Chase (ChronoShift Trilogy) (21 page)

Mark held up a hand to calm their sudden agitation.  The fight would not begin here.

"You have been warned."   With a kick, Mark whipped his horse around and drove it off the path toward some nearby brush.

Clyde ordered a couple of men to pursue him, but they would find nothing for Mark had already shifted out.

***

Shortly thereafter, the twenty mercenaries arrived at the Smith home riding in single file.  They swiftly fanned their ranks out until they'd formed a neat semi-circle about fifty feet away from the front of the house, three archers hanging back from the rest of the group, protected by the forward line.  What should have been a simple, yet chaotic raid, was quickly turning into something else entirely.

Mark, Robert, and Ty emerged from the house.  Side by side, they confronted the attackers.  Clyde of Dorchester spurred his horse a few steps closer to begin the parley.  As the steed trotted forward, Mark raised his right hand high in the air, then let it fall.  This was a preplanned signal.  Hardy was staked out a few hundred yards away in a copse of trees with a sniper rifle.

One by one, the three bowmen jerked unnaturally in their saddles and then slid off into silent heaps on the muddy soil.  The faint reports of a rifle echoed in the background.

Mark liked to try and limit how much modernity they brought back to any historical setting, but not if such limitations would put their lives at risk.  Sniper rifles and other such things were sometimes necessary insurance that their plan would succeed, or at least not lend itself to complication.  Plus, sometimes it was just fun to know the advantage was all yours.

The rest of the men stirred, twisting in their saddles to see what had happened behind them.  Clyde's mount cantered nervously to one side, and he saw that his archers were fallen.  Not understanding how, but unwilling to allow the enemy any further success, he snapped his mouth shut, cutting off whatever great words of wisdom he'd been about to preach to the homeowner, and waved another attacker forward.  This man bore a flaming torch.

The torchbearer spurred his horse hard and made a mad dash for the dwelling.  He meant to fire the whole house, regardless of who was inside, but he hadn't gone ten feet before his body also spasmed.

He slid from his horse, a great new hole in the side of his head testifying as to why.  Hardy's telescopic sights seemed to be working just fine.

Next, Mark signaled to Ty.

Suddenly, the scene erupted violently in four separate explosions of dirt.  Thick clouds of it spewed high and rained back down in unison on the assaulters.

Mark and his team had strategically planted sticks of C-4 in a number of locations and covered them with a thin layer of soil.  Earlier, Ty had shifted forward to see where the men would stop their mounts and returned to bury the explosives exactly where the mercenaries would be.

Horses screamed and men wailed.  Mark hated it for the horses.  Innocent creatures shouldn't have to suffer.  Yet, there was no other easy way to insure they kept the advantage against such numbers.

The taught twang of a bowstring began its song to Mark's left.  Abbie was posted in a window of the home, poaching any men who seemed to be recovering from the blasts.  The explosions themselves had immediately killed around seven or eight of them.  Abbie took out another five with her bow by the time Mark and Ty, who had both armed themselves with broadswords, reached those struggling to their feet. 

Mark had never fought with a sword before.  It was a new sensation, but one he thought he could take a liking to.  Three men had survived the blasts, the sniping, and Abbie's assault. Clyde of Dorchester, the leader of the pack, had perished almost instantly in the explosions.

Two men-at-arms were close to Mark and Ty, and they dispatched them both quickly.

The remaining man was uncommonly tall, strong, and confident as well.  Confident in spite of the shocking manner in which his comrades had just been cut down.

Mark did not hesitate.  He swept into the man aggressively, feigning with his sword and then popping the hilt of it into the man's chest, pushing with it forcefully.  He'd snuck his right foot behind the big man's ankle before doing this, so the man fell hard onto his back.  He was still stunned from the explosions, so it was easy for Mark to kick the sword out of his hand.

Mark brought the point of his blade to bear on the throat of the prostrate man, threatening to end his life with a flick.

"What is your name?"  Mark growled.

"Randolph.  Sir Randolph DeCleary," the man choked out.

"You are a knight?"

"Yes."

"In the employ of Lord Geoff?"

"Yes."

Mark spat on the ground beside the knight's head.  "Tell your
lord
that he shall leave Robert Smith and his family alone from this day forward, and he shall make a public declaration of his status as a freedman, or I will visit my wrath on him personally.  There won't be any warning next time."

Mark whipped his sword from the man's neck and sheathed it, a dot of blood marking the skin where it had touched. Ty and Robert Smith stripped Randolph of his mail and smaller weapons.  He would ride back to his master humiliated.

"Oh," Mark turned back momentarily, "Tell him he's got two days to make the declaration.  No more."

Randolph DeCleary gulped hard, struggling to his feet.  His humiliation in being stripped of armor and weaponry was the least of the worries on his mind at the moment.

"
How many men did you say there were,
soldier?"

Lord Geoff, Earl of Essex, was livid.  Angry shades of purple pulsed through his face and neck as he paced the Great Hall.

"You...uh...had to be there, sir.  It is hard to explain," Randolph pled.

