Chapter 14: Seriously, Why Do Movie Bad Guys Always Eat an Apple?

“Fuuuuccck” I heard someone exclaim on my left. A small part of my brain registered that it was Frank’s voice.

We spotted the bandits cresting over a small hillock, they were in formation calmly marching towards us, and they didn’t seem excited or surprised to see such a large wagon train coming. They were expecting it.

We identified them as bandits by the shields they were carrying. They had the crest of the witch painted in a reddish brown colour on their shields. I could see the Ψ much more clearly than the others (except Isiah) using my enhanced eyes. That reddish brown wasn’t paint, it was dried blood.

Isiah could see the blood just as clearly as me; he sniffed the air, there was a gentle wind blowing towards us so he was able to use his supernatural nose. “It is human blood” he whispered gently under his breath so only I could hear. He sniffed again. “Corporal Alwin’s squad, the blood is from Corporal Alwin’s squad!” he whispered shocked.

Corporal Alwin had been in charge of one the bandit hunting squads. His squad had gone north into the Sherwood Forest, where as ours had gone east towards what would later become Rutland. They must have encountered the bandits and been killed. It spoke to the bandit’s barbarism that they painted their shields in human blood.

The bandit, can we still call them bandits? The bandit platoon was still a mile away in hurry to come charge at us, they had the superior numbers and they were more mobile than us. The mercenary leader Red looked nervous. He asked us all to form a tight phalanx at the front of the wagon train. There were only 16 of us, facing 40; no formation was going to help us. If we were going to survive this we would need to reveal some of our secrets. I looked at Isiah he nodded at me, he had been thinking along the same lines.

We formed up into 3 lines of five, the captain was hoping that the phalanx would help even out the clear advantage, it wouldn’t. The phalanx was a historically great formation, perhaps even the greatest formation. It had been invented by the Sumerian’s some 3000 years earlier (2500 BC approx.) and been in use in some form or other ever since. Most famously under the Spartans in their Hoplite phalanx and under Alexander the great in the Macedonian phalanx that conquered half the known world.

Most famous of all the effective uses of the phalanx was probably the battle of Thermopylae where Leonidas and his 300 Spartans had held off 10000-150000 Persians, or so the historical propaganda spread. There were also 700 Thespians and 400 Thebans present, but were conveniently overlooked by the legends. And you know ... they lost, murdered to the last man.

And they had advantages we didn’t, they were battling in a valley which narrowed the approach, and they couldn’t get outflanked. Outflanking was a major issue, the Macedonians had huge cavalries protecting the flanks, and we didn’t. The phalanx was supposed to be invincible from the front, but was very weak from the sides and back. We weren’t even strong from the front. Also the phalanx was a heavy infantry formation, forget heavy infantry, we weren’t even light infantry. We had wooden shields and chainmail. We had spears but they weren’t as long as pikes and they didn’t have secondary sauroters; sharp pointy things attached to the bottom of the spear to spike it into the ground for more leverage, also they acted as a backup point when the spear broke. Oh yeah no one tells you this in modern times, but spears break. Really fucking easily. Especially in a charge situation, like the one we were going to be facing. We didn’t have plated armour, or durable bronzed shields.

Frank was right, we were fucked.

I lined up next to Isiah and quietly spoke. “This will never work. We don’t stand a chance in close combat.”

He nodded solemnly “we don’t have enough archers, there are only 3 bows available and only you and I can hit targets consistently beyond 100 yards.”

I sighed, we both could easily survive this incident, but not without revealing our secrets. Revealing our secrets was not an option, magic was outlawed and we would become hunted men. I would have considered revealing my secret if it was to save just our squad but there were others, the other mercenaries and the traders in the wagon train. There was no telling if they would keep the secret, especially since there were hefty rewards attached with identifying “magical abominations”.

“You will have to save us.” I said looking at Isiah. He turned his head and looked at me surprised. “We will have to reveal the range of the new bow, you can shoot them down at 400 yards, if we can reduce their numbers by 10 or 15, and I can go crazy with the swords, maybe even cheat a little. We can maybe survive this, but there will be casualties.” I sighed.

Isiah thought about it for a moment and nodded his head. “That’s probably the only plan that can work” he said grimly. He realised that this wasn’t the best of plans, realistically this only gave us a 30% chance of survival, but that was better than 0.

