The Rifleman - Ch.25 (Patreon)

Chapter 25

Besieged

“Up! Up! Up!”

Wesley tumbled out of the alcove he had been asleep in as someone banged the ladle against the giant pot over the fire. 

“Everyone Up!” Peterson yelled as soldiers and civilians alike scrambled to get dressed and ready. “We’re under attack,” Peterson yelled. “If you’re fighting, get out there. If you’re not, get ready to run if we fall.”

“How bad is it?” The alchemist called.

Wesley was surprised to see the man stringing belts, each lined with potions on pull cords. The man then calmly ripped his right hand off, replacing it with a sling.

“What’s the matter, boy?” Ben called. “Never seen a flesh golem before?”

“Nope,” Wesley said numbly. “Did not know that was a thing.”

“Quit talking, get fighting!” Peterson chased them out of the room, running up the stairs behind Split and Mental and out into the sunshine.  

Emerging into the daylight, he saw the mass of creatures approaching over the mostly open plains. It was not a small group at all, and his first thought was that they were never going to hold this place.

Never. 

A massive creature was leading the charge, and for once, Wesley wished he had never taken the Hawk Eye skill. Grey flesh moved over dense muscle as the thing thundered across the stone and sand toward them. A massive horn emerged from the center of the head. Wesley felt like it was aimed directly at him… like personally. 

“Rhino,” Wesley said breathlessly. “ Big, big, BIG, rhino.”

“Split, Wes, shoot that fucking thing down before it makes it to the sands,” Peterson said grimly. 

Wes ran forward with Split and took a firing position, aiming for the eyes… there were no eyes.

“They’ve armored the fucker!” Split growled. “I’m using it!” She called over her shoulder.

“Do it!” Peterson called back.

Wesley gaped as Split stepped to both sides and back, all at once. Three Splits took position around the original. 

“Fuck, that was cool,” Wesley said, trying to pick his jaw off the floor.

“Focus, rook!” Peterson snapped.

Wesley shook himself and focused on the charging Rhino again. 

The eyes were gone, covered by some kind of armor that blended into the skin, so he aimed for the neck instead.

He pulled the trigger twice, seeing two bullets ping off the thick hide. They didn’t even penetrate a little. 

“You need better skills, Wes,” The Splits said with a grin as their arrows began to glow green before they unleashed a barrage.

The arrows flew like bullets themselves from her bows, every one striking the neck… where they left small cuts.

“Wow,” Original Split leaned out of the group. “So, we are all super dead!”

Wes and the Splits kept up their fire, but it didn’t do anything at all. He even tried putting a Jolt into one shot, but it was a complete waste.

Nothing they did slowed the charging creature, and then it swerved to one side, heading for the place the panther had crossed the day before.

The squad scrambled to reposition in time, though they had no real chance of stopping it. 

“If it stops and goes back, we are screwed,” Sara muttered to herself.

It didn’t stop, charging headlong into the sands and immediately starting to sink. It bellowed and struggled, but in the end, the quicksand won.

“I couldn’t even scratch it,” Wesley said as they watched it sink into the sand. 

“High Tier bastard,” Sara patted him on the shoulder. “They can’t have many of those.”

“Good thing it didn’t stop to smell the flowers,” Boone said happily. “Or the blood.”

“Okay, everyone,” Peterson said. “We got one; now we need to get the other couple of hundred.”

“Want me to run for some reinforcements?” Mental asked. 

“They can see this,” Peterson shook his head. “If no one comes, it’s because no one can.”

“You sure they are watching?” Wesley asked, shading his eyes to see the distant town.

“Ernshaw is a lot of things,” Peterson said, “but stupid isn’t one of them. He’ll have people watching all over.”

“So, what do you think the spotters are doing seeing all this lot?” Sara asked.

“Wetting themselves?” Wesley offered. 

They laughed, but the tension was still in the air.

“Enough lollygagging,” Peterson said. “We need to get ready for the rest of them.”

The whole group turned to look at the distant lines of approaching enemies. 

“How?” Wesley asked, feeling anxiety twisting his guts.

