The lone Grey sentry sat on his rock and complained noisily about having to stay awake until one of his fellow raiders threw a rock at him. Then he continued to do so for another hour only this time he did it in his head. He was angry at being told to stand watch. It was a precaution that Grey Ones rarely employed. The humans were food for the Greys. Why should one be afraid of food? He spit. Then he looked cautiously at the others snoring by the fire. When he was certain he was not being observed he lifted the skin of spirits from under the pelt he held around his shoulders. He took a long satisfying pull. The liquor had been taken from an abandoned human farm shack and was of better quality than anything his kind was able to produce. From where he sat with his back to a stand of tall grasses he could make out the strange lights on the walls of the city up ahead. Soon, he thought. Soon he and his kind would flow into that city and kill thousands. They would eat their fill for months. They would take treasure and liquor, all that they could carry. Each would arm himself with fine human steel. Then they would keep going. And more cities would fall. He lifted the skin and took another drink.
A gnat brushed his neck.
Strange. The liquor appeared to be flowing over his chest instead of down his throat. He looked at the liquor skin expecting to see a hole but there was none. Then he felt pain. It was light at first then almost unbearable. He jumped up and screamed but the air from his lungs did not reach his larynx. It hissed out of him in near silence. His hands went to his neck to find it oozing with a viscous warm wetness. An arm snaked out from behind and grabbed the thick mane of black hair, yanking it and him backward off of the rock and onto the ground behind it. Just before his world went black he saw the face of a human. His food. And the food was lifting a long knife for another strike.
I watched from my vantage point. The knifer was good. He moved as quietly as a shadow. In the few sessions I had had training in knife skills I learned that being swift and silent were the primary skills required. The targeted group of greys was now without a guard. I turned to the rest of the shadow’s team and nodded. The other nine knifers crept up on hands and knees with their knives held between their teeth. On the other side of the camp Pulg and his swordsmen snuck quietly closer, ready to rush in should the knifers approach be discovered. At other locations around the camp fire our archers rose up with nocked arrows. Their job was to take down any Grey who cried out in pain or sounded the alarm.
I stayed back where I was. My size was no help in this type of maneuver. Even one as inexperienced as I knew that. My main value to the operation now was to maintain command and control. At least until the excrement hit the oscillator.
In tortuous slowness my knifers oozed forward. The man I had sent in to take out the sentry was now kneeling over another grey brute who snored in blissful ignorance. He stayed his hand waiting for the others. The tension was eating at me. My jaws began to ache until I realized that I was clamping them together too strongly. I could hear my breath sliding in and out of my nostrils. It sounded way too loud. Certainly the sound would soon wake the creatures and send them into a frenzy of combat.
The knife team crawled on. It had now been at least ten minutes since they had begun their approach. I ached for action and an end to the waiting and dreading. At that point I didn’t really care if we were heard, I just wanted it to start.
At last the stealthy team had worked their way around the group of snoring sub-humans. Each knifer was positioned at the head of one of the beasts. I stood up so they could see me by the light of the fire and drew my finger across my throat.
Then it was over.
It was as simple as that. The nine Greys that were left by the fire woke wondering what it was that touched them. The knives employed by our team were sharp as razors and parted skin like it was silk. Two or three tried to leap up but they were pinned to the ground by Pulg’s swordsmen. They had been unable to make a sound. They were held down until their life’s blood saturated the sand and they ceased moving for all eternity.
I was five feet away and I heard almost nothing. I gathered my team around me again. We had a long night ahead of us.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Karr
Karr stirred in his tent. The heat was already starting to grow. He kicked off his skins and stood, sweat running down his body. He was tall for a Grey One, an entire head taller than any others he’d encountered. Besides the streak of black hair that ran from his brow to his lower back he also had thick hair on his shoulders, arms and chest. His limbs were powerful. He strode naked to the cot in which slept his slave, covered by a thin cloth. He woke the emaciated human with a kick. He didn’t need him for anything but if he was awake his slave should be also.
Still naked he stepped outside of the tent to survey his army. Their numbers stretched far away into the distance. Hundreds of fires, thousands of fighters, male and female. Karr laughed when he thought of the fact that his women were the physical equals of the food. Why had his kind stayed hidden on the far side of the mountain ranges for centuries? They were the strongest. The fiercest. Their territory should be wherever they said it was. They were here to take what they wanted while they lived. When they died, if there was any kind of life after this, then they would take what they wanted of that life as well.
Back in their mountain dens and lodges the elders had warned him. They spoke of old stories and fears. They cautioned him to restrict his ambition to small raids. Don’t put the humans in a situation where they had nothing to lose, they said. They kept saying it up until the time that he killed them and fed them to his men.
The old stories might have been important at one time. But no more! They had grown strong over the centuries, outgrowing the safety of the mountains.
Karr was something special and he knew it. All of his people were strong of body but weak of mind. Not him. Since he was a youngling he had an intelligence that was unmatched among his kind. They knew it too. They saw it. His plans, tactics, strategies. All of his kind respected his raw strength but they also stood in awe of his mind.
