SLOWLY THE VILLAGERS CAME out from the darkness of the buildings and into the square. They told stories of samurai raids. Vicious attacks.

A woman’s eyes pleaded up at the five men, all in samurai garb. “They took all of our crops.”

And an older woman said, “They waited until now. Until harvest. Now they will return and take everything we have, all over again.”

A man pushed forward, “They will leave us to starve.”

Carter said, “We won’t let that happen.” He looked around at the group, then back to the huddling crowd of villagers. “We will stop them.”

Joel smiled as he watched the light in Carter’s face. Quietly he said, “You don’t even know how many of them there are.”

Carter’s eyes flicked side to side. Then he cleared his throat. “It doesn‘t matter. We are warriors.” He stood tall, “We will save your village.”

Joel looked at him, wondering. Does he think we’ll have multiple lives, that if we get killed, we’ll magically regenerate? Carter smiled back at him, full of confidence. Joel thought, He’s swept up in the game.

“There are waves of archers,” the old man said, “And there are horsemen. Maybe fifty.”

Ben’s eyes were wide. “Is that all?”

The villagers looked down as their heads shook. It was Kiko who piped up, “No. They bring also the army of the dead.”

“Oh,” Carter said. “You almost had me worried there for a moment.”

Joel asked which of the villagers had archery skills. He told Ben, Carter, and Molson to get them armed and prepared.

“Wait,” Carter said, “Are you in charge now?”

Joel’s eye narrowed but he bit his lip. He didn’t want to be arguing. Especially not in front of the villagers. They needed confidence in their rescuers. After all, he was going to tell them to risk their lives.

“Do you know what comes next, Carter?” He spoke quietly.

Carter was silent. Joel kept his voice even. but he chose his phrasing carefully. He said, “Help Ben and Molson.” Carter”s eyes blazed but he did as he was told.

He sent half of the remaining villagers to bring in the harvest. Try to keep everything looking as normal as possible, he commed to the others. He and Hacker took those left to remove panels from the roofs and walls from every possible building. Only from the sides away from the direction of attack.

They left the village looking normal to the bandits, even though it was practically demolished from the back.

“They will attack with burning arrows first. We’ll soak all the panels with water from the stream. We’ll need fence posts to prop the panels up as shields. Our archers, commanded by Ben, Carter, and Molson, will fire from behind and between the shields.”

Carter jeered, “What will you two be doing while we’re having all the fun?”

“We’ll take off wide. We’ll go either side of where the enemy archers make their firing line. We’ll come in from the sides and kill them.”

Carter nodded. “Well, props to that. That’s a ballsy move.”

The shields were laid flat on the floor until the attack began, to make the village appear unprepared. All those working in the fields were told, as soon as an attack begins, they were firefighters. Their orders were to run to fill buckets from the stream. Put out the fires from burning arrows.

They and the villagers waited all day for the attack. When the sun was starting to go down, over the high hills and mountains in front of the village. Joel cursed, “I should have realized. Of course the bandits would wait for the sun to be straight in our eyes.”

Waiting was a strain.

The stillness, not moving but staying ready, gave him cramps in the backs his legs.

It must be harder on the archers, though, he thought.

He knew the enemy would wait. The moment was theirs to choose The sun was on their side.

The red disc boiled in the streaking sky as it sank below the mountain ridge. When it was a third gone, the dazzle was painful.

Tiny black streaks were hard to see in the distance. Longbow archers had let off a blanket of deadly darts from the bottom of the hill. They flew from a quarter mile away. They arced like a slow mist. Half of them trailed smoke. They seemed to hang, high in the air.

Everybody pulled to get the shields up. Then a rattle of thuds. The shafts rained hard into the shields. Villagers ran with buckets. Fires lit all around.

Joel saw Carter struggling to hold a shield. He hadn’t got it propped up. His hand kept grabbing and letting go. His face in glowed red in the light of the spreading fires. Joel figured his glove wasn’t fully connected.

He pulled up his visor as he ran to Carter.

His eyes were slow to adjust to the darkness. As fast as he could, he pulled Carter’s glove. The plugs were only halfway connected. He tried to shove the plug into place. Carter shook and resisted. Naturally.

Something in the room was odd, out of place. In the jarring scene of the men in their helmets, black suits and white exoframes, someone didn’t fit. A chill like a trickle of ice-water dribbled down Joel’s spine.

Another person, not one of the group, stood nearby in the shadows. Tall and gaunt with sunken eyes, beside him was a large trolley with rows of winking and flashing lights. The figure appeared to be attached to the trolley by tubes and cables.

