by Nancy Osa
“A key target if ever there was one,” Colonel M agreed. “But those hills . . .” He shuddered, causing him to bump into—and pass through—Ocelot, who kept going as though nothing had happened.
“I reckon she’s ghost broke, now!” Frida said proudly.
“What about those hills, Colonel?” Rob persisted.
The transparent man said nothing for a moment. “The extreme hills are not to be trifled with,” he finally replied. “They are treacherous. They offer little cover but many junctures for ambush. They are—” He hesitated. “—they are where I lost myself.”
Rob felt an avalanche tumble toward the pit of his stomach. “The extreme hills? That’s where the final battle of the First War took place?”
Turner cast him a glance. “Thought you knew that.”
Now Rob eyed Frida. She had said nothing of this when they first talked about a vantage point and how it might help him get back home.
Frida ducked her chin. There had been no sense in stating the ominous truth back when they had met. Rob had needed something to cling to, not the likelihood that he would never find a way out of this world.
Now the implications of this news hit the erstwhile cowboy hard.
He implored his mentor, “Are you saying that the site is indefensible?”
The colonel chose his words carefully. “I’m not telling you that an attack there is impossible. It all depends on what you truly hope to gain by it.”
Could they defeat Dr. Dirt’s army? Would taking the extreme hills spell the beginning of the end for the evil griefer’s conquest of the Overworld—or for Battalion Zero? More importantly, would Rob discover a window into his old life there?
There was only one way to find out.
*
The villagers made ready as Kim and Turner had requested. Aswan waved enthusiastically from the drawbridge the townspeople had built to connect with the hillside. The riders could see his neat, white apron from quite a ways off. With the optical illusion the paint job had created, it looked as though someone were waving a flag of truce from midair.
“Kim, my sweet dream!” called Aswan as they approached. “Your wish is my command.”
She ignored his compliment as usual but expressed pleasure at seeing him again. They crossed the bridge, which he secured behind them, and entered the walled town.
“What a fine steed you ride,” he observed. “A match for your beauty!”
Frida and Stormie jostled each other.
“And you two aren’t so bad yourselves. . . .” Aswan reflected.
Turner pulled up at the blacksmith shop. “Hope Sundra’s poked her head up out the ground by now. You guys go on ahead. I’ll be along later.”
Rob shook his head. “Sorry, Sergeant. The battalion needs you for an urgent mission first.”
“Your Sundra isn’t in, anyway,” Aswan informed the pouting sergeant at arms. “She’s out front, supervising the digging. She said they were her shovels, and she wasn’t letting them out of her sight.”
Turner grinned. “That’s my woman. She loves her tools.”
“She’s planting a row of sunflowers all around the village wall,” Aswan continued. “That way, if Dirt’s sentries see us digging the moat, they’ll think we are merely gardening.”
Kim murmured approval.
Aswan smiled widely, revealing half a dozen gold teeth. “It was my idea.” He ushered them to his shop and into his stronghold in back.
“Thank you for your hospitality,” Rob said. “Can we trouble you to log on to the local area network? We need to broadcast a message.”
“Happy to help, happy to help,” the tradesman said importantly and did as he was asked.
Rob sat Turner down at the computer and told him what to type. He did, using two fingers in rapid fashion.
“Can I go now?” Turner half rose.
Jools pushed him back down. “Now we wait,” he said. “To see if they take the bait.”
Indeed, it wasn’t long before a response came through the server:
“It’s Legs!” Turner whispered, as though the griefer could hear him on chat.
“Lead him on,” Rob ordered, and the group crowded around to watch the screen.
Turner typed for a moment.
“Moron don’t know how to spell,” Turner muttered, typing again.
Everyone watched to see what Turner would do.
Turner made a face and waved his hands to indicate that he was lying.
The server indicated that Legs had left the game.
“Now can I go?” Turner begged his captain.
Rob wasn’t certain he wanted the mercenary off unsupervised. But duty leave was good for morale. “Sixty minutes,” he said. “No more. Everyone. Meet back here at curfew. We need to craft supplies.”
When they had gone, Rob remained behind with Colonel M.
“You handled that quite well,” the veteran praised his protégé.
Rob balled his fists with worry. “I’m just not sure we can trust that guy.”
“One can never be sure of anything.” Colonel M lowered his voice. “I’ll let you in on a little secret, Captain: I don’t know diddly about strategy.”
Rob stopped his fidgeting.
“I know barely more than that about horses,” he continued, and then he gave Rob a long look. “What I do know about is men.” He dipped his giant brow. “Once you get a handle on human nature, you’ll need nothing more to win a war.”
“You mean, motivation is more important than preparation?”
“You can train all you want,” the colonel said. “But in the heat of battle, the loyalty of your men is ten times more powerful than skill or weapons.”
“I can’t force Turner to follow orders, though.”
“That is not your job. You must make him want to follow orders.”
Rob thought about this advice as he waited for his troops to return.
*
Anticipation and stress rose like mercury in a thermometer as the sun began its descent. Rob was getting used to the day/night cycle that inevitably increased the need for offensive or defensive melees just as his energy waned. Perhaps that perverse readiness was what made Frida, Stormie, and Turner appear so capable all the time. It was as though they could jump up from a nap, slay a dragon, and settle right back into a sound sleep.
