The Bandit King
Rivers Between Us sat on the great green jade wastrider's massive helm, a crowbar in both hands, making a rather indelicate effort at prying it free from it's moorings. He threw his weight against the bar, beads of sweat standing out on his forehead, then gave up and rested against it, panting. From inside the chassis, Nama Bi called out, “Are you all right out there?”
“I’m… I’m fine. Just taking a breather.”
“Well, you have fun with that, because it’s a real mess in here. This piston? Shot to hell.” Rivers could not see her, from his seat, but he did see a steel piston and several hacked up bits of assembly fly out the back of The Bandit King. “Half of the drive gears are missing teeth, and frame for the left arm is warped! What did you do to this thing?”
Rivers leaned back with his feet braced against the crowbar, his back on the helm. He whispered, “Essence overwhelming, baby.”
“What?”
“I said, it’s just steel. Cast iron. It’s a common warstrider, not a royal. It’s going to get dinged up any time we use it. It’s the only kind we have, so…” Another armload of gears, wire mesh, and cable flew out the back hatch of the colossal machine.
“Then why bother? Just toss this old junker and make a new one.”
“What? This is the Bandit King! It has a lot of history!”
“Like what? Did it fall on someone important?”
“It was the center-piece of many of the Thieving Monkey’s greatest stratagems. I’ve been reading about it in the halls of Jupiter.” Rivers set himself to prying at the helm once more. With a final heave, and a sound like a thunderclap, the helm popped out of its track and fell crashing to the floor.
Nama Bi looked out through the neck hole. “Thieving Monkey?”
“A band of mercenaries that used to work for my last inc’. Very crafty lot, by all accounts. For instance, one season they were set to guard a mountain pass against a much larger invading army. They ran out of supplies, had no food whatsoever. So they sent out the Bandit King in front of their lines and stood him there. The enemy, thinking it must be a trap, wouldn’t go near it. They watched it all night and threw jeers at it, trying to taunt it into battle so they could capture it. Anyway, while they were occupied like that, the Thieving Monkey abandoned their posts, set fire to their enemy’s grain, and stole their trumpets and banners. Confusion spread through the camp, and there was no way to signal or distinguish friend from foe. By the next day the enemy was routed without a single man slain.”
“All right, that’s pretty good, but the Bandit King didn’t do anything in that fight.”
“Well… another time, the shogun decided to crush the Thieving Monkey, so he came against them in their mountain fortress. The battle was terrible, and both sides lost many men as prisoners and casualties. After three months of combat, the Bandit King came striding out of the fortress with its arms spread wide as a gesture of surrender. The shogun knew that the Thieving Monkey were masters of deception, so he ordered it burned. They fired it with pitch. After it had cooled down, the shogun came to inspect his trophy. They opened the hatch, and found one of their own soldiers inside, a prisoner of war! The shogun barely had time to curse Thieving Monkey before a dozen Erymanthoi materialized around him and slew him where he stood. It had all been a ploy; the prisoner thought he was escaping with a prize, but in reality he was just delivering the demons hidden in its arms and legs.”
“Burned, huh? That explains a lot… this pin is practically fused into… wait… here it comes!” There was a loud ping of metal snapping, and with that the left arm of the warstrider fell to the ground in a rumbling smash of steel and jade on metal alloy. Nama Bi stuck her head out the back hatch, and the two sorcerer engineers looked with horror, then slowly, with snickering laughter at the wreck on the floor.
Rivers set to filing out the helm’s tracking groove, shouting over his shoulder, “Don’t worry, it was warped already. See if you can figure out why its right knee keeps wobbling!”
