The Bathrobe Knight: Volume 2 (49 page)

              "I'm an adult now, Dad," Kass snapped back defensively, crossing her arms over her chest. "I can make my own decisions, and I'm perfectly capable of taking care of myself. I'm not some little girl anymore who needs you to hold her hand everywhere she goes. Besides, you're the one who was so insistent I find a job and make some money. I'm just doing exactly what you told me to."

              Robert was immediately grateful she had provided him the opportunity he had been looking for. "Speaking of which, I mentioned you to Charles yesterday during our meeting. I told him I had been encouraging you to apply for a job with the company, and he seemed to be thrilled by the idea. He said he would be happy to even meet with you himself. This is big, Kass. He could place you anywhere you wanted. If things went well and you impressed him, you would basically have your pick of any job you wanted."

              "Oh, is that what that meeting was about?" Kass snapped back. "So you could beg your weird boss to give your out-of-work, loser daughter a job? Thanks for that little boost of confidence, Dad. I can't make my own decisions, I can't decide who my friends are, and I need you to beg someone to give me a job. Thanks a lot, really."

As soon she finished speaking, Kass stormed out of the kitchen and back up the stairs.

Chapter 10:  Guess Who's Coming for Dinner?

Qasin
:

              The air was salty and foul, almost to the point of being putrid, as Qasin marched behind the army of over ten thousand men with the Panda King. It was the familiar smell of sweat from countless men going farther than they should in heavy armor under the strain of the midday heat. It was the stench that leached into the uniforms, the lining of their armor, to the point where only thorough scrubbing ever pulled it off. Scrubbing, however, was a task that most men never did, a task that those downwind paid for during every march. It was an expected odor, but Qasin didn’t have to like it.
Just blow the other way,
he grumpily cursed at the wind as they moved between the trees of the forest.

              “It’s quiet,” he said, putting voice to his thoughts. “We haven’t even seen one scout.”

              “That’s because they are afraid. When the might of our army moves, even the ground trembles,” the Panda King bragged again. He had been continuously boasting the entire trip: ‘My army can crush anything,’ ‘My army is undefeated,’ ‘Every man in my army can kill ten of those weak Humans.’ He bragged at every possible chance.

              “Pay him no heed,” Eve said with her usual fake smile. “He’s just upset that there is a situation he can’t control. The worse it gets, the further he’ll spiral,” she reassured him. But what was the point? Was she also unable to control the situation?

              As they got closer to the enemy encampment, less and less of why he was even bothering to stand on this side made sense. Even Eve’s attempts to calm and coax him were becoming transparent.
She just doesn’t want her puppet out of line,
he thought as his feet moved mechanically. The lure of the upcoming bloodshed was eradicated by the queasy feeling he got from standing too near the Panda King and from listening to Eve try and manipulate him.
Perhaps she, too, is feigning confidence even as she begins to lose control. Maybe she knows these things won’t go as she had hoped and that, instead of a glorious victory for her new pet dog, her brother will crush the Panda King, and she will be left unable to control him like she has me.

              “This brute butchered the sacred forests! What did the trees ever do to him?” The Panda King gasped as his men began to walk out of the woods, no longer dodging trees but instead stepping over freshly-cut stumps.

              “We’re still a ways from the mountain,” Qasin noted, as he struggled to peer over the other warriors, a hard thing to do at his height. “If their lumber harvesting extends this far back, what did they do with all of the wood?”

              “Probably lit fires, the hairless monkeys. You know how their kind gets so cold whenever a breeze passes.” The Panda King almost spit the words. Whatever calm and collected demeanor the King had shown when Qasin first met him was clearly gone. “My apologies, am I not being considerate? Are you’re cold as well?” The Panda King laughed at Qasin. “It’s too bad we didn’t bring blankets for our new friends. How inhospitable.” The Panda King’s drooling mouth flicked pieces of spit as he spoke, and his eyes squinted despite his face’s cheerful demeanor.

