Clockwork Revenant - Chapter 4 Iv. Squad 409

“You honestly expect me to believe you got with a girl like that before you left?”

Joren Falstaff said, pointing at the silverprint photograph in his hand with his flask.

“…Not a fuckin’ chance.” He said as he took another swig.

Ector Garsa grinned at Joren and threw his hands up.

“Ey man, I’m serious. ‘ats my girl back home. ‘er name’s Lyla.”

Joren lowered the flask from his mouth again and swallowed.

“…You’re full of shit, Ector”, he said, wiping the moisture from his beard. “This girl is grade-A, and your face looks like someone cooked five pounds of dog’s ass and glued it to a tank shell. Ain’t no fuckin’ way you’re sleeping with that.”

He flicked the photo with a snap of his wrist, spinning in an arc over the small campfire situated between the two men. Ector put a hand out and caught it before it spiraled into the shadows outside the firelight.

“Eyy man, believe what you want.” He said, sliding the print back into the internal pocket of his uniform with a smirk. “Ain’t gonna stop me from fuckin’ her when I get home.”

“Fucking who?” Basta Gilmore asked, stepping into the light of the fire. He held his spellrifle by the middle in one hand, and with the other held a mug of something steaming by the rim. He picked a seat on one of the logs by the fire between the two men and sat down.

“Ector here’s trying to convince me that some girl with a pulse actually wants to bang him.” Joren said, pointing in Ector’s direction.

“Oh, no, it’s true, Joren. There is a girl who does.” Basta said, his elven face expressionless. “Speaking of which…” he said, turning to Ector with a grin, “how IS your sister these days, anyway?”

“Ey, fuck you, darkie.” Ector said with a snort before muttering “…she’s not even my real sister anyways”

“Darkie! I’m hurt.” Basta said, feigning a pout. “I thought you had more class than that.”

“Oh, I’m sorry, pointy ears… You dark elves prefer the term “grapeskin” instead?” Ector asked.

“We prefer the term ‘Master Race’, monkey.” Basta said, intentionally sipping from his mug a little too loudly. “Show some respect.”

“Well, if you people ever dominate the world again, I’ll be sure to use that.” Ector said. He leaned back on his seat and stretched lazily.

“Speaking of races who don’t rule the world anymore, where’s our dwarf friend?” Joren asked.

“That filthy digger’s around here somewhere” Basta said with a wave of his hand. “Try looking under the nearest stone.”

“Whoa there, racist!” Ector said, scowling in mock disgust. “Watch’er fuckin’ mouth, eh?”

Joren laughed as he stood up from his seat. “I’ll go find him. I gotta take a piss anyways. Try not to kill each other while I’m gone.”

Joren stepped away from the firelight, giving his eyes a chance to adjust to the darkness before he set off towards the edge of the camp to find a tree. The rain had been sputtering on and off for the past several days, and away from the fire the temperature felt unpleasantly cold and cloying thanks to the dampness in the air. Joren shivered to himself as he stepped behind one of the larger trees past the tents and relieved himself. During the few moments of silence this afforded him, he reflected back over the past week.

The front had broken for both sides. At some point, armies just run out of fresh bodies to throw at a trenchline. His commanding officers, in their infinite fucking wisdom, decided to give up the line the same time as Utrecht and wait until more conscripts showed up to die. Five days past, here they were, still sitting in the middle of a soaked sponge of a field, collecting rainwater in their boots and waiting for permission to return to being shot at. The boredom was almost as crushing as the anxiety.

Joren zipped his pants, and turned back towards the camp and his squadmates around the fire in the distance. They were absolute sons of bitches. But they were his sons of bitches, and he felt grateful that, thank the All-Mother, at least his squadmates weren’t mouth-breathing fuckwits. Well, at least most of them weren’t. He had no excuse for Ector. At least the kid was funny.

Joren glanced about the outskirts of their small campsite for his dwarven squaddie. Gunter may be lacking in height, but his demeanor and drinking obsession tended to make him pretty easy to find. He wasn’t in the immediate vicinity that Joren could see, unless maybe he’d passed out somewhere outside one of the tents.

Joren paced a rough circle around the camp, looking for the body of his dwarven friend, when he heard a distant bang from the direction of the trenches, as if someone had dropped something heavy on one of the trench floors, followed a few seconds later by a higher and fainter ping. Sounds coming from the trenches at night wasn’t terribly uncommon, but they were typically of the “clearly caused by animals” variety. These sounds weren’t familiar. A small hill rose about 50 feet east of the camp itself, and Joren walked to the top of it. Opening one of the belt pouches on his uniform and pulling out a small set of field binoculars, he peered down into the trench network.

He scanned across the trench lines for several moments, and was about to glance away when a small amount of movement caught his attention in one of the shell craters between the second and third lines. He adjusted the zoom on the binocs as far as it would go to try and get a better look at it.

Something humanoid was scrambling through the crater.

Joren lost sight of it for a moment as it began to ascend the closer side, before falling from the edge back into the crater floor. The fall, however, didn’t appear to slow it down, and it seeming resumed its attempts until a short while later, it crested the close side of the crater and continued on to the third line. As it grew closer, her got a better look. Whoever that was down there wasn’t wearing a uniform that he could see, and appeared to be covered in some kind of strange articulating armor. He watched as the shape ducked back behind the corner into the third trench line, before slowly peeking its head back around.

As Joren lowered his binoculars and prepared to move off the hill, a gruff voice appeared behind him.

“Vat is eet?” Gunter Kraghammer asked, his Ungarian accent giving the words an almost sing-songy quality.

Joren startled, and turned towards the dwarf, who he noticed for the first time was sitting beneath the side of a large angled stone on the hilltop, a bottle of some variety clutched in one hand, and a lit pipe of something in the other. He chuckled at Joren’s reaction.

“Zorry. I azzumed you knew I vas here.” Gunter said. He stood up and walked up beside Joren, and looked out towards the trench line. “eez eet Utrecht?”

Joren raised the binoculars again to see that whatever had been waiting at the trench corner was now out of sight.

“I don’t think so.” Joren said, lowering the binoculars again. “I’m not sure what it is, but it looks human enough.”

“You zink eet eez coming zis vay?” Gunter asked, drawing on his pipe.

“It’s probably on its way this direction, since we’re the only light source around. Not sure if that’s a good thing.” Joren said. He tossed the binoculars to Gunter. “I’m going to go alert the others. Keep an eye out and signal if you see anything.”

“Zure thing.” Gunter said, setting the bottle on the ground and raising the lens to his eyes. “Oh, und Joren?” he said.

“Yeah?” The man asked, turning back to the dwarf.

“Don’t mention me zitting under ze stone to ze elf. I vill never hear ze end of it.” Gunter said with a chuckle.

“Duly noted.” Joren said with amusement, and walked on towards the campfire.