Who's hunting Who? Chapter 40. (Patreon)

Hello again. It is hard to believe I'm on chapter forty of this tale. Then again, this tale is one of my older ones and I've been at it for awhile. Anyway, a slight peek into the mind and training of how to kill the enemy, and a few other things involved. Please enjoy.

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"Alright you guys, gather 'round, its story time."

The panting, drooling mess stared at me. Of course, I had to repeat it in French, because these were Frenchmen. I did so, and after a brief staring contest, they all came a bit closer, trying not to jostle each other, or move too much. All one hundred of them.

What did they think this was going to be?

They were my first batch, the test batch, full of vim, vigor, and bravado. They were in decent shape, but not hunter shape, so the first thing I had needed to do was correct that.

Challenging them all to a footrace was all about getting them ready, and only getting them ready, and no one could prove otherwise. A hundred laps around the base Vivian had brought me to.

Not all of them had made it of course, but right now they were under the impression I hadn't kept track. Honestly, I hadn't - that was Gray's job, and he had done it well. We'd settle that up later.

My french was passable, but I was certain some of this would be lost in translation: "Now the reason We're doing all this is, you'll be going up against powered beings, things that are not human, without so much as a single generator on your side. No advantages at all but what you can find. Any hesitation and you're dead. If you're slow, you're dead. You need to be able to run farther and faster than a witch can under her power while you have none."

I took a breath and let that sink in. "The reason we're doing that, is so that you can find advantages of terrain. I'll be making you all masters of traps and ambushes, because that is the only way you all can win at all. You will be baiting witches into traps and ambushes you set, and the only way you can survive to do that is to run your guts out. If things go wrong, you don't hesitate, you run your guts out. Run or die, that's the foundation of success against witches when you've got no hunters available. understand?"

I looked for nods, and found no nods.

Right. A bit louder then: "Do you understand?"

This time I got nods. Enough to keep going, at least.

"Right, so now that we all understand how to save our lives... let's focus on how to trap a witch. the first trap I'll show you is a simple pit trap, with a little twist."

The twist was of course the bomb placed at the bottom. No trap was complete without a nice bomb in it, even something as simple as dynamite. Anything to catch a witch by surprise.

The idea was to send the witch reeling from trap to trap until one finally got her. It didn't work with the strongest of course, but hit a normal witch from enough angles and you could overwhelm her. That was all I wanted of this crew... well that and to survive.

I'd be handling the big guns on the other side myself. Well, myself with Cat's help, which was close enough.

While I wasn't a true scout, I did know most of the traps the scouts used, and a few of the more common twists put on them by the now late and lamented scouts. I'd even been in the situation before; every hunter had. You go on a hunt, you get right down to it, and low on power... so you have to dip into your bag of tricks. Been there, done that.

Still, this was life without the Hunt. No generator's no maintenance for them or the other advanced weapons we'd had, we were back to basics. Many of these people would die trying to kill their first witch, and a good portion more on their second.

By the third, they would be considered true scouts, of the old mold. Still wouldn't save them, but I'd do what I could - even if it wasn't really part of the plan.

Cat's plan was just to get a buffer between us and our enemies, a sort of bump in their road to slow them down. I'd give these poor but driven fools the best chance I could. Even if it meant divulging secrets. After all, who would call me out on it? The organization I'd sworn to was dead. That word, that bond, that given promise, did not survive past any such death.

It was true that I thought I'd die before the Hunt did, but here we are. Life is truly strange sometimes.

So here I was, explaining traps, when some idiot interrupted me: "Ma'am, what about firearms? Guns?"

Yeah better to crush that dream. "What about them? They can work, from a distance. If the witch doesn't know you're there. Most witches have spells against distance attacks, however, and guns don't usually penetrate. If you set up a good ambush, guns are useful. If you have them. They can also count as a piece of tech that a witch can zero in on, and get you killed. Something to consider."

Then the idiot pointed to my guns. "My guns are different. I still have my generator."

I didn't, of course. I had a generator that wasn't powered and probably didn't even work. Just enough so that I wasn't lying, but I'd be using my hat. Of course, they didn't need to know that. There was truth, and then there was truth; after all, I couldn't help humanity if they killed me. I'd make peace with my broken honor later.

