Lost Lands: The Game - Atlantis (23 page)

“You led them to us?”

“Nay…we came to warn you.”

It was obvious that Ragnar wanted to discuss the death of his son in further detail but the impending danger of the Peacekeepers overrode everything else and he began shouting orders. From the actions of the bandits, Callistra could tell they had trained for the possibility of such a raid before. Nevertheless seeing their numbers and defenses, she knew they wouldn’t survive.

“They won’t be able to stop the first wave of attackers.”

Tariq nodded. “I know. This town is in a poor location.” He pointed to the tall hills behind the stable. “Since it’s basically a cul-de-sac there is no easy way out. The Peacekeepers only need to place a small group of archers in those hills to keep anyone from fleeing that way.”

They witnessed all the non-combatants move away from the only entrance to the town and congregate in the stables
. The bandits hastily constructed a barricade with wagons and barrels across the street. The sound of charging horses reached their ears and soon the twang of bows as the bandits responded. Even to the untrained eyes of Tariq and Calli, they knew it was a hopeless cause. The Peacekeepers were just too well trained and organized to be stopped by such a weak defense.

Tariq glanced at the woods behind the stable and momentarily considered fleeing into them. With his skills he knew he could avoid the scouts scouring the woods but that meant leaving behind the
vampyress. One look at her face and he knew she wouldn’t leave. That’s when he took a good look at the faces of the villagers. They were scared. They knew that death was coming for them. The Peacekeepers had labeled them as undesirables and that meant their destruction was assured.

Tari
q looked back at the line of defenders.

The first wave of Peacekeepers had reached them and the barricade was already about to collapse. When the second wave of more seasoned warriors reached them, it would collapse and there was nothing that the bandits could do to prevent it. A baby began to wail as one of the villagers watched her husband f
all to the blades of the attackers. Tears rolled down the mother’s cheek as she turned away and moved deeper into the stables.

Even without a conversation, both Tariq and Calli knew where they would make their final stand. They followed the villagers into the stable and barred the door. Death might be coming for them but not without a fight.

Chapter 27

By the time Tao
and his crew arrived at Crooked Creek the town was ablaze.

As they
made their first pass, Tao changed his initial assessment. There was one building not on fire but judging from the surrounding Peacekeepers it wasn’t too far from destruction. The soldiers were being kept at bay by whoever had barricaded themselves inside the stable. Tao could see pitch forks, shovels and even sticks poke through the open places in the wooden walls to push back the attackers. However, it was only a matter of time before the Peacekeepers just set fire to the building and stepped back to watch the devastation.

Tao looked over his shoulder and yelled over the rushing wind at his passenger. “Hang on mate, we’re going in.”

Without waiting for a response, Tao nosed his wyvern down. Even without looking back he knew that the rest of the flight followed.

Gamble
gazed down on the attacking army and did a quick head count. There had to be over two-hundred Peacekeepers below which meant that they would be outnumbered almost three to one. Not that the odds really mattered to Patrick. They both knew that if Cassie was still alive she would be inside the besieged stables. Woe to anyone that stood in his friend’s path.

Tao guided his winged serpent
past the largest group of Peacekeepers but pointed at them for those that followed behind him. He didn’t need to look to know that Cozad and Kastle were leading the rest of the reformed bandits to a landing right in front of the soldiers. Even as the Peacekeepers tried to form up in defensive lines, the two heavily armored warriors vaulted from their steeds and attacked.

The Outlanders had to give the Peacekeepers credit, they
tried to hold their formation but they had never faced a deadly duo like Cozad and Kastle. They were like two peas in a pod, yin and yang, positive and negative.

Cozad was a blend of raw power and dark magic. He would attack with a vicious slash with his huge axe, beheading two or three soldiers with one swipe, before summoning an unseen fist that wou
ld knock an entire group aside. Summoning his pet gargoyle, Cozad grinned as it clawed its way to the surface of the fiery pit and pulled any unfortunate souls to thier doom.

Kastle was both similar and different
at the same time. He was more like the chained fury of a thunderstorm mixed with compassion for his fellow man. His strikes were direct and effective but nowhere near as deadly, by design not lack of ability. He would bash right and left, knocking aside nearby warriors before throwing his enchanted warhammer at onrushing Peacekeepers. Every once in a while, he would raise his hammer high and summon a huge bolt of lightning that would leave him unharmed but fry his enemies.

