“Militia, I know we promised you another week of training before we would ask you to venture more than an hour from the village. Current needs have intervened to make me a liar but at least my ex-wife isn’t around to see it.” Steve’s sergeant was a powerfully built bald man with a very direct way about him.

  “The iron we have here is garbage and the blacksmiths say they’re missing key ingredients to make quality steel. Which is why we are all wearing leather pretend armor instead of anything useful. I am assured the capital has what we need and we will be able to sell the processed flax, whatever that crap is, and get what we need for steel.” The sergeant paused for a moment to take a drink of water. The six militia members wished he had picked a spot that had shade for this discussion.

  “The three wagons with flax should have made the journey in six hours, but the dern fool civilians with them got killed. Repeatedly. And only stopped dying this morning at the crack of dawn. Whatever killed them appears to be staying by the wagons to eat the horses we keep bringing to get the wagons moving. Which brings me to our assignment. We are going to take our crappy iron spears and waddle our leather clad butts into the forest and kill whatever is eating our horses. Any questions?”

  “Do we have any idea what is attacking the wagons?” Linda asked.

  “No, thank you for your input. Anyone else have a question I’ve already answered?” Sgt. McIntosh had been reading a book on interpersonal skills as he thought it was always a good idea to improve yourself.

  “How far is it to the wagons?” Steve asked.

  “That’s a good question. The villagers keep dying about two hours into their trip. That’s on horseback and with the wagon. I expect it’ll take us four to six hours on foot because the horses haven’t respawned yet. We’re wasting daylight, let’s get marching and hope for the best.” Sergeant Macintosh hopped down off the barrel that had served as an impromptu stage.

  The Sergeant liked marching. He had been a career soldier, first with Earth Co and then with the exiles on the station at Titan. The way he told it, he marched all over that space station twice a day for the decade he was stationed there. Never said why he was doing all that marching in low gravity, but that was not a question Macintosh was going to answer.

  Not that the forest was the place to ask questions. Talking in general wasn’t a good idea. Spears were held at the ready and eyes scanned the forest lining the road. All seven of the patrol had died, several times, within sight of the village. The lizard folk controlled the area and even if they didn’t show up, there were plenty of other dangers. Black and yellow jaguars. Giant lizards with horns. And flies as big as footballs with a very painful bite.

  Sergeant Macintosh stopped the group after a while and crouched with his spear braced in the dirt. Birds with long legs and a stout crest on their beaks raced out of the trees. They swiveled their long necks to look at the patrol. They charged with a squawk.

  Their big feet slashed at the militia and their heads dove to peck at whatever they could reach. Thanks to the spears, that wasn’t much. The aggressive birds would push against the spears and if they weren’t pushed hard enough to pass by the feathers and draw blood, they would force their way into the circle where the spears didn’t offer the same protection.

  And when Evan failed to really threaten the bird that attacked him, it forced its way into the circle and stomped Gloria right into the ground. With the circle broken, the patrol had to fight twice as hard. Three birds ran away bleeding and two lay dead on the road.

  “I can’t believe we don’t have anyone who can heal us. This is a joke.” Kevin wrapped a bandage around the stumps of his missing fingers, holding it there until the bleeding stopped.

  “Come on, you’ve got to be close to level two and you’ll get more health. We’ll do this and get better equipment too.” Mike helped him tie off the bandage and then wrapped a second bandage around the first.

  “Calm down kid, you’ll get them back the next time you die. It hurts like a politician though, so let’s take a minute to recover.” Macintosh looked at how many cuts his team had and decided to back off. While they rested, he used a stone knife to cut the head off one of the elephant birds. Steve plucked handfuls of tan feathers from the bodies and stowed them in his satchel. Max was going through arrows faster than he could make them and he needed lots of feathers to replace them.

  “I wish we could eat these. Can you imagine chomping down on a drumstick that size?” Linda smeared a sap and herb mixture onto her cuts. It had already been tried though and no matter how much they cooked it, elephant bird meat couldn’t even be swallowed. It was just so powerfully bitter.

