05-Carl and Yori decide

Carl was out in the field, planting some fresh furrows when he heard a commotion from the orchard. The dogs had something in there. A returning snarl stopped him cold. Carl dropped the seeds where he had stood, and taking the hoe as a weapon started across the fields toward the house and orchard, as fast as he could.

As he ran across the stock yard nearing the orchard, he saw his oldest daughter running through the orchard toward the house. Her bow in her hand. The adult hounds were making fighting noises from farther in the orchard than Carl could see at the moment. There were more snarls as well, not from the hounds.

Carl changed his course to intercept his daughter. Five steps after vaulting the fence he intercepted and scooped her up; from this point Carl could see down the rows of the orchard. The five hounds were worrying a Monster, which had two arrows in it. The hounds all had wounds from the thing.

As he turned, Carl all but tossed his daughter over his shoulder and took off full tilt for the house. When he got close enough he began yelling for Yory. Yory came out the door with a battle rifle in hand. Carl skidded up to the porch, and traded Yory, the gun for the girl, and turned back to face the orchard. Stepping clear of the house as he checked the weapons load, Carl then called the hounds to come. They cleared the trees just ahead of the Monster. Carl stood his ground, and once the Monster was clear of the orchard he fired three shots into its torso. It took a few steps, and fell on its face. Carl put one more shot into the Monster's head, finishing it off.

The hounds alerted to other Monsters and were about to charge off when Yory called them to the porch. She had a large bore scatter-gun in her hands, the three younger children gone inside.

“Where’s Jason?”

“Over at the Galloway’s,” Yori replied.

Carl traded guns and called the oldest hound and took off for the barn. There he grabbed his bridle. Going out the back of the barn he went into the stockyard, and whistled for his horse. They were all gathered with the rest of the stock at the far end of the yard, away from the orchard.

His horse came cantering up, still very nervous. The hound was mulling about and alerting toward the orchard. Carl slung the rifle and reached out to calm the horse. He knew that the most direct route to ride was through the orchard, it being between the stockyard and the road, and in the direction of the neighbors. He slipped the bridle over the horse’s nose and ears, then gathered the reins, and vaulted onto the bare back. The hound alerted at this. He clamped his heals against the horses flanks and headed across the yard, toward the fence of the orchard, the hound at the horses heals. The horse tried to shy away but he pulled its head back and urged it harder. This horse was used to mostly domestic duties, but it still had instinct.  It gathered and jumped the fence into the orchard. The hound jumped between the rails, keeping pace.

They turned some to cut across the orchard diagonally. As they ducked under and around branches, Carl spotted another Monster running to cut them off.  The horse tried to shy away again, but Carl refused to let it. He pulled the scatter-gun around one handed and let fly with a flichette round, blowing the Monster's hip to a bloody mist. He left it there, and called the hound to keep up, as it went to investigate the felled creature.

They jumped the outer fence to the orchard and were on the narrows of the irrigation easement when Carl turned fully toward the neighbors. He urged the horse on to go faster. One more harry Monster tried to lunge out at them. Carl put a shot in it and galloped on as it fell.

They jumped one last fence into the neighbor’s yard, and galloped across the grass to the house. Carl reined the horse in and vaulted from it and through the front door, adjusting the rifle as he went. The hound ran around the side of the house.

A commotion was coming from the back of the house. Carl ran to the great room to find one Monster to his right tossing furniture aside heading to the hall deeper into the house; another on the left advancing on the kitchen through a steady hail of assorted dishes. Carl thumbed a lever on the grip of the gun, and fired; the Monster going toward the kitchen got a small ball of lightening in its back that stunned it thoroughly.

Carl then brought the gun up as a shield to block the paw of the other Monster as it swung at him. The claws missed, but the force knocked him through the end table and against the bookshelf.

Carl recovered in time to blast this Monster at point blank, stunning it. He thumbed the selector switch again, and pumped two flichette rounds into it. As it collapsed, Carl turned to the first and put a round into it, finishing it.

Mrs. Galloway was almost hysteric, and was about to throw a plate at Carl before she realized who he is. Jason called out from the hall, where the one Monster had been going. Carl moved around the carcass and knelt to embrace his son as he and his friend came into the room. Just then the horse started raising a fuss, as did the hound, from right out side the kitchen. Carl let go of his son and turned to the damage and Mrs. Galloway.

“Get into one room, and bar the door.”

She grabbed the biggest knife she had in the kitchen, and herded the children back into the master bedroom. Carl went out the opening the Monsters had made in the glass picture window, and around the side of the house.

The horse was dancing back and forth and rearing at another Monster, the hound was getting back on his feet after having been swatted across the yard.

This Monster’s fur had different coloring, it had red stripes.

Carl could not immediately remember why that scared him.

So he brought the gun up and let fly at the head.

The flichette round hit a psionic shield and puffed to powder. Now Carl remembered why these scared him.

He switched the gun back to energy and let fly again. An unseen force knocked him on his back to slide twice his own length. He shook his head to clear it as he fought to get air back into his lungs.

The Beast was almost to him as Carl got the gun up and emptied it at the thing, nearly point blank. The electrical discharge wreathed the Beast, shorting out its nervous system. It collapsed in a fit of spasms. Carl switched back and put the last two flichette rounds into that Beast, ending it.

