Champion of the Last Battle

VIII

Lieutenant Kahndoot slapped right palm to left side of breastplate smartly—a Freefighter cavalry salute long ago adopted by all members of Bili of Morguhn’s condotta—as he and his inspecting entourage approached the section of wall she commanded this watch.

Many of the Moon Maidens had telepathic abilities, unknown and unutilized until their exposure to eastern mindspeakers. Kahndoot was one such, which had been one reason that Bili had wanted her as a lieutenant of the condotta.

He now mindspoke her, beaming, “All is well here, little sister?”

“Little happening up here, oversized brother,” she replied silently, with a touch of equally silent humor. “But down below, the enemy are scurrying hither and yon like ants on an overturned hill. Another wagon train just arrived on the plain, along with two, maybe three hundreds of pikemen. Perhaps they mean to attack again. I hope so—things are deadly dull here.”

He smiled, beaming back, “Yes, if they come again, we’ll just serve them another heaping helping of what we gave them last time. We have at least as many stones as they have men for us to squash with them. This is a variety of siege warfare that I can easily live with—no fear, no hunger or thirst, no worry about mines under the walls or towers, no enemy engines that can range the city, a competent garrison, along with a loyal and uncomplaining populace. Now, if only King Byruhn were still hale and about ... ”

“He shows no improvement, then?” she beamed. “I had begun to think that Pah-Elmuh and his Kleesahks could heal anyone of any injury.”

“They explained it all to me, little sister. What it all boils down to is that they cannot breach his involuntary mindshield, and therefore they cannot order his mind to begin the self-healing process, so he well may die.”

“And if he does,” probed Kahndoot, “you will accept the crown, brother Bili?”

“Oh, no, little sister, not me; I have lands and family and dependent folk far and far to the east. I have no designs on this cold, stony little kingdom.”

“Then who, brother? It is said he is the last member of the royal house.”

“I know not,” Bili admitted. “I suppose it will be up to the council—what’s now left of them in the wake of that stupid battle—to choose a new king. But it won’t be easy, for all of the nobility are related to King Byruhn in one way or another, though all about equally distant in relationship. There will surely be a long period of anarchy in the land before a strong man finally seizes control, and I neither want to nor intend to be here to see it. Immediately these Skohshuns are scotched, it’s me for home.”

She sighed audibly. “Would that I might say such, brother. But we Maidens, we now have no homes, no families to which to return; for us now, one strange place is as good as another. We had hoped that here, after what Prince Byruhn had told us ... but what good are the assurances, the promises of a dead man, or of one soon to be dead?”

Bili the Axe had no answer to that question.

Of nights when there were no other wounded to tend, when no childbirth was imminent to occupy him, Pah-Elmuh the Kleesahk took his rest in King Byruhn’s chamber, trying in every way he could to reach the monarch’s mind through that seemingly impenetrable mindshield, so that the huge body could have the opportunity of healing its hurts before the lack of proper food weakened it enough to die.

Near the rising of the old moon on a night, he lay supine on the pallet he had devised. After over an hour of vain mental probing of the comatose king, the hirsute humanoid was teetering upon the edge of sleep when the silent call came.

“Pah-Elmuh!” Bili’s powerful mindspeak was immediately recognizable to the Kleesahk. No other pure-blood human he ever had encountered had so strong a telepathic talent. “Pah-Elmuh, it is Rahksahnah. Her waters have broken and ... it’s too early, isn’t it?”

“I come, Lord Champion,” Pah-Elmuh beamed. Sighing gustily, he arose from his pallet, once more examined the unconscious king, then strode toward the chamber door. He now was of a mind to regret that he had helped the Lady Rahksahnah to delude Bili as to just how far along her pregnancy was or had been at the time she insisted upon riding out to war, for this Lord Champion just now had more than enough worries cluttering his mind and this new one was pointless, needless. As he paced down the corridors in the direction of the suite of the Lord Champion, the massive Kleesahk mindcalled his two assistants.

Behind him, the soft beams of the risen moon bathed over the recumbent form of Byruhn, King of New Kuhmbuhluhn, lying like one of the carven images of his ancestors in the crypt buried in the bowels of King’s Rest Mountain, only the movements of his chest as he shallowly breathed showing that a spark of life still glowed within his body.

In the chambers of the Champion, Pah-Elmuh and his Kleesahks wasted no time, shooing out all humans save only the Champion himself, and a brace of trusted, experienced palace midwives.

