XXVIII. Copper Mockingbird
This man is a distraction.
He almost had you, didn't he. Traps and trinkets that almost disabled Harvest, and now he is dancing in front of you, even though he is one man against a Bunraku. You know what this means. He is trying to draw your attention, to keep you from attacking his men and relieving pressure on your troops. This is just another trap, just not a physical one.
You won't be fooled. You make a wide sweep of Harvest's naginata, and Copper Mockingbird darts away, throwing some kind of knife at you - it lodges itself into a shoulder plate, failing to do any damage. You smirk. Your attack was a feint. Instead of pursuing the ronin, you turn your heels and immediately start running in the other direction - towards the loose rank of bandits harassing your men. The distant shout of surprise from Mockingbird as he realizes you've tricked the trickster turns your smirk into a smile.
They are a shabby lot, these brigands. They have no consistent uniform; some of them wear battered light armor, likely being deserters from armies of the surrounding lands, while others have peasants' clothes and wide hats. As with Iron Raven's lot, they recognize each other by a white scarf tied around their necks or upper arms. They make bright flower blossoms in the gloom of the forest, and you charge towards them with merciless strength.
If this were an open battlefield, the half of the ambush force on your side would be dead in the first ten seconds of your charge. Unfortunately the trees get in the way. You have to hunch Harvest's shoulder to ram your way through trunks and branches that snap and splinter at your passing, and you must focus on thrusting attacks rather than wide sweeps. The bandits are lucky.
Five of them still fall before they've realized you were upon them.
Blood spills on the green underbrush and dark trunks. Men shout in panic, withdrawing from the edge of the path where they were harassing the ashigaru. They withdraw from you, raising spears and bows, and you hear the snap of loosened strings. Smoke still drifts out of your hatch, Harvest is still blinded by Mockingbird's putty, leaving you exposed in your open pilot's seat; you must release one of Harvest's hands from your spear and raise it before the hatch to protect yourself from missiles. You feel the shuddering thud of a dozen impacts - and nothing more. Shortbow, woodsmen's weapons; incapable of piercing a Falling Mountain's armor save for a lucky shot in the joints. This will be even easier than expected.
With your spear held in one hand and shifting your gauntlet lightly to open your field of view, you barrel towards the archers, two shallow sweeps bringing down three of the enemies. The rest scatter, a handful of brave ones poking at you with their spears. Freed from the menace of archers, you use your free hand to punch a tree so hard it simply snaps over, its canopy pinning down two confused spearmen.
"Release the stones!" comes a shout from afar. You look in its direction and a haggard fisherman pulls a rope tied to a tree-top - a net full of rocks comes swinging down at you. You raise your arm to deflect it and your whole armor shudders. The net cracks and stones tumble down from Harvest's flank. The blow dented your puppet's forearm heavily - a proper Mountain would have handled that blow much better. On the other hand, you can feel the sluggish lifeforce in your new Verdant Sapling already at work fixing the damage.
A copper light flashes in the trees to your right. Projectiles streak through the air and hit Harvest's back and shoulder, shattering. Knives slam uselessly into your wooden plates.
No time for him. Further away, the ambushers are regrouping. The smoke bomb has finally stopped working and your hatch is free of its obstruction, but Harvest's eyes are still disabled, forcing you to stay in the open. This is the one chance the bandits have: if their shortbows or spears can find a way to your fleshy body, they need not care that they cannot damage the bunraku.
You fall back into your one-armed stance, gauntlet shielding your body, spear tucked between your elbow and your flank, and you rush straight ahead. Not yet ready, the bandits panic and loose their arrows too early. One of them manages to strike past your gauntlet, landing inside the hatch and cutting one string, reducing mobility in your spear-arm; all the others get uselessly stuck in your outer shell. Two poplar trees splinter before you, tossed aside like mere twigs. A row of ten men step in front of the archers, brandishing their spears. You ram into them. Their spears snap like those trees. They only have time to scream before your spear sweeps the air. With only one hand, a damaged string, and the trees constraining your movements, your blows are weak, sluggish.
But these are mere men. They fall by the handful, blood staining their white scarves. Your spear carves through the weak armors of renegade soldiers, while the rebellious peasants are at least granted one mercy - with no armor and poor weapons, they are so exposed their death comes in but one heartbeat. The deserters suffer more, as they deserve.
