Four part four

The soldiers of Nirut

The Inner Fortress of Tranquil Mound

6-26-2007

From the Diary of General Terb

“No one really knows what happened inside the Fortress in ‘Quiet Mound’, especially during the last days of the Great Battle of the Mound, particularly with Niruh, the brother of King Nirut of Lihterb, and his companion Rognat, but of course I did, because I was the Commanding General there. I wrote this journal entry, because I fear history will overlook this battle, one of many in the scheme of all things. So I leave it in the vaults from the dungeon, for the sake of posterity, written on strong and durable snakeskin.

“We had captured Niruh and Rognat threw them into a cell deep in the dungeons of the Quiet Mound, and what he really wanted to do was slit their throats, but Lived said, ‘No! We may need them for ransom.’ And that sounded logical, and I added: ‘I take a risk’, so I said it, and I did it.

“Then shortly after, before the sun went down, we saw the great mass of Nirut’s soldiers encircling the compound: swords, spears, bows and arrows, ropes for scaling the walls, daggers in their hands, all ready for battle. .

“We all rested restlessly that afternoon and through the night, until dawn, when they tried to break down the front door with a large tree they had cut down in the rat-wood, nearby, and turned it into some sort of battle ram, and tried to to run and break through the two-foot-thick wooden gate of the fortress, to no avail.

“I stood atop the high thick wall of the compound, and ordered my men to continue shooting arrows, non-stop, at the enemy below, and I thought horribly at that moment, what fun it is to kill the enemy, one after another. , it affects you, you know, it numbs you, and the more you watch and kill, the more you want, the less the previous kill matters, so it often has to be more gruesome, and you watch the arrows pierce his skin, eyes, skull, You watch the blood flow.

“Then the General, the old man who always seemed to be on Nirut’s side, had an idea, where he got it from I don’t know, maybe from hell itself. Anyway, I didn’t know about the Iron Net, not at that time. moment, but would soon.

“During the battle I looked at the sun, it was low and hot, and the first battles came to both armies, and then we began to fight on cool nights, just before twilight; they and we all seemed to have the same idea: to fight when it is OK.

“In a way, all this was nonsense, all this bloodshed, and when we all agreed to let our prisoners go, a form of goodwill to Nirut, because inside the fortress we were tired of fighting and the Most wanted to go home to the Valley of Arrows in the desert, most had children and wives, and we knew that Nirut was like a wild dog that once it got hold of something, it wouldn’t let go, it took all the blood from every soldier. that he had to win, break the devil in two, if he could, we hoped he hadn’t come to this conclusion yet.

“Anyway, we agreed and so did they with this ceasefire, and I guess it stopped the fighting for a day, or a few more hours, not much longer, and then the King of Lihterb thought better of it, and so did his general (We had a feast that night in the courtyard, even bringing some mutton to our captives.) Meanwhile, King Nirut took us bitterly as a continuing threat, crying out in vain for revenge outside our fortress walls. , and then the net came, the iron net, right over the walls of the fortress, it was thrown by two spaceships, it closed tightly around us, like a snake would its prey; we had never seen anything like it before, It scared us just to experience the sight of those woven iron chains woven over our heads, it was as if we were cursed.

“What could I do? I passionately yelled, ‘We’ll keep fighting…’ and I remember seeing the King smile, I think he wanted that, and we kept fighting, what else could we do, and he killed.” all our men, life flies. Only me and a few others escaped, the others escaped through the Forest of Rats, which Nirut tried to avoid. I escaped in Rognat’s spaceship far into the grasslands of the giant snakes. And so to the Reader, these are my memories of the event that took place.” Terb