After resting the palm of his hairy hand briefly, lightly, on the young woman’s distended abdomen, he smilingly reassured both her and Bili, mindspeaking, since such was far easier to his kind than trying to shape human speech with tongue and palate ill suited to that task.

“Nothing is amiss. The two babes simply are ready to emerge.”

Bili’s cornsilk eyebrows rose in the direction of his shaven scalp. “Two babes, Pah-Elmuh? You are certain?”

The Kleesahk kneeling beside the wide bed smiled, then beamed, “Oh, yes, Lord Champion, two babes—one male, one female, both perfectly formed, alive and healthy. They each are, of course, smaller than was your son, born last year; but, even so, as ill suited to proper childbearing as is the Lady Rahksahnah’s body, as much as was her suffering last year ere I was able to come to her, I think it were better that the two babes be removed as I finally had to remove your son from her body.”

Bili nodded, wordlessly, beaming, “You know best, Pah-Elmuh. What benefit needless suffering, say I?”

Once more, Erica sat with Brigadier Sir Ahrthur Maklarin. Anger, disgust and a tinge of embarrassment were mirrored on the old man’s lined face as he spoke.

“Madam, you have my deepest apologies for the actions of Colonel Potter. Most reprehensible. He will suffer dearly on account of what you and Reserve Surgeon Devernee have here recounted this day. My orders to him regarding you, your men and the New Kuhmbuhluhn prisoners were explicit and written out in plain English, so it will be on his head, alone, that he chose to so flagrantly disobey them.

“The suffering he inflicted upon your men was senseless and cruel in the extreme. Moreover, there was no cause for their injuries in the first place, for he might have asked, determined that they owned inappropriate footwear and had them all issued pikemen’s boots to replace their own riding boots, did he intend to march them rather than follow his original orders.”

His tone became softer, then, as he gently asked, “The ... the injury to your face—more of Colonel Potter’s work?”

Erica’s fingers went involuntarily to the scabbed-over cut running almost from ear to chin across her cheek. “No, not Potter,” she grimly replied. “That supercilious little bastard Ensign Hollister. He was supervising the beating of one of my men who had fallen, lay already senseless on the road. This beauty mark was my punishment for objecting to that beating; the fledgling sadist did it with that riding crop he carries for a swagger stick.

“I’ll tell you, Sir Ahrthur, if he hadn’t had armed, grown men at his beck and call, I’d have killed the little son of a bitch right there!”

The Brigadier riffled through the stack of notes made by his adjutant during the questionings of the woman and the reserve surgeon earlier, then asked, “That was the man who was beaten to death?”

Erica Arenstein shook her dull, dirty, matted head. “No, the man they beat to death was not one of mine, Sir Ahrthur. That was one of the Kuhmbuhluhners, an older man, and from the look of him, not in the best of health to begin. No, all they did to my man was to break his upper arm and crack some ribs. But another of my men is now blind in one eye, thanks to another bite of Hollister’s whip.”

The brigadier sighed sadly. “What could have gotten into that boy? Beating, tormenting, maiming helpless, unarmed prisoners! That is not, has never been the Skohshun way. Were you or your men mistreated, in any way ill used whilst you all were held in the glen, up north?”

Again, she shook her head. “Not once, Sir Ahrthur, not by anyone, for all that we had killed a good number of your cavalrymen before we were captured. Aside from the facts that we were disarmed and our movements restricted, we might well have been your guests rather than your prisoners.”

The old man nodded slowly. “Just so, madam, just so. I can but imagine that Potter’s evil poison infected young Hollister to his detriment, for I have known many Hollisters over the years and never have I found one to be aught save a decent, honorable gentleman. Immediately you have departed, I think I must have a few serious words with the boy. Potter can wait, he’s under strict arrest in his tent. He’ll keep for the nonce.

“But now, madam doctor, to the reason I had in mind for having you and your men wagoned up here. These rifles of yours—how far can they cast a projectile and still kill a man with it? Understand, we Skohshuns had such weapons at one time, but that was centuries ago, at the least, and our old legends don’t really impart much of a serious, military nature with regard to our ancient firearms.”

