by Walter Moers
Rumo had never moved so fast before. Even he was surprised by the speed at which he leapt aside. He saw the tips of the monster’s legs bury themselves in the ground, just where he’d been standing. They sank deep into the earth and stuck there. The forest rang with the Nurn’s furious howls.
Rumo went over to one of the captive legs, raised Dandelion above his head, muttered ‘Two-Handed Slice’ and brought the blade down as hard as he could. It severed the leg at a stroke. Blood spurted from the stump, the Nurn gave a roar and buckled at the knees. Its leafy red body sagged until it was just above the ground. Rumo stationed himself beside it and raised the sword again.
‘Must you?’ Dandelion said plaintively.
Rumo slashed at the curtain of red leaves and stood back. The foliage parted to reveal a rent from which the Nurn’s intestines were spilling out on to the forest floor.
‘Ugh!’ said Dandelion.
Rumo lowered his sword. He went up to the lifeless monster, plucked a red leaf from its robe of foliage and put it in his pocket.
‘Hey,’ Dandelion protested, ‘I’m all smeared with blood, it’s disgusting! Kindly clean me.’
Rumo knelt down, picked a handful of grass and proceeded to wipe the blade.
‘Blood!’ said a voice in his head. It was deep and muffled, like the tolling of a leaden bell. ‘I … taste blood!’
‘What?’ Rumo stopped short. That wasn’t Dandelion’s voice.
‘Where am I? It’s dark … Is that blood? Blood everywhere …’
Rumo finished wiping his blade clean. Was this a practical joke on Dandelion’s part? Was he disguising his voice?
‘Hey, what’s that weird voice?’ Dandelion demanded.
‘Can you hear it too?’
‘Where am I?’ asked the voice. ‘The last thing I can remember is … the battle … the enemy’s drums … the screams of the dying … the song of the swords in the night …’
‘Oh dear,’ said Dandelion, ‘a Demonic Warrior. His brain … He’s woken up!’
‘Who has?’
‘I thought I was alone in here, but they must have forged a Demon’s brain into the other half of the blade. The first blood we’ve shed has woken it up!’
‘Blood …’ groaned the voice.
‘Who are you?’ asked Rumo.
‘I’m Krindle the Cleaver, Demonic Warrior and certified swordsman grade one!’ the voice barked in military tones.
Rumo gave the blade of his sword a lingering stare.
‘Not another voice,’ he groaned. ‘I don’t think I can stand it.’
‘Neither can I,’ groaned Dandelion. ‘This is awful.’
‘What is?’ asked Rumo.
‘Krindle is. His thoughts are getting mixed up with mine. Ooh …’
‘You can read his thoughts?’
‘They aren’t thoughts, they’re a horror story in themselves …’
Krindle, the Demonic Warrior
Demons were a Zamonian life form that didn’t have an easy time of it, no matter what period they were born in, but Krindle first saw the light at a period when Demons were having a particularly hard time. They were thoroughly unpopular, whatever subspecies they belonged to, and would probably have been exterminated if people hadn’t been so frightened of them. As it was, they banded together for mutual protection into warlike communities ranging from small gangs of highwaymen to tribes numbering hundreds of members. If two tribes ran into each other they either fought to the death or formed themselves into a Demonic army, in which case they really got down to business. A Demonic army would roam around, looting and murdering, until another Demonic army entered the fray against it. Demonic Warriors displayed a brutality and commitment never to be found in other soldiers. No deserters, no surrender, no prisoners and no mercy – those were their watchwords. ‘Demonic battle’ was the Zamonian phrase for an engagement in which both sides sustained heavy casualties and neither emerged a clear-cut winner.
Krindle exemplified all the worst characteristics of his kind. He was hideously ugly, extremely bloodthirsty, boundlessly vindictive, infinitely evil – and absolutely honest. Really evil Demons could get by without lies or deceit because they were so obviously evil that there would have been no point in trying to disguise the fact. Krindle had no desire to please anyone, so he wasn’t ambitious; and he hated everything, so he wanted nothing – except to kill and, sooner or later, to be killed himself. Krindle was a Demonic Warrior par excellence.
He had roamed around Zamonia even as a child. Like all Demons, his parents had thrown him away at birth. Demons considered this a mark of parental affection, because it was all they could do not to strangle their offspring with their own hands.