The girls returned first, bringing food from the farmer’s cart and butcher shop. Jools sidled in with extra gunpowder and set up a brewing stand and cauldron. Rob and Colonel M helped him turn base potions into massive amounts of fire-resistance splash potions, which they intended to use on village structures to avoid another big burn. Everyone watched the clock as sixty minutes ticked by and Turner had yet to show up.
I should never have given him leave, Rob scolded himself. The line between motivation and manipulation was thin. To complicate matters, the battalion members had given their sergeant at arms the gems and ores they had mined to exchange for new armor. Another mistake.
At two minutes past curfew, Turner walked in the door, whistling.
“You’re late, Sergeant!” Rob pointed out, though he was secretly very relieved.
“You’ll thank me—Sundra sure did,” Turner said smugly, tossing him a new helmet and chest plate from his inventory. He did the same for the others, making sure that Kim received the pink-dyed set.
“There isn’t much time left,” Rob said, laying out the sticks they still had and the feathers that Turner had procured from the fletcher. “We’ll want some arrows to use on the griefers, assuming they don’t fall for the moat.”
Battalion Zero used the short time left to fill their food bars, tes
t out their armor, and craft bows and ammunition. Aswan sat in the corner with the horses, watching Kim dress them in armor. They had to be ready to move out whenever the opportunity arose.
“Must you leave so soon, my angel?” Aswan asked the horse master.
“I have to see to my ranch—whatever’s left of it,” the petite, pink girl replied, feeling a pang of longing mixed with fear.
Aswan understood that Dr. Dirt’s reach was long, and that without the help of the battalion, it might well encircle all of the Overworld. In fact, the very fate of the village could be decided within the next few hours.
“I will bide my time, sweet pickle.” He sighed.
Rob paid closer attention to how Turner crafted his arrows this time. It struck him that perhaps full stacks of arrows might not be the best thing to entrust the mercenary with. But then he remembered Colonel M’s suggestion and vowed to work harder at drawing his worker bee with nectar.
When their inventories were bulging and the horses were enjoying their dinner, the troopers went back outside to wait for dusk. The sun seemed to be burning more brightly just before it retired for the day. As the flame-orange orb hung on the horizon, Stormie approached Rob for a quiet word.
“I want to . . . thank you,” she said, intimately enough that he took a step back.
“You’re welcome. For what?” He swallowed the lump in his throat.
“For sticking with us. You’d have every dang reason not to.” She gazed at his face as though memorizing it, like a map. “I know this ain’t your fight.”
His greatest wish was to leave this world, and she knew it. But, suddenly, a truth hammered on his brain. “Maybe it doesn’t matter which world I’m from,” Rob said. “I’m just human, same as you. Your world is my world.”
“At least for now,” she said.
Yearning filled Rob—yearning for home, for answers, for this strong woman. He teetered between the need to be a commander and the need to just be himself for a change. His self-discipline stretched as taut as the tightwire he was balanced on. But there was still a thread of it left.
“Maybe someday, Stormie. . . .” He trailed off.
She caught her breath. “Someday . . . what?”
He straightened, looking quite the part of the dashing officer in his new armor. “Maybe someday this war will be over, and we’ll find out who we really are.”
She pulled away from him, sighing. “Maybe.”
In the distance they heard shouting, and the one-two trudge of zombies on the move. Rob gave Stormie a wary smile. “See you on the other side, Artilleryman.”
“Right on.” She snapped off a salute.
Life sped up, as it always seemed to at dusk in the Overworld. This time, Rob was ready for it. The moat had been dug, the iron golem had been stationed, and the villagers lined the parapet, out of sight, awaiting the signal to toss the splash potions over the side.
As the sunlight dropped to an acceptable level, Dr. Dirt’s legions lurched into the open.
“This is it, guys!” Frida rallied her battalion mates.
“All for one!” Kim cried.
“All for one,” Stormie echoed. She eyed Turner and said through her teeth, “Right, Meat?”
He seemed wounded at her doubt. “’Course,” he said, just as Dr. Dirt’s nails-on-chalkboard voice hurtled across the plains.
“People . . . of . . . this village!”
“Yeah, yeah, we know,” Jools said to the others, tiring of the griefer’s arrogant manner. “‘Throw out your . . . everything, or else I’ll . . . blah, blah, blah.’” Jools motioned with his hands that he wished the griefer would just get on with it.
But Dirt continued, demanding their riches and threatening annihilation. Then he said, “The one they call . . . Turner! Come out! And you . . . will . . . not be harmed.”
Rob’s eyes drilled into the mercenary’s back.
Turner rose and leaned over the top of the wall. “Never!” he yelled.
Now Legs stepped around the phalanx of zombies waiting for the order to attack. “Traitor!” He stomped his three feet. “We had a deal!”
“Why don’t you take that up with the iron golem!” Turner replied.
As Legs waved an arm at the advance guard of zombies, the villagers sprang up and began dousing their homes and gate with fire resistance potion. Its effect would be temporary. Hopefully, the protection would hold long enough for the moat to capture the oncoming enemy.