The captain at the front raised a black flag and waived it. This was the flag of a temporary truce, a parley. The bandit platoon stopped about 500 yards in front of us. They all had spears, swords and shields. There were even people with javelins. Their shields were bossed and covered in painted leather. They were prepared for war. We had spears, a lucky few had their own swords, our mail was markedly cheaper and worse than theirs and we weren’t wearing thick leather armour underneath.

The bandit leader walked out, he was a tall gangly looking man in his 40s, ugly looking, he had a scarred face and a mangled ear. He was dressed in full mail with a padded leather coat underneath. He was wearing a bloodied wolf skin over his helmet, in the fashion of a roman standard bearer. Because, you know, being in charge of a platoon of bandits with human blood covered shields is not enough.

Something strange happened beside me. Isiah went still. Like frozen into stone, still. He stopped breathing, his teeth were bared and his eyes were turning yellow, he was on the verge of transforming. Then I heard a low growl starting to build in his throat. I quickly grabbed his arm, squeezing hard. It took him a moment to snap out of it, “What is it?” I asked worried, something had triggered the were-cat in him, which was bad. And it wasn’t like we weren’t already busy.

“WOLF!” he growled under his breath.

“Oh shit!” oh shit, oh shit, oh shit. The bandit leader was a were-wolf; and a powerful one at that. The wolf skin on his head was another were-wolf he had fought with and won. Seriously, just what we needed. Because fighting outnumbered 3 to 1 whilst trying to hide our abilities wasn’t hard enough.

“Give me your sword and move back to the wagons, use these arrows. If you need a sword take one from the enemy” I said handing him 20 bodkin tipped arrows. “Don’t aim for the leader, leave him to me.”

He nodded and quietly moved back towards the wagons. The others looked at us suspiciously, especially the mercenaries. “He will be more helpful with a bow” I said. I will cover for him, the rest of squad nine agreed. The other mercenaries were still suspicious but they didn’t have time to worry as the parley was about to begin. I turned my attention to the meeting using my super hearing to hear what they were trying to say.

Redmond went up to the bandit leader completely unaware that the bandit leader was a werewolf. “I am Redmond and I lead the Red Tailed Mercenary Company” he introduced himself

“What a coincidence, we also love red!” the wolf said in a mocking overly pleasant voice. “I am called Graith, and I lead the BLOOD WOLVES.” He shouted those last words and the soldiers behind him stomped their right feet in unison and howled “AWOOOO”

“Is there a way we can avoid bloodshed, we can offer you 50 gold coins and some truly remarkable barrels of ale. As a ... tax, just so that we can be on our way. You can make a hefty profit and no one on either side gets hurt.” Redmond tried to negotiate

“But I like bloodshed. The more the better” Graith said in that mocking positive sing song voice, his every word carrying a sense of malice. This man was a predator, a sociopath. He exuded a feeling of feral violence; like he was more animal than human. He was circling around Redmond; a hunting pattern. “I like the colour of blood, I like the smell of blood, I like the warm feeling of fresh blood spraying on my skin and I even like the taste of blood. In fact I would go so far as to say that I LOVE blood”

“I am offering you 50 gold coins just to stand aside and do nothing. None of your men will have to get hurt. If you attack we will have to fight, we will become desperate, and desperate men can be dangerous. Think about it I am offering you 50 gold coins, that’s 2500 silver coins, just to stand aside and let us pass. That is good coin, surely lord Theodovellaunus would be pleased with your efficiency.” Redmond tried again.

“You made three mistakes in that appeal. Well really two, I do care about the money a little bit. Your first mistake was that you think I care about what happens to my men. I really don’t. In fact I hope they die. I am thinking about having the widows of those who die sold off as slaves and the children; well you don’t want to know about what will happen to the children.” He said licking his lips. “And second: you think we work for the lord of Galloway?” he suddenly moved faster than humanly possible and grabbed Redmond by the neck and stabbed Redmond in the chest. “I killed the lord of Galloway, with this very knife. I work for the Witch!“ he pulled out the knife, bathing himself in Redmond’s heart blood. He literally liked the knife. Tasting the blood, my inner monologue was thinking {he couldn’t act more like an evil bad guy unless he was eating an apple. Seriously why do movie bad guys always eat an apple?}