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Book 5 Chapter 8 - Reapers

Again, they were taken on what Arthur was certain was a round-about-way meant to confuse and make them lose their sense of direction.

Arthur hardly cared. The new cards felt somehow warm in his Personal Space, and he was buzzing with excitement.

This was it. This was exactly what they needed to sneak into Blood Moon Hive and come back out again. Brixaby\'s next card had never felt so close.

Cressida, meanwhile, was visibly unenthused.

Arthur waited until they got back into the carriage, and they were a bit on their return journey to ask, "What\'s wrong? You didn\'t actually want that miniature portal card, did you?"

Part of the back-and-forth haggling meant leaving out that portal card. Arthur hadn\'t particularly cared. He had only included it to start from a stronger position.

She shook her head. "No, I was just... Well, it\'s silly but I was hoping we would somehow stumble across more Shadow cards, though I knew better than to ask outright for them. There aren\'t many young redheaded women dragon riders who have used that openly. It\'s just..." She heaved a sigh. "I know you have the ability to alter cards, but you truly paid a princely sum for what we received."

He had overpaid, she meant. By a lot.

He shrugged. "I can always make more sets now. Those were just practice, you know that."

She nodded, though again, seemed discontented. As if she were waiting for him to say something more.

Arthur gulped, and though they had been riding in this carriage together – close together – for some time, he was aware all over again that they were alone. Together.

His skin felt like it was buzzing and he wondered what would happen if he reached over and took her hand. No, hand holding was for children. What if he slipped beside her and put an arm around her shoulders. Too forward? Should he pretend to yawn and then if she acted badly, he could pretend it was a joke, and—

Sudden commotion outside interrupted his thought spiral: The thunder of hooves from many horses all around the carriage along with muffled yells.

Arthur looked around but of course he couldn\'t see outside the darkened windows. The carriage suddenly stopped, making him and Cressida lurch forward. And suddenly he was holding her, but only for a moment as they regained their balance. He felt her pulse thundering under her skin, but then she straightened and lurched out of his grasp.

Outside, words were exchanged. They were too muffled for Arthur to understand what they were, but the emotion behind them was clear: Someone angry and stressed was giving orders, and someone who was probably the carriage driver was hastily agreeing.

Cressida looked alarmed. "Should I get my shield?" Her mana shield was effective, but expensive in mana.

"No," Arthur said after a thought. "I think we\'re being robbed." He found he wasn’t that alarmed, or really, even that surprised.

She let out a slightly strained laugh. "I\'d guessed that!"

He smiled. "As soon as they open this door, I want you to shadow teleport out of here and get somewhere behind them. Out of their line of sight."

"Okay." She reached for him, but this time he was the one who drew back.

"No, you\'re not taking me. If they attack, then come at them from behind." He smiled grimly. "I\'m going to have a few questions for them."

Then he pulled out razor edged metal shards from the inventory in his Personal Space. He had filed the shards down to the thinnest, most vicious point he could. Using his Nice Shot card, those shards attached to his torso with the duller end down and the sharp ends up.

But he wasn\'t done.

Next came knives. Butchers knives, more flexible filet knives, and steak knives which, again, had been filed down to a sharpness that no sane chef would need.

His Knife Work with his newer telekinesis aspect merged, allowing him to control the knives in a circle around his body.

It looked impressive, if he did say so himself.

Which was why he didn\'t appreciate Cressida\'s doubtful look.

"We won\'t need any of that if I just use my shields."

He smiled grimly at her. "Yes, but I have some questions for them. I want to know what’s really been happening in the kingdom over the last few months."

“The eruption?”

“I don’t think the nobles are the ones to tell the whole truth, do you?”

She still looked hesitant, but at that moment the door handle rattled. There was no complicated lock, and it was yanked open a few moments later.

It was dark in the carriage, which gave the intruders a pause as their sight adjusted. In that moment, Cressida used her shadow teleport ability and was gone.

Arthur focused on the two men poking their heads through the door. They were rough-looking, but not hard-bitten in the way that suggested career bandits. Though from the dirt on their clothes, they were used to rough work.

One sneered as he saw Arthur with his collection of knives.

The other, older and more dignified, was a bit calmer, almost tired looking. He wore a simple hat that was just a covering for his head -- not like the large, wide-brimmed hats of New Houston. This was a simple curved top that had flaps down to the ears.

He looked at Arthur and said calmly, "We have your carriage surrounded. You\'re to turn over any cards not in your heart deck. If you resist, we\'ll kill you and harvest the ones in your heart deck before we leave."

No mention of Cressida. They had not known she was riding with him. Had this been a random attack?

"Who are you?" Arthur asked. "Were you hired by the noble we just left?"

Despite what he had said to Cressida, his main concern was that these were dragon riders who came to find the riders of Brixaby and Joy. But no rider would dress like a simple farmer. So he pushed that from his mind.