Cat was here, but despite knowing some of this, she was staying silent. Letting me do all the work.

Actually, she was leaning forward, her focus almost a physical thing, a look on her face that... well, concerned me. What was it?

Bloodlust; that was it. "You okay?"

She looked down at my poking finger, then back to me - clearly startled and coming back from her own world.

That look was more what I expected to see. "Yeah I'm fine. Just... paying attention. You're a good teacher."

I could have called her on the lies, but that would slow me down, and I didn't have much time with these people. I needed to make some kind of impact here.

"Alright, you guys need to prove you're paying attention. I want to see the traps I just described, in this very field. You have an hour to make me three, and you better work."

They'd had enough time to sit around and rest and recover by now, surely.

Well, they had enough energy to groan melodramatically. Most of them; a good fourth of them just got to work, and those would be the ones most likely to live, the ones to take note of.

Vivian lowered her notebook; I think she'd written every word I'd said. She'd certainly filled a few pages. "You're going to put me out of a job in a hurry."

Vivian shook her head, casting a sidelong glance at Cat. "No, not at all. We will need more people able to do this, and your experience, the why of what you're teaching, is something I can't imitate."

Huh. She wasn't wrong, I guess. I did want my tales to drive the point home, after all.

"Who do you have tapped to take over?"

"For you? No one." Vivian answered. "But among this company are some of our best; the officers and non-commissioned are among our best and most experienced. They can spend time teaching anyone I can't get you to see, no matter what happens. It won't be ideal of course, but it will be something."

Vivian was smarter than I'd given her credit for. Smarter than her own higher ups had given her credit for; she was planning to continue this as best she could even if I failed to impress her brass and they canned me.

The notes made more sense now.

"I'll do what I can."

Vivian smiled into those words, and a small thorny dagger drove itself into my heart. Just for a moment.

"So, what you said about running...."

She should know, best of anyone, why I said it. "I meant it. Ground is cheap to give, and relatively easy to retake, if you have to. Send them far from the cities, in a web around the centers and places you want to keep, and try to draw the witches off as they come in. If you have to though, give even the cities up. Turn the cities into death traps and let the witches waltz in. The people are most important, because if the witches get their claws on those, there will be no rebuilding."

There were some things, some technology, we'd need and need to keep, somehow. But everything else was nothing compared to having people that could kill the enemy. France would lose enough of those anyway, even if they ran as fast as the wind. All we needed was for them to hold enough to draw some attention - to bring some of the witches Cat and I wanted to see here.

Then Cat and I would handle the rest, and bring the fight to them.

From there, like an avalanche, we could draw more attention and more enemies to us, rather than searching for them as they hid from us. It was almost rule one from the handbook: 'make the witches reveal themselves'.

I'd be the bait. Cat would be my back-up... even if I had doubts about her ability to remain hidden in any way at all. Still, she had managed it for decades, so there had to be something there.

Cat was giving me a grin. I didn't like it. then again, there wasn't much I liked about any of this.

"So what's next?" Vivian asked.

Ah, the innocence of youth. "After we see how badly this lot bungled their first traps? More traps, of course. Do you have any trained snipers?"

Vivian nodded. "A few."

"Once we're done here, you should go ahead and put one in every squad you're going to send, with the best rifles you can find."

"But you said...!"

"I said they were mostly useless, and it was dangerous to even field them. That never stopped us of the Hunt, and it shouldn't stop you guys either. It can't, really. Any advantage. I'll be teaching your people to trap themselves up, so even if a witch sees the sniper and heads for them, they can still get her by virtue of traps. Not many witches have the range a good sniper does. Even the strongest."

Vivian nodded again, smile wiped from her. "I understand."

I could see she did, finally. Or maybe she had all along, and was now willing to show me.

The traps were... well, some of them got it right. Just not many. I blundered into them on purpose, and blundered right back out again for most of the efforts shown... I was barely getting herded at all, and nothing was really lethal yet.

There were some that showed promise, and I made note of those; they were worth some further one on one training, if I found the time.