              The hearty laughter grated on Qasin’s ears. “Hubris,” Qasin said. Only one word, but enough to rile the Panda King’s anger and put a sudden stop to his laughter.

              “A man is only arrogant when he is wrong,” the fat bear countered. “If he is right, then he is just confident. It’s not hubris to think that we will trample the enemy as if he is naught but dirt beneath our feet when our force is this mighty, and they have only a few hundred men and no understanding of war.”

              “Hubris,” Qasin repeated, confident in his assertion. The Panda King would fall, the Humans would no longer be oppressed in this land, and all would be right with the world. The best part about it? He had a front row seat for their downfall. He would, like he had so many times before back in the Human Kingdom, have a front and center view of one of his champions destroying the arrogant competition who dared to challenge him. Darwin was a new champion, but the result would be the same. No cavalry, few archers, no notable magicians . . . The champion that had crushed a legion of White-Horns would not be undone by this rabble. It was indeed hubris for the Panda King to think otherwise.

              As the clinking, clacking and clicking sounds of metal crushing metal, pressing dirt, and banging wooden weapon shafts continued to ring out, a noticeable jolt in the cacophony rang through from the front.
We’re here.
Qasin smiled. Blood would pour bountifully across this once beautiful land.

              “What is that? I can’t see the field.” The Panda King tried to look over his troops to no avail. “Guards, prepare the platform!” He yelled as his army finished coming to a stop.

              As Qasin watched the rear line of men unloaded their backpacks of material and begin building a giant, three-story-tall platform in the middle of the field. Qasin sighed. It wasn’t unusual. He had seen nobles like this before even in the Human lands. Qasin personally hated it, firmly believing that a strong leader should be in the front lines of any conflict along with his people; but, he also knew that there would be this type of person--the one who treated his subjects as a means to an end and the battles in war as nothing more than shows where he could watch from afar as other people achieved his objectives for him.

              “Are you coming?” The Panda King teased as he started walking up the stairs to seats that were being hastily finished at the top. “I wouldn’t want our guests of honor to miss the destruction of every fighting Human in this land.”

             
And I don’t want to miss your arrogance being crushed,
Qasin thought as he started walking up the stairs. In just a short time a rivalry had developed between Qasin and the fat ruler. Everything about the bear-man reminded Qasin of the Human Council, of how much he had hated the double-talking and snide remarks when they thought they were winning.

              “Ladies first,” Qasin extended an arm, letting Eve go up the stairs before him. This fight was going to be a show indeed. He smiled, more assured with each passing moment that things were going to go exactly as he expected.

              “What idiots!” the Panda King said as he reached the top of the hastily constructed pavilion and looked out over the field. Qasin couldn’t see what he was talking about at first, but as he finished climbing the stairs and looked out over the field below, he saw it.

              What on earth is he thinking?
Qasin thought as he looked out over the battlefield.

              “He didn’t even put up a gate?” the Panda King laughed. “That stupid monkey thinks he doesn’t need any defenses, that he can beat us in the open field.”

              “I wouldn’t be so confident,” Eve said, looking at the blockade of blue-scaled shields with spears sticking up over them that stood where there should have been a door, gate, or another form of defense. “He is no fool.”

              “No fool?” The Panda King couldn’t control his laughter. “He built a massive wall and then left a huge opening for us to come through. Did he think he could stop the forces of our legions with cumbersome shields and unwieldy toothpicks? Or are the toothpicks just complimentary, intended to go with the snack? Those absurdly large shields will make excellent platters.”

              “I’m telling you he is no fool,” Eve warned again, but it was obvious from the fact that the King was still chuckling that he didn’t believe it for a minute. There just wasn’t an obvious explanation for what the Human side was doing.

