The Autumn Republic

The first pursuer leapt the fissure only a few moments after Taniel was in position. As the second set of legs flew overhead, he reached up and grabbed a boot, yanking down. The man dropped his air rifle with a clatter and landed face-first on the lip of the fissure, leaving a smear of blood behind.

The third of the group skidded to a stop and knelt beside his comrade. Taniel made a running leap and grabbed this one by the front of his jacket, dragging him back into the fissure. The soldier let out a strangled scream before Taniel silenced him by slamming his face repeatedly against the rocks. He snatched the air rifle from the dead man’s hands and checked it for damage.

Air rifles were notoriously more unreliable than conventional muskets and rifles. The mechanisms broke easily and the air reserves leaked. This one seemed sound, and Taniel checked the chamber and shouldered the butt.

“Glouster?” The first pursuer had noticed his companion’s absence and turned. “Glouster, are you all right? Allier looks like he’s hurt bad. Pit, Glouster, say something!”

Taniel felt a pang at the panic in the young man’s voice. The fear must be setting in, overrunning his adrenaline. He’d be wondering if his eyes had tricked him. Hadn’t Taniel disappeared into the rocks ahead? How could he possibly be in that dark fissure?

The infantryman came into view, his rifle shouldered, squinting into the fissure.

Taniel shot him in the chest.

He took spare ammunition and air reserves from the dead infantrymen and followed his hidden path back to the rocks. The rest of the squad would catch up any moment, and they wouldn’t be as stupid as their comrades.

He ambushed two more infantrymen in the rocks, and then three more after them, using their bulky kits and unwieldy bayoneted rifles against them in the close confines of the rock formations.

He shot another with his captured air rifle just a few moments later, but the damned mechanism broke before he could fire another round, and he was forced to flee, with the remainder of the two squads hot on his heels.

They stayed in a tight formation now, not letting themselves be led on by his tricks.

Taniel knew he was running out of ground. This ridge went on for a couple of miles before it meandered into one of the thousands of valleys that crisscrossed this mountain range. He needed to be rid of the rest of his pursuers before he doubled back and figured out a way to deal with the remaining infantrymen down in the canyon. There was another fissure along here somewhere that would let him get behind his enemy and…

Taniel swung around a boulder to find himself staring out into the sky. The drop below him must have been more than two hundred feet down a sheer rock face into a barren streambed. He searched about him for another escape route, but there was nothing but bare, vertical rock to be found. A ledge to his right gave way to more such rock and a narrow outcropping that would doubtlessly give them a firing platform.

Somewhere, he’d taken a wrong turn. He was at a dead end.

He looked back around the boulder the way he came. Maybe he had time to get back and find another route before they caught up.

The flash of Adran blues sent him back behind his boulder. He could hear the shouts of his pursuers.

“He went down this path here.”

“Careful on that, no line of sight. He could be hiding anywhere.”

“Cover me from above.”

“All right, you three with me. Try to go around that way, lads.”

Taniel risked a glance to see four soldiers working their way down the goat path he’d followed. They were less than twenty paces away, and would reach him within moments. The other soldiers would find that outcropping sooner or later and he was a dead man.

If this damned air rifle hadn’t broken, he might be able to defend himself at range.

When the first bayonet came within sight around the edge of the boulder, Taniel reached past it to grab the barrel and leveraged his weight against the man holding it. Caught by surprise, the infantryman slid and tumbled several feet and then plummeted the rest of the way down into the gorge, the end of his fall punctuated by the silencing of his scream.

“Bloody pit, he’s right there!”

“Hold it together.”

“He just threw Havin right off the edge! Did you see that? He’s going to…”

Taniel didn’t wait to find out what the infantryman thought he was going to do. He rounded the corner, gripping his broken air rifle like a pike, and shoved the bayonet into the talking man’s chest. The man gave a garbled yell and fell, grabbing the kit of the man behind him as he went and sending them both tumbling over the edge.

Taniel and the last soldier stared at each other for a moment before the man brought his air rifle to his shoulder in one quick move and pulled the trigger.

Click.

“They’re so damned unreliable, aren’t they?” Taniel asked.