Of Gods & Grunts

by Kyrell Kendrick

  I put a fresh mag in and proceeded to collect my brass.

  You know collecting brass is a lot easier when you don't have a drill sergeant or a platoon sergeant yelling at you.

  I looked at Cloy with a little bit of agitation.

  She smiled back at me demurely.

  "Hooves, balls, and mouth, what the fuck was that?" I cursed, taking pride in the fact that I mixed Telethan and English.

  "I wasn't worried," she said as she confidently strode over the IV line towards the dead douche.

  "Say's the person cowering next to me," I noted.

  "I just don't like your loud crossbow," she said.

  I shook my head and followed her towards the oraks.

  We had always joked about stacking Taliban like cordwood but had never really done it. The piggies, however, were dead in a nice neat line, with the left one about thirty meters from the IV line, and the right one just at one hundred. It was almost perfectly straight.

  I pointed down the row and turned to Cloy, "Not bad, huh?"

  She shook her head and continued on towards the prisoners.

  The Telenathi were all huddled in a small depression taking cover. I was half worried I had accidentally hit one with that stray round, but thankfully they were nowhere near the strike zone.

  "You are safe," Cloy said, walking towards them.

  They just quivered more.

  "Please, we must go," Cloy said confidently, and then added, "Now!"

  Maybe it was Cloy's tone or her demeanor, but the women seemed to get the idea.

  They stood up, one by one, and removed the rope from their necks.

  I walked by Cloy closely and, in hushed tones, said, "I'll meet you back at the wagons."

  She nodded, put on a stoic face, and started marching back the way we came.

  I was thankful that I didn't have to explain what I had planned. There was a war camp a few miles off, and I was going to make sure that douche of oraks wouldn't trouble us again.

  I removed my ACH and jogged back to Rover, who was still just nibbling on the grass.

  I checked the location of the sun in the sky and figured I had about four hours until sundown.

  No doubt, the war camp had heard the shots, but they probably had no idea what the sound was, so I wasn't expecting a QRF or anything like that. I had no idea what time they were expecting their ambush back, but I needed to make sure Cloy and the prisoners weren't going to have an orak raiding party on their back.

  Normally I would assault an objective from the least likely avenue of approach. Unfortunately, that wasn't an option, so I pulled my big boy pants up and started heading straight towards the camp.

  I stopped every hundred meters or so and examined the camp with my ACOG. Specifically, I looked for dust. Oraks were quick and heavy. Much like horses, they kicked up a fair bit of dust when traveling in a pack.

  About five kilometers off, I dismounted Rover in a ravine and said, "Stay."

  He looked at me like I was an idiot and then proceeded to sample the fine cuisine in the local area.

  While he was munching on the flora, I grabbed my ACH and assault pack and made my way back towards what looked like a trail.

  The area was flat plains, just like Kansas. There were even little copses of trees dotting the hills.

  The war camp was set up straight in the middle of a copse. Little walls of old wagon boards, canvas, and branches outlined the perimeter. Once I got closer, I would need to find a breach.

  Through my ACOG, I counted at least twenty oraks, all males.

  I cursed softly and took a mental inventory of my ammo.

  There was no Academy Sports nearby that I could go to replenish my 5.56. I was down three mags, and I was woefully aware that with every pull of the trigger, I lost one of the major advantages I had in Teletha.

  I had a SOG Seal Pup knife that was given to me as a going-away gift by my first fire team, but contrary to popular belief, normal grunts don't really train in knife fighting. I wouldn't get a hand to hand kill unless they were sound asleep.

  I rifled through my assault pack and pulled up my case of Energizer Industrial AA batteries. As a squad leader, I always carried extra ammo and extra batteries. I also always carried extra tourniquets, iodine pills, smoke, and one sixty millimeter mortar round. There were also two claymores.

  I pulled out my PVS-14s, and lamented the fact that I had given the new high-speed night vision to my team leaders, and clicked the monocle to my ACH.