              Even Qasin felt defeated looking at the shieldwall.
Where is the gate? Where are his pots with molten tar to spill out on the first wave of enemies? Where are the archers lined up against the wall? What happened to the Blue-Drakes?
he asked himself, suddenly panicking and doubting that the Humans would even stand a chance.
What are you thinking, Champion?
His eyes darted across the field, looking for the man who had slain a thousand White-Horns, the man who had brought back the confidence and fire he needed to save the realm and kill the poisonous snakes within his court.

              “Let’s not delay the inevitable,” the Panda King said as he turned and walked away from Eve and Qasin, who were still looking over the stand’s railing. “Heralds,” he called down to five horn blowers who sat at the foot of the stand. “Sound the horns! We crush them now!”

              As the horns blew and the army started marching forward in a disjointed, clumsy and disorganized fashion, Qasin found himself holding his breath. They weren’t charging, they were walking. The sight left Qasin with an uneasy feeling, as if he could feel every beat of his heart, every second of every minute, that led up to the fight. Out of the Panda King’s legions of troops, only one thousand at most were archers, and they quickly became clear as daylight.
They are standing out like a black target on a white background
, Qasin thought as he watched the troops separate and leave them unattended. Qasin looked to the woods on either side of the clearing. If he were coordinating the battle, this is where his troops would have rushed in to flank the unprotected archers, crippling the enemy’s ranged attacks--but nothing happened. There wasn’t even the slightest sign of movement on the army’s flanks.
This can’t be all. It can’t end like this.
Qasin’s heart strained as the possibility of Darwin’s failure became more and more real to him.

              Then, through clenched fists, strained eyes, and held breath, he watched it happen. The slowly advancing soldiers, armed with their mixed bag of weapons, crossed the point where a gate should have been. They dodged the spikes as well as they could with only one or two people getting impaled on the long, sharpened poles that surrounded the walls as the force pressed forward. Then, just as the mob reached a narrow gap within the enemy's defenses, the defenders began shouting incoherently and banging their weapons against their shields creating a deafening clamor. As one, Darwin’s troops then lowered their shields, raised their spears, and crammed together so that no part of their bodies were visible from where Qasin stood watching. It was like staring at an odd mix of a porcupine and a turtle as the spears shot out in front of the ball, and they began slowly inching forward bit by bit at a time. First a crawl, next a slow walk. Then, just barely a jog and then something less. The two armies clashed.

              The earlier ringing of metal on metal was nothing compared to the cacophony of noise created by the hundreds of swords, axes, knives and halberds as they attempting to penetrate the shieldwall created by the Humans’ front line. Yet, despite the ferocity of the initial surge, the Human line refused to give way. On the contrary, the soldiers on the Panda King’s front line found themselves being gored, crushed and thrown to the ground by dozens of spears quickly stabbing each and every soldier they could reach.

              “What is happening?” The Panda King stared, dumbfounded, at the clash from his cushioned seat. It wasn’t easy to make out, but Qasin had been in enough fights to know what to look for when a line was dying. “Are our are men making any progress? Are the wannabe monkeys folding in defeat yet?” He was shouting at his subordinates, his anger palpable as the victory he had assumed would happen in an instant was inexplicably taking longer than anticipated.

              “I told you he wasn’t a fool, that this should be taken seriously.” Eve smugly watched the fight from the railing, never having taken her chair. “You wouldn’t listen. You just charged in blindly as if it were that simple.”

              Defiant, the Panda King ignored Eve. His face grew stern, but he wouldn’t budge. “We will win this day,” he assured everyone watching the spectacle. “We will crush them. Just wait. They hide behind a pebble, believing it will stop a tsunami,” he said with a puffed up chest and a grin baring every tooth it could. Yet, no sooner he had made his declaration than the battle took another turn. There weren’t any archers visible on the wall, but as soon as the Humans defending the gap made any ground against their enemy, they would stop and back up. Then, what seemed like hundreds, if not thousands, of arrows shot up from behind the walls and rained down on the Panda King’s troops.