It's a rout. If these bandits were a true elite force akin to the Imperial Guard, they would defeat you where you stand, their discipline taking advantage of your glaring weak spot. As it is, you are a figure of walking doom, a slayer of army, and these bandits run in terror, throwing their weapons to the ground so that they may run faster.
You take a moment to breathe, then look behind you. Freed from the pressure of the bandits, you expected the ashigaru to come up the slope and gather with you. Instead, realizing that you had the situation well in hand, they focused all their force on the other side of the road, pushing back the other half of the ambushing force. This will be a quick victory.
"G'd show, g'd show," a voice calls out from above, and you snap your head in its direction, raising your arms in defense. "G'd shoulders-head. Cool like icefish."
You frown, trying to track the voice. It's moving in the branches with eerie speed, distorted by its heavy mask.
"Bleaklands dialect?" you say out loud, puzzled. "A bit far from home, are you, ronin?"
"Ah! Am, am, 'deed." He is laughing now. From the sound of his voice, you'd think he's an older man, but that is hard to square with his agility. "G'd thing too. Flatlanders all-like, no know-how traps and tricks. Nonathis work, back home. Everyknows counters."
"Work?" you ask, incredulous. "This didn't work. Your ambush failed."
"All you, all you!" the man says - and finally you can see him in the trees above you. He drops down from a few branches, his mask shining its red-ochre gleam. He does not touch the ground; some thin, translucent thread holds him to a branch, and he seems at ease suspended in mid-air, watching you.
"Wouldaworked, tho. Perfect ambush, you make draw. Still deads on your side, but now on usses too. As say, cool as icefish, g'd shoulders-head. Prop' tactics: many before one. But now pay toll, yea?"
You narrow your eyes, shifting your grip on your spear - not making a move to attack just yet (you suspect he is on watch for it), but preparing yourself for a deadly lunge while protecting your open hatch.
"Toll?" you ask. "What toll?"
The slim man in his dark clothing chuckles, his free hand tapping his mask with a reverberating sound, then puts one hand to his belt ladden with all sorts of toys.
"Only way, eh? Am one, jus' one, gotta ignore me so can rout my men. Fair fair, g'd tactics. Just mean, left me work my designs. Many for one. Now you pay toll."
What the…
From his belt. The same kind of translucent string from which he is hanging, stretching down from his belt to - you.
To one of the last knives that uselessly hit your armor while you were busy fighting.
A drop of fluid drips down from your shoulder onto the door of your hatch. You smell pungent oil. You remember the sound of shattering objects while you were fighting the bandits.
You bite down a curse and kick the lever of your hatch as hard as you can. At the same time the Mockingbird pulls his translucent string, and the cap on the small device tied to one of his knives is released. The oil smeared all over Harvest takes fire seemingly all at once. Only your quick reflexes save your life, shutting the hatch close before it finds its way inside. You let go of your spear and let Harvest fall to its knees, frantically panting its back and shoulders with heavy hands, but there is oil on the hands as well…
Outside, Copper Mockingbird laughs, his voice growing distant as he runs away.
It's getting hard to breathe. Smoke finds its way into the hatch through the breathing grates and the hole in your chestplate. Ironically, Harvest's new Verdant Sapling shape is both doom and salvation - the sweltering heat of the fire on its outer shell would be much more harshly conveyed by a metal armor, leaving you to faint from heat stroke within a minute, but the fact is that your bunraku is made out of wood, and soon will become the very fuel for this fire, needing no further oil to cook you alive. A scout-frame could roll on the ground to put out the fire, but a heavy model does not have the agility for it; all you can do is hunker down for it and hope the fire doesn't take while you frantically pull yourself out of your web of puppet-strings while struggling to breathe. You have to get out, but abandoning your bunraku to the flames…
"Sand! Sand, godsdammit!"
Lady Gozen's voice. A spark of hope in your chest.
You hear the shuffling of feet as men rush to your side, and then hear the splashes of sand being sprayed on Harvest. All armies marching with bunraku carry jars full of sand; fire is a difficult threat to leverage in battle, but if it is made to work it can spell the doom of a very precious puppet. Sand, though, sand is cheap, even mixed in with enough earths and fluids to make it sticky. You hear the flames sizzle and gutter as the fire is smothered and your shoulders grow slightly heavier with a mantle of dirt.
