Champion

Chapter 6

Get down, my dear. We have no wish to harm you," said in a calm voice. "My men and I will relieve you of your horse and your belongings, and send you safely on your way."

Outnumbered and terrified, Laurena climbed fearfully from her mount, taking three rapid steps away from the bandit and toward the steep side of the trail.

"Please sir," she begged him. "Without food or my horse I will not survive the journey to Wolfsvale. Can I have just a few of my supplies, and my warm cloak?"

As she pleaded with him for this small mercy, the other four bandits arrived and surrounded them.

"Bloody Hell, Broast! Look at dem t**s! We can feed 'er and keep 'er warm for da night," the dirtiest and smelliest of the men said, addressing the smooth talker holding her horse's reins while leering at Laurena. "And she can 'elp keep us warm tonight."

Laurena shuddered at his statements. s*x for the clergy was a holy act, the blessing of her god to be granted to his faithful. It was not something that should be torn from the unwilling, and she was very unwilling to sleep with any of these men, even if she had been a priestess. She lowered her gaze to her feet, shaking her hair forward to hopefully cover some of her ample charms.

"That sounds like a fair trade Dahlmer. What say you my dear? Care to make an exception for us and grant a night of Eros' Blessings to myself and the lads?" Broast inquired of her with both his words and a hungry gaze.

Shaking her head, Laurena steeled her spine and raised her gaze. "I would not lay with any of you vagabonds even if my faith permitted it. Eros' Blessing is to aid the worship of the faithful, not satisfy the carnal urges of heathen scum! You blaspheme my god by suggesting otherwise." She trembled in fear at the outrage in her voice, knowing her words would provoke them. She wished she could take them back, but it seared her soul to hear anyone speak such words about Eros' divine love.

His gaze hardening cruelly, Broast shook his head in slow anger. "Then save your worthless Blessings, w***e. We shall take our comfort from your body; and when we finally tire, we shall cast you from our sight to whatever fate your precious Eros deems worthy."

Hearing his words, and knowing with certain fear what her fate at these men's hands would be, she tried to break out of their restricting encirclement. She charged the man standing between her and the freedom of the trail to Wolfsvale, pushing him nearly off the cliff. He caught himself at the last moment, but was unable to slow her. She ran as fast as she knew how, cursing as her flowing robes began to tangle in her legs, slowing her path to freedom.

WHAM!

Something struck the back of her head hard, and she tripped to the ground in an instant. The world was spinning and growing fuzzy, but as her vision darkened she prayed to Eros she would not awaken. There was no one to save her, and she felt a quick death was a blessing compared to what these bandits had planned for her.

*** Close Encounters of the 7.62mm Kind ***

101300MAR13 DW [David's Watch]

Rukusl Valley, Donga Province, Mukavia (?)

There was a rock poking him in the face.

What. The. f**k?

How many times am I going to wake up with a f*****g rock poking me in the f*****g face today?

Seriously?

As David rolled over and opened his eyes he looked around, spotting and glaring at the offending bit of earth responsible for his discomfort. Once was bad. Twice was an extremely odd coincidence. If it happened again he was certain it would be a sign that his life had become the butt of some divine joke.

Checking for additional injuries, and / or missing gear took him a few minutes. He was missing one of his M67 grenades from a trouser pocket, and one of the straps on his rucksack had popped loose. Also his right knee and left hip both had a slight twinge when he moved a certain way. He buttoned his pocket closed again, and fixed the buckle on his rucksack, after checking to make sure nothing was missing. With those tasks complete he surveyed his surroundings, looking for the missing grenade and trying to determine how far he had fallen from the trail.

Looking out from his spot on the mountain he could no longer see the other side of the valley. In fact, there was no valley. He was looking down onto sparsely wooded foothills, which stretched toward a large forest to his far right and open farmland to his far left. Something was seriously wrong. Where was the ridgeline on the other side of the Rukusl Valley? Where were the villages at the bottom of the valley? Where the hell was the valley?