His second worry was that he had been set up from the noble who they just purchased from. That seemed much more likely.

The sneering man spat to the side. "We\'re not answering any of your questions, sir." The last word was as venomous as an insult, and told Arthur the man thought he was a noble.

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The calmer man sighed as if he had hoped it wouldn\'t come to this. "Show him."

Now the sneerer smirked and held up his palm which cackled with motes of lightning. Arthur felt the power -- probably a strong Uncommon -- clearly.

And he was close enough for Arthur\'s Counterfeit card to pick up on it.

New Counterfeit spell obtained: Levinbolt

Remaining Time: 11 Hours 59 Minutes 59 Seconds

"I see you have some fancy weapons there. Well, I have lightning. You know what a metallic conductor is?"

As a matter of fact, Arthur did. He learned all sorts of strange technical terms in his time during that Dark Heart challenge.

"I do," Arthur said. "Though you\'re using the term slightly wrong. But it\'s not going to get that far."

"Why—" the man started to say, and then was interrupted quite dramatically.

Arthur had been stalling for time. That ended as a flash of purple so dark it looked black swept by on a buzz of wings, picked up the calmer of the two men – who happened to be the largest – swept upward, and then dropped him from fifteen feet high.

The man had time to let out a short, panicked scream before he hit the ground and crumpled. It wasn\'t a fatal blow, but it certainly was enough to stun.

The sneering man turned with wide eyes and shot the lightning in his palm out at Brixaby.

It was far too late for that as, with a rush of wind from large, eye-searingly pink wings, Joy landed between them and blocked the bolt with a sweep of her green arm. She rarely used the nullification aspect of her arm, but it worked well when she did.

The other would-be bandits started to come to the leader\'s defense, and suddenly had to contend with a crackling flame bear that roared and swiped a paw of fire at anyone who came close.

Arthur went to the carriage door and looked out. In those few seconds, the few men who had fled, could. The others had put their backs to the carriage with their hands up in surrender.

Except for the unlucky man Brixaby had caught. He lay flat on the ground with an enraged dragon bent over and yelling in his face.

"You dare to threaten my rider? I should tear out those pathetic Uncommons I smell in your heart and eat them in front of you!"

The man gurgled something and had his hands up as if in surrender. His pants were unfortunately wet.

"Thank you, Brix," Arthur called. "Hold him there for a moment."

Then he stepped out and looked at the carriage driver who was doing everything he could to control panicked horses who were not happy about dragons being so close.

Arthur suspected he had some beast card power to keep them in place because they danced and shook their heads like they were fighting silent orders.

"Go, get out of here," Arthur told the driver. "We have these men handled."

"Yes, m\'Lord!" The man snapped his reins and Arthur was close enough for his counterfeit card to activate again.

New Counterfeit spell obtained: Tier 2 Beast Control

Remaining Time: 71 Hours 59 Minutes 59 Seconds

He\'d been right.

The carriage thundered down the lane and the driver didn\'t look back once.

They had to be in gentleman\'s country, or between Noble estates. The road ahead and behind was clear, lined with wild growing hedges, with no witnesses in sight. So much the better.

Arthur walked to the man Brixaby had dropped. He still looked dazed and wet from the waist down, but he didn\'t seem to be hurt.

"Are you the leader?" Arthur asked.

The man held up open palms. "My lord, I... I... Forgive us, we were desperate."

"I\'ll take that as a yes." He looked at the man a moment, then at the others. All were dressed similarly in simple peasant garb.

He double checked to make sure Cressida had the menacing of the others in hand. Easy to do with a dragon at her back and a fire bear summon. Then he turned back to the leader. "You didn\'t put up much of a fight. With the exception of the one with the Levinbolt card, none of you have any combat cards, do you?" He didn\'t wait for the man to answer. "Are you farmers?"

Cautiously, the man sat up, and when Arthur didn\'t object, he nodded. "We were farmers, but I swear the rest of my family had nothing to do with today—"

Arthur cut him off with a sweep of his hand. "I don\'t care about your family, but I have questions. What happened here?"

"I... I don\'t understand, sir," said the farmer who looked to be twice Arthur\'s age.

Arthur decided on another track. "What is your name?"

"Kirun, sir."

"Why are you and your friends not tending your fields, Kirun?"

If anything, this garnered more confusion. "Begging your pardon, dragon rider?"

But the look in his eyes told Arthur him what he needed to know. It said, \'You are a dragon rider. Shouldn\'t you know?’

Arthur let a touch of his Subtle Influence into his voice. Just to give his words weight and help calm the man down so he would speak. "I want to hear from your point of view."