How turned out to not be that different from what they did back in his world. They checked their gear, had some food in case they didn’t have time to eat later, and dug in. The sand was not exactly cooperative with that last part, but they managed to dig in a little while piling the sand up in front of them. 

Wesley had the idea of hiding the bunker from enemy eyes, but Peterson and the others just laughed.

In short, if the enemy got close enough to see it, they were already gone or dead. Whichever way it went, the bunker wouldn’t matter much at that point.

The next hour or so passed at a snail’s pace, and Wesley was reminded of the cliche, ‘Hurry up and wait.’ It had always seemed like a funny phrase when he heard it, making him smile a little. 

The reality was so different. It was like having ice water dripped on his spine at random intervals. It wore away at his nerves, making him fidget and shift constantly, unable to relax for even a moment.

One second, the enemy seemed to be moving in slow motion, and the next, they seemed to have jumped closer in the time it took him to blink. The others were talking and joking, but their eyes were just as tense as he was. The only person who was utterly still was Split.

She stood behind some of the barrels they had emptied. Now filled with sand, they would block a decent amount of spells, arrows, and bolts. Wesley had not seen her so much as shift her weight in the last hour.

“Hey, Split,” Wesley whispered.

“What?” Split asked, her eyes still locked on the approaching enemies.

“How are you so calm?” Wesley asked. “I’m climbing out of my skin, and you are not even fidgeting.”

“Do you want to live?” Split asked.

“Of course,” Wesley replied.

“Then relax.” Her eyes flicked to his for a moment. “Nothing you can do now will change what happens next, ya know? So all you can do is, like, relax and trust the people beside you.”

“They’re stopping,” Split said a few minutes later.

Wesley checked, and she was right. The gathered animals, with the occasional humanoid figure moving amongst them, had stopped their march of hours and were milling around. 

“Are they resting before they attack?” Wesley asked.

“What am I, like, a psychic?” Split rolled her eyes. “I’m going for a piss if they are gonna be a bunch of teasing dicks.”

Wesley just shook his head as she walked off behind the nearby bunker.

///////////////

“Here they come!” Peterson called, “Keep to your areas and call out breaches.”

Wesley sighted the first target to enter his firing arc and was almost surprised to see a Giant Hyena on the other side of his gun again. He fired, putting it down with three quick shots before firing at the one behind it.

The numbers kept increasing, but it was simple enough to down them. What was worrying him was the chance of facing something like that Rhino. If they had a Hyena the same level, well, Wesley didn’t fancy his chances much.

“Need arrows,” Split called a little later and ran to get a new supply, which the husband and wife blacksmith team were feverishly working to create. 

“Got it!” Wesley rolled out of his pit and took her place, covering both of their arcs as best he could. A few more of the creatures made it to the sands before falling, but he tried to conserve ammo as much as possible. He knew Split was back when an arrow whistled past his ear and straight into a smaller Hyena, glowing green tip blowing a hole the size of a baseball all through it.

“Back,” She said, hip-bumping him to move back to his pit. 

Wesley kept shooting, losing track of time as he kept a wary eye on his Reload charges. Most of his targets fell, but several limped away, having dodged a kill shot. Ideally, he would have killed them before they could retreat, but it was just him and Split to cover the full one hundred and eighty degrees in front of them, being the only ranged specialists in the party. 

The attack petered out over the next hour or so, and eventually, he was able to rest his rifle and drink from the water in his canteen. Peterson came over and checked how he was doing, seeing that he was still good on ammo and ensuring he had some food and a drink while they had a break in the fighting. 

“You did well,” Peterson said before he moved on to check on the others. “Oh, and Neil said to give this back to you.” he tossed Wesley something wrapped in rough cloth. Unfolding it, he saw his bayonet had been repaired.

It was not exactly the same as it was, having had the entire blade replaced with a much larger one, but it would do the job. It clicked into place readily enough, so Wesley said to pass on his thanks.

A little later, he was dozing in his pit when Sara whistled to get everyone’s attention. Peaking over the edge of his cover, Wes saw why. 

