Chapter 1: Fools
Now
“Oh, fluff!” exclaimed the crow as he ran up the hill. “We forgot our stuff at the door!” A few black feathers and a loose document fluttered behind him, having slipped out of the folder tucked under his uninjured wing.
“Oh well. Run!” said the raccoon, lugging a long, boxy case by the handle with one paw.
Thwip! An arrow flew towards their backs, coming from the small squad of Marquise soldiers chasing close behind them. The vagabonds had neither the numbers nor the weaponry to defend against the soldiers.
The raccoon instinctively ducked upon hearing the sound. The arrow whizzed closely over her head right after it grazed the top of her satchel, tearing it open and letting several cans of sardines spill out.
“Nails!” the raccoon called out to the short black cat ahead of them. “Let’s get a hiding spot!”
Nails hurriedly spotted a gap in the trees further down by the hilly, leaf-covered path and jumped in, her small stature allowing her to squeeze through with little struggle. She poked her head out and waved the other two towards her, leading them back into the dark, dangerous depths of the Rootward Forest.
The cat cleared her throat. “They’re not… gonna dare to chase us in here,” she rasped.
The three vagabonds panted as they stumbled through the forest in search of a safe corner to rest in. Although the trees had already shed some of their foliage ahead of the winter, the canopy was still dense enough to shroud the interior of the forest from the sky. The afternoon sun could barely reach down to dimly illuminate the tangled forest floor, thick with gnarled, ancient tree roots that offered scarce spots for secure footing.
The trees at the edge of the Rootward Forest were like walls, keeping the towns and paths confined tightly to their clearings, away from the wilderness. Those five or six or ten elite Marquise soldiers wouldn’t dare tail them into the Rootward at the risk of being caught in some hazard, getting lost, or finding themselves in front of a bear. In contrast, the three vagabonds knew these woods as their shelter and were familiar with its hostile terrain. Even without their weapons, the depths of the forest would be an adequate defense.
The crow, raccoon, and black cat dashed into the shadow of a ravine, their footsteps masked by the rustling of dry leaves as the wind blew through the trees. This was a good time to take a breather — they had run from the barracks in the middle of town all the way back into the Rootward Forest.
Anders leaned back against the ravine wall, sliding down into a sitting position. “Ellie.” The crow adjusted his scarf around his shoulder, fashioned into a sling to hold his injured left wing. “Who was that dead cat, anyway?” he wheezed between heavy breaths. Crows weren’t well-suited to travel purely on the ground.
The raccoon shrugged, laying the case down at her feet and plucking a leaf out of her sweater. “I dunno. You can find plenty of dead animals around when a forest-wide war is going on.”
“We did it,” Nails called out hoarsely, coughing up a puff of blue dust. She looked more disheveled than usual, with blue blotches staining her trenchcoat and ragged black fur. “Hahaha. We did it!” she sighed in relief, scratching at the itchy powder stuck to her fur. “Now what?”
Earlier
Turning lazily in the chilly autumn breeze, the old windmill sat in the middle of the much newer barracks grounds and towered over the cat and fox guarding the gateway in.
The two guards tensed up upon seeing three animals approach — clearly vagabonds who had been scrounging around in the forest, given all the leaves and burrs caught in their clothes. The raccoon among them carried an incapacitated cat on her shoulder, flanked by a smartly dressed crow and a short black cat.
“Hold it!” stated the guard fox, crossing halberds with the guard cat. “State your business.”
The raccoon spoke up, struggling to hold onto the cat.
“Greetings, sirs,” said Ellie, straining under the weight of the body. “We— urg—”
“We caught you a traitor.” The crow stepped forward, casually doing up a button of his jacket. “Ex-Lieutenant Antoine Labrèche of the Marquise Militia? Wanted for feeding intelligence to the Eyrie Dynasties?”
With the tip of the halberd, the guard cat poked the body slumped over Ellie’s shoulder. The tail flopped limply. He gave Anders a silent glare.
Anders turned up the palms of his wings, opening them slightly in a friendly gesture. “Oh, come, now,” he cooed. “We’ve all seen the wanted poster around town, right? Dead or alive? This is one of those two choices.”
The glares continued.
Anders dropped his friendly smile. “Look. There’s a gentlecat by the name of Le-roo in there that can vouch for us.” He gestured past the gate to the wide stone building extending out of the windmill. “This isn’t the first bounty we’ve claimed.”
The two guards exchanged looks, their expressions unreadable with their helmets obscuring their eyes.
