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The Kandron Affair (an IWDII serial) - Part the Sixth.


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#1 Guest_TheBeastlordJohnny_*

Posted 12 September 2003 - 11:40 PM

Hullo people!

The battle at the palisade. Parts of this chapter could cause sympathy pains in male readers… and could upset dog lovers.

Chapter 6 – Always Stand 6 Feet Away From Psychotic Dwarves With 5 Foot Axes

“Sir!” yelped a child’s voice, as he came flinging into the inn while we were eating breakfast. It was none other than Swift Thomas. “Shawford Crale requests your presence at the Palisade at once!”

Pausing for a moment to summon up as much acid as I possibly could, I replied with heavy sarcasm, “Oh really? Well, team, looks like we’d best suddenly drop everything and run off there at the double!”

Oberron misinterpreted. Not the brightest star in the firmament, was Oberron.

Talyn looked the boy in the eye. “Well,” he began. “I suppose if he summoned us at once, yet sent some random cowshite kid to fetch us, it can’t be that important.”

“Yes!” slimed Darik. “Breakfast first, duty second. I mean, I can understand wanting my advice, with it being ME, but…”

“Alright,” I said back to the boy. “Tell him we’re coming.”

“Hur hur!”

“Darik, please, it ceased to be funny within hours of the first crack of that pun.” I sighed.


Shawford Crale was a balding regimental army type who looked like the sort of individual who would give his grand daughter a treatise on military stratagems for her birthday. However, he had gone to seed rather, a bald patch was forming on the crown of his head, and a once lean body was starting to spill over at the edges. However, his eyes were steely, and they gave the impression he was not the sort of man to trifle with.

“Well, then,” he began. He was carrying a short length of cane and was standing next to a blackboard on which was drawn a representation of the Palisade. Large, fat red arrows were drawn on to represent lines of goblin attack and how best to defend against them. To oppose them, spindly little green arrows were chalked half-heartedly to face them. You know for sure a town is doomed when even the commander of the garrison ranks their chance of success so poorly. “It appears that we are facing a veritable horde of goblinoids of all shapes and sizes. And all we have are a bunch of half-trained recruits. Your job will be to transform these… cadets… into an efficient… fighting… force. For some reason all our drill sergeants have deserted, but I will resist the goblinoid invasion with every last breath in my body… We must fight to the last man!”

“Training new recruits?!” I spat at him. “Is that all?!”

“YES,” said Shawford, pushing his face close to mine. “And don’t try anything else like that or I shall have you on a fizzer. Take one squad each for the next six days, and inspire them, lead them, to be a band of ruthless killers.”

“Well…” I began. “We can but try.”


What an immensely exhilarating job that turned out to be.

Most of the recruits in my squad had all the fighting skills of an old, termite infested support beam, and the intellect of one as well. It would have been more useful to have attached spears to a wooden frame and marched them up and down behind the palisade so that the goblins were given the illusion of numbers.

“Now,” I would say to them. “The goblins are most likely going to have to scale the palisade wall and clamber over it that way. Thus, your best bet is to use the point of your spear to impale them as they approach the top. You thrust the spear sharply, but not excessively, twist it, and pull it out ready for the next thrust. Got that?”

Nods all round.

“Right. On my command, ‘thrust’, you will all thrust your spear at the air in front of you, twist it and pull it back.

“Thrust!” And so they thrusted.

Lolth wept.

When we’d got all the men in the front rank back from the clerics, after having been partially impaled by those in the second rank, I decided on a slightly different approach to training them.

“Right,” I began. “Imagine this keg here,” I carried on, depositing a barrel in front of them, “is a goblin – “

Lolth wept again, for all the recruits started to run about in a blind panic and it took two hours to convince them to come out from outside the tents at the palisade.


Talyn, however, had a completely different approach to training his squad.

“ROIGHT!” he would shout. “Yer all gonna die! The goblins are gonna kill ye, and rip oyt yer spleens, and chew on them, and chew on them some more, until they’re very chewed on, and then, they’re gonna staple your bifkins to the bridge of your nose, and then they’re gonna rape your corpses until your arses are so sore its not even funny, and then cut ‘em up and mail ‘em to your mothers with amusing slogans carved onto them. THAT’S how painful it’s gonna be! So, why the feck do ye all persist! Why not just f’karrfff and have a drink, ye daft eedjits? Yer all fecked anyhow!”

By now Lolth was most likely sobbing her arachnoid eyes out.