A new attack was coming with a new enemy. A bunch of half-animal people in robes was moving toward them, running on all fours as they closed in on the sands. Each one looked like a caster to him, and he was soon proved right as more and more of them started to fire off spells. 

Fireballs, ice spears, and bolts of lightning began to fly toward the squad as Wesley tried to see through the spells and target the casters themselves.

He drew a bead on a half-hyena woman summoning a larger-than-usual fireball and fired quickly, not quite catching her in the heart, but hitting the shoulder and spinning her round. As she fell, he thought he saw Priest robes like Pru had worn on one of the people further back and mentally crossed his fingers that the Watchmen had made it out okay.

They had been dicks, but they didn’t deserve to get eaten by this lot. 

For everyone he took down, Wesley estimated Split killed at least three. The archer was a nightmare to face in battle as she calmly dodged spells and fired. 

A howl wrent the air, seeming to shake the air in his lungs, and Wesley swallowed. Whatever had done that, Wes hoped never to see it.

The remaining casters pulled back out of range, and a new wave of Hyenas rushed past them.

Wesley focused on firing on the Hyenas, but the inevitable happened. One of the pack found the sand stable beneath his paws and let out a loud, cackling laugh. Every remaining animal began to funnel toward the narrow pathway of stable ground.

“Look out!” Mental yelled a warning as the casters launched a massive fireball the size of a bolder. Wesley could see the heat waves coming off it. 

What happened next was more panic than plan, but Wesley fired off all ten of his shield charges at once, directly in the path of the giant fireball.  

The two spells clashed, and the fireball smashed through the shields, but it slowed massively, dropping not on the defenders but on top of the charging hyenas. 

“DOWN!” Wesley yelled a second before it hit the ground, ducking under the edge of his cover as a wave of fire and debris rolled over the cover above him. 

The aftermath of the spell was like something out of Dante’s Inferno. He peaked over the sand he had used as cover, seeing the top layer of the sand around the impact had melted into glass. Of the charging beasts, there was nothing left… At least, not at the center. The further he looked from the center, the more burning bodies he saw as the air filled with the smell of charring fur, and he slowly began to hear the screaming. 

The casters had been caught in the blast; their fur was burning, and so were their robes. They writhed on the floor and screamed for it to be over. 

Then, through the smoke and heat haze, he saw a familiar figure appear. 

Pru ran in, sending healing into the least burnt of the mages as a familiar man with one arm blackened and twisted helped another away from the fire. 

Wesley was stunned to see them there. His mind rebelled and insisted he was seeing them wrong or they were being forced to act….

Mace walked out of the smoke and roared, his head thrown back as his rage twisted the word.

“LANCASTER!” 

Wesley stood up, staring across the smoke and flame and into the eyes of a man he had once tried to make a friend. 

“Mace, what the fuck are you doing?” Wesley yelled back.

“My job, Lancaster.” He pointed. “This is your only warning, Rifleman. Leave this area.”

“Helping this lot chase down and eat people, that’s your job?” Wesley yelled back, his blood pumping as fire seemed to fill his veins. “Helping the invaders KILL all the NPCs in this zone. Families, Mace! Children!” He shook his head in disgust.

“We were hired, and we will fulfill our contract,” Mace yelled back.

Pru and Alber had come to stand beside their leader.

“You’re all with him on this?” He yelled, but neither answered him.

“Run, Lancaster,” Mace sneered. “We will kill you.”

“No,” Wesley felt like his body was made of molten steel as anger and hate made his vision swim. “How many have you killed? How many have you eaten?” He asked, his voice carrying despite him not yelling anymore.

Mace lost his sneer.

“Did the children taste better than the adults, Mace?” Wesley called.

“Did the ones you killed cry for help before you tore them apart?”

“Shut up!” Mace roared. 

“They were right about all of you, you know?” Wesley called.

“What?” Pru snapped. 

“All those people who called you monsters. They were right.” Wesley shook his head, dropped into a firing position, and emptied the rest of his clip despite knowing they would escape.

He was pleased to see a bullet catch Mace in the shoulder as they dove back into the smoke and out of sight.

“I guess we have a problem,” Peterson said from behind him.

“No,” Wesley replied honestly, “We have four.”