Realizing something was extremely wrong, he reached down and powered on his Garmin GPS and grabbed his map and compass out of his pockets. Opening his compass, he took a north reading, and saw that it pointed to his right, paralleling the mountain range he was on. Looking down at his map, he started trying to find a large enough ridgeline in his Area of Operations that had a north-south orientation. He found a few, but couldn't spot one that had that much open terrain east of it. Even more confused, he checked his GPS for his MGRS (Military Grid Reference System) coordinates, hoping that those would plot somewhere on his map that he had missed.

NO SIGNAL AVAILABLE

That was weird. This Garmin was one of the most reliable GPS watches on the market. Half the damn Army owned one. Guys would pay whatever they had to in order to get them, and they were more reliable than DAGRs (Army issued GPS devices) every day of the week, and twice on Sundays. He popped the back clasp and pulled the batteries, swapping them out for a fresh set he carried in his right shoulder sleeve pocket. He powered it on again, and checked the position of the sun to see if his compass might be faulty. Facing out perpendicular from the mountain, it was a few hours off the horizon to his right, at almost a 45 degree angle. Checking his watch he saw it was almost 1700. That was the problem, his compass was broken. It was pointing him west, not north.

Looking at his map again, he tried to find a mountain range that met all the previous criteria, only oriented east to west. He still had no luck. There simply wasn't that much open land in this region of Mukavia. He started to think about his situation further. There also weren't that many trees anywhere in Mukavia. Trees were rare, and logging was heavily regulated by the Mukavian government. You could spend twelve months in Mukavia, walking patrols every day, and never see more than the same two or three trees. David looked again, but the forest had chosen not to move during his deliberation. Yup, he was definitely staring at an enormous forest in the middle of Mukavia. Shaking his head he checked his Garmin again, hoping it had answers.

NO SIGNAL AVAILABLE

Crap.

He went to the satellites menu to see if the issue was too few satellites over his position to pull an accurate location. That was rare, but he didn't know what else it could be. On the screen he checked, and re-checked, but his GPS couldn't find any satellites. Not even one. That had never happened before.

Must have broken in the explosion, he thought to himself.

Not coming up with any other good options, he resolved to walk to the top of the ridgeline he was on, and try to see what was on the other side. He should at least be able to get a bearing from the snowy peaks of the Hindu Kush Mountains to the north-northeast, and, if he was really lucky, the Pech River. All he had to do was find the Pech, and follow it down stream. It would take him all the way to COP Able-Main if he needed.

Powering off the GPS, and flipping it over to remove the batteries he noticed his hands were shaking. This had become a common occurrence lately. At first he had little trouble with the stress of Mukavia. The occasional insurgent attacks on their base were ineffective. They had never managed to injure a soldier, and only twice had damaged important base infrastructure with a mortar or recoilless rifle round. But the stress had continued to mount day after day. Two months ago he had been out visiting an ANA base, doing the security and training assessment that was part of his advising job, when his team had come under fire. They had been pinned down on the trail for nearly an hour. The insurgents were horribly inaccurate that day, but the sheer volume of fire was enough that they were stuck hiding behind the biggest rocks they could find until the insurgents gave up. David had tried to call in artillery support from Able-Main, but the higher ups had denied his request because the shooters were too close to a local village. Apparently usn lives were less valuable than Mukavian lives now.

Once the insurgents ran out of ammo, his team had hurried down the trail and off the mountain. They had all made it without injury, but after he got back to the COP and dropped his gear off in his room David had sat on his bed staring at his hands for nearly two hours. He figured they had started shaking from the post mission adrenaline dump, but they wouldn't stop. He hadn't smoked a cigarette in nearly ten years, quitting when he left home to attend college. He smoked his first one of the decade that night, and had been using them to fight the shakes ever since.

Pulling his pack from his right sleeve pocket, he popped a cancer stick in his mouth and lit it with his Zippo. Checking the pack he confirmed it was still mostly full, and then returned the pack to its rightful place. Taking a few deep puffs he wondered the same thing he always did, would he be able to quit again once he got back stateside. He knew if the us Army hadn't banned all alcohol on installations in country he wouldn't be smoking again. That first night he would have drank his ass off instead. But cigarettes were the best he could come up with in the absence of a better alternative. Would he become an alcoholic like his uncle when he got back? Realizing the side of a mountain in Indian Country was the last place to have a philosophical debate with himself, he gathered his gear while he finished his smoke.