Uh oh, awkward. Anders had been in the vagabonding game long enough to know to maintain his cool under pressure, though. “Le— Le-roo? Monsieur Le-roo?”
“You’re looking for Leroux?”
“Yes! Yes, him. Le-roo.”
“Okay. We’ll get someone to fetch Leroux,” said the fox. “You’re not coming in with your weapons, though.”
Nails dropped the crow a discreet comment from behind. “Your accent sucks.”
Chapter 2: Rewards
Now
“Ow.” Anders laid the folder on his lap and gripped his injured left wing. “I say we figure out why he wanted so bad for us to get this stuff in the first place.”
“Labrèche specifically told us not to open the case,” Ellie replied sternly. “I’m not giving up my second half of the pay just to look inside. He’ll know if I broke the lock.”
Nails scoffed, a small, faint puff of blue dust shooting out her nose. “And? We did what he wanted. He can’t pull our puppet strings. What is that birdbrain gonna do about it?” She turned to Anders. “No offense.”
“Hah,” Anders chuckled. “If we know what we have in our wings— paws, whatever, I could talk him into upping our pay for the job. We risked our fur and feathers for a briefcase and some paper! He wants it so bad? His begging tail can’t be a chooser.”
Earlier
Nails squeezed through the entrance, struggling to push open the heavy wooden doors. With her trenchcoat now much slimmer with the pockets emptied and her boots lighter with all three daggers removed, she joined back up with Anders, who was brushing the leaves out of his feathers as he waited in the lobby of the barracks.
Only a few of the lanterns nearby and down the halls were lit. Alongside the slight strips of daylight coming from the tall, narrow windows above, they dimly illuminated the otherwise bare stone walls of the barracks. With the fireplace in the side of the room unlit and hardly a soft flame in the lanterns, the air inside was only barely warmer than the outside.
“I hope Ellie can pick a lock with her bare paws.”
The crow leaned against the wall. “At least we’re not forfeiting our stuff. We’ll get it back on our way out.”
Unable to find a chair in the lobby, Nails sat on the cold stone floor beside Anders, legs crossed, as they waited for Ellie and Leroux to show up.
The cat and crow kept quiet as they waited, not wanting to invite any trouble while inside a building full of it. The distant sound of a saw ripping through wood filled their silence, buzzing through the hallway that led to the windmill. Once used to grind the town’s grains, it was now one of the sawmills in the Marquise de Cat’s network of industrial and military might. It produced wood at a speed that no one thought was even possible until the Marquise took over.
Nails sighed. “They’re taking a while with Ellie.” She lifted her chin out of her paws and looked back down the corridor to the entrance. “You think they’re also searching the dead cat?”
“Ah, Mister Anders! And friend!” A cat with orange stripes and dark goggles emerged from around the corner, greeting the two of them warmly. “I hope you’re well. You’re here to claim another bounty, yes?”
Surprised by the cat’s sudden, silent approach, Anders quickly popped off the wall and tucked his scarf into his jacket. “You guessed right, Researcher Le-roo.” They shook paw and wing. “Our colleague is on her way here with the defector Labrèche in tow! And how is the commandant doing?”
Annoyed, Nails quietly reminded him again. “Leroux.”
“Oh, he’s still recovering, unfortunately,” Leroux replied. “I don’t have the clearance to get you your reward, but I will leave a good note with Commandant Renaud so you can pick it up later.”
Nails silently cursed. They wouldn’t be able to collect the wanted bounty in addition to getting paid for their mission.
“Ah, here she comes,” said Leroux, looking past Anders at the raccoon carrying in a limp cat. “If you please, madame, let’s leave this cat here for the medical team.”
“Oof!” Ellie flopped the cat onto the stretcher. “We’ve got another problem.”
Anders nodded. “Indeed. We scouted out Labrèche and counter-ambushed his squad at the edge of town. That means the Eyrie Dynasties are building up for an attack. Our strike against them will buy us a bit of time, but you guys need to get your troops ready to defend against their offensive!”
Leroux frowned. “Hm. Then come with me. I’ll sound the alarm and get you three to the armoury to stock up.”
“But we had our—!” protested Nails, before shutting up when Ellie softly whacked the black cat in the back. “Ugh, never mind.”
With a quick gesture from the orange cat, the three vagabonds followed Leroux down the corridor he came from.
Anders turned to look behind him at Ellie and Nails. “That’s where we need to be,” he whispered, pointing a feathery finger at the securely locked metal door on the left. “Weapons lab. Le-roo works there.”