The horse settled down at the ending of the Beast. The hound came over, and sniffed and nipped at it. It did not respond, so it was there after ignored.

Carl took a deep breath. “I hope that’s the last of them.”

He set the gun’s power pack to ambient recharge, and shouldered it. He then went in to the house, the hound following. He knocked at the door of the master bedroom, and almost got shot for his effort to identify himself.

That afternoon and early evening, as Carl had borrowed the Galloway’s bucket loader and buried the Monsters’ and Beast in a mass grave, Yory decided that she and Carl needed to have a talk. So she got a baby sitter for the evening.

When Carl got home, Yori sent him to go get cleaned up when he came in; once he is presentable for company, she took him out to the barn, where the wagon was all hitched up, and she drove them to town. She took them to their preferred restaurant, and a corner booth where they could talk privately. She did not waste time getting to the meat of the subject.

“Carl, what do we do now? These Monsters on the heals of Janace can’t be coincidence. And I don’t think she would send them.”

“I don’t think she would send them,” Carl added. “They aren’t easy to make, either. Janace is more than two days away by now. So they were either following her, or sent for us.”

“And our kids” Yori added. The two that had been after Jason still frightened her. Particularly that one had been a Beast.

“So the question is, what to do about it.” Carl started into his meal as the server left.

“Twelve years ago, we answered that. We’ll defend our home. Someone else can go have the adventure.” Yori was trying to be adamant, but not very well.

They ate in silence for a moment.

Carl broke the silence. “That sounds hollow now.”

Yory finished her bite. “You want to go track down the source of this?”

Carl stopped and looked at her, then around at the place.

“I’m a farmer. Part of that means solving problems at their roots.”

“What about your armor? You are still cursed.” Yori had agreed to settle down with him fifteen years prior despite a wizard having put a curse on Carl that said that if Carl put on battle armor again, he would loose his humanity and soul.

“That didn’t stop me this afternoon.”

“What about the kids, or me?”

“You want to go worse than I do. But you also want to stay with the kids.” Carl knew his wife. She had enjoyed adventuring more than he had, and giving that up to be with him on a farm had initially been a big sacrifice. Then the kids had come.

“We can’t take kids looking for trouble.” Yori again tried to be adamant about this, for different reasons than before. This was mama bear grumbling.

The conversation paused as they both ate some more. Both knowing the resolution that they would ultimately talk themselves into, if they let the conversation run its course. So by mutual consent they let it end there.

Moonlight streamed through the curtains illuminating the room in muted silver. But that was not what woke Carl up. The breeze through the partially opened windows played with the curtains, while Carl tried to figure out what woke him up. The warm softness of Yory next to him was not it, nor her arm across his shoulders. The baby was asleep, as also the other kids.

The hounds.

Carl sat up, Yory’s arm sliding off as he did. He listened for the hounds. They were not in the house. The Barn? Those animals were restless, but the hounds were not there. This was not good.

Carl turned the covers aside, and got some fresh drawers from the bureau, putting a bathrobe on over these. Something was wrong on his farm, but he could not tell by sound. He took his favorite battle rifle from its mount on the wall and checked its load. This sound woke Yory almost as fast as the baby’s cry would.

“What’s wrong?” She was not yet awake, and trying to decide whether to be.

“I don’t know. But the hounds left the house, and the animals in the barn are restless. Stay here.”

Carl pulled the curtains to the doors aside and slid the door full open cautiously. The night was cool, but not uncomfortable. The taste of electricity filled his mouth. There was magic near by. The hounds set up a howl, and alert. Carl sprinted to the hedge, and looked through toward the sound. A blue-white glowing rift hung in the air toward the middle of his wheat field. The hounds were packed together watching it. Then the first Monster stepped through.

A Beast stepped through first, and the hounds and some dirt and wheat flew and scattered. Some of the hounds yelped as three got to unsteady feet. A second flotilla of blasts hit all three, gouging the dirt around them; none of them got back up. Carl aimed and fired an energy blast, then thumbed the selector back and hit the beast twice, dropping it where it stood. Then a half dozen Monsters charged through. They stomped on the hounds as they moved apart and tried to determine Carl’s location.

Carl lined up and started shooting. He had enough ammunition to take them all if he could just keep sighted on them. They split into two groups and ran in either direction as the gate closed and faded. Carl turned to his left, as that was closer to the house, and fired, but with the light diminished, his aim was not as sure, and he did not have electronic sights on this rifle.

Then Yory shows up in her armor, and rips through the Monsters. She then closes the gate and finishes off the still-dangerous Monsters. Carl shoots from his position as he can.

Carl turned the hose on Yory, washing the gore from the Monsters off her chrome-covered form.

Yori was speaking as they worked the entrails off the armor. “Taking an eight-month old adventuring is not being a responsible mother.”

Carl twisted the nozzle from spray to stream. “Neither is sitting around waiting for the enemy to send overwhelming force.”

“You want to go.”

“I want the problem solved, that means tracking the problem to its roots and pulling them out.”

They had gathered the living hounds, and called a vet. The kids have gotten up by now, and start tending the hounds.

They also call Janace.

Carl and Yory then begin planning out what to take and how, and what to do about the rest of their stuff.