Erica shrugged. “I know of kills that have been made with rifles of this type at ranges of two thousand meters. You see, Sir Ahrthur, the bullets have a small but most effective explosive charge incorporated in them. A hit almost anywhere on a human body will kill quickly from shock alone, while the chunk of flesh that would be blown out of an arm or a leg would lead to almost certain death from loss of blood. But as I have already told you, I could no more make or show you how to make these weapons and ammunition than I could flap my arms and fly. Nor are there enough rifles to arm even a squad of your troops, and I think that there’s all of some hundred rounds of ammunition left for the rifles we do have.”

The brigadier said dryly, “One hundred and fourteen of the, longer, slenderer ones. And I take it that that man of yours I had armed, mounted, supplied and released never returned from his journey to this place wherein he might find more of the projectiles for these rifles?” At her negative headshake, he asked bluntly, “Do you think, then, that he deserted you and his mates? That he went hotfooting back to wherever you all came from?”

She replied, “No, I don’t think so, Sir Ahrthur. For one thing, there’s no longer any place for him to return to. The New Kuhmbuhluhners exterminated those of the Ganiks they did not or could not intimidate into moving south, out of New Kuhmbuhluhn. No, I’m more of the opinion that Bowley is dead. After all, it offered to be a very dangerous trip, especially for one lone man, no matter how well mounted and armed. He was a brave man, a very brave man, to undertake the trip at all.”

“It may be as you say, the man is dead,” nodded the old officer. “Then I must make such use of you and your men and rifles as the limited number of projectiles will allow. If you agree to my plans, you will no longer be prisoners, but rather my allies. Remember, we Skohshuns are at war with the very kingdom that drove out or slew your own folk.”

It was on the tip of Erica’s tongue to state flatly that the bestial Ganiks certainly were not her folk, thank God, but instead she asked, “What did you have in mind, Sir Ahrthur?”

The creature’s eyes were of no use in the stygian dark of the labyrinthine corridors. Claws clicking on the stone pave, it followed the conmingled scents of the various twolegs—human and humanoid—that had trod these ways before it. It was weak with hunger; its long-empty stomach rumbled and growled. At last, there was a dim glow of light from far up the corridor, light ... and an odor of fresh blood.

Softly whining in starved anticipation, the creature padded in the direction of that light, following the mouth-watering scent of the blood, only to stop in frustration bare yards from where its sensitive nose told it was the source of the delightful odor.

Not only was the way obstructed by a pair of massive metal-bound and -studded doors, but on this side of those doors stood no less than six big twolegs. Their bodies, their heads and parts of both pairs of their extremities were all sheathed in shiny metal, while their forepaws held the shafts of deadly-looking spears and poleaxes.

Snarling its disappointment, the creature finally found a way to pass these big, dangerous twolegs unseen. Within its primitive mind, it harbored but the one image: food, hot spurting blood and tender, quivering flesh to fill the gaping, demanding emptiness of its shrunken belly, to give renewed strength to its pitifully weak body and legs. Mayhap the very next twolegs it encountered ... ?

But there seemed to be no small, weak, vulnerable twolegs anyplace the creature went, only more and more of the big, strong, metal-sheathed ones, always several of them together. It was getting desperate enough to attack even one of these, could it find a single one, alone. At last, it did find a lone twoleg and was upon the very verge of rushing in for a quick kill when the twoleg victim-to-be suddenly opened one of the movable wooden barriers, took two short steps into the dark night beyond that barrier and abruptly began to swiftly ascend a wooden device that quickly put him beyond the reach of the creature’s jaws and teeth. But the barrier had not swung shut and the creature was quick to slink through the opening.

Bili of Morguhn and his entourage did not go their usual route on the morning after the birth of his twins; rather did they follow the city guardsmen through the streets to the spot whereon what was left of a body had been discovered. And there was not much of it left—the partially defleshed and tooth-gouged skull, a few vertebrae, the pelvis, the still-shod feet, a gnawed and incomplete femur and the scattered, shredded, blood-soaked clothing.

Although many guardsmen and curious citizens had tracked about the area since the grisly discovery just after dawn, some few of the presumed killer’s paw prints, stamped on the smooth stone in dried blood, still were in evidence. Bili and two of his officers squatted around one of these.

“Wolf, right enough,” said the young thoheeks. “But did ever you see wolf spoor so large? I’ve hunted the most of my life and I’ve never seen such. Why, that beast’s feet are more than a hand in length!”

Freefighter Captain Fil Tyluh nodded agreement with his leader. “But how does my lord suppose the thing got over the walls, and them both lit and patrolled, then out again without someone seeing it?”

