The Rifleman - Ch.27 (Patreon)

Chapter 27

Routed

It would be great to say that his actions saved the flank from failing and that once the enemy retreated, everything stabilized, and Wesley was a massive hero. Of course, that wasn’t even close to what happened. 

The vast majority of the defenders in that zone were severely injured or lying dead on the ground. In all, Wesley’s actions saved a half dozen people. The left flank was simply gone. With nowhere near enough troops to replace the ones who died and a new wave of enemies pouring in to replace the retreating wolven forces, a general retreat was called.

A series of flares shot into the sky, each in a more alarming shade of red, and Peterson called for them to grab their gear and fight back toward the city. 

“Come on,” Ben’Ta offered Wesley a hand up from where he sat, panting and shaking on the ground. “The sooner we get clear, the sooner we can rest.” 

Wes nodded and got to his feet, following the rest of the squad as they rushed back to the bunker and their supplies. 

It seemed a lot further to run heading back than it had to get here in his headlong dash. The sight of the bunker as they crested the slight rise should have been a welcome one if not for the half-dozen armor-clad hyena men busily unloading the supplies from inside.

“Combat formation!” Peterson called as he stepped to the front. The others fell into a V formation with Peterson and Mental in the front. Wes fell into place opposite Split, guessing it was about where he lay in terms of range. A leather-wearing hyena saw them coming and raised her head to yowl a warning, but a glowing arrow from Split’s bow ripped her throat out before a single sound was made. Two more hit her seconds later, taking her out completely. 

“Charge!” Peterson yelled as he and Mental blurred forward, slamming into the rear-most warriors before they could react. Sara roared and ran after them, her pike tip glinting in the light coming through the bunker door. 

Split, Ben’Ta, and Wesley all ran to the sides, opening up clear lines of sight to fire on the enemy soldiers. 

It was over in a matter of seconds, with Wesley and Split both taking down one of the hyenas in quick order. With the front line of their squad pressuring the enemy back, they found the door behind them suddenly blocked by a glowing blue door. 

Trapped between the squad and a shield, they had no chance in the narrow confines of the stairs as Sara’s pike slammed into them again and again.

It was less a flight and more butchery. 

“Clear out here,” Peterson ordered, and the ranged members split up to search for any hidden or nearby enemies. 

Five minutes later, they were sure the immediate area was clear, but it wouldn’t be for long. It was time to get their stuff and go. 

“You wait out here, lad,” Peterson said to Wesley as he approached the stairs. “We’ll get everything out.”

Wes frowned for a second, wondering what was up until he remembered two of the squad were still in the bunker when they left.

“You don’t want to see that,” Peterson tried to stop him, but Wesley pushed past him and rushed down the stairs.

The bunker was wrecked. Tables were overturned, bedding slashed, but the worst was the blood. Two half-eaten bodies lay in the middle of the floor, where the large table had been when they left. The hyenas had eaten most of the soft tissue, with Maggs lying there and only half her face remaining. His eyes locked on the deep toothmarks in the skull and the single tear still lying on the cheek of the kind blacksmith.

She had been crying when she died.

Most people talk about hate, but few actually know it. Real hate is different from what people mean when they say it. Hate, in its purest form, burns away a part of you, permanently changing who you are. Seeing those two kind and loving people lying half-eaten on the floor of his bunker caused that kind of hate in Wesley. He felt it flare and rip through his system. It burned, and his vision swam as if he was looking through a haze of heat. 

It was a powerful feeling. It made him want more. To kill the ones who had done this, to kill every one of their people, to the last hyena-man in existence, they didn’t deserve to live… and he pushed the feeling away.

Wesley struggled as he stood there, fighting to push away the hate, the rage, and the rest of the emotions threatening to change him forever. The people who did this were dead. They lay in a bloody pile just outside this very bunker. 

What happened was awful. 

What happened was sad. 

What happened would make it a lot easier to pull the trigger for a long time to come, but it would not change who he was.

If that hate were allowed in, if he fanned those flames, then Wesley Lancaster would be no more. The person he tried so hard to be would burn away. More and more of him until, one day; he would become the kind of monster he started off hating. That was what hate did. It took and took until there was nothing left of the person feeling it.

He was not a monster, and this world would not make him one.

“We need to go,” Ben’Ta said gently, placing her hand on his shoulder. 

Wesley just nodded, patting the loose sand down once more before he stood. He had found the folding shovel in his backpack, a long-forgotten item. The loose sand on the very edge of the quicksand was easy enough to dig up, and the squad helped him bury the husband and wife together. The quicksand would quickly suck them down into the deep, where the bastards who were sure to come along after they left could not loot them.

It wouldn’t spare them from being recycled by the damn system, but it was something.

Wesley hurried off after the squad, stuffing the shovel back into his backpack and hearing something shatter inside. He sighed and slung it over his back. If he survived long enough, he would sort out whatever that was.