A glance over at Shayla and her squad revealed them all sitting in a circle discussing their feelings. A large, massively muscled man was in a flood of tears over something or other.

“No, relax, Carlos, let it all out…” Shayla soothed him

“I… I can’t!” sobbed the big man. “I’ve never dared admit it until now… but it was too strong to resist it!”

There was a pause as pregnant as the mother of twins a week before her due date. Then the big man grabbed another soldier in that squad in a zestful embrace, and planted a huge slobbery kiss on his lips, wailing, “I love you, Genthan!”

“WHAT!” yelled Genthan. “And all the time you were trying to be in the second rank behind me… it was because…”

“You looked tasty in your uniform, yes!” wailed Carlos.

Shayla held her head in her hands in desperation. Like Lolth, she wept out of sheer frustration.


“Wight men! Squaaaaad… TEN SHUN!” Oberron bawled out.

They snapped to attention.

“SLOPE AWMS!”

They sloped arms.

“Sir!” asked one hopeful. “Why are we sloping thin air?”

“BE QUIET!” barked Oberron.

“Yeah!” asked another. “I know someone stole the spears, but surely…”

Oberron strode up to this soldier and barked in his face.

“YOU HOWWIBLE LITTLE MAN! TWY ANY MOWE BACKCHAT AND YOU’LL BE ON A CHARGE!”

Sniggers all round. “You can’t do that! You’re not our proper commanding officer,” said one smart arse.

“I AM HIS PWOPER WEPLACEMENT!” shouted Oberron. “PWOVISIONALLY I WANK HIGHER THAN YOU!”

More sniggers all round, as Innuendo savaged our erstwhile paladine companion. “Can we see sir?” asked one front rank individual.

”WIGHT THAT’S IT!” he ranted on. “TAKE HIS NAME SERGEANT! HE’S ON A FIZZER FOR GWOSS INSUBOWDINATION!”

At this point the entire squad fell about in hysterics. Lolth also fell about in hysterics.


“Right, you’re in the ‘harmy, now!” said the great Darik Ironbeard. “And you lot need to be much tougher or in a battle situation you’ll be overrun. I want you all buck naked in the snow here in two minutes sharp.”

The squad were all buck naked in the snow in two minutes sharp, and huddled together to conserve body heat. Darik sidled in front of them, and all of a sudden gave the first poor soldier a tremendous whack across the chest with his axe handle.

“Did that hurt?” he inquired of the unfortunate recruit.

“NO SIR!” he barked out. “IT DIDN’T HURT BECAUSE I AM A TARGOS GUARD, SIR!” and saluted. Darik nodded in approval.

A few soldiers down the line, he singled out another one at random, turned him round, and smote him across the posterior with his axe handle. “Did THAT hurt?” he inquired of this unfortunate.

“NO SIR!” this one barked out. “IT DIDN’T HURT BECAUSE I AM A TARGOS GUARD, SIR!” and saluted. Darik nodded and even grinned in approval.

The next but one poor recruit was evidently in the state of having an extremely interesting daydream about some local girl whom he secretly fancied. An evil grin on his face, Darik took his axe handle and smashed it into the manhood of this individual. The sympathy pains were too much for me to bear, and I clutched at my groin, despite it being safely encased in my customised armour plated trousers.

“Did THAT hurt?!” Darik barked.

“NO SIR!” replied the unflinching recruit. All the others stared at him with sudden newfound respect. “IT DIDN’T HURT BECAUSE IT BELONGED TO THE MAN BEHIND ME, SIR!”

Lolth drowned in tears of laughter.


On the sixth day of training, after having been debriefed by Shawford, Swift Thomas came charging into the guard hut, yelping his little head off.

“Sir! Sir! The goblins are at the palisade!” he shouted.

“What!?” replied Shawford. “Right… this is it men. Today, you fight, win, and hopefully prevail against such things. Good luck.” And offered us a hand to shake.

“Aren’t you coming too?” asked Shayla. Darik hurhured.

“No,” replied Shawford. “I have to report to Lord Ulbrec.”

“Coward,” muttered Darik under his breath.

“I quite agree,” I muttered in return.


When one is embroiled in the heat of a mass battle, one finds it utterly impossible to remember every slice and counter slice, every stroke and counter stroke, and every advance and retreat. We warriors spend hours practicing slashes and stabs and thrusts and hacks, and building up strength, stamina, and endurance, and trying out progressively more and more complicated moves, until we become lethal as a razor. And then, as soon as it is transferred to a mass battle situation, we forget it all.

