Chapter CXV – For they shall have a defense without mercy.

12th of Autumn 5859
Imperial Highway №04-030, Casamonu

It was quite the stressful situation for the poor sods in the wagon fort: nobody found it fun to be in the middle of the fort while a horde of horse archers turned the wagons into porcupines with all the arrows that they shot. The fort provided safety, but it also acted as a prison now that they couldn’t get out without joining the wagons in becoming like porcupines.

Billy was running around like a headless chicken, cowering behind a wagon, getting scared of the sound of arrows hitting wood, and then running to another wagon and so on and so forth as the cycle repeated.

“What the hell are you doing man?!” Shakira was following behind him, mostly because she had nothing else to do in particular. The enormous sword on her back clanged and weighed her down as she crouched down alongside him.

“It’s the end! We’re all gonna die!” shouted Billy, only to receive a firm poke to his side with the handle of Shakira’s sword “Ow, what was that for?!”

“You’re gonna die by my hand if you keep shouting right in my ear!” shouted Shakira. Everyone else around her was shouting as well, so she couldn’t help but shout in response to get herself heard

“Sorry!” replied Billy with a shout, receiving another blunt poke “Ow, ow, ow…”

“This isn’t my first-time getting projectiles rained down one me. Calm down and think of what to do.” Shakira looked around her. There wasn’t much to do, now that she thought about it. Suddenly, she heard a loud thud on the other side of the wagon they were hiding behind. The world lit up, and suddenly they were hiding behind a wagon on fire. Billy screamed like a girl and Shakira screamed like a boy as they jumped away from the fire. The night had become day and the day had become hell. Now the soldiers could see the faces of their enemy and their movements. The horse archers were circling around the fort in a dizzying manner, taking shots at the fort and moving fast to avoid taking shots at their own bodies. There were a few brave men on the wagon forts taking pot shots towards the cavalry. A few had gone limp with an arrow stuck in their chest, others had just fainted from shock, and the rest were doing a Billy by running around the place in panic. “Uhm… Yeah, we’re screwed.”

“Thanks for the help, milady.” Billy got up to his two feet. It felt like the grim reaper had finally come to take him after his lively escape from the Siege of Casamonu. The horse archers circled around them. The fire circled around them. The stars in the sky suddenly circled around them. Suddenly, more cavalry. “I-It seems that the nomads want to make sure that we’re dead.”

As if to extend an objection to Billy’s words, the new group of nomads began riding in circles not around the camp but right next to the other group of nomads. Billy thought that maybe that bottle of rectified spirits had done permanent damage to his vision and that he was seeing double, but Shakira pointing towards the cavalry and screaming “Who are these guys?!” let him know that his vision was doing fine.

“I don’t know. Allies? They all have the same type of gear…” He could only distinguish the two sides from one of them having tabards and the other not having them.

“I didn’t know the guys over at Casamonu had cavalry.” Shakira grabbed her sword tight “Well, if we have help, then we too should help the help.”

“…I got what you’re trying to say, but the wording is nonsensical. Whatever.” As Billy had noticed in the respite that they had finally gotten, the others had gotten to extinguishing the wagon fort now that the attackers were distracted. The barrels of water and booze were being dumped on the burning cart in an attempt to stop the fire. “I’m making myself comfortable here. Our job is to build a road, not to repel a full-on cavalry raid.”

“Fair enough.” Shakira left her sword to grab four buckets of whatever, Billy followed by struggling to carry one, and they followed the conga line of soldiers working hard to defeat the fire. They were safe as the nomads were busy fighting each other and they didn’t really care much about the unhorsed losers who were waddling on their own two feet. The soldiers waiting in line to put out the fire watched the cavalry battle as if it was a theater show, though their view was obstructed as the fire was put out and the night came back once more. It seemed that the darkness seemed to extinguish the combat as well: the enemy cavalrymen retreated out into the woods, leaving their dead and injured behind which presented a horrifying scene as the dying screams of men ringing out from the dark wasn’t particularly pleasant to hear. The soldiers got to tending the wounded and capturing any prisoners, while the nomads dismounted from their horses. One of them, who had a particularly fancy helmet with a plume on it, shouted “Who is your commander?”

The soldiers of the National Guard looked at each other to see who’d get stuck with telling the nomads of the situation. The gazes passed and passed, until the last guy to get gazed at had to step forward. Billy hailed the fancy-plume nomad “Our commander is in Casamonu right now. We’re working on road construction right now, so I guess our foreman is the closest thing we’ve got.”

“That’s an impressive fort for a bunch of construction workers. You’d have been dead out in the open field” replied the plume man. “We’ll inform your commander back in the city then. She said that we should settle around here for a while, so we’ll be your neighbors.”

“Glad to know that we have some people who know how to ride horses around us.” Billy did feel a bit apprehensive considering that these guys, at least in his uncultured eyes, looked the same as the guys as the who were shooting at them a minute ago. The nomads separated from the soldiers to go pitch their own tents right next to the wagon fort. As it had happened before, the two camps began mingling with each other almost immediately. The denizens of the wagon fort had brought out their finest hardtack and booze to exchange for small bales of wool from the nomads. The sheep that Brown loved so much had huddled around one of the tents, joined by goats who the nomads prized for their wool which was rumored to be softer than the clouds in the sky. The people who had actually climbed high enough up on Mount Curry to touch the clouds would say that clouds weren’t solid enough to be soft, but those people were also pedantic losers that nobody cared to listen to.

As the food and booze came out to celebrate a victory, Billy and Shakira sat down to finally have a rest. For some reason, a strange sort of attraction perhaps that only two people who survived a battle together can experience, the two had stuck together despite having been strangers a few hours ago.

“Cheers!” Billy raised his mug and clanked it together with his comrade-in-arms’. The beer was lukewarm, but as Billy blurted out after scrunching his face up from the taste “It’s nice to be alive, eh?”

“It’d be nicer with some cold drinks, but adventurers can’t be choosers.” Shakira took a sip. It tasted like… well, if she was to be blunt, piss. “Okay, maybe I can be a chooser.” She dumped the contents of the cup into the ground.

“Ah, I could have had your portion…” Billy lamented the perfectly good drink being wasted.

“Your taste buds are as rotten as your social skills, buddy” replied Shakira. She sufficed with a sip of water from the flask on her waist.

“You say so, yet you’re still talking to me. How come?”

“Your face scrunches up like you’ve been kicked in the shin, but you’re still drinking. Same thing.”

Under the countless stars that decorated the sky, the night went on like so. From those lowly adventurers who ventured to-and-fro, to the emancipated slaves who breathed free air, to the nomads who didn’t recognize rooves, the stars smiled on them all equally.