Alfred 2: And The Underworld (Alfred the Boy King)

by Ron Smorynski

  The drill bug retracted its incredible drill-beak leaving a near perfect circular opening just above the defenders. It flailed out fan-shaped antennae, flicking them about. They shivered then disappeared back up the hole.

  Everyone stood in growing fear, they could hear the clickity-clatter of the giant ants as they neared the opening.

  “Let one through,” Dunther yelled, giving them courage. “Fire at the second!”

  A giant ant shot out and landed on the cave floor, and a second got through before they could fire.

  “Fire! Fire!” shouted Dunther, spitting in frustration.

  The gnomes fired their javelins with the speed and strength to pierce stone and steel. Several struck the second ant's chitin head, driving it against the rock wall.

  Kurik's mercenaries rushed forward and struck the ant with their spears and pick hammers. The hammers were made to swing at steel plates – their heads bringing down weight, their spikes piercing any armour. But these swings merely bounced off the creature’s thick chitin head.

  Dunther and the gnomes noticed the stricken ant twisting back upright onto its six legs as a javelin fell out of its head. It left a small notch. Ant armour was a thick woven organic shell, having a malleable quality that absorbed the steel before it could penetrate. The javelin dropped harmlessly to the ground. The ant crawled forward, and more poured out of the hole. The second crew fired their javelin, only to see it glance off the head of an ant and stick deep into stone.

  “Impossible?!”

  Before too long, a half dozen hormigs were charging in. More javelins bounced off heads, and several mercenaries fell to gruesome deaths. Their chilling screams frightened the rest.

  “Retreat! Back away!” Lord Dunther yelled.

  Kurik reached over and speared the rear of an ant, penetrating its body and bringing the creature down, but it turned its mandible back and grabbed the spear, snapping it in two. Kurik released the spear and hurried to join Dunther.

  The gnomes tried several more shots as they retreated. They were able to fire one into the body of one ant, effectively pinning its body to the wall. But others quickly scurried over it. The next shot hit a thick chitinous head to no avail.

  Dunther brought forth his shield to a charging ant as he severed its head from the body, but the hormig continued biting. Dunther barely got his arm out of the shield handles as the steel folded in from the mandibles.

  “Fall back!”

  Kurik and a few of his men were able to lure ants with their weapons, to get them to commit to crushing the weapons, which resulted in them losing their weapons or shields. This slowed the ant charge just enough for the rest to escape. But more hormigs poured out of the hole.

  With no time to reload, the gnomes had to retreat in a full run. Dunther hurried behind them. He cut the legs of one ant, which slowed it down as others crawled over it, gaining on them.

  Kurik pulled out his last spiked hammer. His men had only a few shields and smaller weapons like daggers and pickaxes left. They formed a wall in a narrowing of a tunnel. Dunther looked back to see Kurik hold his men at the spot.

  “Kurik! Hurry!”

  “We'll hold them off as long as we can!”

  Dunther ran back as the ants began attacking their buttress. “No! Retreat with us!”

  “No time! I choose this! I choose freely!”

  His men began to scream as the ants crushed shields and armaments. Kurik yelled to them in his native tongue, which encouraged them as they swung and jabbed into the horrific attackers.

  “I die a free man!” Kurik cried, stepping over his men, leaping behind the ants and swinging his pickaxe viciously. Many ant parts flew. Many ant heads were severed. “Hurry, Dunther!” Kurik shouted. “Save your people!”

  Kurik’s attack sent the wall of chomping ants into disarray, and his men were able to attack the bodies of many.

  Dunther hurried away and turned to look one last time as another wall of hormigs formed up as Kurik and his men fell.

  At another tunnel screams could be heard. Gorham and Hedor retreated and met Dunther.

  “Fall back, to the Sanctuary!”

  Gorham gritted his teeth while tugging at gnomes and men to fall back. He looked at Dunther, showing him his bent sword. It was hopeless.

  “Fall back! We'll fight them in the opening of the Sanctuary.”

  “If we have any weapons left!” Gorham yelled above the screams of retreat.

  Murith slid down a tunnel with a bleeding gnome in his arms. They rolled and fell forward into the Sanctuary. Some ran across the stone walkway while others leapt into the shallow lake, splashing in a panic to get across.