To top it off, b
ehind them came the fifty-seven reformed bandits. None were as deadly as the spiritual duo but they were fighting for something they believed in for the first time in years. That gave them passion and a belief in what they were fighting for, something that had been lacking in their lives for a long time. Couple that with the deadly rain of arrows coming from Mathias and a small group of archers that remained aloft on their wyverns.

Tao had no idea where the ladies ended up but as he guided his beast
toward a small opening just shy of the stables, he soon had other distractions. His new steed had been Jagoda’s prime mount. It was a dark, dusky grey and larger than any other wyvern in the herd. But beyond that, Tao discovered that it was superbly trained and took only the simplest of nudging to get it to do his bidding. He only had to guide it with his legs while he fired indiscriminately with his bow as they came in for a landing.

Touching down, Tao
dropped his bow, leapt off and went on the attack. He crossed blades with two young Peacekeepers as soon as his feet touched the dirt. The first one he disemboweled with a wicked slash while the second only received a gash across the cheek. Then, Tao was past them and they were forgotten. He knew that Gamble had his back. Marvin had always had his back ever since High School. The dwarven skald might not have any runestones but that only meant that he would have to rely on his deadly daggers.

A
s Tao locked blades with the next group of Peacekeepers, he discovered that the dwarf wasn’t the only assistant he had in this battle. The winged serpent that he had ridden wasn’t content at being left behind and lashed out at targets of opportunity with its extremely long tail. The scorpion-like stinger blasted through armor and defenses to inflict its deadly poison on anyone that got near its new master. Then, there was the matter of its long neck and deadly jaws or its huge wings that it used to buffer nearby soldiers away, the wyvern was not going to be ignored.

To put it bluntly, t
he Peacekeepers were in complete disarray. They had expected minimal resistance for their assault on the town and had planned accordingly. They also figured that there would be some stragglers that would barricade themselves somewhere or flee into the woods. These were situations that they had planned for…not the unexpected assault of the wyvern riders.

As
Jericho witnessed the deadly efficiency of the Outlanders, he knew that all of his plans and dreams were about to disintegrate. He had one chance to turn the tide of the battle back on itself. He had to take out some of the Outlanders. The closest and seemingly most disheartening pair to his men’s morale was the huge armored knight with the battle axe and the red-cloaked priest with the war-hammer. Seeing no other option, the Grand Marshal of the Peacekeepers drew his sword and waded into battle.

 
*   *   *   *   *

Sanguine Bolt rarely thought of his life before being pulled into the game.

Those memories were almost like the dream that had happened to someone else and not real life. Of course, he’d discovered that the one real truth of the game long ago, one person’s dream is in effect another person’s reality. The truth of the matter was that he was trapped here in Hyperborea. That was a fact. It was originally designed as a game world, another fact. But even though logically he knew it was naught but a game, it could kill you as outright as a psychopath with a gun. A long forgotten quote ran through his mind.
‘If you prick us do we not bleed? If you tickle us do we not laugh? If you poison us do we not die? If you wrong us shall we not revenge?’

Shakespeare.
Sanguine knew it was Shakespeare but he couldn’t recall which play or movie it was from. The Wayne mindset remembered the famous actor Sir Laurence Olivier speaking that line in some old nearly forgotten movie but that was about it.  

Taking a deep breath, Sanguine
shook his head to clear it of the times before he was pulled into the game and turned his attention to the amazing scenery.

His
gryphon was flying along the northern edge of the forest that dominated the majority of this region of Hyperborea. It was shorter to fly over the water in a straight line to Atlantis but it was nowhere as beautiful. A person can only stare down at the unbroken waters of the oceans for so long before it gets boring. Or at least that’s how it affected him.

Suddenly, his
gryphon tucked in his wings and dove with a loud screech.

Grabbing on the reins, Sanguine pulled back with all his strength but the hybrid eagle-lion wasn’t responding to his commands.
He’d been flying on gryphons ever since he’d left Atlantis and its dragons behind years ago. This had never happened before. Leveling out mere feet from the tree tops, the gryphon flapped his mighty wings and picked up speed. He screeched again but this time he was answered from below. Not just one shriek but several echoed through the trees.

Since the flying beast wasn’t listening to him and all he could do was hold on, Sanguine hazarded a look over his shoulder and noticed
nine large figures break from the canopy of trees behind him. They were similar in size to his steed but these looked different in some aspects. As they quickly drew abreast of him, he noticed that they were a hybrid of a gryphon and a horse, more commonly referred to as a hippogriff.

Several questions ran through
Sanguine’s mind. Why would his gryphon suddenly not respond to his commands? And why would it call to hippogriffs? And for that matter, why would they answer him? But more than that, where were they going in such a hurry? Not that he had any answers or any other choice but to hang on and find out.

