Chapter 8

Even for high noon the springtime sun wasn't especially warm and already I regretted leaving the warm blankets of the camp, beside the clean and clear (but cold) waters of the pond. The ladies, my lovers Ruth and Jodi rarely left their blankets except to perform necessary tasks to maintain the camp, and help prepare meals for the rotating scouts who came at dawn and dusk to deliver their reports and refresh their supplies.

I did have to admit that having a cleanly shaved crotch did make every part of sex more stimulating and interesting. Still my groin was tingling from the unusual feel of completely bare skin rubbing against my heavy leather riding trousers. Jodi had used one of her razor sharp combat knives to perform the task of shaving her own nether region baby smooth and then doing again the same to clear away Ruth's rather overgrown pubic mess that had never before known even a trim before. She also had to admit that when she tried on her own newly acquired leather pants that the feel of the snug leather rubbing against her bare mound and lips was an extremely distracting and sensual one.

This new novelty quite enhanced everyone's libido and for much of yesterday we had quite lost ourselves to near continual bouts of sexual congress. Enough so that the four scouts that returned to our camp to report yesterday evening at sunset each got quite an eyeful of their leaders hard at play. After a long but very pleasant night of even more frantic fornication, it was reluctantly decided that we needed to take a short respite from the fun and games. Pleasurable or not, we were here for a reason and after evaluating two full days of scouting reports we were now about ready to decide upon some sort of action.

Probably no one would have thought twice or second guessed us if we'd decided to just sneak off and report back to the mayor of Fort Salina what we had discovered, if that had been our decision. I'd strongly considered it, but every indication was that the besieging forces here by us at the furthest point away from their main camp were light, barely enough to functionally surround the town at all, let alone provide sufficient force to prevent a determined sally of the defenders, or repel a well-planned covert attack by us to reach a small secure gate at the northeast section wall into the town.

Ideally, we tentatively proposed to let Jodi covertly take out the active guards nearest the walls under cover of darkness tonight, much like she had done to decimate (and then some) the camps of cavalry that had hunted us down a few days ago. Jodi enjoyed this sort of sneaky mayhem and agreed with alacrity.

"I hadn't killed anyone in a couple of days now and my fingers are starting to get itchy!" she remarked, and we believed her. She had a rather liberal moral code about killing, namely that any time, place or way you could kill your enemy was just fine ... but it was a lot more fun if you can cut their throat or gut them with a sharp knife! I wasn't quite so cavalier about killing, but even Ruth agreed that the horde, which preached a violent religion based upon human sacrifice and cannibalism, needed destroying ... by any means possible.

Once we could reach the walls to make contact with the townsmen and hopefully their military leaders, we would offer to set up a light cavalry screen for the following night, to give preparation time for the townsfolk to gather and load their wagons and prepare for a fast and orderly evacuation to Fort Salina, about ten miles away as the crow flies but probably closer to twenty by the relatively safe and indirect route I'd prefer to take. The wagons and women and children on foot wouldn't be able to move fast, but we hoped that by clearing out all of the nearby horde guards, we could gain a couple of hours of secrecy before the besiegers discovered that their prey was gone.

The horde didn't really want the walled town itself anyway; they were nomadic and on a mission of divine conquest. They just wanted to capture and absorb the population into their own ranks, to swell their numbers for yet more conquest. Saying 'No' wasn't an option ... unless the victim wanted to go next into the communal stew pots! If we could get some or most of the population away to safety, along with as much stored food as possible, they could probably reach the safety of Salina by dawn.

Certainly their remaining cavalry would try and chase us down, but we'd beaten them twice already and really all we had to do was screen our evacuation column at the rear and just deter or delay the attackers. Given the state of their morale, I doubted they'd have the belly to stand and fight us anyway. I didn't consider the company size force of foot soldiers as much of a threat to our plans either. They couldn't march much faster, if at all, than the town wagons ... and we'd hopefully have time and distance in our favor by the time they could begin to earnestly chase after us. Even just eight half-trained riflemen hidden in a secure but prominent firing position could exact a large toll of any attacking force. I'd naturally be taking out the leaders with my sniper's rifle, and prior experience had shown that the horde rank and file soldiers tended to willingly, even eagerly retreat and do nothing without receiving direct explicit orders to do anything otherwise.

Reaching the last of the four scouting positions of my normal noontime patrol circuit, I greeted the young lad currently on watch and took his mid-day report. His, the western most of the four hidden spy posts was the last duty station that I needed to check on today and frankly I didn't expect much of a report other than 'all's quiet', but I was soon pleasantly surprised. His scouting partner whom ought to have been napping for his own watch later, was awake and eager to add to the accuracy of the report. The look of their eyes alone told me of the urgency of their discovery.

"Witch-Lord, I'm glad you came just now, because only a few minutes ago I thought I saw something happening closer to their main camp, right by the main gates of the town on the western side. More cavalry sir, new ones I think ... all wearing bright green jackets and green caps. I only saw about a patrol's worth and at a bit of a distance heading towards the main gate, a dozen to sixteen of them for sure, but I'd bet there are yet more, either nearby or still coming. Fine looking mounts too! Bigger and better looking than ours! If I was to guess, and it's not in my pay-grade, Sir, I'd say that these were the advance elements of one of their really elite units, maybe even their best boys! Chester here was wanting to sneak closer to get a better look, but since I was expecting you soon we waited. Did we do the right thing sir?"