  King Alfred, Loranna and Cory looked on from the rallying point.

  “Archers, to the stone walls! Spearboys, guard the walkway!”

  Loranna and her girls rushed to the walls and lined up as they saw gnomes and men rushing toward them in utter fear.

  Gib and Pep reached them first over the stone walkway. “Horrible hormigs! Giant ants! Our weapons are useless!” Gib yelled. They leapt from the bridge to join the rest behind the small stone walls that circled the Sanctuary.

  “Their heads are the thickest chitinous armour, thicker than dragon scales!” Pep cried.

  The girls and boys shuddered, not just at their words but at the panic they felt in the gnome troopers, fighting men and knights.

  “Loranna, aim for their bodies!” King Alfred said. “Ants? Ants? Ants?” He tried to think about how to defeat them.

  “There they are!” Cory yelled.

  The hormigs poured out from the tunnels, dozens upon dozens. Many had javelins or weapons sticking out of their armoured heads. Nothing bothered them. Some had legs or body parts severed, but they crawled along furiously, living long enough to fight this day.

  “The perfect war machines!” King Gup offered. The gnomes lined up on the walls of the Sanctuary.

  Nubio and the Khanafians came forward with spears and sticks, anything they could find to help. They were still weak from years of slavery but knew these could be their last moments of freedom.

  Abedeyan, still weak, came up with his meek sword. Lady Nihan helped him hobble forward. Farmers and their wives came with their own bows and arrows and with kitchen utensils and even rocks.

  The knights adroitly leapt along the walkway, rushing to reach the walls. In their panic, many gnomes, Hedor and Ruig and his men leapt into the water and thrashed and splashed across the lake. Some were on the walkway but fell into the water. It was a fearful retreat.

  The hormigs reached the water’s edge and charged on, following the splashing of their prey. Once in the water, however, they began to float in circles, unable to swim in a straight line.

  “Loranna, fire!” King Alfred yelled.

  “Fire at will!” Loranna ordered.

  The girls lifted their bows and fired into the meandering hormigs from a distance away. Many arrows flew over Hedor and his men, sticking into ant heads or bouncing off them, but plenty hit their mark and became tangled in the ants’ spindly bodies. Some ants got pinned in the shallows. Others were busy twisting and convulsing, trying to rip arrows out of their bodies. Many floated haphazardly in the lake, giving the retreating men the time they needed.

  Swimming gnomes reached the Sanctuary's walls and scaled them to drop safely but exhausted on the other side. King Gup was amongst them, and, as a leader, paced to and fro to comfort and encourage them.

  Hedor and his men were helped up by the knights at the base of the walkway. They were even more spent than the gnomes, and many had horrible cuts. One was holding his severed hand. Verboden attended to him immediately, saving the hand with his healing power.

  “King Alfred, I won't have the strength to heal many more like that!” he said, drained of energy.

  Alfred looked to the other shore. All turned to see the ants pause and stop there, waiting.

  “What are they doing?” Dunther asked as a new set of weapons was brought for
th.

  Boggin yelled, “This is the last of our steel weapons. Don't waste 'em!”

  The hormigs gathered together and raised their antennae. Dozens upon dozens more entered from the tunnels. They swayed their antennae and then felt about. They found the bridge.

  “The walkway, defend it!” Dunther cried.

  Cory and his boys lowered their spears and gave a great, “Hurrah!” to encourage each other.

  King Alfred pointed to the bridge. “Destroy it!” he shouted. “Gnomes hurry!”

  The gnomes pulled out their pickaxes and ran onto the stone walkway. The ants, gathering in force at the other end, were coming toward them. The gnomes had to work quickly before it was too late. Thankfully, they were expert hammerers and picked at the bridge, breaking stones up rapidly.

  “Loranna help!” King Alfred ordered.

  Loranna and her girls turned their arrows upon the advancing ants, shooting at an angle from the Sanctuary walls. Many arrows hit the bodies of ants. Some ants were pinned and others slowed, but none seemed to die. Others came along, felt for the arrows with their mandibles and released their comrades. This delayed the hormig advance only by a little, but it was enough, as the gnomes were able to break larger and larger chunks of the walkway off and separate their side from the other.

