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 several 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 wh
ir 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.