Battle for Peruna by Josiah Boss (book club suggestions TXT) 📕

in Mardoc's army. They also didn't have to be the first ones into battle. They were in the last wave who finished off the remains of their foe.
This morning their mission was to find the traitor. A jail guard who had escaped about a year or so ago. Only now had Mardoc gotten word of it, and he figured that he had gone to the centaurs. At the same time, the centaur's leader's son had disappeared. It was supposed that he had gotten out with the help of the guard, who was now on the top ten wanted dead list of Mardoc's. He was wanted dead or alive, preferably dead.
They had been told that the camp was somewhere in the woods. It was their job to find it, not only so they attack it, but also so they would know where to go to get the traitor to kill him.
As the morning mists wore off, they found themselves deep in the forest. Taking to the shadows so as to stay hidden better. The shadows blended well with their dark armor. Suddenly the leader spotted movement up ahead. He held his hand up motioning the others to stop.
*****************************
Skandar and Skylar had gone out hunting together. They hadn't shot anything much less seen anything. The hunting was poor around here they supposed. Suddenly a dull glint caught Skandar's sharp eye.
“Look.” he said in a low voice to Skylar. He nodded in the direction of the glint. There in the shadows, they could barely make out the forms of some mounted men.
Skandar glanced at Skylar. “On the count of three we make a run for it.” Skylar nodded a grim look on his face. “one.....two......THREE!” with that, they wheeled their horses around and whipped their horses into a full run. They heard a shout behind them and Skylar glanced back in time to see the men charge out of the brush in hot pursuit.
They raced through the woods, trees whipping past them at a terrific pace, hoping to run into Nikkelon and Garth who were hunting in the general area. Skandar untied his bow from off his back and strung an arrow. He'd never shot his bow off of a running horse, but there's a first time for everything. He took as good a aim as he could then let fly with an arrow. He saw the arrow just miss the lead horse's rider and burrow into a tree. He heard a shout from behind and figured that they would begin shooting now.
“Run!” he shouted to Skylar who dug in deeper, trying to urge more speed out of his faithful horse. Suddenly Skandar felt a sting in his right leg in the calf. He looked down and saw an arrow lodged in it. He yelled at Skylar and pointed to his leg, who nodded grimly. When he reached down to pull the arrow out, he lost his balance and was sent sprawling into the bushes. Instantly, he rolled to the right and rolled to his feet all in one smooth move.
Unfortunately, it didn't end as smoothly as it was executed. For as he stood, his wounded leg gave out on him and he collapsed again, almost landing on and breaking his bow. This time he managed to stand and prop against a tree. From there he took careful aim and managed to down two riders before his leg gave out on him again.
Just then he heard a shout from the trail and saw Skylar there on his horse. He started staggering towards Skylar when suddenly a arrow found it's mark and buried deep into the horse's chest. The horse collapsed under Skylar sending him sprawling off to the side. Skandar sank down to sitting against a tree and let his head fall onto his chest. This was probably the end for him and Skylar. Suddenly he saw Skylar stand up bow at full draw length. He was able to launch several arrows before an arrow drove into his chest, driving him backwards where he collapsed at the bottom of a tree.
He looked up and could see the lead rider aiming his bow at him and he knew that it was over. Suddenly a yell erupted and he looked up in time to see the bowman flop backward off his horse, an arrow buried in his neck. His horse reared in fright then bolted. Three more arrows quickly found their mark making three of the remaining four riders bite the dust beside their leader. The last one caught an arrow in the hip where he doubled over and fell off his horse landing on the arrow.
Skandar closed his eyes against the pain that suddenly flooded over him. Before he lost consciousness, he heard voices, sounding far away trying to talk to him, but he couldn't answer them. Then he blacked out.
****************************
When he came to, he was laying on his back on a bed made of blankets beside Skylar, who's chest was all bandaged up and bloodied. That's when the fight came back to him, if you could call it a fight. He heard low voices talking farther away in the room, and moaned when the pain hit him again.
“He's awake!” he heard Garth exclaim. The next thing he knew, Garth and Nikkelon were looming over him like two tall, grim statues.
“How do you feel?” asked Nikkelon.
He shrugged and closed his eyes to let another wave of pain pass. It surprised him how much pain one little arrow in the calf could cause. “What happened?” he finally managed.
“We were hunting like you guys, and we saw the guys moving through the forest chasing you. We saw you fall, then Skylar take an arrow to the chest. We knew that they were probably going to kill you so we did a hasty thing. We shot them. I got the one who was going to kill you, and after that we just kind of finished them off. Then we loaded you guys up and took you back to camp. Once there, Aura had to extract the arrows from you guys. The one in your calf was hooked behind the bone so she had to kind of dig around in there to get enough room to get it out.”
