A cold breath of wind shot through the City of Stone and through the front gates and out in the flat of the land. The air was fresh, and cool but not without the smell of death strong and vibrant within that cold breath of wind. The thirty could smell it and so did Whisk-pey. From a distance, they saw the changes made to the outside of their city. The wooden beam with the faces in them that not only held up the walls of their city but also served as a defensive system against the enemy was gone and replaced by a green stone door twenty feet high, to which walls that went all around the city, were attached as far as the Canine eyes could see.
“What is this? Our defense is down. What have they done to our city?” Scionna yelled. The anger in her voice ignited a rant among the others and soon the rants became louder and more furious.
“Hey, we can’t lose our heads, there is an enemy in there and the only way we can defeat them is working together,” Olen said.
As they heeded Olen’s advice, there was a loud scream emanating from one of the Canine people, right behind the door.
“Come on, Gilma, they need us!” Gilma flew toward the city.
“Camden, no! Come back!” Olen yelled.
“Just let him go! He will cause problems for the rest of us!” Bodolf said.
Olen turned to the wolf-man along with the bird on which he was riding and said: “Not because he is my friend, but because he has a father who loves him with all of his heart that has gone missing two years’ ago, I won’t be responsible for his son going missing or killed. I must go after him!”
“I’m thinking that you’re actually thinking someone is going to help you, or is that just a habit you people have when you know that you are going to be eaten alive?” One of the two guards remarked as he escorted the Canine-man down the brick walk. “I never knew a man who could cry so much and beg for his life,” said the second guard.
The bound Wolf-man who looked to have been beaten from the blood that poured out from the top of his head and down his matted hair didn’t fight. He hung his head as the two guards walked on each side of him, gripping each of his upper arms.
One of the guards let loose of the arm and unlocked the gate that led into the arena. The wild beast, from the bloody mouth and fleshy bones that still hung out of it, obviously was still working on his latest meal.
The guard only got the key out when he felt pieces of stone, small pieces fall from above his head.
The two guards tried to figure out what was causing pebbles like stones to fall from the roof of the arena. Their wonder turned into certainty when the huge stone door into the city made a cow-boom sound. Surprised, the two guards hurried to the door, leaving the bond man unattended.
They marveled at the hole but what came through the hole astonished the two Wolf guards even more.
“You are the bad guys, right?” Camden asked them.
The two guards looked at each other, dumbfounded and bewildered and then took another look at an extremely short and lanky kid, wearing a metal suit and a matching red and blue head gear.
“What is that?” one of the guards asked.
The second one replied with the drawing of his sword.
“He has a sword, Camden. Punch his light out,” Ento said from a pocket just above Camden’s belt buckle.
Camden heeded Ento’s words. “Yeah, you are the bad guys!” Camden yelled.
Ento cheered Camden as his white steel fist met with the second guard’s face. The sword dropped and so did the guard. Camden went after the second guard, who scrambled to get up, when he was suddenly hit from behind and taken to the ground.
In his hand was a knife smaller than a sword but bigger than any knife that Camden had seen in his mother’s kitchen or anywhere on his planet.
“I don’t know who you are or what you are but I’m not waiting to find out.” Camden’s eyes grew the size of silver dollars when he saw the hairy hand hold the knife up ready to stab him.
“Oh, man, this is so cool! This is just like the movies or something like that,” Camden shouted. Before the knife could plunge down into Camden’s body, he witnessed a spear come out of the second guard’s forehead, the guard rolled over onto the ground dead. Camden got to his feet with ease, standing in front of him with a bow and arrow in her hand was Scionna along with Olen and a few of the Canine people.
“Olen, did you see that man? He was…”
“Thanks for putting the hole in the door and getting us in but we have to work as a team you and me, remember?” Olen said. “If there is no you then there is no me.”
“And if there is no me then there is no you,” Camden said, completing Olen sentence.
“That’s right!” Olen said while Scionna not only made quick work of the second guard, she made quick work of the first guard and the two beasts inside of the arena.