"I bet it
is
hard to explain.  Explaining how three men and a
woman
overcame twenty trained soldiers in a matter of seconds must be very difficult!"

"It's not that...they had..."  Randolph stammered.

"Oh, yes!  I forgot.  They had magic!  Their leader just waved his hand and men and horses fell over dead or flew into the air as if hit by a catapult."

Randolph realized he would be wiser to hold his tongue, so he did.

"I cannot believe this incompetence.  Do you
hear
me?  I cannot believe it!"  Spittle sprayed from the noble's mouth.

Randolph nodded.

"Get me fifty men and do it now!  We're going to show Smith and his bandit friends a thing or two, and we're going to do it tonight."

"Uh..."

"Do you object?"  Geoff snarled.

"No, sir.  It's not that.  I don't mean to be disagreeable, sir, but I don't think I can get fifty men together on such short notice."

"Fine.  Get a hundred for tomorrow night."

"Yes, sir.  What about their leader's warning?"

Though Randolph deCleary was a head taller than the earl, Lord Geoff was practiced in the art of intimidation.  He wrapped his fingers around Randolph's throat and squeezed hard.

Through gritted teeth, he sneered, "You will get me those men and we will wipe this puny man from the province."

All Randolph could do was nod.

August 4
^th
1100, Essex, England

Randolph DeCleary had been knighted by King William himself and he was a man whose pride was accustomed to being nurtured, not pricked.  Between this bandit and Lord Geoff, his ego had suffered two vicious blows now, and no mere prick either time.

He rode, chest puffed forward, leading his men toward the darkened forest.  He could not, would not, allow such humiliation to happen again.  He could not reasonably resist or insult the earl, so naturally his wrath was directed forcefully at the man who'd held him on the ground with a sword tip biting into his Adam's apple.  The next time they met, Randolph would not be recovering from some magic explosion.  He would not be cowed by the bandit again.

More than a hundred and twenty men followed him.  A significant portion of these were archers.  More than thirty bore well-oiled torches so they could fire the house with impunity, and another forty were well-trained men-at-arms.  Those were all mounted.  The rest were helpless serfs who had no choice but to serve when their lord called.

They arrived at the Smith property.  He burned with desire to exact revenge and see that house destroyed.  Still, the prowess of the bandits had to be respected.  They
had
killed nineteen armed men in mere moments.

Recognizing this undeniable but regrettable truth, Randolph halted his men a safe distance from the residence before approaching.  He sent a group of fifteen serfs toward the miserable hut, flaming torches in hand.  The serfs were expendable.  With luck, they would trigger any defenses that had been prepared.

Sure enough, the serfs were still two hundred feet away when the ground exploded in front of them.  None were killed, for the explosion went off prematurely, but several horses were terrified and turned tail in the opposite direction, ignoring the panicked instructions of their riders and even bucking a few out of their saddles.  The torch-bearing serfs mimicked the horses out of sheer fear until Randolph froze their flight with a few forceful commands.

It was clear to Randolph defenses had been laid in expectation of this calvary squad, but the extent of those defenses was still unknown.  He didn't believe those explosions were magic, but they were some kind of new weapon he'd not encountered before, which meant it might as well be magic.  Did the blast go off prematurely, or was it a kind of trap to lure them closer?

As he mentally debated the possibilities, a cry went up to his right.  Four unknown riders were racing for the cover of the forest about two hundred yards away.  The sun had almost dipped below the horizon, so they had been masked by the shadows.  The riders were whipping and spurring their mounts madly in an attempt to escape to the safety of the trees.

"Ready!" He called to his archers.

Then, he had second thoughts and stayed their barrage with a motion of his hand.  The dark riders were already out of range.

Randolph was nothing if not a decisive leader.  Following sheer instinct, he instantly chose their course of action, barking different commands to his various groups.  The villains he wanted were fleeing for protection among the trees.  Though the house remained an unknown risk, it would still be there when they returned.

Dividing his men into three columns of forty, they rushed the forest.  One column would enter the woods to the left of where they'd seen the bandits, and a second to the right.  He would lead a center column.  Then, they would squeeze the bandits into their dragnet.

"
That's something to be proud of

That's a life you can hang your hat on
"

                             ~ Montgomery Gentry

Hardy pulled up on his reins and walked his horse back until he was even with Mark.  Ty and Abbie also slowed their mounts and joined the huddle.  Mark began issuing instructions.

"Abbie, you and I will run diagonally to the left from here at full speed.  Hardy, Ty, you guys do the same, but to the right.  Get outside their little searching grid.  Then, dismount, shift, and find a spot behind them.  We'll shift back in and start picking them off.  Leave the serfs alone, they're here against their will.  The rest are fair game."

They all nodded.

"Remember  — make sure your sixth shift is made when you
leave
this time.  You don't want your watch shutting down in the middle of battle.  The rest of us would have to come rescue you."

Ty was fiddling with the settings on the face of his shifter.  "When's our anchor time, Mark?"

"Good question."  They'd be bouncing back and forth between this evening and some other time.  They couldn't choose their own modern time because the shifters would shut down for at least twenty minutes whenever they crossed that many years.