Krindle landed in a capacious barrel situated in the backyard of a Grailsundian mouse abattoir specialising in the sale of mouse bladders. This big barrel was used as a container for the scraped carcasses of Ornian Piddlemice that were carted away at the end of every month. So Krindle spent the first month of his life amid skeletons and blowflies, but also amid the cannibalistic mice that inhabited the barrel and lived on the gnawed remains of their own kind. Although still unable to walk, Krindle was already capable of defending himself with his powerful hands and sharp claws. He strangled one cannibalistic mouse after another, bit off the creatures’ heads and drank their blood. He lost an ear and two toes – the mice nibbled them off while he was asleep – but he survived. After four weeks he was strong enough to climb out of the barrel and face the world. Even before learning to walk, he had gone through hell.
Krindle did nothing for the next five years but kill, eat and sleep. He killed mice and rats, but also cats and dogs, drinking their blood and eating their flesh. He divided his time between the sewers and the forests.
Then he settled down for three years. He made his home in a cave in Devil’s Gulch and preyed upon anything or anyone that came his way, be it wayfarer or mountain goat. At eight he was a full-grown, seven-foot Demon ready to go out into the world in search of action.
He began by joining a band of Demonic brigands. Within twenty-four hours he had bludgeoned their leader to death and taken his place. They proceeded to raid a few farms and hold up small parties of travellers. When this became too boring they joined forces with a Demonic tribe numerous enough to raid whole villages. Krindle now received his first lessons in the art of warfare. He proved an apt and enthusiastic pupil, becoming an exceptionally proficient and successful swordsman. He liked to split his opponents down the middle, so his comrades in arms christened him Krindle the Cleaver. They taught him to speak so that he could not only obey orders but – later on, perhaps – issue some of his own.
One day the tribe encountered a big Demonic army. They were given a choice between joining it or being impaled on sharpened stakes. A few particularly pig-headed individuals opted for impalement, but Krindle and the others joined the army.
Now came Krindle’s golden years. Although less of a free agent than before, he could pursue his obsession with killing to the full. The army attacked towns, fortresses and convoys. Krindle fought in the mountain labyrinths of Midgard, in the Demerara Desert Wars and the Battle of Toadmarsh. He and his fellow Demonic Warriors sang raucous songs filled with a yearning for death, drank wine mixed with blood and devoured the flesh of their enemies. His comrades rhapsodised to him about Netherworld, the Kingdom of Death in which they would live on after being slain in battle. Its amenities included huge dishes of meat and bowls of wine and blood from which they would be able to drink in perpetuity to the accompaniment of screams from their slaughtered enemies, for ever impaled down there on stakes of red-hot iron.
It was a wonderful day, the day Krindle died. The army had engaged a superior force of Yetis in a simultaneous blizzard and hailstorm, the unrelenting roar of the wind mingled with the crunch of splintered bone, and the snow was sodden with blood. Never had Krindle killed so many adversaries in a single day. Frozen stiff in a snowdrift full of severed limbs, he proudly and exultantly
raised his voice in song:
‘Blood, blood, blood!
Let blood like water flow!
Death, death, death!
May death my foes lay low!
And he swung his sword in time to the song. It thrust and sliced, severed arms and legs from torsos, and sometimes it split an enemy in half, right down the middle, for Krindle was Krindle the Cleaver.
Then the storm subsided, the snow stopped falling, and out of the steam that was rising from the acres of spilt blood stepped a gigantic warrior swathed from head to foot in a black cloak and armed with a huge scythe.
‘Are you Death?’ Krindle asked eagerly.
‘No,’ said the dark figure, ‘don’t mistake the message for the messenger. I’ve only come to bring you death. What is your accursed name?’
‘My name? My name is Krindle the Cleaver.’ Krindle tried to hurl himself at the newcomer, but his feet were stuck fast in the frozen blood and snow, so he hurled his sword instead. However, the battle had left him so weak and weary that the warrior evaded it with ease.
‘How do you do?’ said the warrior. ‘I’m Skullop the Yeti, known as Skullop the Scyther.’ So saying, he drew back his scythe and severed Krindle’s head from his body. The head fell into the snow, gave a last smile, said ‘Thank you!’ and closed its eyes. Krindle was dead. He had led a life of truly Demonic happiness and fulfilment.
