The General's Legacy

Chapter Nine: Homecoming and Failure (part 1)

The Bandit Country Operators, they only know how to look after cargo. She had to admit they were good at that. They were here and alive, after proving too tempting a target for bandits to ignore for kidnapping and (she hoped) ransom demands. There were only fifteen operators once they had left Norvale. Not the same deterrent as forty soldiers on her trip there. Jaygee had bragged one of his men was worth more than six soldiers. They believed it too. Daylight was fading on their first day of travel as rolling hills rose about the road before it lead to the great plain. Julia and Pico had looked out of the carriage starting to fear the dark as the men stopped talking. Worse than that, they could only see six out of the fifteen with them and they had crossbows out and loaded. Jaygee rode close, winked at them and closed the sliding shutters over the carriage windows. Iron shutters. Infuriating man. The window on the other side closed with a clanked. The carriage had an odd smell to it. The air inside felt damp. Sounds echoed in the enclosed space. The walls were made of iron. It turned out there was a reason why the wheels were covered with metal plates. The reason announced itself with a sudden dull thud and a momentary flexing of the metal walls. A second thud on the other side. The carriage stopped. Julia and Pico had looked at each other, eyes wide in alarm. It sounded like they were under attack. They heard barked orders, men took cover behind the carriage and the solid wheels. They could hear them scrabbling and thumping about under the carriage floor. Then the twang and clank of crossbow fire started.
Thuds on the carriage walls, smaller this time and much more of them as if someone had thrown a bucket of rocks at the carriage. There was a battle going on around them and they were blind in a metal box. The cargo was safe for now. Julia had wished they were in the concert hall playing for all her life was worth. Or out on a hilltop under a tree somewhere watching waterfalls. Pico might have preferred to be browsing the markets in Tranmure or walking in the hot house with sunlight streaming through every pane of glass. Anywhere but in a claustrophobic coffin on wheels with no room to do anything but cling to each other.
There were shouts of alarm, in the Nearhon language and further away from the carriage. The thudding ceased, replaced by the dying wails of whoever it was out there in the hills.
Julia reached for the shutters then snapped her hand back as if scalded by a hot kettle. Jaygee could put on a menacing glare if they were stepping outside the lines he drew for his cargo to stay in. The man apparently liked to be in control and was used to having it. When he gave orders to his men, he never looked up, knowing they were being carried out.
Then the shutters did open.
"You can come out now. Get some air."
Julia opened the carriage door and stepped into the aftermath of a small a war. They were spared the sight of dead bodies close up. They could be seen, heaps of makeshift armour on the crests of the hills. On the same hilltops, standing out against the darkening sky stood giant crossbows mounted on wooden tripods.
"We've been trying to nail this bunch for months," Jaygee declared, a broad grin on his face glinting with the gold of his teeth.
He barked some more orders and the formerly 'missing' operators began pulling the bodies down to the road and dismantling the crossbows.
Jay had picked up what looked like a giant crossbow bolt with a thin rope tied on one end. Then he pointed out the impact point on the carriage where the oversized bolt had punched a hole in the wood, only to be turned back by the iron plate.
Julia stared at the tip of the bolt.
Around the shores of the great plain lake in Plain Lake City men would sit for hours on the bank staring into the water with thin fishing poles propped up by their side. Every once in a while, one would whip back his pole to see if a fish had taken the bait. She would watch them work the hook out of a fish's mouth before dumping it into a keep net. Then they would hold the hook up, dig into a wriggling mass in a box plucking out a maggot to impale on the barbed hook.
Just like the barbed tip of the oversized crossbow bolt, intended to snag inside a carriage or cart so it could be hauled to a halt.
Julia had shivered, feeling like something small and wriggly just pulled out of a box.
Jay had given orders to make camp.
Insufferable man.