  “Do you think orcs can eat it? Or maybe the lizard people. Is it weird that we’re all iron blood people in the village?” Evan asked and looked at Steve. Steve was one of the few people in their village that played Andalusian Dream before and they expected him to know a lot of things.

  “That’s how it was when I played. Later in the game, more people have moved and mixed. But right at the beginning the races are kinda split up in the villages.” Steve shook his spear to see if the head was coming loose.

  “I can keep marching now.” Kevin stood up and switched his spear to his whole hand. Sergeant Macintosh was more than willing to get back to that. With the elephant birds in the area, nothing else wanted to make trouble and they weren’t bothered for an hour.

  “Stop, look up.” Macintosh raised a fist and cut his last step short. In the tree branches that wove together like a roof large clumps clung to bare branches. These crusty slimes stripped the branches of all leaves and eventually bark. Then they dripped onto any passing animal to eat it and get to another leafy plant.

  Kevin, as the most injured, led the way into this stretch of slime infested road. He jabbed up at the lowest dangling bit of slime to get it to curl up into the tree. This should keep it from grabbing them and absorbing what it could. It took half an hour to make it through that mile stretch without anyone else being injured.

  They needed everyone for when the lizardfolk showed up. Four lanky lizardmen burst out of the bushes and attacked Kevin. Their heads were like alligators and they had long tails with scaly ridges. Two of them bit Kevin, right through his leather armor, and he immediately disappeared back to the town bell.

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  Sergeant Macintosh’s spear glanced off the dark green scales, but his second attack cut. Mike hit the same lizard folk over the head with the shaft of his spear. It knocked the lizardfolk to the ground. Mike and Linda stabbed at the other without the results of Macintosh’s attack. It didn’t seem like the spears even hurt it.

  Steve grabbed the trident the lizardfolk on the ground had dropped and stabbed down at its exposed neck. It bit through the touch hide and it suddenly stopped flailing. The other two who had bit Kevin were busy eating something, but as the rest of his body had vanished Steven didn’t know what they were actually eating. It distracted them though and that was enough to deal with one of them.

  The lizardfolk stabbed Linda through the stomach and went to bite her arm, only getting air for its efforts. Mike and Evan beat it with the butts of their spear and Macintosh jammed his spear at the neck. The lizardman hissed and caught the shaft of Macintosh’s spear in his powerful jaws. The shaft snapped and Macintosh clubbed with it right away. Evan jabbed again and got his spear in another set of jaws as the distracted lizardfolk joined in.

  Steve stabbed again, injuring the lizardfolk and making it drop the head of Macintosh’s spear. Two tridents stabbed Evan at the same time and he disappeared as well. The two lizardfolk who had bit Kevin ran back into the woods towards a river to the south and left their friend.

  Everyone still on their feet piled on the wounded lizardfolk, stabbing hard until the spear cut through the scales. Macintosh stomped on its arm when it fell to keep it on the ground. It was easy to stay angry at these monsters, they had just killed their friends. But it was odd to then have those friends come back and not want to hear how they were avenged.

  “At least we have decent spears now even though they’re overgrown salad forks. These might be what attacked the wagons, but they won’t keep coming back with only half of their number.” Sergeant Macintosh picked up the dropped trident to replace his broken spear.

  “Are we that close to the wagons?” Mike asked.

  “I hope so. We’ve lost half of our people and if it’s much further we could all end up standing next to the bell. Another patrol will be behind us as soon as they can with horses and the merchants. And we can get some decent steel, instead of whatever these are.” Macintosh frowned at what looked like bone on the forked end of his trident.

  The wagons did come into sight within an hour of walking. The wagons were parked off the road with the harness stacked on the ground. Whatever had attacked had waited for the horses to be unharnessed for the night. And the horses were gone without so much as a hoof left behind.

  “It ate three horses completely?” Mike turned in a circle with his spear ready. “We’ve never seen anything that big.”

  “If it ate three horses, it shouldn’t be hungry for a while. Let’s hope.” Macintosh adjusted his grip on his trident and walked around the wagons, looking for evidence of whatever had eaten the horses.