But his head was collected with the others to be dried and shrunk. Having passed through numerous hands the length and breadth of Zamonia, it wound up in a smithy where Demonic Swords were being manufactured from Demon Range ore. His desiccated brain was pulverised and the powder mixed with the molten metal. And that was how Krindle became immortal.
Friends for life
Still rather dazed, Rumo tottered through Nurn Forest sword in hand. Friends for life He was looking for a spring, pool or puddle in which to wash the Nurn’s blood off himself.
‘I’ve a feeling we’re going to be the best of friends,’ said Dandelion.
‘Friends?’ said Krindle. He sounded puzzled.
‘Well, I’m afraid we’re destined to spend a long time in each other’s company, so it might be better for us to make friends, my dear fellow.’
‘My dear fellow? What is this, a nightmare? The last thing I can remember is that Yeti with the scythe and then—’
‘You’re dead.’
‘Dead? Is this Netherworld? Where are all the big bowls of blood? Where are all my slaughtered foes impaled on red-hot stakes and roasting for ever in the flames of hell?’
‘Yours isn’t the kind of death envisioned by your barbarous, dim-witted comrades.’
‘Dim-witted? Who’s dim-witted? Where’s my sword?’
‘You don’t have a sword any more. You are one.’
‘What do you mean, I’m a sword? What’s going on here? Oh, my head …’
‘You don’t have a head either, ha ha!’
‘No head? Who’s that speaking, anyway?’
‘I don’t think I can stand much more of this,’ Rumo groaned. ‘Two voices!’
‘And who are you?’ Krindle demanded. ‘Are you a Demonic Warrior?’
‘No.’
‘He’s a Wolperting.’
‘What’s a Wolperting?’
Rumo spotted a little spring gushing from among some boulders on the sloping forest floor. He knelt down beside it, stuck his sword in the ground and proceeded to wash. ‘Before we go any further,’ he said, ‘I think we’d better discuss a few basic facts.’
‘What basic facts?’ asked Krindle. ‘Who are you people, anyway?’
‘Shall I tell him or will you?’ asked Dandelion.
‘You do it,’ said Rumo. ‘I’m not too good at explaining things.’
The forest’s canopy of foliage was growing thinner. The slope was less steep, and protruding from the ground in places were some thick black roots that could only belong to the Nurn Forest Oak. Rumo felt confident that he would soon reach the summit of the hill. Taking care not to tread on any more Leafkins, he trudged steadily upwards.
‘So in short,’ Krindle recapitulated, ‘I’m a sword. I’m a dried brain and I’m dead, but I’m also alive. You’re a friend with horns who can speak and this unpleasant voice beside me belongs to a dead Troglotroll who’s also a sword.’
Rumo nodded. ‘That’s it, more or less.’
‘What was that about an unpleasant voice?’ asked Dandelion.
‘This must be a nightmare!’ Krindle groaned.
‘There’s no pleasing you, is there?’ Dandelion said reproachfully. ‘You’re dead, my friend, but you can still live on in another form. Very few people get that chance. Show a bit of gratitude.’
‘Very well, let’s assume this isn’t a dream and I really am a sword—’
‘Half a sword!’
‘All right, half a sword. What will I do as a sword? Will I be used for killing? For shedding blood?’
‘No, for carving.’
‘Carving?’
‘Yes,’ Dandelion whispered, ‘for carving a casket for his sweetheart!’
‘But first we must cut off some wood,’ Rumo decreed.
‘I’m Krindle the Demonic Warrior! I wasn’t reborn to chop wood. I’m a killer!’
‘Oh dear.’ Dandelion sighed.
The Nurn Forest Oak
‘Could the two of you shut up a moment? I think we’re getting close.’
The roots growing through the forest floor were steadily multiplying in number. Their dark shapes proliferated everywhere. On the summit of the hill stood the biggest tree Rumo had ever seen. Far wider than it was high, it was a wooden monster only fifty feet tall but at least three hundred feet in diameter.
‘The Nurn Forest Oak,’ said Rumo. ‘Enough wood for a thousand caskets.’
Rollicking around in the branches of the ancient oak tree and on the grass in front of it were some forest creatures, among them a Unicornlet, a Twin-Headed Lambchick, a Cyclopean Owl, and a raven. A Zamonian Cuddlebunny sat just in front of the tree, nibbling grass.
