Chapter 16 - Maid for Combat

Should have mentioned, going to drop the last few sentences of 15, and go with Camille's suggestion to move story along... in case anyone is confused. Sorry!

It took a while for everyone to disperse, leaving Camille and I alone with the little maid squad.

“So, how do you want to test them? Skirmish? Hunting? Live fire drills?” Camille asked as she bounced from one foot to the other, excitedly.

“Let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves,” I replied sullenly. “We should check that they’re capable of fighting at all before we move on to anything more complex.”

“They can fight! They even have the relevant combat skills!” Camille insisted.

“We’ll see about that,” I said. “Let’s start them off against some basic ranged targets, and training dummies first.”

I looked over the head maid, and her charges, who appeared to have gone into some sort of guard mode without anything to clean. She was standing in the center of the group, slowly scanning the entire square, while the other maids stood around her, each looking in a different direction. It would be an effective tactic to prevent ambushes, too bad their point of view was only two feet off the ground. 

“Come on you lot, time for some training,” I muttered, turning towards the farm area. “We don’t have that many training dummies around, but I think Camille can whip something up at the edge of town.”

The little group threw me a crisp salute then fell in behind me, marching like a bunch of professional soldiers. 

“Soooo cute…” Camille whispered.

It didn’t take me long to find a place where we could set up some targets. Most of the area just outside of town had been cleared of trees, but only the pastures and farmland had been cleared of stumps. The plan had always been to come back in and clear the remaining land up later, but that could wait until we’d finished getting the food, and housing setup. It would have been a lot of extra, wasted effort, when we were still struggling to survive.

In this case, it worked to our advantage. It meant that there was a large, unused, space sitting just outside of town we could work in.

“Alright, this should be far enough,” I declared, stopping roughly in the middle of the no-man’s zone.

Even though we did our best to harvest and use as much of the trees as possible, the smaller maids still almost disappeared behind some of the larger stumps. I didn’t have high hopes for this test.

“Camille, would you mind creating a couple human shaped dummies here,” I said, gesturing to a fairly clear area next to us, “along with a handful of ranged targets, at different ranges, out towards the treeline?”

“No problem,” the girl agreed. She flicked her hand towards the open ground, wiggling her fingers slightly as she released her power. A set of three peculiar looking bushes sprouted up, growing at an extremely accelerated rate. They twisted, growing taller and sending out branches at unnatural angles until the entire plant had taken on a roughly humanoid appearance.

Once that was done Camille threw her arm out towards the forest, causing a handful of stumps to rip themselves out of the ground and pitch forward, creating rough ranged targets.

“That ought to do it,” she chirped.

“We don’t need anything fancy today,” I agreed with a slight nod. 

I turned towards the small squad, which had formed an orderly line and snapped to attention when we stopped, and pointed at the rough combat dummies. “Today we’re going to do some combat tests. I want you to treat these three dummies as an enemy squad, and engage them as you would a real enemy. You’ll start about thirty feet away, and begin the engagement when I say go. Any questions?”

The head maid shook her head, saluted and let out a loud ‘Hup!’ which caused the rest of the maids to scramble back to their start location. After drawing their pikes they spread out and crouched behind the stumps, using them as cover. 

“And, begin!” I shouted.

As soon as I gave the command the maids burst from their cover, snaking between the stumps with surprising speed. When they were about twenty feet away they split without a word, half the smaller maids going left, half right, and the head maid going straight for the middle. Weaving like an experienced warrior, the head nun got within about ten feet of the dummies, planted her feet, jammed her pike forward, and screamed, ‘Hup!’ 

I watched in shock as the tiny pike, which couldn’t be more than five feet long, more than doubled in length and embedded itself in the chest of the center target. 

The flanking teams moved in at pretty much the same moment. One maid darted in close, holding their pike up defensively while their partner struck from around eight feet out. As soon as the pike struck home the first maid backed off, preparing to strike a follow up blow.

“That was some fancy footwork,” Camille whistled. “Did you know they could do that pike thing?”

“No,” I replied quietly. “If I had, I would have been a lot less concerned about their capabilities.”

We let them continue beating up the dummies for another minute or so. The small ones didn’t seem exceptionally skilled, but they made up with that with teamwork, swapping between close range and long range attacks to keep their opponent guessing.

The head maid was far more skilled than her smaller comrades. She might have even been good enough to fight one of the duchy’s nights to a standstill. It was actually a little scary.

“Alright, good enough!” I yelled, breaking up the practice. “Next I want you to take out your rifles, line up next to Camille and me, and aim at the farthest target you think you can hit. I’d like to check both how accurate you are, and how much damage your weapon does. Any questions?”

The head maid raised a hand, and when I looked at her with a raised eyebrow she held her rifle upright and made a pouring motion. “Hup?”

Camille and I just stared at her for a minute. “I don’t get it,” Camille muttered.

The head maid changed her tactic, and took the ram rod off the side of her rifle and pantomimed the loading process.

“You don’t have reloads?” I finally guessed. 

She nodded emphatically, sliding the ram rod back into its storage place. “Hup!”

“I guess that makes sense,” Camille muttered. “The kingdoms with bow constructs have to supply them with arrows, guess we’ll have to supply our troops with bullets.”

“That makes things significantly more difficult,” I groaned. “We only brought a limited supply of gunpowder with us. We’ll have to find sources of coal and sulfur if we want to keep this lot armed. With so many constructs they’ll chew through the ammo.”

“Hup?” the head maid asked, pointing at the targets.

“Let me guess, you want to know if we’re still doing a test?” I said. 

She nodded.

“Yeah. Although we don’t have a ton of ammo in town, we can spare enough for a single salvo. I need to know what you’re capable of. Whether it’s even worth resupplying you, or whether it’s better to leave you to fight with pikes,” I explained. 

The maid nodded again, firmer this time. 

“Alright, take your positions!” I declared. The little maids rushed around, most finding a stump to brace their pistol sized weapons on, while the head maid just  planted her feet. 

“Ready? Aim. Fire!” I shouted. 

The barrage was less intense than I expected. Since the squad’s rifles were sized to fit them perfectly, they were closer to regular pistols in size.

“Ack… and I thought the smoke was bad after you fired one of those things. I can barely see after five of them,” Camille whined, waving a hand to summon a gust of wind to dissipate the wafting smoke.

That’ll be a concern in the future, if we have entire columns of them shooting,” I admitted. “But before we worry about that, we should make sure it’s worth even arming them. Weapons away!”

I waited until the maids had all shouldered their weapons before wandering out to check the targets. Even though all the maids had fired, I didn’t want to risk accidentally getting shot in the back. Despite their tiny size, it looked like the maid’s rifles were nearly as accurate as the real thing. The majority of them shot at a target around two hundred feet out, and they were accurate enough to hit an average sized humanoid at that range.

There was a single shot on the target three hundred and fifty feet out, and although there was no way to identify who shot what, I suspected it was from the head maid. Even at this distance the ball had embedded itself several inches into the tough wood. That was more than enough to cause some serious damage to a real target.

“Good enough,” I declared. “Well done troops, you’ve proved your worth to me!”

To my surprise the little maids actually stood up and started cheering. It was a very un-construct like move, and I wasn’t sure how to take it.

“Now what?” Camille asked.

“Now we head back to the village hall. Not only do I have to talk to Selena, but we have to reevaluate our expansion plans and figure out how to best put the Stone to good use. Lots to do, and I’m suddenly feeling a lot better about our future, so let’s get to it!”