*   *   *   *   *

At this precise moment, Cozad was as close to Nirvana as he could get in life. He was surrounded by numerous enemies and he could kill with impunity. He was truly and fully a servant of Thanatos, the god of death. The only thing that bothered him was the fact that none of his current opponents even offered him a challenge. They died easily and messily by spell or blade. Granted, that would make his god happy but it did nothing to quench his need to conquer an enemy of true worth.

W
hen his eyes fell upon the Grand Marshal of the Peacekeepers, Cozad smiled.

*   *   *   *   *

Tariq couldn’t hold back a grin as he watched the scarlet samurai cut into the Peacekeepers. It was weird to think of Tao as the cavalry especially since he’d threatened to kill him but at this point, the assassin would take his chances with him. He knew what the Peacekeepers would do to them if captured and it wasn’t pretty. At least with the samurai, he had a chance and with Callistra in his corner, he liked his odds.

He stepped back from his vantage point in the hay loft and looked down into the stable proper. The witch had done wonders with the villagers that had sought refuge in the old stable. She had organized the ladies and elderly into a formidable defense that had actually repelled the invaders twice. The older children had been put to work keeping the horses calm and out of the way, while the youngest kids had been given scouting jobs all throughout the barn. It was make-work but the kids believed they were helping and that kept them out f
rom under the adults’ feet and possibly out of harm’s way.

Tariq
could tell from Callistra’s mannerisms that she hadn’t seen the arrival of her real world husband, probably due to the fact that there was still a mass of Peacekeeper bodies trying to burst through the stable door. He was unsure of how she would react when she saw him but he knew that he couldn’t, no shouldn’t, keep that information from her. “Calli,” he called out, “the cavalry has arrived.”

The beautiful
ginger haired vampyress paused and looked up. “What? Who?”

T
he assassin pointed to the opposite wall. “Tao has arrived and it looks as if he brought a bunch of friends.”

Calli dropped the pitch fork she was using and rushed to the ladder that led to the loft. “
Patrick is here?”

Tariq moved back to his vantage point and nodded. “Looks that way, I don’t suppose that there are too many crimson samurais in the neighborhood.”

She smiled at his sarcastic remark.

Tariq pointed to the left. “And it looks like Kastle is with him.”

Calli shifted her attention to the area he’d indicated and sure enough, she spied the warrior-priest of Thor as he locked weapons with Grand Marshal Jericho. It was sword and shield versus lightning-kissed war-hammer. A servant of the thunder god versus the right arm of the Peacekeepers. It promised to be an epic battle until a cloud of darkness engulfed the warrior-priest, hiding him from sight.

“What the…”
Callistra asked before she spied the imposing armored figure of Cozad step forward.

Tariq swallowed hard and mumbled under his breath
. “That doesn’t bode well for Jericho.”

*   *   *   *   *

Cozad had felt the rage of jealousy flow through him when the priest engaged the enemy commander. Somewhere deep inside him, he heard a small voice ask,
‘How dare that upstart steal your kill?’

Cozad shook his head even as he killed a young warrior with a backhanded slash. “Kastle should know better
.”

‘He doesn’t believe you have it in you to do what’s necessary,’
came the voice, only this time it was stronger.

Cozad continued to cut his way across the battlefield in a straight line toward the
two warriors. “He knows that I will do whatever is necessary to accomplish my goal.”

‘If that is true, then he want
s the glory for himself and his god.’

“Not on my watch.”
Calling forth the dark powers at his command, Cozad dropped a globe of darkness on the priest and stepped forward. Raising his huge axe, the dreadknight entered the fray.

 
*   *   *   *   *

Tao and Gamble made a formidable duo.

They had cut straight through the invaders until they’d reached the besieged stables and turned to one side. Mathias and his archers were decimating the enemies to his left, so Tao had turned to his right and began cutting deep into their ranks. Unknowingly, or better yet unconsciously, the samurai had caught the majority of the Peacekeeper force between them and the two holy warriors.

Tao sliced and stabbed
with deadly precision as he constantly moved forward. He had switched to the same tactic he had used the last time he had run afoul of the Peacekeepers, his attacks became less about killing and more about wounding. Gamble was like his shadow on a cloudy day, always one step behind him but never seen for long. One moment he was on the samurai’s left, the next on his right. Always present but never prominent. The skald would silently slide forward and slice an Achilles tendon here or whack a downed warrior on the temple there, whatever was needed to aid his friend.