  The night was falling, and I was ready for some action.

  I missed Earth a lot. I missed my family, the internet, movies, and caffeine. I fucking missed caffeine the most. Rip Its, Red Bulls, the weird blue and black cans made by Coca Cola, and Wild Tiger. I could destroy some fucking Wild Tiger.

  “I wish I had a Wild Tiger, a dip, or a cigar. Hell, even a cigarette would be nice,” I muttered.

  I sat there in silence, hand poised on my clacker, waiting for something to happen, but it never did.

  Now, most people have this absurd idea that just after dark is the best time to attack, or just before morning. They're wrong. The best time to attack is around two in the morning, when everyone but the guard shift is nice and snuggled up, dreaming about fucking goats, or whatever those goatfuckers dreamed about.

  Since I had no idea when two in the morning was, I guessed.

  The fires had all died down, and I saw no movement through my nods. Since I was the only soldier in the area, I turned the IR floodlight and high powered laser on my PEQ 15 and proceeded towards the encampment.

  Illumination was at about ten percent, which I was thankful for. It was dark, and only the stars were shedding their light on the ground.

  The hardest part about infiltrating a camp at night is the sound. People will always hear you before they see you when the sun isn't shining.

  My advantage was, however, that I had night vision, and I could see them well before they could see me. At least I hoped. Urban legend or I guess more accurately; backward ass ancient idiot legend had it that oraks could see in the dark.

  I never believed in that legend, mainly because oraks eyes look identical to human eyes.

  I made my way to the edge of the encampment and smiled inwardly. What had looked like walls was really just a bunch of branches, brambles, and old wagon parts hastily tied together. I could slip through one of many dozen breaks without alerting anyone.

  Using the laser on my PEQ, I flashed one of the slots and was happy to see no visible return. I hadn't expected a tripwire, but you never know.

  I quietly slipped through the crack and took a knee. Scanning the interior of the perimeter, I found a disorganized cluster fuck of a camp. Half pitched tents, bedrolls that were empty and laying out, bones, and trash littered the ground everywhere. The smell of shit and urine could be tasted on the wind. The bastards probably didn't even have a designated latrine.

  It only took me four paces to find the first orak completely racked out, laying on top of a bedroll, a half-eaten deer head next to him.

  This was going to be the most dangerous part of my assault. I needed to kill him without alerting the others. A gunshot wouldn't do, and I didn't think slicing a throat would achieve my objective quickly enough without him hitting me.

  I let my M4 hang and pulled the knife from my plate carrier. It was one of those really nice SOG Seal Pups, with the hard Kydex sheath. It was about six inches long with a single-sided blade.

  My heart was racing as I closed the distance to the orak lying on the ground. A plan had formulated in my mind, and I mentally rehearsed how I was going to accomplish the deed.

  Readying myself, I kneeled slowly and plunged the tip of my blade right under the orak's chin, towards the back of its skull.

  I then jumped back and brought up M4, half expecting the large creature to jump up.

  He started twitching violently, but no noise escaped him.

  "Thank God," I whispered as I retrieved the knife and wiped the b
lade on the nasty creature's clothing.

  I wish I could tell you that I was like a super stealthy ninja, who used his awesome sneaking skills to dispatch all the other oraks, but that would be complete bullshit. The fact is, I just went from sleeping beast to sleeping beast, and did the exact same thing to each dumbass creature. They didn't even have a guard going. It was like picking low hanging fruit.

  Within an hour, I had killed every living orak in the camp.

  Too wound up to sleep, and too cold to just sit, I started looting the place, keeping an ear out for any movement.

  That was when I found it, the reason why there was a camp in that specific copse of trees.

  Coming out of the largest tree, a stream of water leading to a clear pool at the root base. It looked like the tree had a garden hose near the top of it, and all the water was running down the bark; however, there was no visible start of the stream.

  Watching the tree sweat through my nods was impressive enough, but when I shined white light, I was absolutely astonished.