Chapter 3: Arms
Now
Nails crouched down and laid a paw flat on top of the case. “Come on, Ellie, we should at least know what the thing in this case does. He’s not paying us to play fetch for fun.”
Her pleading couldn’t shake Ellie’s stoic demeanour. “Guys, we need to save this discussion for… not here,” she said, looking between the other two. “Not now. We’re still deep within Marquise sector of the forest out here and we have no way of fighting back if they find us here.”
Anders leaned his head back against the ravine wall and took a deep breath. After a brief moment, he came to a realization.
“Oh, hey! You think what’s in this folder would say anything about it?” He opened it up and brushed off the leaves that got caught inside. He frowned, squinting at a tea-stained stack of papers within. “I can’t read a word of this.”
Nails stepped to his side and craned her neck to see the papers in his grip. “Well, they’re with the Marquise. They wouldn’t be writing in our language. Let me take a look at what it says.”
She started reading over the small stack of papers and mentally translating them. “It’s…” Her ears dipped down slightly. “Oh.”
Progress Report for Prototype Weapon Development
The current situation in the Woodland War has exposed issues with armoury stocks and the design of Marquise standard-issue weapons. The goal of this project is to explore options to alleviate these problems.
The standard longbow takes too much time to train recruits in its use, which limits their deployment across Marquise territories. Although there is a local abundance of lumber with which to make arrows, these arrows perform poorly against armour and reliably sourcing feathers for fletching is unsurprisingly difficult given the conditions of the war. In addition, the standard crossbow is slow to arm, requiring excessive force, and additional stock of bolts must be regularly imported due to the lack of in-colony production capacity and appropriate sources of materials.
The first phase of this research project aims to develop upgrades to the standard-issue ranged arsenal. The upgraded weapons must be easier to use, thus reducing the training required. The ammunition must also have improved ballistic properties and be practical to produce locally. Development of an initial prototype is underway.
…
Earlier
“Impressive forging pattern!” remarked Anders, turning a sword over in his wings, a smooth, swirly pattern shining along its length. “I’ve scarcely seen a sword forged with such high quality metals.”
Leroux was visibly eager to engage in conversation with the crow, his ears perking up. “Hah, yes! These get shipped in from other parts of the empire. Good-quality iron is scarce in these parts, you know.”
Of course the weapons researcher would have much to say about this subject. It was amusing to Anders that a geeky cat like Leroux could get a job literally studying the blade.
And that suited the silver-tongued crow perfectly. He and Leroux toured along the stone walls of the armoury room, its sparse decor a clear concession to speedy, defensive construction over style. Anders feigned admiration for the equipment stacked up on the racks as they walked by, chatting up Leroux with inane questions about alloy compositions and trebuchet mechanisms.
Ellie stood in a separate aisle of the room, gawking at the expansive stock of Marquise-standard field rations. Upon rows of shelves were stacked flat metal boxes small enough to grip in one paw — a peculiar style of food storage the Marquise Militia employed. She didn’t understand the foreign words on the labels, but going by the graphic stamped on them, these little boxes were packed with fish. That was certainly more palatable than the bricks of ground sunflower seeds the Eyrie issued to its soldiers.
With Anders subtly leading that orange cat away to an obscured corner of the room, she reasoned that she had enough time to grab herself a few more free meals before heading to the weapon lab. Not like the Marquise herself was going to come over to count inventory.
As she brought her empty satchel off of her back and started grabbing cans, she overheard Anders and Leroux.
“…besides, we’re the good guys. Maybe we’ll just have to teach a bridge how to string a bow and fire it!” joked Leroux. He and Anders shared a laugh.
Ellie lowered her head as she continued to shove cans of fish into her satchel. “Alright, Nails,” she whispered. “Sounds like Anders has the guy busy— Agh.” One clattered on the ground. She quickly picked it back up and turned to Nails. “Now’s the time. I stole back my—”
The raccoon stood alone in her part of the room, accompanied only by a thin streak of sunlight coming through the window above the shelves. Nails wasn’t actually with her.
“Huh?”
She snuck along the perimeter of the room, looking for the cat while trying not to disrupt Anders’s distraction. The crow gave her a fleeting glance, concerned that she and Nails still hadn’t made their way out to the weapons lab.
No, the black cat wasn’t in the armoury room, Ellie concluded. She looked back out to the hallway: the door to that storage room wasn’t open on their way here. She dropped the fish again and bolted over.