  “Oh no,” Steve murmured in concern. He had come across a dried husk of a dead bug. It was like a wasp, but much bigger. Its stinger was as long as his hand and the rest of it was as big as a Saint Bernard. “Sarge, this is probably more than we can deal with.”

  “What’s this? What did you find?” Sergeant Macintosh came around the wagons and stomped over to Steve.

  “This whole area could be their territory. All the way to the capital.” Mike winced at the sight of the husk.

  “There could be dozens of them, maybe hundreds. We’ll never make it to the capital with these around. We’ll have to deal with their nest while they don’t know we’re here.” Macintosh looked around as if he could see where the nest was.

  “How are we going to destroy a nest for something that big?” Steve asked.

  “First we find it, then we deal with it. Still, we should probably be ready to burn it. It’s going to be way too big to stomp.” Macintosh nodded to himself and began to slowly walk around the wagons. The other two followed him out of desire not to be stung by something that big.

  The buzzing sound was very loud when they came across it. It led them into the trees to a grove with three dead oaks. Between the oaks, the giant wasps had built their nest from the top right down to the ground. The pocketed face had lots of empty spaces and an uncomfortable amount of eggs waiting to hatch.

  “If we go into that grove, they’re going to swarm us.” Mike said when he had given up trying to count the wasps in the area.

  “Yeah, that’s what they do. So we have to find a way to kill them even if we die. Gather up all the dried branches you can carry. I’m going to get us a little cover and hope they aren’t too bright.” Macintosh whispered to Steve and Mike. He moved away from the grove and broke off some living branches and uprooted an entire bush. Mike and Steve gathered up dead branches and twigs. When they came back to the Sergeant, he had a green canopy strung together with twine.

  It was a flexible structure, barely held together and mostly leaves. They all had to hold it up or else it would fall apart. And that wasn’t easy with a bundle of branches and twigs under the other arm.

  “This is never going to work.” Steve hissed at his Sergeant who gave him an evil grin.

  “It only has to get us there and keep us safe while we start the fire. Then the fire will do the work.” Sergeant Macintosh shook his head and lifted the canopy before anyone could make another comment. All three supported the canopy and started slowly walking together into the grove.

  The wasps noticed. Their buzzing grew louder as they gathered to see what this walking bush was up to. The closer it got to their nest, the louder and angrier their buzzing became. When it reached the bare patch of dirt around the nest, the wasps attacked.

  Stingers plunged into the leafy branches and some tried to crawl under the rim of the canopy. Macintosh did his best to stab at these wasps, but Mike and Steve had to resort to kicking when they got too close. All three of them had been stung at least twice before they reached the nest. The canopy went to the ground and rested against the nest.

  “Quick, get it lit.” Mike began stabbing back at their wasp attackers.

  Steve broke up branches and flaked some bark on top of the pile of branches. Macintosh had a tinderbox out and was furiously trying to get an ember going while his hands swelled from the stings.

  “I didn’t think I’d be allergic to bees here.” Macintosh managed to get out before shoving the tinderbox at Steve and fumbling with his trident to help Mike. Steve struck the flint to the steel close to the bark tinder and repeated the action when the sparks died out futilely.

  Then a bit of bark caught a spark and glowed orange. Steve blew gently on the little ember and set it among the flaky tinder. Yellow and orange flames crept out of the tinder and across the branches. The sound of the wasps breaking up the canopy couldn’t distract Steve. He carefully fed the fire and tended it as it ate the bigger branches.

  “It’s going, that’s all we brought.” Steve announced and realized he was alone. The other two had crawled out and were fighting the wasps in the open. He crawled out with his trident and was surprised to see six dead wasps. There were fifty still in the air, but the spears had no problem cracking open the yellow and black exoskeletons.

  “I’m at level two!” Mike cheered, but no one could cheer with him. Sergeant Macintosh was being bitten by two wasps and stung by a third. Steve had three wasps stinging him and couldn’t stab with his trident anymore. A wasp came in to bite him and the sight switched to black. He was going to respawn in the village, but the fire was already going. It would catch on the canopy and whatever the wasps used to build their nest.