Chapter Thirty-Two - Running Assault

I woke up to the sound of something sniffing and immediately grabbed my revolver and tensed up. Then I opened my eyes and shifted back just a hair to see over the back of Rusty’s hand.

A dog was sniffing at Rusty’s leg, black back and brown sides. It turned, raised a hindleg, then started marking Rusty as his own.

I sighed and sank back down. Just one of the sled dogs.

Couldn’t fall asleep after that though. Sun was already on its way up, and that little boost of adrenaline had jolted me out of sleep and my dreams of striking it rich and spending all that gold on a couple of nice hours at one of those fancy parlours in a big city. Getting my back rubbed by some nice men and...

I shook my head to get my thoughts on straight, then with a sigh, shoved myself out of my bed.

Morning brought with it some normal things. Warming up a small fire with the leftover wood to heat up some breakfast and chatting with a wide-awake and grinning Bertrand about the area. For all that he didn’t venture here often, he did seem to know his way around.

“Been to Daggerwren, then?” he asked.

“No more than once a year,” I said. “Have some friends there. Or, at least folk I know more than in passing. Some that moved out of Galenook when the going got tougher than most would care for.”

“Shame that,” the dwarf said. “Give us some decades more, and maybe we’ll get the worse of the weather to calm down a little. Maybe even get seasons to return.”

“Don’t we have seasons?” Clin asked.

I laughed. “Summer, second summer, cooler summer, and summer but-with-more-storms,” I said, naming all four seasons.

Bertrand shook his head. He looked a little sad, but he didn’t shy from laughing. “Fair, fair. That little bit of variation means there’s hope still.” He set his now emptied bowl aside and stood. “Well, time to give the dogs their fill, then latch them up. We all have a long path ahead of us.”

I nodded to him. “You do that, Greenie.” I finished my breakfast while the dwarf fed his dogs, then pet and rubbed and cajoled them to the sled where he locked each one into place. I’d seen that kind of dog in the wild tear a goblin apart. It was strange to see them so tame here.

“Well,” the dwarf said as I stood, my meal complete. Clin scooped up the last of his own, his elven decorum going to the wayside as he sensed things moving. “I’m going to be off now. May we both live to see the world green again.”

“Good luck out there. I’ve never been one for your sort of work, but I wish you well all the same.”

“Thank you, young miss, and you too, elven miss.” He waved, then snapped the reins on his sled. “Away, boys!”

We watched him go, sled rumbling and jingling with the crash of glass-on-glass as he took off.

“Did he call me a miss?” Clin asked.

“Well, you do lack a proper, manly beard,” I said.

The elf touched his face. “I don’t look like a woman,” he said.

“Of course not,” I said. “Manliest elf I’ve ever seen. Now, do you need a hand back into Rusty? I wouldn’t want your delicate hands to get dirty.”

“I am not womanly,” he repeated.

“Never said otherwise,” I replied. I turned my back to him. Always had a bit of a hard time keeping a straight face when holding back a laugh. “Prettiest boy I ever saw. Why, if I was into women, I might even consider ravishing you.”

“What... don’t mock me,” Clin said.

“Get in the mech, boy.”

Rusty purred to life, and after I made sure everything was set for a long day’s trek and that we wouldn’t have things flying around the cabin after a trip, I connected myself to the mech and waited for the vertigo to settle. And then we were off.

“Bit of a strange detour last night,” Clin said. “You trust the dwarves that much?”

“Dwarves? Nah, not as far as I could throw them. They’re too clever by half and hold their beer in too well. But that guy was a greenie. They make a point of not interfering with anyone’s business, and what they’re doing is too helpful for everyone to bother interfering. They pay fair for anything, and they keep to their own business. Even the young orcs know to leave them be.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen them past the Drywall.”

“Sounds like the world past the wall doesn’t need curing. This place though? We need it, and we need it bad.”

I upped the cooling a notch as we carried on, and kept an eye on my gauges. So far, Rusty was toughing along on just the nomad fixes, but I’d feel more comfortable about things with a proper look-over by a proper mechanic.

Time enough for that in Daggerwren. I had an old friend I’d be meeting there who was a deft mechanic. Might ever be able to help with my Clin problem.

I was hoping for a nice, quiet trip back.

So of course, by mid-afternoon I saw my luck taking a turn for the worse.

“Shit,” I said. “Do you hear that?”

We were still some ways from Daggerwren. We’d be getting there just before nightfall, or otherwise in the next morning.

No reason for me to be hearing the rumble of another mecha or two over Rusty’s own engines.

“Trouble?” Clin asked.

“Maybe,” I said. “Whatever it is, it’s behind us, which poses something of a problem.”

“This is why my habitation units are so popular with the military, you know?” Clin said.

“That’s awful nice, but we don’t have anything of the sort right now, and--”

I cut myself off as a god-awful clang reverberated against Rusty’s back, the sound as if we were sitting in the middle of a massive bell as it tolled.

“What was that!” the elf shouted.

“Gunshot, small caliber,” I replied a bit terse.

I turned Rusty’s head from side to side, getting the lay of the land even as I sped up. I’d made a few mistakes. Walking farther away from the hills and outcrops to the north and deeper into the valley where the terrain was nicer was the first. It meant less cover, less places to hide. Made it harder to track us, but that didn’t matter if whatever we were up against was in shooting range already.

“Gonna circle around that hill over there, try to see the fidiots shooting at us with our own two eyes.”

“Got it,” Clin said as he hung on. “What can I do?”

“Sit down and let me work.”

If it was a gnomish patrol, what would I do? The question bothered me as I pressed Rusty into moving faster. One mech I might be able to take on, maybe, if I had cover and such. But patrols weren’t made of one mech on its own.

Surrender then, and hope I’d get to live another day.

I hissed as I saw a gout of sand puff up a ways ahead. A missed shot, still small-arms. A warning shot?

The terrain started to dip a little as we entered a sandy valley, the sides nearest us hidden enough from the wind that scraggly bushes were hanging on, and the bottom had some of that tough yellow grass that sprouted up wherever there was deep water to be had.

What I thought was a hill was really more of a bump around which the land dipped, with some loose sand collecting atop it. It would do.

I had to slow down on the slanted terrain, lest I send us both tumbling down, but I made it to the hill in good enough time.

Reaching my Rusty’s shoulder, I grabbed onto my lever-action rifle and swung it over and around even as I stopped and turned.

It took a second for what I was seeing to register.

Goblins.

Some dozen of them, clinging onto a pair of mechs and rushing our way, arms swinging with warcries. One of them was standing atop the head of one mech, little dick out for the world to see as he pissed in our general direction. A goblin insult, from what I understood.

“What in the god damn,” I muttered.

“Do you see them? What is it?”

“Goblins. It’s goblins.” Two shamans, working together. Uncommon, but not unheard of. Two of them might be enough to bolster their confidence into thinking they could take on a bigger mech.

Hell, I was afraid that they might just be right.

“Hang on, this is gonna be interesting.”