“It’s settled then,” Fritzer said; “we’ve made a decision; let us now call in the Dachwaldians.”
Sifindel and Lixen remained waiting outside the temple. More than an hour had passed, and they were beginning to become somewhat agitated. Even if they left right now at full speed towards the border they would be lucky if any of the tracks were still left. This was unacceptable. Just as their agitation was about to reach its crescendo, they heard the temple doors open and a voice say, “Come in.” Both Lixen and Sifindel were slightly anxious, not sure what to expect. They stood up straight and tall and walked into the temple with their bodyguards.
“Gentlemen,” said Fritzer, “we are going to send twenty-five of our own trackers to investigate this damage and help you track down those guilty. We assure you that if Sodorfians are the culpable parties they will be turned over to Dachwald for punishment, and we will offer assistance to you both agriculturally and economically to help you survive the coming winter, given the substantial loss in harvest you’ve suffered. We’ll also send five hundred Sodorfian regulars—should these perfidious vandals be successfully tracked down, we can fight them together as allies! We’ll summon the twenty-five trackers and the five hundred regulars immediately!”
“Thank you, Sir Sodorf; I assure you King Dachwald will greatly appreciate this!” said Sifindel. Sifindel and Lixen bowed, and then they and their ten bodyguards picked up their weapons they had laid next to the temple entrance and exited the temple.
Optimism had returned.
Chapter 19
The bird that had been observing the meeting was a konulan, and it was now traveling north as fast as its tiny wings could possibly carry it. It knew all too well if it didn’t get this information to Tristan in a timely fashion, it would be Koksun’s next meal.
Tristan paced anxiously back and forth inside his cave. He was unusually tense. Everything had been going according to plan before he found out Dachwaldian emissaries were going to the City of Sodorf. In fact, the horrible devastation that he had wrought on the southern farms of Dachwald had exceeded his expectations. When he had received the report from one of his konulans that emissaries were crossing the border into Sodorf, he almost had a heart attack right on the spot. This wasn’t part of the plan. This was a deviation, and he did not like deviations. Unfortunately, he had almost no way of spying on the king and his senators when they were in Castle Dachwald, so he had no idea what had been decided. This left him completely in the dark. He had let the konulan know if it didn’t find out everything of import, it would find itself exploring the inside of Koksun’s stomach.
He had tried to take into account every contingency. His biggest fear had been General Sivingdon would simply say to hell with the rules and cross the border, or even get permission to do so. What he had hoped for was King Duchenwald would deny permission to cross at all.
Suddenly, just when he thought his head was going to explode from all the building tension, he heard the unmistakable sound of a konulan’s beating wings.
This better be THE konulan, he thought to himself.
Koksun licked his lips with anticipation of what he hoped would be a wonderful, feathery treat. As the konulan got closer, Tristan, having lost all patience, held out his hand and yanked the terrified bird towards him like an invisible chameleon tongue snatching an insect from thin air.
“Tell me—what have you found out?!” Tristan thundered to the bird he now held in front of him by the throat.
Koksun, overly excited by the prospect of eating the bird, jumped towards it. Tristan backhanded him hard, sending him flying across the room and crashing into several large books on Glisphin and poisons.
“You eat konulans when I feed them to you, and only when I feed them to you!! Do I make myself clear?!” Tristan shouted. Koksun meowed loudly and indignantly and then went and hid underneath several large books, embarrassed at having been handled so roughly in front of a lowly spy bird.
Turning back to the bird with fiery eyes, he repeated his question, “What have you found out?!”
“Master, the Sodorfians have agreed to assist the Dachwaldians! As we speak, five hundred Sodorfian regulars and twenty-five Sodorfian trackers are accompanying the two Dachwaldian emissaries and their ten bodyguards. I listened to their whole meeting. They’re going to check to see if the damage is as bad as the Dachwaldians say it is. They also want to see if the tracks truly go from Dachwald into Sodorf. In the event they do, they’ve agreed to work in tandem to hunt down those responsible. Master, there seems to be quite a bit of unity arising between the Dachwaldians and Sodorfians. It seems like—”
“SILENCE!!” shouted Tristan. “Bird, if you value your miserable little life, fly like the wind to Feiklen. Tell him I’ll be there shortly. Tell him to be ready to do battle!”
