The Fangs were a gang of bandits known in the area for rustling livestock and waylaying caravans. They were named for the fangs and tusks of various animals they used as symbols of rank; the more teeth, the higher their status. Their leader was a half-orc named Brutus, whom Dusty and Sige had tangled with before. Brutus aimed his crossbow at Dusty, closing fast.
Dusty pulled his saber from its sheath and pointed it at the coming riders while commanding the rangers to charge. They were outnumbered two to one, but the rangers were better fighters on horseback. If they could put up a big enough fight, there was a chance they could put fear into the bandits and drive them away.
There was no option to make a shield wall. The rangers didn’t usually carry shields because they were a light cavalry unit. Instead of a phalanx, they formed a column, one that Dusty hoped would be strong enough to penetrate the group of fighters riding towards them.
Using his knees to grip and steer the pony, Dusty wielded his saber in his right hand, and his crossbow, secured around his shoulders by a sling, was held high in his left hand. As the group closed, archers from both sides shot their volleys. Most of the bandits’ shots went wide, but one crossbow bolt was sticking out of Sergeant Ingotson’s leg, enraging him. The rangers had more experience shooting while mounted and managed to stick several of the bandits with arrows. Sige preferred a medium hunting bow to a crossbow and had a natural, elven grace on the back of a horse. His first shot was true to target and they saw one of the bandits fall off his horse.
Brutus’s bolt had missed, as had Dusty’s. After firing, he dropped the crossbow so that it bounced off his his hip by the strap, allowing him to hold the reins in his left hand while swinging his saber in the right. The two groups collided with such force that it sounded like a boulder tumbling off a cliff into a canyon below. Dusty leaned to the right off his saddle and slashed with his blade. It sliced across the front of Brutus’s leather jerkin armor, cutting into straps and buckles, but not drawing any significant blood.
The groups rode through each other then circled wide before re-engaging to reload crossbows. As the rangers turned and rode back, the bandit who had been shot off his horse by Sige brandished an axe at them and challenged the rangers with insults and curses. Dusty cut him down with a saber slash to the throat and then raised his reloaded crossbow to aim at another bandit on his right. He fired, and a bolt stuck into the bandit’s chest. He slumped over in his saddle while his horse continued to ride on. Dusty dropped his crossbow again and made another slash with his saber at a second bandit.
The men fought fiercely, even Jed who was barely of fighting age. But he was decent with a blade and consistent with a bow. Cletus was off his horse, roaring with the quick and hot rage of his orcish blood as he attacked riders with a sword in each hand. Sergeant Ingotson launched himself off of his horse at one of the bandits, knocking him off his mount to the ground. The sergeant brained him with his battle axe. The younger Corporal Ingotson was also on the ground, grappling with a bandit he had pulled off his horse, trying to get a knife into his ribs. Meanwhile, sharp-sighted Sige was shooting arrow after arrow, doing devastating work and earning a new nickname.
It was bedlam, and it was bloody, and soon the bandits, even though they had outnumbered the rangers, were only at half strength. The rest were either wounded or dead. But the rangers had casualties too. An arrow was sticking out of Corproal Kouri Ingotson’s arm, but the dwarf ignored it while putting a chokehold on an unfortunate half-orc. Jed had been shot down but was alive. Several of their horses were dead.
Dusty didn’t want the bandit gang to break off the fight and ride away yet, not before he had a chance to confirm if they had been the ones who stole the children, and if so, to find out where they had been stashed.
Brutus and Dusty had remained on their mounts, and now each were on opposite sides of the combat on the ground. They stared at each other while reloading their weapons. They began to circle the field.
The tension broke when the half-orc suddenly spurred his horse and charged at Dusty, riding through the melee on the ground. Dusty kept his horse still and waited, raising his crossbow and tucking the stock into his shoulder. He aimed down the sights and slowed his breathing.