Rumo drew his sword.
‘That’s the spirit!’ growled Krindle. ‘Let’s kill that rabbit.’
Rumo went up to the tree and took some measurements. A short, thick branch growing at shoulder height was just the right size. He raised his sword.
‘I wouldn’t if I were you,’ said a soft voice. ‘I’d strongly advise you not to go hacking away at the Nurn Forest Oak without permission.’
Rumo spun round. There was no one in the clearing apart from the animals.
‘Who was that?’ Krindle demanded.
‘Down here,’ said the voice.
Rumo looked down. It was the Cuddlebunny speaking.
‘Nobody hacks away at the Nurn Forest Oak without official permission,’ it said, scratching its ear with a forepaw.
‘That rabbit!’ cried Krindle. ‘It’s being provocative. We must kill it!’
Rumo ignored him. ‘Are you the guardian of the Nurn Forest Oak or something?’ he asked.
‘No, I’m not the guardian of the Nurn Forest Oak. I am the Nurn Forest Oak,’ the Cuddlebunny said with a touch of pride.
‘I’ve ended up in a madhouse!’ groaned Krindle.
Rumo looked puzzled. ‘You are the Nurn Forest Oak?’
‘Well, it’s a trifle hard to explain. Mind if I go back to the beginning?’
‘All right,’ said Rumo, ‘but I’m in rather a hurry. I have to carve a casket for my sweetheart.’
The Cuddlebunny stared at him wide-eyed, then hopped off into the forest without a word.
‘Hey!’ called Rumo. ‘Where are you going?’
‘There, now it’s gone!’ Krindle complained. ‘We could have sliced it in half at a single stroke.’
‘The thing is,’ the raven chimed in from its perch on one of the branches overhead, ‘all the creatures here are my spokesmen, so to speak – the spokesmen of the Nurn Forest Oak. I speak through them because, being a tree, I can’t speak. My n
ame is Yggdra Syl.’
Rumo clasped his brow. ‘This is all rather confusing …’
‘It’s quite simple, really. I’m a tree, but I speak via a raven. Or a rabbit. Or an owl – via any creature with vocal cords that happens to be in my vicinity. It’s a kind of telepathic ventriloquism. Understand now?’
‘No.’
‘Then I’ll have to go back to the beginning …’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Rumo, ‘but I really don’t have much time and—’
‘Listen,’ said the raven. ‘You want my permission to hack off a piece of my precious flesh, so kindly find the time for a chat with a lonely old tree.’
Rumo sighed. ‘If you insist.’
‘We ought to kill that confounded crow,’ said Krindle.
The raven uttered a final croak and flew off. A big fat Chequered Toad hopped over to Rumo and sat down at his feet. It reminded him unpleasantly of his chess lessons.
‘At first I was just a tree,’ the toad began in a sepulchral voice. ‘I simply grew, you understand. A branch here, a branch there, one annual ring after another – the sort of things trees do. I didn’t think, I merely grew. That was the Age of Innocence.’
The toad clambered awkwardly on to a thick black root.
‘Then came the Age of Evil,’ it went on. ‘For many years the air was thick with smoke and the stench of charred flesh.’
‘Ah, the Demonic Wars,’ Krindle sighed nostalgically.
‘Many battles were fought and one of them took place in this very forest. They went at it hammer and tongs, believe me. Heavy casualties, no winners, only losers. The forest floor was sodden with blood. Then silence fell, but not for long, because the Age of Evil was followed by the Age of Injustice.’
The toad assumed a resentful expression.
‘I couldn’t help it, I served as a gallows – not an episode in my career of which I’m proud, take it from me. Hundreds – no, thousands – were hanged from my branches. Then it really went silent. That was the Age of Embarrassment. People were ashamed of what they had done in the Ages of Evil and Injustice, and nobody entered the forest any more. The corpses suspended from my branches swung to and fro in the wind until the rotten ropes snapped and they fell to the ground. Softened by the rains, they mingled with the blood in the soil. I assume that this mixture of dead leaves, blood and decaying flesh produced the Nurns, because the creatures suddenly sprouted from the ground and took to prowling around. They weren’t here to start with, at all events. Not that I could help it, my roots, too, absorbed this blood, this cadaverous mush, this deadly fertiliser. And that was when I began to think.’