Gilma came from the skies and scooped Camden up to join Olen and the thirty. The bound man came out of hiding to see the thirty gathered in the front entrance of what was formally known as Canine-Land. He stared at Olen and Camden with great concern and curiosity.
“There is no time to explain,” Whisk-pey said, “except they are our friends. Where is the leader here that has our people in oppression?” she asked.
“I’m not sure where he is but this place is swarming with these Wolf-people. We are out numbered. If any of you go against them, you will be taken to the arena,” the bonded Canine-man said.
Whisk-pey and Olen exchanged glances.
Then as if he heard something, Olen looked straight ahead through the stone city. He placed both hands using his thumb and index finger on the lens of his glasses. “He is right; there are a lot of them. They heard the blast Camden made and they are on their way here,” Olen said. “I think if we work together we could take some of them out before we get to the tyrant.”
“Can you see him from here?” Bodolf asked.
Olen paused then looked back at Bodolf. “Yes, I have a clear view of him and of his assistants. Just address him as King Fenris.”
“Yes, that’s him! I have some unfinished business with him; he killed one of my own and your people. Let me do to him what he has done to your people. Let me kill him!”
Olen hesitated. Bodolf saw it in his eyes. “Once the head is destroyed then there is no body, they will run like the cowards they are. They will be out of your city when I cut off the head and show it before the Wolf-people.”
Olen wasn’t used to these kinds of words or his role as leader but he would and he did adjust fast. “Okay, okay, Bodolf, that sounds like a good idea. Take the head, it will weaken the people, I mean, well, you get the picture,” Olen agreed.
Whisk-pey and Bodolf exchanged glances.
“Thank you!” Bodolf read those words across her lips. Olen gave him a clear path to King Fenris’s location. Without saying goodbye, Bodolf was gone.
“You’ve been a real help, but I will take it from here!” Bodolf said to the bird he was riding when he saw the King’s fortress. Below him there were his own people and the wild beasts.
“Good luck, Bodolf,” the bird said.
The sword clean and spotless and the black steel helmet that the Mountaineers created for Bodolf stayed without blemish long enough for him to jump off the bird and onto level ground.
By himself with the help of a double-edged sword and a small steel black shield, Bodolf slew over fifty of his used-to-be friends and wild beasts. Blood cover his helmet, shield, sword and garments. As he stepped to the outer courts of this stone monument with two statues of King Fenris in the courtyard, more beasts came at Bodolf. Without any trouble he killed them, blood splattering over the grass and onto one of the statues.
“I have slain fifty of your men and beasts, and I won’t hesitate to slay more if it means I will raise my hand, with your head in it, in victory and the Canine-people have their land back. Come out here or I will come in there,” Bodolf yelled from the outer courts.
It wasn’t until Bodolf took the double-edged sword and chopped down the bronze sculpture in the outer courts, expending a lot of strength to demolish it, that the doors opened to give way to his former right hand man and now King Fenris.
“Bodolf, what a surprise!” King Fenris said.
“Did you think I was going to stand by and watch you humiliate me in front of my own people?” Bodolf asked.
“Humiliate? Is that what you called it? I call it reassigning position. I dethroned you and therefore you had been reduced down to a peon.”
Bodolf growled behind closed tight lips. “I may be dethroned but as far as the sky is from the ground so will your head when I detach it from your immoral body!”
“How quickly you forgot, Bodolf, when you were in control and I was nothing more than your do-guard, immoral wasn’t a problem. But now, since your control and reign is over, immorality is erroneous. I should have killed you before you came here to my city and kill my people. But this very day I will not allow my past decision to cripple my city and my people. This day I will take the air that you breathe, Bodolf.”
Between the wild beasts and the Wolf-people (mostly the men) they had cut the group of thirty down to twenty and out of the twenty the Canine-man with the white hair was added to the dead Canine-people.
“We have to keep fighting!” Scionna encouraged her son Auden who wanted to give himself over to the beast and the Wolf-people.
