Chapter 9

I could hardly wait for the afternoon because I was so anxious to test my new boots under field conditions. Speaking of field conditions, I gave my old jerkin to Opso, figuring that the little bit of extra protection couldn’t hurt anything. He was wearing it under his armor.

I waited until I was outside before I changed my boots. I dropped the ones that I had been using into a belt pouch. We were trying a different order of march this afternoon. Almo was leading five men and Opso was leading four. I was out in front of everybody acting as the point.

I stepped off at what I figured was a reasonable pace and suddenly found that I had left everybody else behind. They were running to try to catch up to me, but they were going to be exhausted very soon if they had to keep that up. Okay, I stopped to let them catch up, and then I stepped off at a very slow pace. They could keep up this time, but I quickly got very tired because I was so far away from my normal pace.

This was not going to work. I could function fine as long as I was working by myself, but I had to go back to my regular boots if the rest of the militia was going to keep up with me. I called to Almo and Opso to join me for a conference. We decided that we would forget me trying to walk point and simply move out as a scout. If that didn’t work, I would change my boots and go back to being point.

I stepped off and found myself about 250 yards ahead of everybody else within only a couple of minutes. Okay, that was not doing anybody much good. My next idea was to walk in a wide circle around the marching group and try to cover them from all directions. Oh, dammit, we were coming to a bunch of hills and some clumps of trees that were breaking my contact with the others. These blasted boots were more trouble than they were worth!

I raced to find Almo and to tell him my latest problem. He agreed with my assessment of the situation. Everybody stopped while I changed my boots back to my original ones and dropped my speedy boots into my belt pouch. Maybe I could find a use for the boots later on, but they were a bust when I was trying to work as part of a group. With my boots replaced, I resumed my position at the point. I was not going to tell Tonto what had happened. I didn’t want to hurt his feelings.

We resumed our patrol, and things returned to what passed for normal in this crazy place. It wasn’t long before we encountered something that was new to me. We came upon a box-like structure that had to be magical because very large bugs came through the slats. The magical part was that the structure was barely large enough to contain one of the bugs, yet five of the things appeared before our eyes. These bugs looked to me like a large wasp with a stiletto-like stinger in its very mobile tail.

The bugs attacked us, and we were very lucky to have the metal armor. That stinger looked like it was long enough to enter the chest and easily reach the heart. On top of that, I thought that I could see poison drip from the tip of the stinger.

There was a lot of flailing about as we tried to reach the wasps with out swords, but the wasps were too fast and agile for that to work. At least, we had gotten adequate protection from our armor, but that couldn’t last much longer as we began to tire rapidly.

It took a while, but it finally dawned on me to shoot at the wasps with my ray-gun ring. Those wasps were damned hard to hit, but I finally got one just as it stabbed Rollo with its stinger. The beam from my ring chopped the wasp in half, and it fell to the ground. Fortunately, Almo saw the attack and was able to get to Rollo soon enough to cure him with the proper charm.

I have no idea how long the fight lasted, because new wasps appeared faster than we could kill them. Opso had his men attack the structure with their swords, and that was the key to stopping more wasps from appearing as the men chopped the structure to pieces. By the time the fight was over, I had managed to kill 12 of the wasps with my ring, and at least three others flew away once the structure was destroyed.

This was almost a disappointing victory because we only got 12 gold coins and no other loot. At least we were able to kill a number of dangerous creatures!

One of the things so hard to understand about this dimension was that the terrain changed almost from day to day. One day we would come out of our fort to find a plain with a few rolling hills and a few trees, and the next day we would find very little flat ground and mostly high rocky hills with numerous caves. Another day, there would be the plains back, but they would be covered with a forest of very tall trees.

There seemed to be no rhyme or reason to these changes. The only really consistent ground was within a radius of about 300-400 yards of our fort. I kept wondering why our immediate land was so stable while everywhere else was so unstable. Of course, I didn’t complain about the stability of our home, but I did wonder about the variability of the rest of the ground. Furthermore, I couldn’t find anybody who could explain why the place was so easily changeable. Magic was the answer to everything.

One longtime resident of Arillium did tell me that this variability only started after the demons started to show up in such large numbers. She figured that the variability was associated with the demons. There had always been an abundance of magic around and about, but the trouble started when the demons became such a problem.

