part0040

A fter the shelling of the Wall stopped and the dust settled, Abraham headed into the tunnel. With Sticks and Horace in tow, he sloshed his way ankle deep through pulverized rubble. Out on the field of battle, five of the ten tanks turned and started rattling their way.

“Does anybody have any big ideas?” he said.

Horace’s face was as blank as Sticks’s. No one in Titanuus had ever seen a tank before, let alone fought one. Abraham had seen them but never fought one either. However, he had seen movies and read his fair share of G.I. Combat and Sgt. Rock comic books. Those childhood images sparked some ideas.

“Listen up!” Abraham shouted out of the tunnel. “We are going to let the first tank through. Tark, Cudgel, Prospero, and Apollo, as soon as that tank rolls through, start covering it in pitch. We’ll set that thing on fire and smoke the men out.”

“What about the others? How are we going to stop them from barreling through?” Horace asked.

Abraham flipped his sword around. “Leave that to me and Black Bane.”

The first tank thundered down the road, pointed toward the tunnel. The other tanks blasted cover fire at the Wall. The tank rolled into the tunnel at twenty miles an hour.

“Now!” Abraham yelled to Tark and Cudgel, who were waiting above.

Tark and Cudgel poured two vats of hot pitch over the Wall and down onto the tank. The hot black goo spattered everywhere. Then Apollo and Prospero hefted bags of pitch and slung them onto the tank.

Small slit doors on the tank opened. The rat-a-tat of machine-gun fire blasted away from within.

Apollo and Prospero dropped to the ground.

Ranks of the king’s foot soldiers were mowed down.

The tank gun turned and fired on the largest mass of soldiers gathered near the Wall. A loud booming blast sent men and their dismembered body parts flying.

“Burn that thing! Burn it now!” Horace bellowed.

Shades and Sticks rushed the tank with torches in hand and flung them onto the tank. Flames covered the tank. It rolled on, crushing, shooting, and killing everything in its path.

Gripping his sword in hand, Abraham said out loud, “It’s showtime, Black Bane. I need you now.”

The second tank entered the tunnel with its tank gun lowered.

“Black Bane?” He shook the sword. “Black Bane! I need lightning! I need it now! Oh man, this is a bad idea. Will you wake up?”

The tank started to pass out of the tunnel.

Abraham pointed the sword at the tank and yelled, “Lightning now!”

There was a momentary pause followed by a calm, “All right, then.”

A globe of white-hot light dropped out of the sky and plowed into the tank, knocking it back into the tunnel. A jarring explosion knocked Abraham back off his feet. Tendrils of energy created a sparkling net all over the tank. Inside the tank’s metal belly were the sounds of men screaming. As the mystic fires died out, the men’s dying screams died out as well. The second tank was stuck in the tunnel.

A cry of victory went up from the soldiers on the top of the Wall.

“The tanks retreat!” Cudgel yelled from above. “The tanks retreat!”

The first tank rolled on like a flaming juggernaut. The Henchmen continued to throw on more pitch. The flames and black smoke grew higher. Suddenly, a man popped up out of the tank’s turret coughing his lungs out and firing a machine gun.

Skitts and Zann shot the man in the face with their crossbows.

Another enemy soldier squirted out of the tank. The hot flames of pitch seared his hands and face. He dove off the tank. Before he could get up, the king’s soldiers cut him down.

The tank rolled on, aimlessly, took a sudden turn back toward the Wall, barreled through a storage building, and crashed to a stop at the Wall.

Abraham breathed a sigh of relief and said, “Thanks, Black Bane.”

“Now let’s go and take those other tanks out.”

“I beg your pardon? I’m might be powerful, but I’m not a miracle worker. I can only store up so much energy.” Black Bane made a yawning sound. “I’m spent after that. Good luck with your little skirmish.”

“Wait, how long does it take for you to store up enough energy to do that again?”

“Days. Weeks. It can vary. Say, where is that woman, Iris, that you matched me with earlier? She was some warm and cozy. I’d like to—”

Abraham sheathed the sword and said, “Good night.”

He made the climb up the ramps to the top of the Wall. Cudgel was spot on—the tanks were retreating to their initial positions. The king’s soldiers cheered in victory.

Pratt spat over the Wall and said, “There are still eight more of them out there. What are you and your magic sword waiting for?”

More ideas started to come to mind. He wasn’t sure if they were his or Ruger’s. He answered Pratt by saying, “Nighttime.”

All day long, the tanks continued their hourly shellacking of the Shield of Steel. For the time being, they backed off from blowing another hole in the Wall. They seemed intent on doing something else. They blasted away at that Shield of Steel’s weak spot, the stones around the hinges.

Abraham paced. “Blazing saddles!”

One of the front doors of the Wall stood in place, but it had fallen askew. The tanks continued to hammer away every hour on the hour. The enemy took their time about it. The inevitable began to sink in. The doors would fall, leaving an opening big enough to drive four tanks through. There would be no stopping them.

“So, what’s the plan?” Solomon asked. The hippie troglin had a few more creases of worry in his brow. “Why do we wait for the night?”

“Because we have to be sneaky.”

“Night is a good time for that. What are you going to do?”

“Something crazy. Did you ever see the movie Beverly Hills Cop ?”

Solomon gave him a funny look and said, “Another movie reference? Seriously? Well, what’s the plan?”