“We have to win this war, son. Your father would be well pleased with you. Don’t give up, come on!” He heeded his mother’s suggestion. He aimed his dart gun and took out a wild beast.
“Cam and I are going to take to the ground; there is much to be…”
“No, No, that is an absolute no, Olen!” Whisk-pey interrupted harshly while using her new and improved sling-shot. “We stay together, me, you and, of course, Camden. Remember you said we do this together, remember?” Whisk-pey said with tears in her eyes as another one of her people was taken down by a Wolf’s spear.
“Your people want their land back so much so, Whisk-pey, that they have taken to the ground. Die or live, I will fight alongside your people, to see this through,” Olen said.
“And I will too!” Camden rejoined.
“Whisk-pey, this is for you and your people, the way we take the city back is hand-to-hand combat on the ground,” Ento said.
“Me and my people will handle the air, we will take care of as many beasts and Wolf-people as we can, Whisk-pey,” Gilma added.
“Thank you. Okay, Olen, let’s do this!”
Fenris was dazed but far from injured when Bodolf took a small chunk out of his shoulder. Blood poured out of the wound immediately. I have to kill him now while I have him down, Bodolf thought.
With the sword aiming down at Fenris’s head he leaped in the air toward Fenris. On a knee and looking up, King Fenris rolled out of the way of the sword when he had only inched to recover. The sword jammed in the ground breaking a piece of the stone walkway.
Losing his balance from the impact of the sword on the stone walkway, Bodolf fell to the ground along with his shield. Those that Bodolf believed would come came and before he could recover, four of King Fenris’s henchmen attacked him, leaving him with two knife wounds under his steel breast plate before King Fenris called them off.
“Leave the rest for me. Today his life has been given unto me to take. There is war here, I know. I smell it on Bodolf. Go now and defend our city. I will put an end to this war shortly.” The four henchmen ran off. “I should have made sure you were dead before I cursed the Dark Forest,” King Fenris said, snatching off his burgundy robe.
The pain was excruciating, and as bad as he wanted to hold his side, Bodolf attempted to use one arm as a shield to protect the coming onslaught from Fenris. Bodolf’s arm didn’t have any protection and King Fenris didn’t have any mercy. He raised his own sword and from the shoulder down Bodolf ceased to have a left arm.
The pain was enormous, as shock struck Bodolf just as hard as King Fenris’s sword. For a second, King Fenris raised his sword to Bodolf’s head to cut it off then pulled it back. “An easy death would be too good for you. I want you to remember the choice you made in coming here thinking you will defeat me,” King Fenris yelled. “I want you to hear the yells and screams from you new friends as me and my people kill them.”
“Why, why be such a man of anger and discord, Fenris? We were, we were…” He couldn’t get the words out from the blood that was getting caught in his throat.
“You mean friends, Bodolf?”
Bodolf didn’t answer instead he kept trying to get to his feet. “‘Were’ is the past tense, Bodolf. You will die and the fowls of the air will devour you, but to make sure that happens…” King Fenris pulled Bodolf up by his neck…. His feet wobbled as he tried to stand straight, and jammed his sword in Bodolf’s sternum and then yanked it out.
“May the fowls of the air smell the death and blood. May they find you and seek you out just as you have sought me out, but not as you did fail in your desires to kill me. And when they find you may the hunger that fills their souls with indignation rise like the power of a new king that they may rip the flesh from your bones. When they see you powerless and dying body, may they have a merry feast – not one but all them that find you – may they eat you till death.”
As the King spoke the curse over Bodolf, he walked toward the part of the city where the war was going on. Olen, Camden, and Whisk-pey were doing away with the Wolf-people with ease. Camden single-handedly killed a quite a few of the Wolf-people and some of the wild beasts.
Olen and Whisk-pey didn’t stand by and watch as Camden suggested they did: “Take a break I will handle this.” They both acted liked they didn’t hear what Camden suggested and instead they continued the fight right beside him.