The rest? Well they needed more help, but were less likely to benefit from it; if this were the Hunt, they'd already be out on their ear.

We didn't have the luxury of being choosy anymore, however.

"Vivian, I was out of the loop for awhile, was there any effort made to contact the chapter house here? To plunder the library and armory?"

Vivian nodded easily. "Of course... however, those assigned to it were gone overnight, and the armory was empty. The library had some books, but they were all in code...."

"Right. I can help with that." Abandoning a chapter house overnight just didn't happen. Orders, or enemy action? If it was enemy action, were they still here? "How long ago was this?"

"At the start, more or less. As word came to us of the Hunt's fall."

That was a long time for a witch to stay here, surrounded by all the things she hated. Still, if I were the betting type (and I kinda was) I'd bet on enemy action. Which meant we had someone strong here already, and who had already taken note of our presence - there was no way I would dare to think otherwise.

Not that we hadn't just assumed one of the heavy hitters was here anyway, because after all why wouldn't there be?

"Well I can help with the code part. I won't tell you guys anything about past operations or anything like that, just in case some of the players are still alive, but training manuals and the like are all yours, if they still exist."

Vivian beamed a smile at me. "That would be much appreciated by my bosses, even if your presence here is better than any training manual could hope to be."

I wouldn't go that far, and I told her so: "I don't know everything. Like pole arm mastery or some sword techniques, and some of that may help."

"What were you trained as?" Vivian asked.

As if she didn't have a massive clue. "A gunman, of course. Short range, mid-range, long range."

The grin turned wry. "I should have known."

I stared pointedly at one of my pistols. "Yeah, you should have. Got to do better, get more focused, or a witch will walk right up to you and eat your face."

It was true enough - I could do it right now, if I wanted. I was the only thing standing in front of her and an early grave. Again. Old habits died hard, I guess. Not sure I'd have it any other way.

Vivian blushed and stared at our feet. "You're right, of course, I need to do better."

I wasn't good with this sort of thing. "Sorry, I didn't mean to make you feel low."

She waved me off as if I were a pesky fly or something. "It is alright, you were right after all. I can deal with a few hash words."

Yeah, I hadn't meant those to be harsh. But I wasn't going to apologize twice. "So, think you learned enough to teach?"

My partner in crime, or one of them, shook her head. "Not yet. I still don't understand a few things, like why that log trap can't come straight down. It seems as if it would be more effective that way."

"Mainly due to the trees. You need a large number of large trees to support weight like that, while a swinging version doesn't need as many of either. You don't have many full forests around here, so it just isn't a good idea to show that one first."

"But isn't it... well, obvious anyway, in our current environment?"

"Yep," I nodded. "That's the point. We want the witches looking at that one, and the pit, so that maybe the dart traps go unnoticed. We are testing how observant they are, same as they do with us. It's a sort of chicken, and just like that, whoever blinks first loses."

"...Chicken? I have never heard of that. Is it a game? You said one 'plays it.'"

Right. "It is a game, its kind of like a race, only you race toward each other in a vehicle of some kind, and the first one to veer away loses. Usually by getting shot of crashing."

I had seen two people play chicken on a horse, but that hadn't worked very well; horses were smarter than humans, and both had stopped short of hitting each other.

"What a silly game."

Yeah, wasn't it? "Invented by Americans, I think. so yeah."

Vivian frowned. "I wonder how they are doing."

We'd been cut off from America for decades now. The common wisdom is they were hanging in somehow, but not able to reach us. Some people thought worse, of course.

I was with common wisdom. No people who were so used to violence in all its forms would be put down so easily. They must have their own concerns though, which kept them from helping us. I bet their witches were insane, even compared to ours.

I wouldn't know, maybe I'd have the chance to find out later. I only needed to clear my half of the world first, no big deal.

Cat might know too - that was something I'd never asked her. Hell, even Gray might know. Did I want to know that badly? No, not yet, it wouldn't change anything.

"Whatever, we're running out of time. Next trap set; let's get this done so we can find a bar."

Now I was speaking the right language, it seemed: both Vivian and Cat were grinning. Well, grinning back I guess.

"I could use a drink," Vivian admitted.