  The tree was not sweating water; it was sweating ale. I hadn't noticed the smell because the camp was littered with rotting food and feces, but once I saw the golden liquid, I could distinctly make out the pleasant aroma.

  Realization dawned on me as to why it was so easy to kill the warband. The fucking pigs had been literally drinking ale from an ale tree. Something that, I have to admit, had never heard of.

  American's have a common saying, or maybe it's all English speakers, curiosity killed the cat. The SAS says, who dares wins.

  SAS can kill cats, so I decided to follow my spurious logic and drink from the ale tree.

  Tiner, my sniper buddy, used to buy those craft beers that cost like twenty dollars and come in a wine bottle. This stuff made those taste like PBR.

  I must have drunk like at least a pint in about five minutes because I started to get buzzed.

  Feeling pretty damn good, and not wanting to be inebriated in an area that might have a hunting party return, I decided to walk out to where I had the claymores set, and hang out until it was light.

  I hunkered down under my woobie and fell into a semi-coherent sleep. It was the super light sleep I was used to, where you get some rest, but it's not enough to keep you from being groggy, but it's good enough to keep you operating.

  At least six hours later, I found myself starting to be warmed by the sun. My first thought was to get some actual sleep. My second and better thought was to go see what goodies I could claim.

  I pulled in my claymore, packed up my assault pack, and carefully made my way back towards the camp.

  Most of the tents were all little lean-to contraptions, so I knew ransacking those wasn't going to help much, but I did find a nicer and bigger shanty than the others, about a quarter of the way through my pig-sticking endeavor.

  I walked back towards the chateau de swine and kept an eye on the orak bodies to ensure I didn't leave one squirm

  I purposefully kept my mind on the tents, because in reality, I wanted to go check out the beer tree.

  The largest tent also had the largest orak in front of it.

  I kicked the body to ensure he was dead and said, "Mind if I check out your tent, buddy?"

  I ditched my ACH and ruck and pushed into the crappy little domicile.

  Two boxes and a barrel were pushed against the far corner. I knew immediately what the barrel was because written in Telethan, it said, fey wine. The barrel held maybe a gallon of the precious liquid.

  Considering fey wine sold for about a clack a glass, the barrel was easily worth a hundred or so.

  Smiling at my at fortune, I pulled the barrel out and was satisfied to see it hadn't been tapped yet.

  The two boxes that remained were different from each other in size, weight, and appearance. The first, smaller box was made of a fine wood that reminded me of black mahogany. It was about twelve, by eight, by six inches. Opening it, gave me another satisfied grin.

  Lying on purple felt was a white ivory recorder looking thing, inlaid with gold. It was meticulously carved with images of griffins, dragons, and other fantastic creatures that I couldn't recognize.

  Not wanting to break it or smudge the fine instrument, I closed the box and set it behind me next to the barrel.

  The last box was more the size of a modern footlocker, with about the same level of decoration. It was nothing to write home about. So naturally, I assumed it was filled with money.

  There was no apparent lock, but I couldn't get it open.

  Seeing as I was bent over in a smallish tent, with little room to gain leverage, I dragged the box out into the open.

  Once out in the light, I searched the box thoroughly for some sort of latch, button, or lever. There was none. There was a tight seam where the lid met the body, but there were no visible hinges.

  I pulled out pork slayer, the new name for my knife, and attempted to put the point into the seam.

  That box was tighter than a Baptist with a purity ring.

  "Maybe Cloy can help," I said myself, and decided to look around for greener pastures, or in my case, aleier trees.

  Thinking somehow the night before was a figment of my imagination, I returned to the center of the copse to examine that beautiful wonder, the ale tree.

  As I approached the magical lumber, I could make out the smell of ale and the sound of splashing. It had not been my imagination.

  There it was, standing majestically tall, weeping pure golden delight.

  I indulged in a little bit of the tasty beverage, which not only tasted delicious, but I realized it was the perfect temperature.