“Yes, Master.” Off it flew.
Tristan felt slightly bad for having struck Koksun; he was really one of his favorite possessions in the whole world.
“Here kitty, kitty, kitty.” He heard Koksun meow cautiously. “I have something I think you’ll like.”
Koksun shyly exited his hiding spot, tail low, ready to make an abrupt dash for safety at the first sign of danger. In Tristan’s hand was a konulan. The hapless thing was becoming incompetent in its old age; one of its fellow konulans had turned it in for sleeping when it was supposed to be spying.
“Please, master, don’t feed me to that horrible cat; I’ve worked hard for you for many years. Please I beg of you; I—”
As soon as Tristan set the konulan down on the table, Koksun leaped across the room, clearing four feet easily, maybe five. His eyes, previously innocent, grew large with a maniacal desire that went far beyond hunger. He tore into the poor bird, which died quickly—possibly from fright as much as being torn to pieces. No longer would it have to serve Tristan.
Chapter 20
It was now the Dachwaldians’ and Sodorfians’ second day of traveling. The twelve Dachwaldians were led the group, about twenty feet in front. The Sodorfians had a confused mixture of feelings. To a certain extent, many felt optimistic. Here they were, with their age-old adversaries, the Dachwaldians, marching together in unity. The rain continued to come down hard, striking the ground repeatedly like miniature bombs being dropped by vengeful clouds. The sky was dark gray, and the clouds stirred about angrily. An occasional bolt of lightning flashed across the sky, painting some interesting geometric formations and causing more than a few of the ironclad soldiers to flinch as they thought about the effect the lighting would have if it connected with their helmets. A few of the bolts of lightning struck some trees off in the forest, singeing them instantly and smashing a couple of them into pieces. Notwithstanding the slight optimism, all the Sodorfians were feeling on edge. The lighting seemed foreboding.
“It shouldn’t be too much farther,” announced Lixen in a loud voice.
Ehbit was one of the Sodorfian regulars, and he was traveling in the very front row. The twelve Dachwaldians were about twenty feet ahead of them. Ehbit was a tall man for a Sodorfian, standing about six feet tall, and had a long, dark beard. His nose was slightly long and just a little crooked at the top, the result of a bar fight. As the soldiers traipsed through the mud, every once in a while one of their boots would get stuck, and they would have to pull hard to yank it out of the soggy ground. Ehbit was feeling nervous; he didn’t really trust the Dachwaldians at all. He liked the idea of being at peace with them, but he didn’t trust them.
SWIIISSSSSHHHH!! Suddenly out of nowhere an arrow came flying through the air and passed through his throat completely. Blood sprayed out of his neck as soon as the razor-sharp arrowhead made contact with a small area of unarmored flesh on his throat. It covered the faces of several Sodorfians standing next to and behind him. He immediately went into shock, blood pumping out of both sides of his neck with great force in sync with the beating of his heart. He tried to swear because of the pain, but simply gurgled blood. He fell to his side, causing sever
al soldiers standing next to him to jump out of his way.
“IT’S A TRAP!!!” one of the Sodorfians yelled.
Arrows began raining out of the large, thick clusters of trees. But this rain didn’t fall harmlessly on them like the bothersome droplets of water had been doing all day. Within seconds, scores of Sodorfians looked like porcupines from all the arrows flying out of the forest, crashing through their armor, and burying themselves in their bodies. They immediately began to panic.
“RETREEEEAT! RETREEEEAT!!” yelled a Sodorfian officer; “we’re being ambushed!!” The Sodorfian troops were now in complete disarray and fleeing wildly for their lives.