“I don’t know ... yet,” said Bili grimly. “But I mean to find out, and that soon. Send a runner up to the palace and fetch back a brace of the late king’s tracking hounds. We’ll find out what part of the walls that damned wolf went out over, at least.”

But he did not. The veteran hounds refused to track. After a brief, tentative sniff or two of the ensanguined area, they both tucked tails between legs and huddled close together, their sleek bodies trembling, hackles raised, whining in clear terror.

“What the hell kind of mongrels did you bring me?” Bili demanded of the royal hunter who had fetched the canines to the scene.

The grizzled hunter shook his head in obvious puzzlement. “M’lord Champion, Bearbiter and Bruindeath, here, they be King Mahrtuhn’s favoritest bear dogs. It’s many a big bear—six-hunnerd-, seven-hunnerd-pounders, too—they’s held till the hunt could come up to them. Afore this here today, I’d’ve laid my life that they wasn’t no critter in all these mountains neither one of them hounds was afeered of.”

Bili shrugged his armored shoulders. “Well, take them back to their kennels. They’re no good for my purposes.” Then he mindcalled, “Whitetip, cat brother?”

The powerful mindspeak of the prairiecat responded. “I have just seen and mindspoken your new kittens, brother. If they had the proper amount of fur, I could possibly admire them, for they are assuredly big enough. The Lady Rahksahnah is learning, at least. This time she had only the two, but that still is better than one. Maybe next time she will throw you a respectable litter—three, four, perhaps five.”

“Whitetip, a very large wolf got into the city last night and killed and ate a young woman. The hounds seem afraid to try to track the wolf from the place where it slew and ate. How is your nose this morning? I need to know just where it came across the walls.”

“I come, brother,” beamed the cat.

But when the monstrous feline had sniffed at the place whereon the killer had obviously lain—this fact attested by the presence of several coarse, reddish-brown hairs stuck in a thin smear of dried blood—he wrinkled his nose and beamed, “Are you certain this was done by a wolf, brother chief? It smells like no wolf I’ve ever scented. Like no other animal, for that matter.”

“Could it have been a man, cat brother, laying false paw prints, perhaps?” In Harzburk, Bili recalled, a man had once tried to conceal a murder by dumping the body in a forest, then stamping around and about the corpse while wearing a pair of wooden-soled boots cunningly carved to resemble the feet of a bear. But that malefactor had been apprehended before he could burn the telltale boots, had confessed under torture and was then impaled in the central square of the burk.

“No, brother,” the big cat demurred. “While there is the vague hint of man smell to it, there is mostly something else, not really twoleg, not Kleesahk at all, but not really an animal smell, either. It is simply beyond my experience.”

“Well, can you at least follow it, cat brother?” asked the young commander. “Scent it to where it left the city?”

“I think I can,” agreed the cat, “unless there is more than the single trail to follow.”

But the prairiecat did lose the trail at a point near the palace kitchens where some scullions had recently dumped pails of inedible slops and soapy water to allow them to run out the drain that pierced the corner of the curtain wall.

Bili gazed up at the nearly nine feet of smooth wall critically. “Well, I suppose it’s possible—just barely possible—that the beast, whatever it is, could have jumped that high, gotten onto the battlements. But where could it have gone from there? Nowhere, unless it has wings. That’s a good hundred-foot drop, and the cliffs too sheer for anything bigger than a lizard or maybe a mouse to find purchase.”

Once again, there was no answer.

The big Ganik bully, Horseface Charley, had crept into the spot earlier decided upon just before dawn. Now he lay well concealed beneath an overhang of rock, his hands, face, hair, beard and clothing all oiled, then heavily sprinkled with rock dust and streaked with soot, his rifle similarly dulled. With him in his burrow under the overhang were a skin of watered wine, a quantity of Skohshun hard bread and jerked beef, a handful of dried fruit and a plug of chewing tobacco. But aside from his rifle and forty rounds of ammunition, he had brought along only its hanger-like bayonet and his belt knife—he was not there to fight, only to kill.

The slope on which he was situated was steep and the rocks he had piled before him not only helped to conceal him and his burrow but provided a rest for the rifle that was rock-steady in every sense of that phrase. As the sun rose, those piled rocks and the overhang combined to keep the burrow relatively dim and cool for the big man who lay on his belly, the rifle stock cradled against his right shoulder, sighting up the length of the barrel at one of the armored figures standing on the battlements of the main wall some five hundred meters distant up the steep hill.