Those are the skills to fight man on man in a duel-type situation, yet in a battle where one is outnumbered several to one, the order of the day becomes to hack, slash, disembowel, and to slice your enemies down and chop them mercilessly. The adrenaline rush such a situation provides only serves to exacerbate the blur of death and gratuitous maiming that it all rushes together, and by the end of it all there is little one can foreseeably write about. Save that I was slashing through goblins left, right, and centre, Oberron was steadfastly smearing them one at a time, Darik was taking out huge swathes of them with enormously powerful axe slices, and Shayla was hosing spells at selected ones from afar. Talyn was showing off how he could still shoot accurately with his bow aimed backwards and firing over his shoulder or between his legs or hanging by his feet from the ramparts, and spouting off comments such as, “Take that, badger features!” and similar intellectual items.

However, all became as nothing as a hole was smashed in the wall of the palisade by some goblin wizard. He was adorned with a necklace of teeth, and a staff, and filthy, smelly robes, and was accompanied by a series of worg riders who came leaping through his freshly created hole and began to set about our poor recruits.

Charging like a yochlol with a spike up its bottom, I held my weapons out in front of me and powered across the blood-slippery snow towards him. With an almighty scream of triumph, I slashed him plumb down the middle of his skull, cleaving him in two, and busting my longer sword in the process. I threw it absently over my shoulder, and transferred my short sword to my right hand –

- and was summarily knocked to the ground as a worg rider and his mount leapt on me. Your average worg weighs about the same as a small carthorse, and I felt my left leg skid out to the side as I landed heavily, pulling all the muscles around my groin. It looked bleak – that leg was going to be out of action for some time, and it couldn’t have been a worse one. In desperation, I grabbed onto the worg’s collar, and hoped fervently for a miracle as I used it to swing onto the beast’s back…

And by some incredible stroke of luck, it worked. Using my short sword, I drove straight through his eye, his foul-smelling vitreous humour, blood, and brain tissue (albeit only a little brain tissue, him being a goblin) ran down the blade as I pulled it out and dunked him unceremoniously face down onto the packed snow.

The worg didn’t even notice. I steered it somehow towards the other remaining goblins, which Darik and Oberron had manage to dispatch the mounts thereof, and allowed it to savage them. As the few remaining goblins were systematically eliminated one by one, and the few remaining Targos soldiers increased in confidence, I knew the day was ours.

All except for my worg.

Sensing something wrong – i.e. it had more intelligence than its goblin masters, it bucked, threw me off its back, and onto my defunct leg, causing me to buckle and fall to my knees. Worse still, the impact had sent my remaining weapon skidding across the ice to far out of my reach. And the worg was displaying a set of extremely sharp fangs which it was contemplating sinking into my throat. And worse yet, Darik, Talyn, and the others were on the other side of the battlefield, routing the last few goblins, and the Targos recruits were all either dead or utterly terrified.

This, I thought, is where I reach the clearing at the end of the path…

Then, all of a sudden, I noticed a strap of my pack within easy reach…

And the worg noticed an inviting jugular vein, with blood coursing through it…

And at the last moment before it struck, I grabbed at my pack, and succeeded only in shoving it away and getting bitten in the shoulder. As Talyn would have said, I was fecked.

And I would have been fecked if it wasn’t for the specialist baloth toothbrush I had been given for my birthday which had conveniently spilled out. Seizing it, I thrust it at the slathering mongrel. Taking the bait, it bit into the cork block.

“TAKE THIS, SHITWORM!” I screamed into the beasts face and wound the handle on the device. The steel wool pads scraped all over the monster’s face, crushing its eyes and flaying fur and skin off in huge bloodstained lumps. It howled in agony as I kept it thus incapacitated long enough, and it thrashed about as, with an almost supreme effort, I levered it off the floor so it thrashed about, got tangled in the mechanisms by its neck, upon where I threw it as hard as possible into a nearby wall, breaking its back.

Utterly drained of all energy, I blacked out in an ignoble heap.


That’s all for now. Hope you enjoyed it. Don’t forget to pass opinions now.

Coming next instalment – Either a dramatic near-death experience, or a tremendous letdown.

#2 Guest_Withiel_*

Posted 13 September 2003 - 11:26 AM

That was amusing and gory - best yet, Johnny!
Are you SURE it was PG13 though? (Not that I care)

#3 Guest_argan_*

Posted 13 September 2003 - 06:29 PM

Excellent chapter :)




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