“Combat formation!” Peterson called. “Stay close, keep fighting, and don’t stop.”

“Yes, sir!” The squad called back with military precision. 

“Move out!” Peterson started walking before speeding up to a trot, and they all fell in step as they moved toward the chaos ahead of them.

And chaos it was. Their left flank’s collapse was part of a coordinated attack that had smashed through defenses in three places, and enemy forces were harrying freely as the defenders tried their best to fall back and establish some kind of order.

Hyena's laughter and wolf howls cut through the night, and screams and blood were lit by spells flying back and forth. In a hundred places, a life-and-death struggle was underway. 

The squad charged into all of this, Wesley trying his best to keep up while he tried everything he could think of to let go of the My Domain skill. No one had actually told him how to do it, and the skill didn’t seem to be responding. Finally, he felt more than noticed a faint string of something. Mana, consciousness, whatever it was, that seemed to connect him to the place. Wesley gave it a mental yank.

My Domain - released.

Influence refunded - 1000

-200 for being raided.

-300 for 2x deaths of guests.

Final amount refunded - 500

Wesley felt something flow back into him, blinking away tears at the cold judgment of the system of his own failures. 

Would casting shields over the door have saved the Blacksmiths? 

They crashed into the madness of the running battle outside the city, and there was no more time for thought. All Wesley could do was fire when he had a target, stab anything close enough with his Bayonet, and cast an occasional Emergency Flare when the squad was pinned or found a little safety for a few minutes. 

Running and fighting from one cover to the next was a slow, tiring process. A single mistake could leave him or one of the others dead, and yet the mind could only focus for so long. 

His first mistake was a counting error. He miscounted his shield charges, and a bolt of ice he could have dodged quickly buried itself in his shoulder. He stumbled, missed his shot, and across the battlefield, a charging wolf got to its target unharmed, tearing into the man with abandon.

He gritted his teeth and cast an Emergency Heal on himself while pulling the jagged piece of ice from his shoulder. The squad crossed the last fifty feet to the next cover, a boulder, and he leaned against it and waited for the pain to pass while everyone took half a minute to rest before moving on again. 

That was the plan, anyway.

Something hit the boulder. Wesley never did find out what it was. A spell, or a creature, or something else. He never even knew if it was actually aimed at them or just bad luck.

The boulder exploded, and Wesley was thrown through the air before rolling across the floor and struggling to rise. His leg was screaming at him, but he had used his last heal on the damaged shoulder. With no other choices, Wesley turned into wisp form and finally managed to get to his feet and look around. 

The squad was pulling each other to their feet; Mental and Peterson were lifting bits of rubble as they looked for missing people. The entire bolder had been turned into shards and chunks no bigger than a baseball.

Wesley turned back to human, feeling his leg scream at him as he dug a dazed and bleeding Ben’Ta out of a pile of the stuff when he heard Split’s scream. 

The brackta woman waved him off, so he turned back into a wisp and shot across the ground to Split, who had dropped to her knees.

As soon as he got close, Wesley stopped. 

Sara was on the floor in front of Split. Her pike was in a dozen pieces, and several shards of rock were sticking out of her legs, chest, and skull.

There was no movement from the usually brash soldier. 

Wesley stared for a moment more before he turned back to help the others. He was numb, but the pain was there, he knew. 

He just couldn’t deal with it. Not yet. 

They took her with them, of course. 

For another half hour, they fought while taking turns carrying their fallen comrade. Wes took his turn the moment the healing cooldown was up. Together, they fought, fell, and stumbled their way back to the city’s defenders' reforming lines. 

The moment they stepped through the lines and into the relative safety of the defenders, the whole squad was sent to get something to eat and to rest. Split, that strange, thin girl with arms like a twig, was carrying Sara then. It took three soldiers to prise Sara from her arms, and they all left bleeding while Ben’Ta held the crying Split.

They ate, but Wesley couldn’t tell you what it was. There was no taste to it, and he could not even remember if it was a soup or a sandwich, even if you asked him while he was still chewing. They were shown into a tent, complete with beds up against the city walls, but none of them used the beds.

Wesley sat with his back to the wall, rifle over his legs, while Ben’Ta lay with her head on his shoulder. Soon, the whole squad was leaning against the wall, not talking or doing anything but just being near each other. A few minutes later, they began to swap stories of how often Sara had gotten in trouble when drunk, of when she had made too many suggestive jokes to a senior priest and been briefly cursed with boils, and of her as a young girl, standing with nothing but a long pole against the bandits who tried to rob her family’s farm while the rest were out at the Market. When they all ran out of stories to tell, Wesley said he wished he had gotten to know her better, and Split said only a single thing: ‘She was my friend.’ 

Many of them cried then, but sleep took them not too long after.