The upper part of a body clad in cuirass and open-faced helmet leaned out in the crenel between two massive merlons, apparently to shout something to someone of the garrison of the barbican, then lingered as if awaiting an answer. In the interval, Horseface Charley settled the rifle’s buttplate solidly against his clavicle, pressed his bearded cheek to the dusty stock sighted carefully and slowly squeezed the trigger. The rifle roared and slammed the butt into his shoulder with considerable force. Horseface kept his keen eyes fixed on his target while he rapidly operated the bolt of the rifle, ejecting the smoking brass case and jacking a live round into the chamber of the piece. For a long moment, it seemed that his shot might have missed, but then the distant figure disappeared from the crenel far more quickly than it had appeared, as if jerked by a hidden rope.

Horseface Charley smiled contentedly to himself, worked his wad of tobacco around into another spot and began to sight up at another target.

Bili had barely returned to his palace office when the frantic mindcall came from Lieutenant Kahndoot. “Brother, one of the engineers, here on the top of the gate tower, has been killed. There is a smallish hole over one of his eyes and it seems that his head for some reason flew into pieces inside his helmet.”

Half out of the sweat-soggy canvas pourpoint, Bili worked his arms back into the sleeves and thrust his head through the neck opening, called back the serving men to help him back into the just-removed armor. Two mysterious deaths in one morning, he thought wryly, were more than he cared for.

Accompanied by Sir Yoo Folsom, Captain Fil Tyluh and two guardsmen, Bili strode the length of the west wall and was just putting foot to the stairs that would take him up onto the top of the corner tower, when Kahndoot’s mindspeak came again. “Brother, two more have been slain in the same manner as was the first. Take care when you come not to expose yourself anywhere on the front wall. Both of these others died there.”

Bili briefly recounted what he had been told by Kahndoot’s telepathy, then he and the other four men entered the door to the low-ceilinged tower room, squeezed their way between the piles of catapult boulders, commodious siege quivers of darts, arrows and quarrels, racks of assorted polearms, bags of slingstones, forked shafts for pushing over scaling ladders and other impedimenta, to emerge at the similar doorway that opened onto the front or south wall. At a crouching run, they crossed to the open door to the gate tower and the waiting Lieutenant Kahndoot.

After Bili had carefully examined the three still-warm corpses, he shrugged, looking up at Kahndoot and his other subordinates. “I would think that we can safely assume that this is the foul work of the Skohshuns, who clearly are up to something down there and so want us to keep our heads down, be less alert than usual. As to precisely what weapon did the actual killing, I can’t say, not without delving into that mess inside those helmets, but I imagine, since no one seems to have seen a slinger, that it was a prod—one of those crossbows that throws stones or leaden pellets. Now, true, I’ve never heard of or seen one of them powerful enough that its projectiles were capable of striking, penetrating with such power as this, but that is not to say that such weapons don’t exist, for upgrading the effect of weapons is—as all of us know—a constant, ongoing process.”

He arose, wiping his hands on the thighs of his trousers. “Lieutenant Kahndoot,” he said aloud for the benefit of Sir Yoo Folsom and those others present who were not mindspeakers, “alert your people to keep as close a watch as possible on all approaches without unnecessarily exposing themselves to that prod or whatever. Come nightfall, I’ll send a couple of the Kleesahks down there to try to find the hiding places of whoever is picking our men off this wall.

“Now, the barbican is, of course, the most vulnerable of all our defenses. Who is the mindspeaker there, this watch?”

“There is not one there, Dook Bili,” said Kahndoot, who was always much more formal orally than telepathically.

“Damn!” His big, bony fist made a sharp crack in the palm of his other hand. “All right, for now, but in future there must always be at least one easily ranged mindspeaker in that barbican, and on every other watch detail, for that matter. For all our obvious advantages, this city still could fall, you know, do we conduct a sloppy, cocksure defense of it.

“Lieutenant Kahndoot, send an order to gap the main gates enough for one man to get through them. Send a runner—a mindspeaker, with orders to stay at that post for the rest of this watch—over to the barbican. He’ll be safe enough on the drawbridge; it’s not exposed. He’s to pass on to the barbican commander just what I’ve told you. Be wary, but keep low enough to not make a good target for those prod men, and at the first sign of a looming assault, mindcall me, directly.”