“Nails, no—”
BOOM!
A deafening explosion tore through the halls of the barracks and shook the floor, making all the armoury racks sway and rattle in unison.
The black cat launched out of the storage room and slammed into the corridor wall back first, leaving a trail of dark blue smoke. Her harsh coughing fit ejected clouds of dust from her mouth.
“Urgh! The Eyrie are here!” Nails shouted into the armoury, her voice hoarse from having inhaled the dust. “We need to hurry!”
Shaking himself from his stunned state, the orange cat got up off the ground and straightened his goggles to see loose halberds and swords littering the ground next to himself and Anders.
“Queue de crevette!” cursed Leroux, seeing the crow lying face down. “Anders, are you o—”
Anders’s left wing was pinned under a toppled sword rack. He tried to pull himself free but collapsed, squawking in pain.
“…no, you’re not. Look,” said Leroux, lifting the rack off the crow and helping him sit up against the wall. “I’ll call for a medic. Right now, I need to get to Commandant Renaud!”
“Ungh!” grunted Anders, cradling his injured wing. “Alright. And hurry!” he shouted as he pulled his scarf out of his jacket.
The three vagabonds pierced through the dust and smoke of the halls, dashing past the charred double doors laying by the walls, having been blown right off the fortified doorway’s hinges.
Ellie was the only one among them who came out of that whole mess still looking decent, with her sweater only slightly dirtied by the dust. “Oh, pinesticks. That wasn’t how it was supposed to go,” she grumbled, lugging a bulky black case in her paws.
Anders, his good wing carrying a folder full of Marquise intelligence and his hurt one in a sling fashioned out of his scarf, huffed as he struggled to keep up with the other two. “Oh, please. It’s never how it’s supposed to go.”
Nails, her fur and trenchcoat covered in blue soot, replied hoarsely. “They took all our stuff!” She hacked out several monstrous coughs of blue smoke. “It’s not my fault they had a storage room full of bluepowder. The room was basically a bomb.”
Chapter 4: Approaches
Now
“Wait! Did you hear that?” whispered Anders, his head feathers puffing up slightly in concern.
Ellie tilted her head and turned her ears. Somewhere close to their corner of the ravine was the soft sounds of rustling and crunching leaves.
“That’s not a bear,” she murmured gravely. “Bears don’t try to be sneaky. They also don’t sound like they walk on ten feet.”
They both knew this was bad news. Well, bears were also bad news, but that wasn’t what they were dealing with this time. Some of the Marquise soldiers were actually following them into the forest.
Anders looked back and up at the steep ridges of the ravine wall they were resting against. “Aw, fluff,” he sighed. “They took our weapons. We’re not making it out by climbing up. And I won’t be flying until I get my wing fixed up.”
The sounds of footsteps crunching down onto leaves came closer.
Branches being shoved out of the way.
Brush being chopped off.
Yowling and a thud as someone tripped.
“Okay.” Ellie exhaled sharply and tugged her sweater straight, steeling her resolve. “We gotta get out of here before they show up.”
She looked around their corner of the ravine. The only reasonable escape route was back the way they came.
She looked down at Anders on her left, exchanging worried looks. He couldn’t be of much help while grounded.
The black case rested flat on the ground at her feet.
Nails was on her right, captivated by the documents, frantically flipping and reading through them much faster than before.
The current design iteration, known as the “stringless crossbow”, closely follows the form of the standard-issue crossbow for its superior ease of use, except without the string and limbs, simplifying the firing mechanism.
Current testing plans explore methods of propelling a crossbow bolt using the force of a controlled explosion instead of the mechanical force from a string under tension.
Prototype 2 is powered by bluefire ore, a strategically important mineral available in local quarries, which becomes especially volatile when ground and dried into a powder.
This bluepowder often sees use in Woodland A…ADDENDUM. Prototype 2 self-destructed explosively during active testing. Commandant Renaud was injured. Further research is to determine why bluepowder’s explosive yields vary so greatly.
Chapter 5: Leaves
Nails just realized what they had in their paws.
“Ellie!” hissed Nails as she whipped her tail around anxiously, eyes glued to the foreign text. “We need to get that case open now. It’s a…” Her words difted off as she pulled her face out of the papers.
The raccoon was kneeling on the ground, hurriedly trying to force open the padlock on the case. Her expression was fixed with the typical intense focus she has while figuring out a lock. This was a sudden reversal in her position from a few moments ago. She broke her concentration to respond.