And now he had a secret. One that was helping him to succeed. A marvelous secret that he protected from all eyes. The secret made his intelligence even more formidable. More dangerous to any who dared oppose him.
His slave came out of the tent and wrapped a loin skin around his waist, then buckled on a sword made of fine Olvioni steel. Karr looked down from the foothills toward the walls of Olvion. There was more fine steel there. Soon it would be theirs. Steel and treasure and food.
He walked among his fighters kicking awake those who still slept. He was anxious. Today would be the day that they reach the city. The fine city with the walls that the food thought capable of protecting them. He was ready. The fighters were ready. He wanted everyone up and making preparations to move out. His destiny was waiting behind those city walls. His place in history was there.
A small commotion drew his attention over by one of the feeding stations. Several of his officers were talking in low tones while glancing over their shoulders toward the city. He strode over to them and demanded to know what they were speaking of. One of them meekly turned and spoke to him in their tongue.
“My lord king, we have had messengers from our fighters who are camped nearer to the city. They say some of our people that we sent forward are being murdered in their sleep.”
Karr stepped close to his subordinate, noting the obvious trepidation in his face. Karr greatly enjoyed the effect his presence had on underlings.
“So we lost some fighters? Are we to be surprised that the food would crawl from their hiding place and kill a few of our people? How many did they kill?”
The junior officer fought the urge to recoil from his sovereign’s morning breath. He also didn’t want to give Karr bad news because one could never tell just how he would react. He noticed that none of his friends were stepping forward to spread the risk around. He licked at the sweat that was beading on his upper lip.
“My lord king, reports are that ei
ghty six of our soldiers had their throats slit last night.” The Adam’s apple of the underling bobbed up and down several times as he swallowed repeatedly.
Karr had been gazing again at the walls of Olvion. Upon hearing this last news his head snapped back to his minion. “Eighty six? I heard no battle.”
“There was no battle, Lord King. No struggles were heard, no outcries, nothing. Not one sound. Some are saying the humans have some among them who can change into snakes and slither quietly into the camps where they then change back and cut the throats of their enemies.” The smaller grey made a face that was meant to convey disgust.
Karr looked into the eyes of his lieutenant. There was fear there. Weak minds were quick to accept wild explanations for things they could not immediately understand. All it took was one silly story. This had to be quashed now. The Grey King slapped the junior officer causing him to stumble backward several paces, barely keeping his footing.
Karr stepped closer to his admonished underling. “The next time you hear that story told you will cut the throat that utters it. And the next time I hear that or any other outrageous lie I will personally cut the throat that speaks it.” He swiveled his head to take in all of the officers present. “Am I understood?”
All of the underlings bowed their heads and made obsequious assurances to their king that hi orders were well understood.
Karr dispersed them with a wave of his hand. His slave tried to buckle a sandal onto his foot. He kicked away the shoe and the servant. Once again he surveyed the walls of Olvion. Eighty six fighters killed in their sleep with no sound being heard. Should he be worried? The number was not important. They had hundreds of thousands of raiders gathering here. But the way they had been dispatched. Karr was a veteran of skirmishes with the food. He knew their moves. This was new. This had the ability to spin rumors and rumors travel faster than anything else in a war camp. Even executing a few fighters for spreading the stories would not keep it from being whispered from mouth to ear. This would bear watching.
CHAPTER THIRTY ONE
Terror
I was the last one in from the night raid. We made our way back to what I had been thinking of as the “rock entrance” just before dawn broke. That was pushing it a little close and I resolved to be more careful of the time if we got a chance to go out again. I would never have found the hidden door by myself. We got back to the general area and one of our guards swung the door open and waved to me. He had been watching for us. We all scrambled up the side of the hill on which it was located. The sky was already pink.
When we were all inside I dismissed the troops after telling them how impressed I was with their professionalism. “We gave them something to think about.”
Pulg and Syrann waited for me to debrief them but I was too tired. I told them to get some sleep and meet me in the first floor dining hall in six hours. Dwan was just exiting the shower when I came in. Ten minutes later I was snoring and she was taking another shower.
Three hours later I was awakened by a knock on my door. I expected another young teen messenger. Instead it was King Zander. I had wrapped a blanket around my shoulders to open the door. I invited him inside feeling a little uncomfortable to be standing almost naked in front of the most powerful man in the kingdom. I suggested that he take a seat while I pulled on my trousers and a light shirt.
“Forgive my unannounced intrusion, Tag-Gar. I heard a brief report of the success you had last night and I wanted to verify it. You slew eighty-six Greys?”
I sat on the bed slicking back my hair with my hands. “Yes. Well, my people did. I did not actually participate in any of the…events.”
“As is proper. A commander must take all steps required to be there to direct his team. I must say that is an astounding number.”
I nodded. “Well, Your…”
“We are alone here, Tag-Gar” he reminded me. “Titles are not needed.”