  The gnomes cheered as the walkway fell and tossed stones at ants on the other side, which were feeling with their antennae for a way over. As row after row of ants gathered on the other side, Loranna and her archers continued with volleys, hoping to disable as many as possible, but their arrows bounced off or went harmlessly through the skinny insectoid segments of the ants’ bodies.

  The gnomes continued to holler, toss stones and jeer at the ants, which stopped again and began to move their antennae, slowly and oddly, in unison.

  “What are they doing?” Dunther asked.

  “Communicating,” King Alfred said. “Ants, ants… I had biology lessons on them and watched them on TV...” Alfred did a little mouse and keyboard stance, thinking...

  Meanwhile, ants at the front suddenly used their mandibles to anchor themselves on their side of the walkway. Other ants crawled over them, sinking their mandibles into the preceding ants. The gnomes quickly surmised what the ants were doing. They were building their own bridge and doing it quickly.

  The gnomes retreated.

  Seeing this, Dunther said, “We must get up there and stop them! Hurry!”

  He and Gorham led Cory and his spearboys to the edge of the walkway just as ants were in reach. Cory and the boys jabbed furiously at the ants, trying to dismantle their mandible-locking bridge.

  Nubio stood next to King Alfred with a small shovel in his hands. “We are ready to fight with you, King Alfred.”

  Alfred looked to see Nubio's people in tears but ready to defend their last hope, the Sanctuary. None had great weapons.

  The gnomes as well looked defeated. One whispered, “We can flee to the depths!”

  “No!” shouted King Gup. “We stay and fight!” His eyes met Alfred's.

  One gnome was cowering behind the wall, lying wet and muddy. Alfred continued to work his imaginary mouse and keyboard, remembering how ants use their antennae. He saw these giant ants flicking theirs about. Then he looked intently at the gnome in the mud.

  “King Gup! Cover your gnomes in mud!”

  “What? King Alfred, we won't return to that dark slavery! We will stay and fight!”

  “They can't see it! The ants! They use their antennae! They would touch you in your mud and only see mud, only see dirt, and not a gnome!”

  “And we can get away!” the cowardly gnome spat out.

  “No, we can attack them at will!” said King Gup, hurriedly smearing mud on his skin. “Gnomes!”

  The ant bridge was complete, and the spearboys were losing spears as fast others could rush up to them with more. Mandibles snapped spears and shields with ease as they advanced on the boys. Cory continually yelled out orders to step back – to keep a defensive posture as they retreated.

  “King Alfred has a plan!” Abedeyan shouted from behind.

  “Please implement it quickly!” added Dunther, almost shrieking and quickly jabbing a spear into an ant, only to retract a broken stick.

  Engrossed in seemingly crazed defensive maneuvers, the boys and knights could not discern Alfred’s plan. All they knew was that Loranna and her girls had stopped firing.

  “Why did they stop?” Cory hollered in fear.

  “His plan better be soon or we are all lost!” Dunther said through gritted teeth, swinging with a stick.

  Under the walkway, gnomes easily traversed like muddy spiders or stone geckos. Their camouflage was muddied skin, something they had put on for ages. The ants connected as a bridge still had their antennae flailing slowly, and as the gnomes approached, Gib decided to test out his camouflage. All the gnomes waited with bated breath! He reached out and touched an antennae. Though the sensitive antennae felt the muddy hand and retracted, it returned to feel the hand again and slithered along it with no reaction from the ant.

  Gib raised his pickaxe and found the weak point between the mandible and the head. He jabbed the pickaxe in, tearing at gooey flesh. The ant squealed and lost its gripping strength. More gnomes advanced, easily finding these spots on the anchored ants and ferociously using their pickaxes. The ant bridge quickly collapsed.

  Ants leapt about to find footing. In their confused state, they became easy targets for boys with spears. The boys jabbed furiously, pinning the circling ants. As ant heads thrashed and turned, Dunther saw the opening. “In the back of the head!” he cried.

  Cory adroitly thrust his spear into an ant at that vulnerable place, retracting it with lots of bug goo. The half dozen ants still clinging to the Santuary side of the broken walkway were methodically taken out this way.