They had. Being called a Witch-Lord was a bit of a surprise, but I guess they had to call me something. They were still a bit scared stiff of me and Jodi, and of our powers, but we definitely had their complete respect. Already the lads were joking about giving themselves a unit name, something bold and scary like 'The Regulators'. Getting fancy notions of fame and glory they were, but I had to admit that their morale was sky-high. They were ready to kick ass and screw taking names! I just wished I had eighty, or more of the lads instead of just eight ... or that the few riders we had were just a bit better trained and had more experience.

I told the lads to keep their secrecy and just passively watch and have both of them return right after dusk to the main camp for new orders ... and to be prepared for a possible fight later tonight. The lad currently on watch, named Scott I think, snapped off a wild salute that I almost worried might have attracted some outside attention, but thankfully no one seemed to be anywhere nearby. I didn't chastise his over-enthusiasm. Last night, he'd been the only lad that didn't gawk (overly much) at seeing his commander screwing his bevy of lovely ladies, and he'd even ordered the other three lads to quickly turn away until we'd made ourselves sort of decent. Future officer material this one was ... if I could keep him and his buddies alive another day or two!

The lad was a bit excitable, but his report sounded sound ... especially from a very keen young kid that really wasn't old enough yet to shave before he'd killed his first fellow human in battle. This report bore further investigation and if true these new horsemen might screw up our entire plan to evacuate the town. A couple of dozen cavalrymen we could handle in a skirmish, but if another troop sized force or even a full squadron was on the way, that was really more trouble than we could safely handle!

My first thought was to wait until dark and then send Jodi to investigate. That was the smart play. The only problem was that I needed that information about the strange riders now ... in order to better execute our plan tonight. Furthermore, if I took Black back to our camp and then left right away again, Jodi would know that something was up ... and want to run the scouting mission herself. Frankly, that sounded like a bad idea. She was just excitable enough to forget that she was only scouting and get distracted taking scalps. Mercifully, she didn't actually take any literal scalps that I know of ... but it's the sort of thing she'd do, gleefully - once the idea came up. I didn't want to give her the opportunity. She already had enough appallingly homicidal habits.

I wanted to sidle around the camp safely and try to count noses or maybe even listen to what any loose lips with loud carrying voices had to say. This made me think at once of Jodi's and mine 'gift transference'. Her danger sense was somewhat better than mine, and now that we'd rather recently had vaginal sex, less than an hour ago in fact, my own minor gift was now operating at her own full normal power. Likewise, she would now have my metal sensing ability and enhanced combat targeting gifts. Now I wondered if I'd also have her nearly supernatural gift to sneak about unseen, virtually invisible and without leaving any discernablible trail behind me. I'd never tried this and now this was worth checking out!

For fun, I told Scott that I was going to try and move through the field of rye-grass below him and I'd come back in a few minutes to check and see how well he could spot me. Could he detect me right up close while he was on full alert, or did my stealth have a certain range? Better to discover the details now, rather than anger an entire horde by marching right up within their sights!

In fact, as the astonished lad reported, I appeared to disappear not very far in front of him, perhaps at about a range of only fifteen to twenty yards distance away from his outpost. From that point further onwards I was functionally invisible apparently. Perhaps he saw the waist high grains of rye-grass move at odds suddenly with the wind, but certainly no human figure was betrayed to give anyone cause for warning. Better than I had hoped! Really, I didn't have much of a clue about what I was doing other I than I tried a slight variation of the invisible light shield trick I'd tinkered with on my first big solo scouting mission and then I kept thinking very hard about 'not being seen'. No one here, thank you - nothing but the wind around for nearly a mile ... certainly not a sneaky witchfinder leaving less trail through the tall rye-grass than footsteps through water!

I did need practice, and this seemed like a good time to learn while doing. I decided I'd just slink around further to the west gliding and hiding in the rye-grass fields as much as possible until I could get a really good look at the enemy camp by the western main front gate. The cavalry would be posted somewhere to their back away from the main infantry camp anyway. Probably a quarter to half a mile further west or south, down one of the old roadways. This should allow me more than sufficient cover from their camp watch-guards and maybe I could now get close enough to hear something of their plans. I just had to find out if this was merely some sort of VIP escort with just a patrol unit of dozen or so troopers, or if they were just the early-birds ... and harbingers of serious trouble. By now they'd have received word that some of their cavalry outfits had been chewed up and spit out, so if I were a smart barbarian commander I'd be wanting some hard boys who were a bit better at the game. After all, getting defeated twice by an inferior force is really, really bad for army morale and this obviously couldn't be allowed to happen again!

For the next hour I sneaked and snooked, snooped and scuttled myself quietly and secretly counter-clockwise about half way around the town, staying just outside their limited active patrol zones until I had a pretty good view of everything happening down at the main camp. At the moment it wasn't much. The infantry was still limited to about a company size, more or less, no one was building any siege ladders or putting some polishing touches on any battering rams. All nice and quiet! I thought I could see some big fancy tents near the center that looked to me like officer country, but in full daylight, or as much as we normally get in the spring, sneaking inside their encampment was a bigger risk than I wanted to try. Jodi probably would have taken that risk, unnecessarily, but that was a main reason why I was performing this particular scouting mission. The rewards probably weren't worth the significant risk – nothing was really more important than keeping our presence here secret! Alerted, our chances of getting any of the surrounded townsfolk away to safety would be just about nil.