After a moment, the sweltering heat goes down. You breathe out and open your hatch again, clearing out the smoke, and shamble out of Harvest. You cough harshly, spitting out black phlegm, and it takes you a moment to recover your bearings. When you look around you see Lady Gozen watching you warily from her own bunraku; the Rising Tide looks like a porcupine, its armor full of arrows. It's not a pleasing sight; Gozen's armor is a lighter model than yours, and some of these projectiles must have struck far enough to damage her internals. Still, her armor moves smoothly as she approaches you.
"Are you injured?" she asks sharply. You shake your head.
"Stumbled on a Mendicant Blade," you say, voice still hoarse with smoke. "He blinded my armor, but he couldn't hurt me. Just dizzy from the fire."
Gozen nods and turns her head to look at Harvest. She is kneeling on the ground, covered in clotted sand, her eyes downcast. Arrows and knives stick out of her shoulders, back and arms, but the hole in the chestplate from the tree-trap is the only serious damage.
"The fire will have…" Gozen begins, and you raise a hand to cut her off, which she allows.
"They couldn't have known," you say with a thin smile, "but this was the worst approach to take against Harvest. Dented gauntlets, minor holes in the outer shell, abrasion from the heat? Verdant Saplings can heal all that. Death of a thousand cuts mean nothing to my armor, my Lady. I'll just have to replace a few strings at our next stop."
Gozen blinks in surprise, then takes another look at Harvest, squinting.
"Whole-wood construction… I'd heard Mitsuko talk about it as a hypothetical design, but I didn't know she'd moved forward with it. If it delivers on her promises… Very interesting indeed."
"Where's Yoichi?" you ask.
"Guarding the troops. He was at the rear, and with the chaos of men in front of him he had trouble contributing to the fight. I had to expose myself while we drove back the bandits on our side. On the plus side, his bunraku is undamaged, unlike mine, so we still have two heavy-types relatively intact."
"Good thing," you nod, and walk back to Harvest. From her waist, you grab a fireproofed leather bag and open it, pulling out a set of strings. Gozen gives you an odd look.
"You don't have a retainer carry your materials?"
You return her a flat stare.
"I don't have retainers, Lady Gozen. I am still unproved, and only had one stipend since I came to Autumn."
"Uh." She pauses, rubbing her chin. "We'll have to fix that." Then she looks around her - and her face turns into a scowl of vague disgust. You follow her eyes.
Ah, of course. The day has been won. The looting commences. Ashigaru are mere conscripts, and though they are given a stipend for their service, the looting that comes after a battle is their best chance at bringing home real profit from their years of service. Spearmen are already prowling the woods, taking any bit of nice clothing, sandals, usable armor or useful weapon they can find from the dead.
It's distasteful, and you don't like it any more than Gozen, but it is the kind of thing that must be allowed except when pressed by circumstances or else the men grow restless.
"We need to stop to tend to the wounded, anyway," your superior shrugs. "Take that opportunity to restring your armor."
"Are you sure?" you ask, frowning. "Shouldn't we push forward, before the enemy can regroup?"
Gozen shakes her head.
"The men must be allowed their rewards, the wounded must be seen to so as many of them are combat-capable when we find the village, and the dead must be burned or buried, whichever is most convenient here. All of this will take enough time that we might as well organize a proper camp than try to push through for a couple hours more afterwards. Besides, this area has been cleared of traps, so in a perverse way it is safer than if we kept going and stopped elsewhere."
You nod. Strategy and logistics are not your strongest suits; you have alway been more effective at determining the right course of action for the battle ahead, than at planning the march and the battles to come after this one.
Gozen gives you a salute, and moves back towards her troops. Sighing, you take a jug of small beer from your baggage and wash away the acrid taste of smoke with several long swallows. When you're done, you look at your set of replacement strings, then at Harvest's condition, and think for a moment. Most of the damage will heal on its own, and you could replace the lost strings yourself, but charging through so many trees will have unset some of your gears and armor plates. Nothing crippling, but this is where it really pains to not have an attached mechanic accompanying you in the field.
Thankfully, there are others you can call upon. And it will give you something to do while the small army takes a rest. A march is always a tense affair, where there is solitude even in great numbers, and an occasion to relax and talk while someone else tends to Harvest would not be unwelcome.
[ ] Approach Yoichi, asking to borrow one of his mechanics.
[ ] Approach Gozen, asking to borrow one of her mechanics.
[ ] Mingle with the ashigaru, looking for people with the right skills.