Rob and his troops kept bows and arrows at the ready. They observed their attackers from the village wall, holding their ground as the shambling line of zombies fell back to reveal a platoon of armored skeletons. These began firing flaming arrows at the wooden gate and at the iron golem, which had been chained in position so it wouldn’t wander ahead into the moat.
A deafening mob noise rose and fell in a tide of moans and bone clatters. Rob and the colonel watched as Legs and several other griefers crept behind their troops to place three mine carts on a track they had built that led toward the village and then off to the south. “They must be planning to haul away the village loot!” Rob said.
The marching skeletons were almost in range to crest the wall with their arrows. At Legs’s command, the zombie ranks closed in behind them. Then, as the skelemob looked up to sight their arrow trajectories, their marching feet broke through the woolen wrap that disguised the moat. Instantly they dropped as one, crashing to the pit bottom, four layers down. Sundra’s diggers had excavated the heck out of the trench, not stopping until they reached unbreakable bedrock.
This kept the skeletons who were still able to move from climbing out of the moat. Nothing kept the brain-dead zombies from falling into it, not even Legs’s panicked screaming. Once again, a carefully crafted plan had fooled the griefer army into submission.
Then the battalion got their first brief glimpse of Dr. Dirt himself: a heavyset block of a man that belied his reedy voice, climbing into the first mine cart. Legs caught hold of the side of the cart and pushed, getting a three-legged running start. As the cart took off, he jumped in, shaking his fist at the villagers and members of Battalion Zero. Dirt’s underlings followed in a hurry.
An enormous cheer erupted as the citizens realized that their antagonists had fled in defeat. The sound warred with the muffled groans and screeches that came from those trapped in the moat that were still alive.
“Don’t open that gate!” Kim reminded her village friends. “Not until after sunup.”
Rob asked her to assemble the townspeople so he could address them. He stood on a decorative planter block and called out, “This victory will only make Dr. Dirt angry and more determined to harm you. Now that we have provoked him, we intend to attack him with everything we’ve got.” Concerned murmurs came from the crowd. “It looks as though he’s fled to the extreme hills. If we can overthrow him there, this biome and six others will be free for good.” Rob let this sink in. “We’re asking for volunteers to act as reinforcements.”
The crowd of villagers—and the other battalion members—reacted with surprise.
“Those of you who are willing and able, we can provide you with weapons and training,” Rob promised, catching the colonel’s eye and smiling. “Now, who’s with me?”
For a moment, no one said anything. Then another cheer rose, and scores of villagers came forth to volunteer. Jools and Kim were charged with signing them up and preparing them to head out the next day. They would drill at Kim’s ranch.
Frida and Stormie ran up and hugged Rob, one on either side.
“Good going, Captain!”
“Way to recruit!”
Turner stood there somewhat sourly, watching his commanding officer get all the female attention.
Rob reluctantly shrugged the girls off and called to him, “And, Sergeant! I’m promoting you. From now on you’ll be Sergeant Major. And the new troops will answer to you.”
You could have knocked Turner over with his own fletching.
He swi
ftly recovered, though. “Yes, sir!” he said, raising a hand in salute.
Colonel M saw the gesture and mouthed at his protégé, I told you so.
Rob grinned. For the first time since falling into the ocean, he felt truly buoyant.
CHAPTER 16
BATTALION ZERO LED THE NEW RECRUITS across the plains toward their training grounds. The sun sat high in the sky when they arrived at Kim’s ranch the next day. Rob remembered the peaceful scene that had drawn him initially—the tidy stable yard, the comfortable box stalls, and the well-kept fencing in a sea of green prairie, dotted with buttery sunflowers. There it all was, still standing, still vibrant . . . except for the groans of undead horses coming from the stable.
Kim’s shock had long since worn off, but anticipating the sight of the four-legged monsters now sent her into a panic, air whistling through her pursed lips. She shook so hard in the saddle that Nightwind took off for the paddocks at a gallop. Not wanting her to face the spectacle alone, Rob set Saber after her.
But the neatly divided paddocks held no zombied animals. Kim’s horses stood huddled together watching the approaching strangers. Kim’s and Rob’s hopes rose, until they noticed that the adjoining pastures lay empty . . . except for distinct piles of burnt and rotting flesh. The zombie horses that Dr. Dirt and company had left outdoors had disintegrated in the bright sun!
Kim and Rob quickly wheeled Nightwind and Saber around and headed for the enclosed barn. Ungodly whinnies and neighs filled the air along with a sickening odor.
“Leave our mounts outside!” Kim warned. “The zombie horses will bust through the walls to attack them.”
She and Rob snuck inside just far enough to see the mottled green coats and unfocused eyes of the affected equines. Kim sagged to the ground, ashen, and Rob scooped her up and pulled her back outside, just as the rest of the battalion rode in with Colonel M floating behind them.
“There are so many of them—” Kim’s voice broke.
“How many, exactly?” the colonel asked.
Rob ducked back in and returned with the count.
“And Vanguard Frida,” M continued. “How many apples have we?”