“I need all of you to keep working or I will send every last one of you to the pit,” Amose heard the guard say, but he also heard screams and yells from what sounded like Wolf-people from behind the large stone wall that separated the front of the city from the stone lot. Not only Amose, but others that were in that stone lot working, heard the uncommon cries of people that weren’t their people. Amose looked toward the bar stone fixture that was his dwelling and he saw a battle. There, were his wife and a few of the Canine people who were part the twenty five who were overcoming the Wolf-people in there.
Amose’s one eye grew as if it was pried open. It’s ten of us here working and only one of them. Even with only one eye I could take the guard, I am sure, but I am not sure that the others would be willing to follow my lead and fight back with me. I guess I will have to take my chances!
And Amose did. The tool that is called a stone hammer, which was used to break stones into little pieces, Amose threw it at the guard. Not a precise hit but one that was good enough to do harm. The guard held his head not knowing what hit him suddenly.
“Come on, if you want to get out of here, you have to follow my lead,” Amose yelled. Dazed and not able to regain his senses in time, the Canine-men mauled the guard to death. Amose and the others didn’t know exactly what was going on, but once Amose had seen his wife desperately fighting for her life, battling with her and his fellow Canine friends was all he could think of.
The yelling of: “You all are going to The Arena, if you don’t stop!” sounded off in the back of them.
“Come on, you have to keep running. Don’t look back at them,” Amose encourage his comrades. But there was another person living in each one of those slave Canine-people and that was the person of fear. Two of the men turned giving themselves up and freely believing that they would be caught and taken to The Arena.
“You should have kept on running,” one of the Wolf people said.
In Amose’s ears it sounded like a woman who spoke those chilling words, then again he wasn’t sure. But what he was sure of, without looking back to confirm, was that the people that were being killed in the back of him weren’t the Wolves but his own people.
Amose’s group and the group that was fighting with his wife even put together weren’t enough to beat the numbers of the Wolf-people that came after them. Kalite, who never used a sword before, but who was willing to defend herself and her people, took the opportunity when it presented itself.
“Do you think I would let a woman defeat me?” the Wolf-man said, walking faster and faster in Kalite’s direction, toting a knife. The sword shook in her hands. She was scared. She swung the sword as hard as she could. Minus half an arm, the guard kept coming, but fell short of his will to kill Kalite or anyone else, when he felt a sharp pain go from one side of his neck to the other then shortness of breath from his new open throat.
There was a brief hug between Amose and Kalite.
“What’s going on here?” Kalite asked.
“We are taking our city back. Whisk-pey and her friend are leading us!”
“Whisk-pey? Whisk-pey is here my baby is here?” Kalite asked.
“Whisk-pey? Where is she?” Amose asked, bewildered. His focus switched from fighting to his daughter when suddenly a group of the owl birds swooped in and made the fight fair when they grabbed up some of the Wolf-people and harshly threw them over the city wall.
“There are a lot of them. We should try to make our way out of the city,” one of the Canine-people suggested.
“No, I am not leaving here without my daughter.”
“And I’m coming with you,” Kalite yelled.
“Come on, fight with me, I
have come to save my people. Let’s go,”
Scionna yelled as she crossed paths with the Canine-people that had
been working in the stone lots. Many followed, others didn’t; out
of fear they stayed there working or perhaps they turned suddenly
loyal to their enemies.
The anger in King Fenris’s heart burned like a blazing fire. He roared with revenge at the core of his thoughts. “I want every one of them dead or I will kill you,” King Fenris said, informing a slew of his workers that came to him to tell him of the continuing battle. He watched but kept his fast, even steps with his army as the combination of wild beasts and Wolf-people gained the upper hand against the Canine-people.
However, it didn’t make King Fenris any happier when he saw the destruction of a city that was now his, which he gradually built, come falling down. The sight brought hate greater than ever before inside him. He held his rod in front of him. In his sight were three Canine-people prevailing over his own Wolf-soldiers. The light on the end of that rod lit up.