“Right. And along that same line please call me Tag. It is a name that my former friends used to call me. Anyway Zander, we simply followed the instructions that you and Ruguer gave us. We sought out isolated small pockets of the enemy and snuck up on them while they slept. I have an extraordinarily skilled knifeman, I forget his name at the moment. Most of the groups of Greys have now learned to set sentries at night. Whenever we came upon a group that we wanted to take out my knifeman was able to slip in and silently take out any lookouts. Then we crept forward until we had them surrounded and outmanned. At a signal from me the other knifemen simply slit the throats of the remaining Greys. Our other warriors were close by to ensure none of ambushed Greys were able to raise the alarm. Few were even able to make a sound.”
Zander pondered this news and smiled. “I knew you’d be useful. You look at this conflict with an entirely new and unbiased set of eyes. You may be interested in knowing that the remaining Greys that had moved up closer to the city last night all packed up and withdrew. They are now heading away from us. It would appear they are intending to join up with the main body of raiders.”
I was interested. “Wow,” I said.
“Wow?”
“Sorry. That is an expression from my world.”
The king stood and asked to be excused. I thought he was leaving but, instead, he opened the door and spoke to one of the four guards waiting outside. When he came back in he had a puzzled look on his face.
“Sorry. I have had little sleep,” he said. “I know you understand because you have probably had less. I just requested a tray of tea for us. But I have had a nagging feeling lately that I might benefit from learning more about your past. My time has been limited the last few weeks but I have set aside this time for us to speak to one another. Tell me, Tag, all about your world.”
And so we sat for close to two hours while I droned on and on about Earth. The king listened with rapt attention, stopping me only to clarify points. He was amazingly open to believing my story. He asked about my weapons and armor, leaning forward with interest when I described the cavern and its skeletal remains. He had numerous questions about Tinker who was curled in a ball next to me on the bed.
The tea arrived and I sucked it down, savoring the caffeine and the sweet honey. Zander urged me to continue and was especially fascinated by my reports of airplanes, automobiles, ships and submarines. His brow puckered when I mentioned explosives and firearms. I tried to explain but he had no frame of reference with which to understand. He confirmed my earlier suspicion that combustible elements which we used on Earth were either non-existent here or in such small supply that they had never been widely mined and used. I described oil and he allowed that he may have heard of such a thing. There were stories of farmers finding viscous black fluids when digging or plowing. The few deposits that were discovered were quickly filled in and forgotten. Zander closed his eyes as if lost in his memories and recited a story he had heard from his father about exploring far across the plains. He supposedly found several small isolated villages in which people lived in primitive conditions. But he recalled that, in one village, the occupants coated their torches with a thick black goo that burned for a long time. Zander’s father had paid little attention to the substance because the use of the phosphorescent leaves in globes was a much more efficient and less messy means of illumination. I became excited at this news and urged him to follow up on it after we got out of our current mess. If we get out of it.
Zander then grew serious and looked directly at me. “Tag, is there anything about the way we do things, specifically the way in which we fight this war, that you may see as needing change or improvement?”
“Well, as I said before…” I stopped. I was about to remind the king that I had no experience with this type of war. But I suddenly flashed on an insight that had been itching the back of my mind for a while. “Actually, I might have a suggestion. Feel free to tell me if you have already considered, tried and rejected this.” He nodded and I went on. “Most of your combat plans seem to be very much concerned with the hono
r of standing man to man on the battlefield. You devote two of our warriors to each Grey because they are stronger than you on an individual basis. But I have noticed a distinct advantage in speed by our people. One-on-one, our people are just faster. I would like to see that advantage emphasized when we equip ourselves for battle.”
Zander became intensely absorbed. He rose slightly and scooted his chair closer to the bed upon which I was sitting.
“Can you elaborate?”
I fought the feelings I normally had in these situations, to assume that I was wrong and would appear foolish. My time in Olvion had worked many changes in the Jack Taggart of Earth.
“We seem to rely more on short swords and shields than weapons which can strike quickly and effectively. Think spears, javelins and pikes. They keep distance between the combatants. A stronger opponent has no advantage against a foe who can kill him from six feet away.
“Let’s take it even farther. Only a small part of your army are archers. Yet when I was doing night raids they were invaluable. I think so many of your archers are female because men don’t want to deal with the stigma that has been allowed to grow against archers as warriors. But the kill ratio for your bowmen is probably higher than that of regular troops.” I had more to say but I wanted to get his reaction.
Zander sipped his tea, his brow knotted more now than I’d ever seen. He closed his eyes, thinking deeply. I could almost predict the objections he could cite. Instead he opened his eyes smiled slightly.
“I think your idea has some merit,” he said. “But our deep sense of honor…of manliness if you will, almost demands what we think of as fair combat. There is honor in defeating your enemy shield to shield even when it is done two on one because it is understood that we are compensating for our lack of comparative strength.”
I found that logic hard to follow. An idea occurred to me.
The Olvion Reality (The Chronicles of Olvion Book 1) Page 29