“What?” Ellie didn’t get why Nails looked so agitated. “I stole back my picks right after they confiscated them.”
“You had your tools the entire time?!” shouted Nails, tossing the stack of papers back to Anders. “Then what did I need to blow up the doors for?”
Ellie shrugged. “Well, I didn’t get a chance to tell you. You silently ran off and blew up the armoury.”
Grabbing the papers that suddenly landed in his face, Anders turned to hear past the sound of the other two arguing. “Guys, what are we actually gonna do to escape?” he asked. “They’re getting closer.”
The other two didn’t hear him. “Look, Ellie, let me grab what’s inside once you get the case open. I have a plan.”
“You? A plan?” It was hard for her to believe the cat was capable of thinking about the future.
“It’s a weapon! Those pages described it.”
“Guys?” Anders called out as he slowly stood up and gathered all the documents, his anxiety growing.
“Well, duh, we stole it from a weapons lab. And you’re planning on fighting five soldiers with one weapon?”
“But it’s not just—”
“Ellie! Nails!” shouted Anders.
That got their attention. The two of them stared up at him.
“We don’t have much time. If she has a plan,” he nodded to Nails, “then it’s better than no plan.”
After a brief, awkward exchange of looks between the three of them, Ellie silently went along with it, hunching back down to the case.
Several moments of fiddling with her lock tools. A cough — she hoped bluepowder poisoning wasn’t contagious. She could feel the mechanism start responding to her twists, which meant—
“They’re over here!” a voice shouted from up the ravine trail.
Clack. The padlock hit the ground.
“I see them!”
The three vagabonds flashed anxious glances at each other.
Multiple cat soldiers in orange uniforms gathered right in the ravine, the shine of their eyes piercing the dim light of the forest. The soldiers blocked their escape path, one with their standard-issue longbow already trained on them.
Ellie flung the case open. In the blink of an eye, Nails swiftly leapt down to it. She smoothly converted her momentum into a roll to the side, the weapon held against her chest.
It looked like a standard Marquise crossbow, but it had a boxy enclosure covering the top of an oddly wide bolt channel and the limbs that held the firing string were sawed off. The whole wooden assemblage clicked and shook loosely like the pieces were barely screwed together.
“You three!” roared the cat leading the pack of soldiers. “Y—”
“Bored!” yelled Nails, snapping the weapon to the soldiers and immediately pulling the trigger.
Pow! Fweeeeeeeeew!
The front of the crossbow abruptly spat out a bright blue flash, the sound making the cat soldiers jump, their tails puffing up in surprise. An unusually large capsule flew out of the crossbow’s opening, leaving a trail of smoke and blue sparks behind as it screamed down the ravine. The power of the crossbow launched Nails backwards, slamming her into the ravine wall back first.
POW!
The soldiers couldn’t get out of the way fast enough. The bolt crashed at their feet and released a blinding flash with a stunningly powerful burst of sound, instantly disorienting them and rattling a few leaves loose from the trees nearby. Hardly a moment later, a cluster of several brilliant sparks sprang out and went off all around them, each one accompanied by a crackling noise. The sparks lit up the dark forest floor with a ghostly pale blue, painting over the autumnal oranges and browns of the forest. It was as if a gap in the canopy had opened, exposing the depths of the forest to the harsh light of cloudless noon skies.
The soldier in front futilely shielded her eyes and folded her ears back, senses overwhelmed in the chaos. “Ugh! Don’t let them get away!” she shouted to the others, who likewise blindly stumbled out of formation as they tried to regain their bearings, with a few even losing their balance and falling over.
Nails grumbled in pain as she pushed herself off the ravine wall. “Now’s our chance!” she called to Ellie and Anders as she pointed over to the soldiers.
Now with Nails’s bright plan temporarily burned into their vision, the two of them wasted no time. The raccoon snapped the case shut and hopped up. The crow tucked the intelligence under his good wing. They bolted back down the ravine trail, past the dazed soldiers.
“Let’s get back to Labrèche, and fast,” said Ellie. “I’m starting to realize why these guys want their stuff back so bad.”
“Aw, but this crossbow’s so much fun! Wish I could keep it.”
“Look on the bright side,” said Anders with a sly grin, inadvertently letting a page slip out of the folder. “We could steal it a second time!”
Exiting the ravine, they hopped over tangled roots and ducked under spindly branches as they ran deeper into the darkness of the Rootward Forest.
no damn clue what happened to that crossbow bolt — probably vaporized in explosion upon firing
To do: explore other options for projectiles