at the other group. It cast its shredded, burning cloak aside. It revealed a horror.
The being was nothing but bones. The bones of something large and broad, like an ogre. Its eye sockets were black, unnaturally black, with little red flames burning in the depths. It bore armor, heavy slabs of plate, massive domed pauldrons, spikes and gothic angles everywhere. In one hand it held a terrible-looking mace and chain.
In the other hand it held fire.
It threw the fireball at Lita’s unit. It exploded like a miniature sun, and they were all gone.