The broad-shouldered, thick-bodied woman saluted as Bili and his entourage departed, even while her mind was instructing a telepathic Moon Maiden runner.

After a late planning session with certain of his staff and of the royal council, Bili was just drifting off into much-needed sleep when one of the Kleesahks, Oodehn, mindspoke him.

“Lord Champion, we found the spot where the man lay who slew those upon the wall yesterday. What should we do?”

Bili pondered briefly. “If it appears that he might return, Master Oodehn, erect a cairn nearby as an aiming point for our archers and engineers. I’d liefer have the bastard alive, him and his new-fangled, extra-hard-hitting weapon, but he must be put out of action are we to maintain an effective wall watch.”

The mindlink was broken by the Kleesahk, but before Bili’s own mind could close, there came another beaming, this one from Pah-Elmuh. “Lord Champion, it will please you to know that King Byruhn’s condition seems to have improved a little. His color is better and he seems to at last be taking more benefit from the milk, wine and broths we keep forcing into his belly. But still his mind is closed to me, alas.”

Once again, old Count Sandee was entertaining strange lowlander noblemen at his hall and high table. One of his daily patrols from out the safe glen of Sandee’s Cot had run across this column of invaders from the east, and the leader of the patrol, Phryah the Moon Maiden, had shown herself to them after recognizing sisters she knew among their ranks. When he had heard that this strange Maiden knew the present whereabouts of Thoheeks Bili, the brahbehrnuh and the two missing Ahrmehnee headmen, Sir Geros had not been at all loath to follow her and her patrol back to Sandee’s Cot.

But at the first, Count Steev Sandee had been most loath to allow so large a force of armed invaders within his safe glen and had kept the most of them camped outside the Cot, just beyond its outermost defenses. But as it became clear to him that these men and women harbored no designs upon the glen or any other possession of New Kuhmbuhluhn, he had at last allowed them all entry and lodged the most of them in the huge, commodious tower keep down by the lake, for the Cot itself had room only for the nobles and the captains.

The old Kuhmbuhluhn nobleman spoke his mind bluntly, as had ever been his wont. “Sir knights, you and your force are well come into Kuhmbuhluhn at this time. For at this very moment, our good King Mahrtuhn, his chosen successor, Prince Mahrtuhn Gilbuht, and many another brave warrior of our beleaguered little kingdom lie dead, killed in battle against the northern invaders, the Skohshuns. Our capital, New Kuhmbuhluhnburk, is straitly besieged by this alien host, and King Byruhn, but recently crowned, lies gravely wounded within the city, while its defenses are commanded by that same stark young warrior-duke whom you came to find—Bili of Morguhn, him and all those others you seek after.

“Bare days before my patrol found you all, had I been in contact with the counts of certain other safe glens in these parts of our so-threatened kingdom, that we might form up such forces as we could scrape together to ride over the mountains to try to succor New Kuhmbuhluhnburk, to so sorely hurt the Skohshuns as to break their siege ... or die trying.

“But, stripped as we were months agone to send arms, men, horses and supplies to the north, we could have raised no more than a scant two hundred swords, and too many of those with only mountain ponies to fork. However, now, with you and your hundreds of well-armed and -mounted fighters ... ?”

Sir Geros answered the question readily. “My lord count, since it appears that Thoheeks Morguhn has felt your cause against these northern invaders sufficient to freely pledge him and his to the furtherance of the Kingdom of New Kuhmbuhluhn, how can I—the most humble of his followers—do less? I and my force are your men as of this moment ... uhh, men and women, that is.”

“Me and mine, too,” Sir Djim Bohluh nodded.

Within the hour, Count Sandee had sent messengers galloping to all six of the other, southerly safe glens with the glorious news of the unexpected and most fortuitous reinforcements.

Led by Skinhead Johnny Kilgore and the other Ganik, Merle Bowley, General Corbett’s column marched long and hard and made good time, coming to the environs of the glen wherein Bowley had said Erica and the rest were being held in under two weeks. Then, Corbett took over.

A rocket and two mortar bombs demolished the massive gate to the glen and toppled one of the two flanking towers. Then Corbett sent Merle Bowley in under a flag of truce, threatening to visit worse destruction upon the entire glen and every living soul within it did not Erica and her party come out forthwith and unharmed.