The Hard Road by D.A.Sanford - HTML preview

First encounter

We dig, We bend saplings. No one goes out without a blow gun and their weapon of choice. The object is not one on one battles but ambush. Hit and run. The traps won’t injure all, only a few but it works on your enemy’s moral. Gets them thinking, am I next? Curves in a trail, pinch points but also clear stretches of trail are spot for traps. Sometimes, we will dig on the path but fill it in again as to fool them to leave the path. That is what we want because we make the traps off the path to incapacitate soldiers and horses.

Here is where we use a leg break trap. A pit is dug a few feet deep. Six inches below ground level there is a small ledge where there is placed two spiked boards that are joined together with a loose leather strap. The center of the two boards are propped up with small sticks.

A foot steps on the false cover. The weight of the human causes the foot to break the center stick and the two spiked boards will plunge into the leg and break bones. The army is forced to take that one back to the rear for treatment. One or two people would be needed or they would have to leave that one behind. Either way, it demoralizes the others and slows them down. It is not pleasant to watch but watch we must because we attack the disarray. Panic causes others to trip other traps. We always remember that they brought the fight to us. All we wanted to do is live in peace.

Targeting the leaders, usually nobles, the ordinary soldier may just be happier to lay down their arms and run away.. During these type of conflicts, the populace are conscripted. Dragged off the farm and told to die for your king, lends to some just wandering off. Kill the leader and you liberate those conscripts. Only thing is, you first must kill some of those conscripts. Our pack patrol area is the first to encounter the king’s army. Our scouts reported that they were coming. They all look like the elite.

We are ready.

“We have the honor” Tartan speaks, “These are the ones that attacked our elders. Now is the time for the Green Ghost to take the battle to them. They are puffed up by their wins. I want to see any skin that is exposed full of darts. We have positions that are hidden but have escape routes. The only ones to die today are them. The attack is after the first scream. Make them scatter into the other traps.”

Now, everyone is in place. Our first vision of these troupes is that the leader is a noble. A general will lead from the front. This one is the last in shining armor. No one saw the thin string that was at a horse’s head height. The horse ran when the paddle spikes lifted the impaled noble off the saddle.

The leading troupes had their feet skewered. Darts flew. Chaos ensued. Only the moaning of the dying was heard. We came down and treated two of them. Then we gave them the pierced noble’s chest armor.

“Take this and know that we will not leave anyone else to live. Our suggestion is for you to go to the nearest town as adventurers, tell them that you came upon this scene and just wanted to report it. Then disappear. Get out of this country. We find you again fighting, you will be taken to our hide and all there will have at you.” I now have the respect and trust from the pack. They have seen my dedication to the Green Ghost reputation. They also see my pain. I do not have any problem killing those who come after us. My pain is that the rotation schedule does not allow Ziva or our packs to meet. It hurts and they see it but they also have loved ones in other packs. We who have mates just sit and drink when at the hide. All will not say anything when we each break down and go off to cry. We are the walking dead at the hide. If someone tries to relay messages, they are stopped and told not to speak of the dead. The next time that person came in and asked, they were told what we had said. They realize that it hurt both their mate and themselves. They truly were walking dead. Maybe, if the gods smile they will return to life but this campaign has taken casualties, Some mates will remain dead until the final life.

Casualties of war, doomed by the god of fate.

That is why we do not talk of the dead. It is considered disrespectful of those that will never return. Some will find their mate waiting for them in that final life. It is not an easy time for the ones in the hide. Always on guard. Always hunting for prey to feed the young ones. At times going without so the young can eat. The youth are the reason we fight and die for them.

The king is a cowardly rat

King Erik is fuming that whole villages have been abandoned by their residents. He is running out of soldiers. He now issues an order that the city and towns are now drafted into the army. That now included children as young as ten, old men and women. The Green Ghost creed is that we attack only those who raise arms against us. It now is known in villages throughout the country. There have been whole squads of conscripts that have laid down their arms when the leader has fallen. Those have been instructed to spread the word. Those who don’t want to die, leave the country until this is over. The word goes out that no pack is to kill those children. Take out the leaders and the soldiers that do not throw down their arms. A not so strange thing is that we are coming across dead leaders and arms but no dead people.

Even so, the armies keep coming. We keep fighting and on both sides there are the valiant dead. For them, the struggle is over. That is the only true peace in this life. If lucky, ours will be able to boast of their conquests.

This is war. There is no quarter for those who sit on the fence. If you do not want to fight, leave the country.

We have had our own disappear. We do not cast shame on them, As long as they leave the country, we have no problem. Never have we seen any of them fighting on the human side.

This has been very costly. Physical costs but more devastating is the mental cost. When one of ours wanders off, we don’t go looking. We just think of them as leaving the country. There have been more than one body has been found with fatal wounds. Those have been seen as battle injuries. In more ways than one they are. The type of war that Erik is waging goes against what the old kings did. Even my father Arron, after a few battles, called out that king and killed him in a one on one battle. Erik throws people at us without regard of what the people feel. They are expendable He just wanders around the palace with his trail of conscripted concubines. None of them are to be queen. A queen is a threat that would need to die in her sleep, like his mother did. It is rumored that when one was confirmed pregnant, she disappeared. Never to be heard of again.

When his commanders try to give him an update on the war, all he asks is how much have you sold slaves for? When they tell him that most are killed in battle and others will commit suicide.

Those commanders are executed for treason to the king. Now they don’t even report to him. The war goes on. The sooner this rat is exterminated the better. I get the feeling that the gods are playing with me. I’m being set up for that battle. Being a play toy mouse to an enclave of cat gods, that mouse knows that it will be a meal before this game is played out. All I ask for is an either or question.

Either Erik dies or I die soon.