Tag: REX FANG-BLADE AND THE ATTACK ON THE GREAT NEST

I really need a new title.

From the way he was frowning at the skittish snakes now, Rex had an answer, and it was one she wouldn’t like: “So. Is it magic crap, Hey-You?”

“Yeah,” he responded, still staring at the somewhat pathetic-looking serpentine horde now gathered before them. “Somebody’s put a no-vermin spell around Purty.” For one moment, Tabetha was downright incensed at how anybody – even the enemy! – could think of snakes as ‘vermin.’ “They’ve been ignoring it as best they could, but it’s just getting stronger, the closer we get.”

Dallin had squatted to look at one snake. “They don’t look hurt, at least. Guess that means it’s just a spell to keep critters away? Purty don’t know we’re here?”

“Good questions, Dallin.” Rex quirked his mouth.“Yes to both, I think. If they knew, we’d know that they knew, and we’d be fighting right now.”

Scouting!

Three days later

The books said you could get soldiers to walk twenty miles a day and still have them in some kind of shape to fight at the end of it. The books didn’t say anything about a gaggle of townsfolk and fighters, moving through broken land on foot. Six miles a day was the best they could do, and it was only halfway to Purty.

Rex thought they had made pretty good time, though. “They’re not going to march like soldiers,” he’d told Dallin and Tabetha when they brought up the issue. “We’re moving faster than I thought we would, and nobody fell out.”

“Yeah, well, anybody still alive and free out here is tough,” Dallin shrugged. “That includes the bad guys, sir.” He stared out into the night. It was extra dark, because it was for sure that there weren’t going to be any fires to give them away. “Only… where’s their pickets and scouts? They’re not dumb. They know they got to patrol.”

Yeah, a new title really is needed.

“What’s the problem, Hey-You? …That’s still me asking, not scoffing. I figure if you’re worried, there’s a reason.”

Rex stood up from the meeting table, and stood before an old map of Deseret. It didn’t have as much information as they’d like on it — people didn’t exactly stop by Wells to chat, and snakes can’t read or write — but it still showed every place north of Seventy Road and east of the Bonneville Flat that at least had a Dominion garrison. There were far too many of ‘em, not that anybody had asked Tabetha her opinion. 

“I’m glad Burning Brand’s dead. He was vile, cruel, and ruthless. He did horrible things when he took… the capital. Even worse ones, as Viceroy. The worst part was, he didn’t even care. His atrocities were carved from ice and indifference. He was a monster of the first order.” For a moment, Rex was clearly somewhere else, and Tabetha’s fingers clenched, looking for a sword-hilt that wasn’t there. Wherever he had gone in his head, it was no place to travel alone.

But he gathered himself. “The problem is, Burning Brand was a smart monster. He knew just how hard to squeeze the towns and cities. A lot, but not enough that they’d decide to die on their feet — or at least, not before that would be more convenient for the Universal Dominion anyway.” Rex shrugged. “The word is, he was forced to take a slow poison. He must have really infuriated the Supreme Archmage with his system.”

Title is clunky.

“That’s gonna happen no matter what, Hey-You. You think the Dominion is gonna decide, ‘Shoot! A bunch of folks in the badlands up and wrecked our base! Guess we shouldn’t go there anymore.’” Tabetha shook her head. “That’s not how those so-and-so’s do things, and you know it.”

“No,” Rex agreed, “it’s not. But every one of those motherless sons we kill first is one more Purty won’t have later to burn out farmers and townsfolk. I’m not going to pretend I don’t know that. That’s not how we do things. Not in Deseret.”

It was the most powerful temptation in the world for Tabetha to throw, There ain’t no Deseret no more! back in Rex’s face, and she wondered later what would have happened if she had. Aside from infuriating Rex no end, naturally, which was one reason why she didn’t. The man was almost supernaturally reasonable, but there were limits.