The sunken eyes glowered at Joel.

“You have a burning village to save.” And he waved a hand.

Joel recognized the sardonic British inflection. A tilt his chin and a small stretch of his eyebrow matched the sarcastic tone. He knew. Then.

Blinking and shaking his head, he turned his attention back to Carter’s kit. He convinced himself that he’d forgotten about the encounter. Tat it never really happened. After one last struggle with Carter and his glove, Joel snapped his visor back down into place.

A burning arrow flew at him. He had to doge fast. It missed his knee by inches.

Quickly Joel stamped out the flames from the arrow before they spread. The last of the shields were up. The archers from the village shot waves of arrows back at the attackers. Ben, Molson, and Carter lead and directed the defensive barrage.

When Joel could see and hear the virtual world properly, he heard Carter saying, “I didn’t think that was you at first.”

Joel shook his head, “It’s okay.”

“Hey,” Carter frowned and grabbed his arm, “Something’s happened. Are you alright?”

“Sure.” Dodging another arrow, “It’s nothing. Come on, we’ve got a village to save.”

Carter grinned, “Nothing to it.”

Joel told him, “There’s going to be some kind of a quest as a part of this, too.”

Carter nodded. “You called them all this far.”

If he didn’t know better, Joel would have thought that Carter was starting to show him respect.

~~

As they made their way out to the edges of the woods, Hacker and Joel kept in com contact. Joel had Hacker’s view in a corner of his visor. They went wide, out of opposite sides of the village. Joel kept low, hearing the lethal swish of the arrows, watching them fly toward the village.

Waves of arrows shot out in regular salvos, upward from the edge of the woods.

Joel tried to read where in the wood they were coming from. As he crept into the cover of the trees, sound became softer and muffled. It became darker as he made his way deeper.

On Hacker’s cam he saw the dark woods and a clearing ahead. A flight of burning arrows shot out of the clearing. Joel saw the smoke trails in front of him. He still couldn’t see the archers, though. He couldn’t even locate exactly where they were.

A grotesque warrior’s mask jumped right in front of his face. The samurai was huge. Joel saw the glint of a vicious curved blade. He jumped to the side. He hadn’t time to get his own knives out.

A message appeared from Hacker. He ignored it. there wasn’t time to stop and read a line. All he caught was the word ‘ninja.’ He launched himself at the bandit’s head.

He was too big and too strong for Joel to bring him down. Joel’s arm wrapped around the warrior’s eyes, but the weight of his whole body was hardly enough to hold down the man’s arm with the knife.

When the other arm came around, Joel twisted as fast as he could. As he sprang away, he tried to pull the big knife with him. It didn’t work. The man came after him. Fast. All Joel could do was to swing up his foot in a high arc.

He caught the man hard in the ear. It seemed to make no difference to him. But a message on the visor told Joel,

Skills Acquired: Ninja skills + 10

Joel jumped at the bandit’s neck. His thighs scissored the man’s head and he twisted hard. One bandit fell in the woods.

Another two bandits appeared in front of him. He leaped in the air. In one move and almost in slow motion, he cut the throat of one and skewered the other between the eyes. Two more loomed up. He stabbed one through the heart and opened the other with the dagger, from his chest straight down to his pelvis.

Next there were four bandits. Joel jumped and spun in the middle of them, decapitating all four. When he landed, crouched low, he saw the position where the archers were shooting from.

Only there were no archers. He saw the same thing on Hacker’s cam, too. A dozen children scurried to load arrows into four wooden frames. Each frame had six bows. They were wound back by one strongman. When the arrows were all in place, the strongman wound back a handle to draw all six bowstrings.

One man stood by the nearest machine. Huge like a sumo wrestler. Bald but with a long black ponytail and mustache. He had heavy shoulder pads but was was stripped to the waist. He wore wide, leather chaps and heavy boots.

Joel understood. The man raised, or lowered the archery mechanisms to aim. The children ran along to light all of the arrows, and the man aiming shot off all the machines. One after another in fast succession. Twenty-four bows each shot burning arrows into the air and at the village defences.

Tireless bows and no archery skill required.

Joel commed to Hacker, I’ll get the guy in charge. You start on the strongmen.

With his ninja skill, Joel dived low at the aimer, cutting both his Achilies tendons as he passed. The man pulled an ax from his belt and swung it as he fell. Joel swatted it aside as he jumped to land with the side of his foot on the fallen man’s windpipe.

Hacker had killed one of the strongmen. Joel took the ax from the aimer and slung it straight into the face of the next, and they knifed the other two, one each.

That left only the children.