Tyro crushed the bandit who had his son pinned down with a wall of earth, then threw another at the one trying to take the wagon. The rock broke against the man's head and looked back at him. Only to be crushed by old Baalung with a wheel of rock.
"Go," he said to his son, then flung a flurry of rocks at the thief's comrades.
Haru ran towards Favo and Lera who were being sheltered by Metah's shields of earth while Gamao fended off any hard flying rocks. Three bandits then tried pulling the wagons with a wave of earth but it only made them a target of Hushuo's pillars, one of them even ramming the chest of a surprised bandit wrong.
Tyro made his way closer to another bandit that made it his mission to throw anything and everything as hard and fast as he can at anyone he set his eyes to. The amateur was a barely decent earth bender that didn't even know to preserve his Chi for an engagement. He was either a greenhorn deserter or an idiot and Tyro didn't care either way.
That bastard died with a rock to the throat.
He and his people were on their way to Gaoling to where the airships were waiting for any immigrants when bandits came down from the mountains looking for food and women. The end of the War should've been a good thing but he was willing to bet the Fire Nation fully intended for this to happen. Chaos spread like wildfires in the long dried-up lands without the people toiling at the fields.
To think his entire village's worth of benders were prisoners just a short year ago. He should have known it was too good to be true that those bastards were giving them all the power to choose their fates for themselves. It was insulting to be 'graciously welcomed as equal citizens.'
And now he and his people were forced to come crawling back to his jailors for sanctuary against the now lawless Earth.
Tyro joined Baalung and Hushuo and loosed the earth the rest of the bandits had erected as a temporary foothold and folded the land over them, burying the fools together, before the three as one held the earth down and pressed hard.
Their days as honorable soldiers were long past them, he and his neighbors—his own brothers-in-arms against the tyranny of the Fire Nation—reduced to killing their own people. It was as if they were back to the times of Chin and the Yellow-necks. Earth had always been to stubborn to give in. And when two rocks were pressed too hard together one had to break sooner or later.
Tyro just didn't think the Fire Nation could break them without having to push.
The tell-tale rumble of the land spoke of a coming pack of ostrich horses—saddled in earth coalition green and ridden by more bandits.
Baalung crouched and placed his hands to the ground sending waves of upturned earth towards the animals while Hushuo took out the riders. These bandits weren't even worth the wheat they'd take. The nobles had gotten careless as the war kept dragging on, favoring savings on their constant expenditures than investing in proper care and training.
Tyro didn't need to see it. He just knew. When the fat pickens saw the notice of the Fire Nation's victory, all they probably did was laugh and cut off all support from the coalition they formed and paid for, that was now suddenly left dry in the sand. And now the commonfolk were paying for the penance of sins they didn't even commit.
Were the bandits any better for only knowing how to fight but not to plow the land? Not really. They had a duty to their fellow citizens to at least try and be decent people. And they chose not to. This was already the third attack his brothers fended off since leaving their village. And his benders were tired and brought too brittle.
With the loss of their ostrich horses, the still surviving bandits ran away, leaving their injured and dying to soon join the already dead. With the blood rush fading, his bones felt like a burden once more. They were too old to still be fighting so fiercely. Old Falu's heart gave up two days ago, and old likewise Lora fell three days before that.
Benders lived long lives, but even they grew frail with age. Not everyone was blessed like that old fossil Bumi.
With the immediate area secured, the older children picked the corpses clean of anything useful. But these bandits were so desperate to live that death was a bigger gain to their troupe than a loss. Less mouths to feed meant it wasn't the dead's problem anymore to keep on living like beardogs.
His son came back with a couple of hammers with heads of iron that was practically just shiny rock, another reminder how the real enemy now lurked within the great cities' walls.
"Father," Haru said, "it's only a day's march from here to Gaoling, let's just leave the food behind."
"We can't," he said, "even if we dropped everything here we'd still be too slow." Not everyone was a bender. His son was still too young to notice how big of a difference that made. The Chi of Earth was enduring and sturdy, the food wasn't for him and his brothers but for the children forced to make the journey they never should have had to make if only the War never was.
There were so many things nowadays that never should have happened, but wishful thinking got more soldiers killed than cynicism. Things were bad. Earth endured with teeth ground smooth. And the nobles continued their pleasant useless lives.
Such was the shattered Earth.
"We'll get there son. We'll all get there." He wanted to hold his boy close but the blood on his hands was a bad example to set. Children shouldn't be able to look at the broken dead without flinching. Well, soldiers shouldn't be killing innocent civilians either, and yet here they were.
Tyro almost missed fighting the Fire.
They resumed their journey, the day's hard march's worth was going to take three if he wanted everyone to make it. But that was also three days to lose more people. Old Moshe, Hori, Seyah, Lumo, his brothers and sisters gave their lives to keep their village safe. Old Fen, Mahu, Bomur, Gara, and Sheyang made sure they could cross the inlet crawling with pirates and bandits both. Falu and Lora died to the journey, but they were honored no less.
Tyro didn't know who else they would lose in the coming days. He didn't know for how much longer they could keep this up. How he could keep this up.
The last stretch to Gaoling was through a narrow pass, but the coming rumbling was made his stomach drop from the cliff. They had too much to lose by this point, but even if they told the rest to run then he and the other benders still needed to stay back and hold the line.
When the first ostrich horse appeared—it was struck by lightning, its rider exploding into chunks, and followed by more and more bolts coming one after another like the unbridled anger of storm spirit.
The bandits ran before they could even make sense of the sudden maelstrom.
Then came a shadow from the sky, and revealed an old man with bushy white hair. His hands were smoking with the smell of burnt flesh.
The old fire bender extended a hand outward.
"How would you like to join the cause for a new world order?"