The bandit leader was 100 yards away, then 75, then 50. Still Dusty was unmoved. As he got closer, Brutus raised his hand crossbow and fired at Dusty. It was close, too close, and Dusty could feel the bolt fly past his head. But it wasn’t close enough. Before Brutus could turn away from his charge, Dusty let out half a breath and then squeezed the trigger.
Brutus fell off his horse in a crash. He struggled to his knees, one hand clutching his shoulder, where a bolt had nearly shot clean through the muscle. Dusty calmly reloaded and rode up to the fallen bandit leader, aiming his crossbow at his head.
“Where are they?” Dusty asked.
Brutus rolled off his knees and sat, facing Dusty, still clutching at his shoulder, examining the wound. “Damn that hurts,” the orc said.
“Where are the children?” Dusty said again, louder.
“What children?” Brutus asked, looking up at Dusty defiantly.
“The elf girl you stole from Breckenridge and the halfling boy from the caravan,” Dusty said, still aiming down the crossbow sights.
Brutus stared at the halfling with what seemed like genuine confusion. “The hell you on about?” he asked.
“Your little gang disguised yourselves as a gnoll warband, rode into Breckenridge the night before last, and stole a child. Then you came across a halfling caravan, burned it out, and stole one of their youngsters.”
Brutus narrowed his eyes and frowned. “We didn’t steal no children, you horse’s ass. We weren’t even in Breckenridge the other night. We were raiding south. By the coast.”
Could Brutus be telling the truth? Probably. Dusty lowered his crossbow slightly. In truth, he had doubted the Fangs could pull off something that big or use magic at all, but he wanted to be sure.
“If not you, then who?” the halfling asked.
“How should I know? The hell I want an elf kid for? Ain’t much profit in taking children. We stick to honest work, like robbing merchant guilds.”
Dusty didn’t reply. He could tell Brutus was telling the truth now. It was almost disappointing. He lowered his crossbow but kept it aimed in Brutus’ general direction. The battle had stopped, and the bandits who were alive were standing in a group with their hands up while the rangers covered them with blades or bows.
“Then why did you attack us?” Dusty asked.
“Because of what you and that elf bastard did a while back.”
Dusty smiled. “You mean that time I choked you out in that hole you called home? That time when you stole that rancher’s daughter for some love-sick idiot? Thought you didn’t kidnap people?”
“Well that was a grown-ass woman, weren’t it? And we were going to get paid well for that until you two came in with her pa. I had to find a new hideout and recruit more men. You know how difficult that is to do out here?” Brutus replied. “Besides, who would want to go around lookin’ like that sort of filth? I ain’t got no business messin’ with gnolls. I got standards.”
“Of course,” Dusty said dryly.
He waved a dismissive hand at Brutus, indicating he could stand up and join his men. This created a new problem for the rangers. Not only did they need to find the missing children, but now they had outlaws in custody who had just attacked them. Brutus was a wanted man. They couldn’t just let them go, but they also couldn’t end the rescue mission to bring them back to town for trial. The other rangers were thinking about this too. Without being prompted Sergent Ingotson siddled over to Dusty and said, “We could just kill them all and keep going.”
This elicited angry glances from the bandits. Dusty thought about that for a moment. They could do that. But he didn’t like it. They had surrendered. “No,” he replied. “Killing them now would look bad on my report.”
In the end, he didn’t have to decide. Dusty was about to say something else when he noticed the look on the faces of the bandits. They were looking past the rangers, with eyes rounder than the moon and faces just as pale. Dusty turned in his saddle to look.
There on the ridgeline was the warband. Each gnoll was on a horse and wore armor made of rags, skins, and bones. They were sitting there, watching the men below.
“Of course,” Dusty said again.
This is part one of “Hell’s Warband.” Click here to read the next part. If you like these free stories, please subscribe. If you REALLY liked them, please consider leaving me a tip by purchasing it on Kindle for .99 (the cost for 1/3 of a cup of coffee).
George Cottonwood Books 
Leave a comment