  After getting another buzz going, I decided to look for pocket change.

  It took about four hours to loot the remains of the camp, and in addition to the three hundred clacks I found, I was also able to acquire a large number of water skins. Since I didn't trust the water in Teletha, I decided to fill about fifteen gallons of ale into the repurposed water skins. To be perfectly honest, I would have filled the skins with ale even if I did trust the water.

  I had a nice stack of supplies, and there was absolutely no way to fit it all to my horse. There weren't any useable wagons or carts to be found.

  "Fuck, I wish I had something to take all this crap," I said to myself.

  Just then, a noise startled me. In Afghanistan, we had a cow get caught up in our triple strand or triple standard, or whatever the right nomenclature is concertina wire. The idiot animal just thrashed and jumped, making its predicament worse and worse. Eventually, we had to kill the beast. The downside was, we had to go back to our perimeter and unfuck the mess Bessy made. The silver lining was, steak and eggs were pretty common for breakfast for a whole week.

  The whole point of the story is, it sounded just like that.

  I rushed over, keeping my M4 at the low ready, only to find Rover struggling against something. Apparently, he had wandered into the encampment and got his bridle stuck on a rope or something.

  "Rover!" I yelled, "Calm down, or you will make it worse."

  I'm about eighty-three percent sure that Rover can understand me half the time. He instantly stopped struggling and stood there waiting for me to release him from the dreadful trap which ensnared him.

  Pulling my pigsticker, I cut the rope free from his tack and kissed my horse on the nose. "See, buddy," I said, trying to soothe him, "All better."

  He nuzzled me back, and then went about doing what Rovers do best, graze.

  Feigning hurt after being snubbed, I bent down to examine the rope, which somehow tethered the massive beast, only to find it was very nice. Like silk rope nice. Like the type of rope you would think you find adorning a king's curtain or a Japanese lady.

  I followed the rope to its point of origin. It was attached to a very nice, camouflaged tarp. Like magically camouflaged. Like the tarp colors blended in perfectly with the surrounding flora.

  Excitement filled me as I rolled back the canvas.

  Have you eve
r seen those shows where they restore like old nineteen-sixty Shelby Cobras to their original glory? They slowly uncover the car to reveal a pristine machine that makes women swoon and men envy?

  Under that tarp was the medieval fantasy equivalent of a Corvette Stingray.

  The majestic carriage was built out of black wood and decorated with gold and silver. It had a passenger compartment that was decorated with crushed blue velvet. A harp hung, magically affixed in the center, and a small box with four glasses sat between the two bench seats.

  The back of the carriage had a compartment the size of a small pickup bed for storage. It looked right somehow, not like El Camino or one of those stupid Avalanches.

  "Well, this is nice," I noted. "Wonder if they have any financing options."

  I put the tarp in a locker that was designed for the purpose and then went to check the tongue to see how hard or easy it would be to attach it to Rover.

  I've never attached a wagon to a horse before and wasn't entirely sure I knew what I was doing. After five minutes of stubborn protest by Rover, I had him securely rigged to my new whip.

  "It's only going to be until we find some new horses, dude," I assured him, "I promise."

  He didn't look like he believed me.

  The carriage had a spot for two horses, but I figured one Rover would be enough to get me back to the main road if I took it slow.

  I led him and the carriage to the pile of treasure, and then the tree of beer.

  Once I had loaded everything I possibly could, we made our way back to where the original ambush had taken place.

  The suspension on the carriage was smooth, and the ride to the road was uneventful.

  As I approached, I saw some Telethan Guards assisting with the cleanup.

  They noticed me, but I saw Cloy calling to them.

  A pentagal, essentially a squad leader, approached on horseback.

  "By order of the City of Teletha, I command you to identify and disarm," he called in a loud, steady voice.

  I had received the same command at least a dozen times. It was their standard greeting. Every time they commanded me to disarm, I just pulled my knife out and set it down. They never cared about my M4, so of course, I did as requested.