The other reason was, she didn’t think Deseret was dead. Not yet.

snek

Tabetha didn’t mind the snakes anymore. They were nice to have around the place, once you got your head around the idea that they were now on your side. They crept around, sure, and you had to watch your feet. But Tabetha hadn’t seen a mouse or rat in months. That was worth a lot.

They also made good scouts, when you put them together with what Desert Joe called a ‘two-leg.’ The human would get them most of the way to whatever needed looking at, and then the snake would… sneak on in, then report back. Nobody besides Rex or Joe could make heads or tails what the snake was saying, but it was still a great way to give a place a looking-over.

It was good for ambushes, too.

Worked very hard to keep this meeting from being three thousand words.

“But not west,” Rex echoed, the smile now gone. “Can’t go west, dumb to go east, and we won’t go north to freeze. So we go south. What’s stopping us? Dally?”

“That base, even half-built,” Dallin immediately replied. “It’ll see everything and everybody, for miles around. Even if it’s looking west, it’ll have an eye for anything south.”

Desert Joe stirred. “Before, the southern towns would have let us pass, maybe,” he rumbled. “They will not patrol widely, because to see is to know, and they do not want to know. They have plenty of troubles, which only grow more every year. But with the Dominion watching from the skies? They would see our people as a treat to be traded for a few more weeks or months of peace.”

“The damned scum,” Dallin muttered. “Ah, pardon me, Miz Tabetha. I know some of your folks still live down south.”

“I ain’t mad, Dally.” Tabetha tried to smile, despite the sudden sour taste in her mouth and throat. “Not at you, not at them. Ever since the Temple fell, people ‘round here got stuck ‘tween nothing but rocks. You don’t get good choices when that happens. We gotta just keep on with it.”

Getting on with it!

Rex liked a quick meeting, too. Tabetha kind of felt bad for him about that, because this one wasn’t going to be one. “They’re all going to Purty [Verdi Peak, Nevada]?” he asked Dallin. “Every one of the slave caravans?”

“Yes, sir. Those slaver basta — so-and-sos’ been sending caravans up from Elko, Jiggs, Tuscarora — all the western camps. Too well-guarded for anybody to take a slap at them, too.” The former slaver (failed) grinned. “Although there was that one squad that thought they’d go off for a night or two, go beating the bushes for refugees. We made it look like they ran into a grizzly.”

“Whatever it is they build there, my lord, it stinks of the cursed Dominion,” Desert Joe added. “The snakes cannot think as we do, but they know buildings, men, and monsters. The first two are on that mountain, and the reek of the third grows every day. The two two-legs we sent there to observe dare not get too close, but they report great activity. Perhaps it will be one of their cursed towers?”

“That’s a good guess.” Rex looked over the map. The peak was about forty miles southwest of Wells; from what Tabetha remembered of the area, it was forty miles away from anything else worth the walk, too. “The only thing is, it’s outside territory the Dominion’s claimed. They’ve already ripped off every hunk of land they can hold, and there’s nothing out here they want.”

Still working on the title.

Liberated Town of Wells

Former Deseret

2464 AD

Everybody says to just leave the corpses of no-account slaver trash out for the buzzards and thunderbirds, but Tabetha Frei knew that just wasn’t smart thinking. Even in winter, corpses smell. They rot, too. Besides, who wanted thunderbirds hanging around town? That wasn’t safe for kids. You can’t just pile dead bodies up in an abandoned house, either — even if one third of the houses were empty, on account of there not being any slavers in Wells anymore. Leave a bunch of corpses in a cellar, you’re just asking for shamblers later. 

The new town fathers (after looking sidelong at Tabetha, just in case she had any observations) eventually decided to bury the slavers in the basements, with prayers and a proper service said over them. Since they still hadn’t found a bishop that survived the Dominion invasion, Tabetha had observed that pouring concrete over the bodies wouldn’t be the worst idea in the world. You know. Just in case the prayers didn’t take. 

Wells had just enough concrete from the old stores to do it, too. Tabetha would have worried about using up something that valuable if she had thought they’d be in this town long enough for it to matter. As it was, she figured it was better used up than left for whoever would take over Wells when her people left.