Suddenly, from high, high above, they saw something coming towards them. They couldn’t tell what it was . . . a dragon . . . a falling tree, struck by lightning perhaps? As it came closer they realized it was a large tree attached to a rope and was swinging towards them like a pendulum. It was about a hundred feet long and twenty feet wide, and on the front of it was a row of glistening spikes. The spikes looked like the smiling fangs of a devilish monster preparing to give an unsolicited kiss. They were attached to a piece of steel perpendicularly placed on the front of the tree as wide as the path itself.
“KASANIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII!!!!!” yelled several Sodorfians in horror as they watched this terrifying missile approach them. As it neared them its speed easily exceeded a hundred miles per hour.
THUD!! WHACKK!! For a brief second, sparks flew as the steel spikes made contact with the steel armor of their targets. Giving the unsolicited kiss. It was as if about fifteen glass pitchers of blood had been hurled at each other at a hundred miles per hour. Blood flew far up into the air, even drenching some of the nearby trees. As this horrible device completed its descent, it then proceeded to somehow run horizontally for about a hundred feet before it began to rise up in the air once again. It seemed to be a living, breathing organism. And it wanted to keep on kissing.
Several men whom it just barely missed wet themselves from fear and shock. Each spike had about fourteen screaming, writhing Sodorfians impaled on it like flailing sardines on an extra-long shish kebab as the wooden beast sailed high up into the air, north of the Sodorfians. Some had been impaled cleanly, a spike going directly through their torso. Others had been hit in different places, such as the skull, and these were picked up in the air only briefly, the impact shattering their skulls so completely they couldn’t stay attached to the spikes. Others were pierced right through their thighs and were hanging upside down and bleeding profusely as they sailed through the air.
The utter greenness of the Sodorfians began to show. While all this was going on, many of them were so paralyzed with shock and fear they simply couldn’t move, and while the deadly swinging spear was doing its damage, arrows continued flying from the trees, turning dozens of additional Sodorfians into bloody pincushions. The arrows went right through the Sodorfians’ armor like a hot knife through butter. Then, the huge swinging monster began to come towards them again, like a relentless stalker. A few of the dozens of men impaled on the spikes were still conscious enough to be screaming horribly, and as the spear began to swing back the other way, the Sodorfians on the ground could hear the screams of their hapless companions, quite faint a second ago while the spear soared hundreds of feet up into the air, begin to increase in volume. They turned, and to their horror they realized the other end of the swinging spear was also lethally armed. It was equipped with two blades on either side that came towards each other, making a triangle of razor-sharp steel. They tried to run to either side of the path and get out of the way. Some even tried to simply outrun the beast, but the sticky mud made for slow moving.
The screams emitted as they helplessly watched the device rush towards them could give a wolf nightmares.
CRASHH!!! As it slammed into them, it severed over two hundred in half instantly. Unfortunately, as their severed torsos hit the ground, they didn’t all have the good fortune of dying instantly, although none were far from death.
A few looked at each other, each wishing there was some way he could help the other, as large pools of blood formed around them on the ground. There were only eight Sodorfians alive at this point out of the original 525 that had come. Seeing their boots were slowing them down in the mud, they quickly pulled them off and began running down the path in their bare feet like madmen. They were shaking with fear, their whole bodies trembling uncontrollably. They were mumbling strange things not found in any known language. Although perhaps it was the language all men speak when death is mere seconds away.
SHOOMMM!! Fortunately for them, they barely managed to get out of the way as the large tree descended yet again to destroy everything in its path. It sailed harmlessly over the mutilated, bloody corpses of its previous victims. Victims it had already kissed. It was slowing down now, like a lion that has finally satisfied its hunger. Yet the gust of wind created by its passage was still strong enough to knock them off their feet.
Although these eight Sodorfians had been lucky enough to just barely miss a kiss from this monster, they weren’t all lucky enough to survive the next volley of arrows that came whizzing out of the dark forest.
SHOOMM!! SHOOMM!! SHOOMM, SHOOMM, SHOOMM, SHOOMM, SHOOMM!! Seven were felled by the volley of arrows. Only Ruksin was spared. Terrified, covered in filth, gore—and not to mention some of his own bodily fluids—he ran south, frightened to death. His large brown eyes were dilated so wide they looked like saucers. He was shaking, talking to himself. His psyche only had a few strands of sanity left, which he held to desperately like a man holding the slimy hand of a friend hanging over the side of a tall cliff with alligators at the bottom. The grasp slipping, slipping away each moment.