This bit of knowledge had come from her great-grandmother, so she really didn’t know how accurate it was, but the instability had been around for at least 200 years. Towns were located in the stable parts, but she did not know if the towns or the stable parts came first. It was something like the old joke about which came first, the chicken or the egg?

Okay, at least there was no question that we had to live with this variability, so I tried to quit worrying about it. Ha! Fat chance of that. I guess that basically I am just a worrywart.

Well, the afternoon was about shot, so we left for home. The 12 gold coins we picked up were not worth worrying about, so I dropped them in with the rest of the coins. Everybody knew that no one would be forgotten when we next made a trip to town, so there was no complaining.

This was our routine for the next couple of weeks, and we all decided that the men were ready to operate as we had originally planned. Opso was put in charge of the field trips for the 10 men, and they started spending all day in the field.

We picked up a second group of 10 volunteers, and this included Hena and another woman. Hena started immediately to train with Almo in the mornings while I was training the other 9 recruits in sword fighting. The afternoon was spent in training all 10 of the recruits in close combat and Krav Maga techniques associated with that.

Once we were sure that the new people could handle their swords and shields adequately against the demons and monsters in our current location, we combined them with the first group. The plan was to split the “old hands” into two groups of five and have them mix with the newbies also at the level of five and five. Hopefully, the new men could learn from the more experienced fighters and be somewhat protected by them in case we ran into a really bad fight.

Almo and I each led a group of 10, but we put Opso and Hena in the direct command role. Opso was in my group and Hena was with Almo. Almo was sure that Hena could handle her poison sword well enough, especially after the special training he had been giving her, but he was going to stay close by in case she messed up with her command responsibilities. None of us were what could be called great at military tactics, but we were all learning fast!

I was also handling the overall command responsibilities because Opso did have some experience leading his men. Hopefully, I would not have to keep very close watch over him. I made sure that Opso understood his duties at this stage of our training, and that I would be right behind him backing him up if he needed it. I also said that I didn’t expect him to need me for much, but he should not hesitate to call for my help if he thought he needed it.

We set out to investigate that large cave where we had broken up the torture party previously. That was such a good place for the demons and monsters to assemble that I could not imagine that they would abandon it after only one battle. That just did not seem to fit with their psychology. Anyway, we were about to find out the answer to that.

We entered the cave and immediately ran afoul of that terrible odor. If anything, it was worse than our previous visit! Surely, that had to mean that we would find demons and/or monsters in residence.

We had hardly advanced to the first bend in the tunnel when we were set upon by a pack of the small demons as they came around the corner. We were not caught completely unprepared because we had been expecting to find some of the evil creatures before we went very far into the cave, but the ferocity of the attack by the small demons was something of a surprise.

Fortunately, Opso and his men were able to respond quickly enough to block the first attack with their shields. The small demons were using stabbing spears, so they had the reach over Opso and his men, but the demons came within reach when their spears were knocked aside by the shields carried by the men. Opso and his men laid into the demons with a ferocity of their own, and this first batch of demons was soon killed. Opso did a lot of the damage to the demons with the lightning bolts released by his sword. Those demons just did not have any resistance to lightning bolts.

However, a second gang of the small demons rushed in to fill the void left by their vanquished compatriots. In fact, this second batch of small demons was so close on the heels of the first batch that they must have seemed to be a part of that first batch. Only a person keeping count of the demons would have noticed that this was a second batch, and I was that person. Almost instantly, I realized that there had to be a shaman calling up new attackers as fast as the previous batch was killed.

Unfortunately, I could not see the shaman from where I had been standing, so I had to work my way through the melee to get far enough around the bend in the tunnel to see the shaman that was calling up the reinforcements. The moment I was able to see the shaman, I brought my “ray gun” into play and blasted the shaman to his version of Hell.

That shaman was eliminated at about the same time that the last of the small demons were wiped out by Opso and his men. I decided no to fight against human nature and waited until the men had picked up the gold coins dropped by the demons. At least, I told myself that was what I was doing, but I did take the opportunity to pick up the gold and the few items dropped by the shaman. We finishing scavenging about the same time, so everything worked out fine. I kept telling myself that I was not embarrassed when they saw me pick up that last gold coin.