  The gnomes scoured along the walkway from both sides, crawling into the horde of hormigs that were trying to push forth. They hammered and spiked the ants, crushing bodies and appendages. The ants could not see their attackers. Their antennae detected stone and mud but no adversary to attack. A few dozen gnomes, with no armour but muddy skin, wielded pickaxes and javelins. They scurried through the webwork of ants and dismembered them. A few ants would get a lucky entrapment with their mandibles. But since gnomes work in teams, as soon as it happened, several leveraged their picks into the joints of mandibles and easily ripped them out from there.

  Another fun tactic Pep found was to bite off antennae and watch the ants stand motionless, blind as bugs. Then he would crunch on the antennae, saying things like, “Salty good, but a bit acrid and dry.” Then, with a shrug, he would munch on more.

  Gib pushed him along, as there were many more ants to dismember.

  The people cheered with tears of joy. Verboden healed the boys on the walkway. Many had rough abrasions and cuts. Hedor and his men helped carry many of the injured to safety. Dunther and his knights carefully stepped among the ants to finish them off. Some still had working mandibles that closed forcefully if anything were detected.

  Once the ants were disabled, the knights could get their weapons into openings between segments of the armour. Dunther discovered that ant flesh was quite weak. With proper leverage it could easily be ripped out. He had to step onto their giant heads, push his spear into the openings or jab it into the back of the skull, where the ligaments were not as well shielded. He gave a sigh of relief as he saw the gnomes on the other side of the collapsed walkway working hard. Ant parts were flying in all directions as the stony shapes of gnomes flitted amongst them.

  Loranna leapt down from the wall and put her arm around King Alfred. Both fell in amidst the wildly cheering people. “King Alfred! King Alfred!”

  Alfred tried to get up, but too many were hugging him or putting their hands on him to thank him. He finally was able to stand. Abedeyan came in quickly and jabbed at the cheering folks with his makeshift cane.

  “Alright, alright, inappropriate! No to
uching the King! No hugs! No hugs! Back off!” Abedeyan turned and nodded to King Alfred. Then he fell on Alfred, hugging him. “Oh, thank you! Thank you!”

  “Okay, okay, it’s a team effort! And the war is not yet won! We have work to do!”

  Abedeyan straightened up. “That's right, peasants! We have work to do! There's a war, don't you know!”

  The people bowed and smiled, easily seeing how much was still to be done. Many boys needed first aid. The girls had lost many arrows and went out cautiously to retrieve them, as in some cases it was difficult to tell if ants were alive or dead. Even the live ones, pinned, would not move till they sensed something near. The knights had to wrench each one apart laboriously. Hedor and his men came to help. Hedor gagged a few times hoping Dunther would allow him to leave. Dunther would not.

  The muddied gnomes gathered with King Gup, Gib and Pep and cheered victoriously at the shore of the lake. Pep carried a bundle of antennae and handed them out. “Snack? Snack? Here ya go. Good. Snack?”

  After dispensing the hormigs, gnomes piled up carcasses along the shore. Gib and Pep were doing something odd – counting them.

  Alfred swashed ashore, having to climb down from the walkway. Dunther and the knights came with him, eyeing the dead ants.

  “We'll still have to contend with the bugbears,” Alfred said with a sigh, looking askance at Gib and Pep as they muttered to each other, figuring something in their heads. In time they nodded, and Gib turned to Alfred. “Based on all of the wagons, we'd say these came from only a few of'em.”

  “A few?”

  “Yes, King Alfred, there are hundreds and hundreds more.”

  Chapter Fifty-Seven: The Plan According to Alfred

  King Alfred, Dunther, Gib and Pep lay low at the edge of a rock crevice, surveying the valley below. They had crawled out of the slotted rock opening. The humans had difficulty, but gnomes wormed their way out with ease. Alfred, feeling compelled to look around for himself, made the arduous confining crawl upward.

  Using one of the gnomes’ small spyglasses, Alfred surveyed the bugbear encampment. He saw wagons and campfires as bugbears busily chopped more wood, clearing the nearby snowy forests of all their trees.