The Badlands of Neu Bremen

Let's kick off this write-blog with something new and interesting. Iron Age Media hosts a quasi-contest for would be writers, issuing a picture prompt and allowing the storytellers to do as they will. It was a good time to start this too: the prompt for July 2023 was a cowboy on a raptor. Awesome.

 

    There were no people on the American continent when the first explorers arrived. The first ones that survived long enough came from the northern coast of Prussia. Though the English tried two centuries earlier, they never succeeded making in-roads into the continent. Neither did the Spanish or the French or the handful of others that attempted. It took a firm, disciplined Prussian touch, along with Prussian iron, to bring the guiding light of civilization to the most uncivilized land in the world.

Still, the inhabitants of the soon-to-be Deutsche Amerika did not take kindly to warm-blooded invaders from the sea. The first landings upon the eastern shores were fraught with peril. Reptile eyes, villainous like a devil's, watched in concealment from the foliage beyond the sand, seeing the strange meat as it approached from the sea. The beasts in the shadows did not know it, but the strange creatures were a different breed than those that had come before.

When the shore parties first came in-land, the raptors made their move. Ravening beasts burst forth from the brush and within moments, half were shot down by accurate musket fire. Those that remained pressed the assault without concern, eyes wide with fury and hunger. The charging beasts were met by men with iron pikes and breastplates and though many men were overcome by the mass of their animal enemies, the ones in reserve made good in cutting down scale and fang. Gathering wounded companions and the dead alike, the pioneers of the Amerika Feldzug pressed further in, bringing with them heavy guns that the native beasts had little chance against.

That was a hundred year ago. The brave settlers who sacrificed so much for honor and adventure made it possible for Eric Roth to be traversing the Neu Bremen plains, several thousand kilometers west of where his great-grandfather landed. Atop Blücher, his trusted steed and constant companion, Eric was on the hunt for a gang of bandits, British riff-raff come to loot where they had no right. The Grenzejaeger were charged with removing such undesirables and Eric Roth was the man for the job.

Now, a good German would not have done what Eric did. A good German would have scouted the English in their camp and either returned to base to raise more men at arms or, if he was really good, picked the bandits off one by one with accurate sniper-fire. Eric didn't do that. Once he came upon the outlanders making camp, he checked both of his Kaiser Werke 8mm pistol-carbines and then charged into the camp on Blücher. There was something about being in Amerika that changed Germans, Prussians especially. Maybe it was the high heat. Maybe it was the lack of refinement. Maybe both, maybe neither. There were many immigrants fresh from the Empire that were utterly appalled by the brashness and surliness of Deutsche Amerikaners, their hot-blooded temperaments and their loud mouths.

Fights between immigrants and the born and raised only happen once, if at all. It took a generation or two of abundant bread and meat to make tall and powerful men and the ones out west were even more dangerous than their "soft" east coast brethren. Dry plains and deserts, hot sun, and dangerous animals tend to make men more deadly with their weapons. When a single second guarantees life or death, the Westen Pionier is the fastest draw of any European man. And just to salt the wounds, the raptor mounts these men favor in their day-to-day lives, they don't have the steady gait of horses. Hitting a target from a bipedal mount is damn hard, but being able to do it means the fastest draw is also the truest one.

And that's why a good German wouldn't survive out west, but Eric Roth and the Grenzejaeger can. Of the sixteen Englishmen in the camp, Eric lays out twelve of them with his guns. Blücher is responsible for the other four, clawing and ripping at the bandits while they make an attempt at return fire, but it's obvious how inferior their marksmanship is, let alone their equipment. German gunsmithing is the best in the world and that is something these British louts would never forget. A final memory for dead men.

Then again, maybe Eric was too good at this. None were left alive. Between his accuracy and Blücher's savagery, all of the Britishers were dead and none of them were gonna start spilling their secrets. For a while, Grenzejaeger Roth was fuming, swearing up and down that he couldn't leave at least one alive. Blücher, good beast that she was, ambled over, fangs and claws still bloody and bearing torn bits of cloth. She nuzzled Eric with her sizable, scaly head and this calmed the man quite a bit. He pet her scaled skin affectionately, glad to have her at his side in dangerous moments like this. With his furor broken, Eric started searching the bodies for documents or evidence of any kind. But these illiterate English dogs hadn't a single scrap of paper between them.

If they were here on their own, some of them had to be quite intelligent to survive in these lands, but there was no planning to their camp, no watch set or guns at the ready. These imbeciles had to be lead from somewhere else and it had to be close. The only thing of note that Eric found was a monogrammed kerchief, blood red and bearing the initials "T.H.". Roth pocketed the cloth and mounted back up on Blücher. With a kick to her haunches and a roar from her gaping maw, the raptor set off again, back to home.

"God dammit, Eric. You didn't interrogate one, not a single one?"

The Grenzejaeger captain shook his head as he dressed down his subordinate.

"No sir," Eric curtly replied. "They started shooting when I entered the camp. I was faster though."

There was a little pride in that last statement and Roth betrayed it with a little smile. Captain Schmidt furrowed his brow and shook his head some more.

"Fine then, smart mouth. You didn't get the information we needed, then it's your responsibility to find it. I won't be sending out any more men to assist in this case and it'll be your head if the English bandits attack another train. Do you understand, Roth?"

With a fine salute, the blonde ranger clicked his heels and said, "I understand clearly."

"Dismissed."

With that, Eric departed the Captain's office, back into the hot sun. Blücher was waiting patiently at the hitching post and she excitedly bucked at her bonds when she saw Eric return.

"Whoa, girl," he said as he removed her from the post.

"Hey, Eric! Hey, 'Dead-eye!"

Those snide words were followed by a chorus of raucous laughter. Eric rolled his eyes and turned around.

"Karl. How are you this fine day? You and all your toadies."

"You watch your mouth, Roth," spoke one of the big brutes behind the redhead Karl. "You aren't the wunderkind around here anymore. We heard about your last foul-up. What good's a fast draw if you can't do your job with it?"

Eric returned to prepping Blücher.

"Don't you fellows worry yourselves over me. I've never failed in the end. A little slip-up isn't anything to be concerned with."

"Foul-up, he said," Karl responded.

Once Roth had unleashed his raptor, he put his hand to one of his pistol-carbines and turned around quickly. The sharpness of his motion put the other men to alert and they palmed their own pieces to match Eric. He smiled, cocky as could be.

"Now you boys might get me, but I'll get most of you first and then Blücher here will clean up for me. Ain't that right, girl?"

The raptor was champing at her bit to be let loose on the men right in front of her. Her eyes were narrowed and her body was tightening up, ready to spring forward and tear some meat. Neither Karl nor his posse had anything clever to say. The standoff was just too volatile for any of them to act rash. When he knew he had all the aces, Eric put his hand down from his gun belt.

"That's the last you'll see of me for a while. I've got some Englishmen to track down. You boys go twiddle your thumbs in the bar and have a few steins in my name. I'll be back right quick."

Just as fast as he turned to face them, he spun about to mount Blücher and within moments, the raptor reared back, still a predator with a lot of pride like her rider. With that done, she turned about and broke off into a gallop, opposite the sun. The truth was up north. Eric knew it. With any luck, he'd be able to sniff out the British and hopefully this time, they'd put up a good fight.