"The... the eruption happened on our lands," he began haltingly. When Arthur didn\'t interrupt, he went on. "Me and my family got out in time, thanks to the dragon riders in fact. I... I don\'t know which Hive helped, if you beg my pardon. But it was a rider with a dragon a little bigger than that fellow there." He nodded at Brixaby. "Only purple."

"I am a purple, fool!" Brixaby snapped back, all teeth. Clearly he was in no forgiving mood.

Kirun shrunk back.

"And after the eruption?" Arthur pressed.

"Well..." He paused, likely knowing what he was about to say would not be taken well.

It was one of the other men who yelled with long banked anger in his voice. "There was nothing for us to return to, was there? It was all swallowed up in the cone!"

Which meant that they had been very close to the eruption, indeed.

Cressida spoke up. "Your noble didn\'t offer you new lands? Didn\'t help you to resettle?"

This time Kirun took up the conversation. "There was nowhere for us to go to, was there? But... to tell the truth, rider, not all of us lost our land. M’family was more well off than most, and we could have taken some in, but..."

"But?" Arthur pressed. The way the man was hesitating made him think there was something even worse he wanted to say. And after seeing what the Blood Moon Hive riders had been like in the city, he feared what it would be.

"The lands are dead," the man said in a low whisper. "For miles and miles all around the cone. And no one even with a soil restoration card can seem to fix it. Then the children, and those who\'d never bothered to get a card in t’hearts, started getting sick. A lot had to leave."

Arthur nodded and let a trace of sympathy enter his voice. "I\'ve seen that."

Again came that hesitation before Kirun mustered up his courage and plowed on. "Before that, though, the dragon riders came."

"To fight the scourglings?" Arthur asked sharply. Sometimes hotspots could flare up after a bad eruption, and from what he had heard so far, this was a particularly nasty one.

"That\'s what they said, but not before they cleaned out some of my men\'s homes. Said they needed supplies." Finally, anger had triumphed over fear and Kirun looked ready to spit. "M’family has had five generations on that land, and we had had stored carefully and well for all kinds of disasters. But now no one has anything to spare, and we\'ve got too many mouths to feed."

That caused Arthur to look at the man again and he realized he very well may be talking to a very minor one who was responsible for his patch of land, and that of his neighbors, and had to report to his own noble... one who was likely so destitute that he was now emptying out his card library to make up the costs.

"The riders who asked your people for supplies," Arthur said, putting emphasis on the word. Though he knew it was theft. "Were they wearing a Blood Moon Hive insignia? A red moon, darker on the bottom?"

The man hesitated once again. At this point, Arthur was becoming frustrated. It was one thing to be cautious, it was another to be this… timid.

But before he could prod the man along, he shook his head. “Forgive me, I don’t know the insignias of the hives as well as I should. The badges they wore had snakes on them.”

“Not snakes,” Cressida corrected with a sigh. “Worms. Worm Moon Hive.”

So, it seemed Blood Moon wasn’t the only ones taking advantage of those who could not fight back. How widespread was this practice?

But that didn’t matter a jot to these poor farmers who had been kicked while they were down from the people who should have protected them.

He looked at Kirun.

“If you could ask anything from your noble to help you get back on your feet again, what would it be?”

The man considered for a moment as he slowly stood to his feet. He seemed to draw confidence, and a bit of pride, from being able to look Arthur eye to eye.

“Not all the land is lost,” he said, considering. “There are patches and corners that are not deadened. But we grew wheat and corn, y’see. Which means that we need acres. If we no longer have that… well, then we’ve got to switch crops and grow something profitable that requires less land, but maybe more tending.”

Arthur could well imagine that their nobles, who were hurting financially, didn’t exactly have the funds to invest in expensive or valuable seed crops.

Luckily, Arthur had a solution to that.

He grinned. “And here I was worried you wanted to pick up and move to a new area all together.”

“This is m’home,” Kuron said. “All of our homes. We aren’t going anywhere – one day the dragon soil will come and the land will be reborn. I’m determined that as many of my family and the people under me will live to see it.”

“I assume you have people with the cards to force grow crops?”

“We do.”

Arthur nodded and then reached into his Personal Space and brought out a red bushel. The plant had been dried out in the sun on the vine and then tied together with twine. The leaves were dead, brown husks. In contrast, the warty thumb sized vegetable on the end was so brilliant it was as if it stood as a warning for others not to eat it.

But people, being people, they did.

Kirun squinted and looked close. “What is that?”

“They’re from another kingdom,” Arthur said. “They call them reapers.”

“Ugh, I hate those things,” Cressida said.

“I love them!” Joy licked her chops. “Especially crushed up and sprinkled on meat.”

“Or cooked in sauce,” Brixaby added.

Arthur pushed the bushel at the man. “They’re a type of pepper. I suggest you try them very, very carefully.” He paused. “And perhaps handle them with gloves. People will either love or hate them, but I guarantee a little of these will go a long way.”