“How's Skylar?”
“He'll live. Thankfully, his breastplate slowed the arrow down enough that it stopped after cracking a couple of ribs. He has two broken ribs and a broken arm from the fall, but other than that, Aura says he'll live.”
Skandar heaved a sigh of relief and relaxed. Then he closed his eyes and drifted off again.
******************************
Skylar had felt the arrow slam into him, then everything had gone black. At first he wandered if he had been killed, then he realized that if he was thinking, he obviously hadn't been killed. After what seemed like hours, he opened his eyes when he felt a light shining on them and found himself in a forest. But it wasn't Peruna, it was a different forest. This had fir trees in it, not maples and such. He heard a loud roar overhead and something in his brain told him that it was a helicopter looking for him.
He looked down at himself and suddenly realized that he was only about nine years old. He then saw that his right arm looked like it had a second elbow in the lower part of his arm, the bone was sticking through the skin in a nasty break. He tried scrambling to his feet, but only succeeded in getting nowhere. Finally after about an hour of trying, he got to his feet with the help of a tree. He started stumbling down the mountainside. He saw the canyon at his feet when it was to late.
******************************
That night Garnock was awakened by the sound of Skylar screaming. He rushed to the tent where Skandar and Skylar were sleeping and saw Skylar thrashing around. He rushed in and after a while had him calm down. He said that he had a weird dream about being in some woods, with people looking for him and a broken arm and falling into a canyon and waking up here. After a while, he finally got Skylar to get back to sleep.
*****************************
That night Skandar had the same dream, and he to woke up screaming. For the second time Garnock rushed in only to find out that it was Skandar this time and not Skylar who was screaming. He heard the same dream told that Skylar had told. He did the same thing as last time finally getting Skandar back to sleep.
******************************
The next morning Mardoc was rudely interrupted at breakfast by a scout rushing in.
“What is the meaning of this?” bellowed Mardoc, rising from his seat, ready to do bodily harm to the scout if he didn't have anything important to say.
“I have some news about those seven troops that you sent out yesterday.” the scout quickly said.
“Yes,yes,” said Mardoc impatient. “Go on. What is it? Did they succeed?”
There was a pause. “They're dead.” the sentence fell flat in the room. Mardoc stared at him his mouth hanging open in disbelief. Then as if catching himself, he shut his mouth.
“What?” was all he managed to get out.
“Yes, sir. All dead by last evening if not before.”
“How?” he croaked out.
“Shot with arrows, every one of them.” The scout knew why this news disturbed Mardoc so much. Three of the soldiers had been Mardoc's best friends. Without another word Mardoc strode from the room. The scout left out the other door.
*****************************
“Well, well,” said Garnock coming into the room where Garth and Nikkelon were sitting and talking. “You come back and try to be hero right away, huh?” He grinned at Garth.
“Is that supposed to be a compliment?” asked Garth.
“Sure,” said Garnock. “It's my way of saying that I'm proud of the way you handled yourself in that situation. It tells me that when I retire or die, you're going to be a good general and leader of your people.” Garth looked down at the floor, somewhat embarrassed, yet proud. “You're gonna turn seventeen tomorrow and that's when you become a soldier in the army. Nikkelon, in a couple of weeks, you to will be turning seventeen. You guys have grown up way to fast. It seems like just the other day, you guys were little foals trotting around and only coming up to the bottom of my belly. Now look, Garth, you're taller than me, and Nikkelon, you're taller than your dad and almost taller than me.” Now they both looked slightly embarrassed, they were glad that no one else was around to hear.
“I just wanted to let you guys know how proud of you I was,” said Garnock. “Keep it up.” With that, he patted each boy on the shoulder and left the room. The boys looked at each other kind of amazed.
******************************
The next morning when Skandar woke up he turned over to see if Skylar was awake, when he saw he was he said. “I remember.”
Skylar turned his head and looked at him. “What?”
Skandar faced the ceiling when he said, “The other world.” He turned to look back at Skylar. “I remember what happened now. I remember it all—the cops and robbers game, going into the woods, seeing the helicopter searching for me after I fell out of the tree and broke my arm.”
“You broke your arm?”
“Yeah, you can't tell it now, but I now remember falling over a cliff, but when I woke up, I was in a forest and not dead at the bottom of the cliff. I was in this world. That's why you never found me. I've been here for several years.