Suddenly, the whir of arrows from within the forest ceased as abruptly as it had started. But not the rain. The large spear had more or less ceased swinging now. Each end of it looked like the mouth of a lion that has been starved for weeks and then let into a barn full of sheep to devour ravenously.
Chapter 21
Lixen, Sifindel, and most of the bodyguards had now crossed the Sodorfian-Dachwaldian border. When the fighting had started, two of the bodyguards had been killed by the overwhelming barrage of arrows that had come flying out of the woods. If it had been up to them, they would have stayed and fought, but their mission was to protect the emissaries, and they had no choice other than to form a defensive circle around Lixen and Sifindel and command them to run like the wind. They had galloped north on their spider horses, whose wide hooves and quick gait permitted them to gallop through the mud as if on hard soil, oblivious to the devastation occurring behind them. They mistook the screams of agony behind them as the Sodorfians’ shouts of frustration at their quarry having narrowly escaped the trap—that is, with exception of Tulgug, an overly curious bodyguard who had looked over his shoulder. As they crossed the border, which was about ten miles north from where the battle had taken place, General Sivingdon came rushing up to them on his horse, sword in hand, and began firing questions excitedly.
“Do we have permission?! Can I cross the border?! Where are the Sodorfians? Wait a second, there were ten bodyguards; what happened to the other two? What’s going on here?!”
“We were attacked by those perfidious Sodorfian traitors!” yelled Lixen. “They must not have liked the fact we were on to them and knew we were going to find out it was they who had destroyed our crops! Those mercenaries ambushed us! We lost two men, and the rest of us barely escaped!”
“Then it will be war!!” shouted General Sivingdon; “I’ll assemble my men at once. We will attack immediately!”
“Not so fast!” said Tulgug, the largest of the royal bodyguards. “I happened to take a look back as soon as the arrows started flying, and I swear I saw some Sodorfians being struck by arrows as well! In fact, just before I lost sight of the Sodorfians due to a small hill blocking their view, I could almost swear I saw some of them impaled on some kind of flying tree!”
General Sivingd
on’s face turned white. “If I find out some of my men attacked without orders, I’ll have every last one of them impaled on spikes!! Captain Mindgkor?!”
“Yes, General.”
“Go check on all of the men. Make sure they’re all accounted for!”
“Yes, General. Right away!”
General Sivingdon was sweating bullets. He knew if it turned out some of his men had become hotheaded and attacked without orders he was going to be in a load of trouble. First of all, he would ultimately be considered responsible for what could turn out to be the beginning of a major war. Secondly, he could be held responsible for violating the king’s explicit orders, notwithstanding the fact he had authorized no such attack.
“What do you think about Tulgug’s statements?! Is he telling the truth, and if so, what do you think it means?!” General Sivingdon asked Lixen, frantic for an explanation. He hated not having been allowed to be there to see what happened firsthand, given that he suspected deep down he would ultimately be considered responsible for what happened.
“My job is to carry messages on behalf of my sovereign and to deliver messages to my sovereign, not to engage in speculation. That is the job of the king and the senate. I must report to the king the known facts, and it will be up to the king and the senate to fill in the blanks,” Lixen said dryly, having lost the enthusiasm he seemed to have a moment ago when he had first told General Sivingdon his opinion. Then, almost as an afterthought, he said, “The king will probably want to know whether you have thoroughly investigated the possibility of any of your troops being involved. Sifindel can stay here, and then as soon as you find out whether you can rule out the possibility of your own troops being involved in this attack, Sifindel can come to Castle Dachwald and give his report.”
“Well, I don’t like it, but until I receive new orders from the king, I have no choice other than to wait for the Sodorfians to arrive and give my trackers permission to cross or at least tell us what in Kasani is going on! Something that clearly is not going to happen now!”
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