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

Ten at least, I'm twenty now. A hunting party found me and took me into the village doctor. He healed me and one of the palace guards took me under his wing. When I got old enough I was trained as a soldier and traveled with Mardoc to Peruna to try to set up a new kingdom. Then I met Garth. I helped him escape and you've heard all of our travels so far.”
“And that's why we never found you, huh? We thought you were kidnapped or something. The police and S&R teams were out looking for you for two to three weeks and found no trace, you had just disappeared into thin air. We even had had a funeral for you after several months because we thought that you were dead, when all this time you were alive in this world.”
Skandar nodded, then rolled over and tried to get back to sleep ignoring the pain in his calf.
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The next morning Mardoc called a mandatory meeting in the big meeting tent.
“All soldiers here?” he bellowed to be heard above the noise.
The roll call started, and only after all the soldiers had responded positive, did he continue.
“This morning a party of a dozen of my best warriors were sent back to our home land to bring in more troops. I know that all of you heard of the tragedy that happened yesterday. Seven of our best troops fell in battle yesterday afternoon. Three of them were my best friends. NOW is the time for revenge. We strike while the harvest is ripe! So on your feet, for we march as soon as our group gets back with another regiment of soldiers.”
All the soldiers stood as one and made the whole valley echo with the noise that they made. Mardoc smiled for the first time in weeks. And held his hand up for silence.
“All who are to scared to wage battle against these centaurs can stay here just raise your hand now or forever hold your peace.” No hands raised. “Okay,” Mardoc continued. “as I mentioned before, as soon as the other half of our enormous army comes, we'll be ready to march on the centaurs and wage the fiercest battle against them that ever was fought in the history of Peruna.” All the soldiers cheered and banged the swords together drowning out Mardoc's next words. “Within a couple of days, Peruna will be ours!” More loud cheering. “Ours...” here he leaned back and with all his might bellowed, “FOREVER!!!” The noise that followed was so loud that even the deafest man on earth could have heard it.
The whole valley echoed with the noise of it. Rabbits dove into their holes, deer bounded into the brush. Even the old bear stopped eating honey and froze with his paw in his mouth. When the noise finally died down, the group split up and went their various ways a happy and excited bunch. Finally the long wait was over, and only now was the real fight beginning.
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A scream pierced the morning air, followed by: “Get it off of me! What is is?” then more screaming. It came from the tent that Natelin and Gardenia were sharing. In the boys tent, which consisted of Nikkelon, Garth, and Fletch (Skandar and Skylar weren't well enough to join them yet) muffled laughter could be heard by a passerby. Even though they practically smothered themselves with their pillows they weren't able to contain the laughter that followed.
They had sneaked into the girls tent at night and had lifted up the foot end covers and slipped dead snakes under and laid them on the girl's feet. Oh what joy, when the next morning, the reaction was better than the boys had hoped for. They quickly ran over to Skandar and Skylar to tell them what had happened and they all laughed till their sides hurt. Aura quickly ran in and scolded Skylar for laughing so hard because of his healing ribs. Even though his healing ribs hurt for awhile after, he didn't regret laughing as he hadn't done that in days and it felt good to do it once again.
Later in the afternoon, Garth found a dead spider on a tree branch and decided to see what fun he could have with it. He walked into camp looking for Natelin and Gardenia, then, upon spotting them walked over.
“Look what I got.” he said coming up to them.
“What?” they asked eying him warily.
“This.” he said opening his hand and pushing it at them. They screamed and clutched at each other. “No, no.” he said. “Look. Isn't it actually cute. See it has eight cute hairy legs. And a nice body that has a good shape unlike some people I could mention. He looks pretty healthy.” he sneaked a look up and saw that the girls had edged closer. He'd have to keep talking. Finally they were standing in front of him looking at it. “And see it has these nice big eyes, and....see these big teeth in front?”
“Yeah,” said Gardenia warily.
“What are they used for?” asked Natelin.
“For scaring girls!” he said and simultaneously threw the spider at them. They shrieked and backed away so fast they stumbled over their own legs so that they almost fell. He doubled over with laughter which made the girls mad and they started beating him as hard as they could, which wasn't very hard at all to him. He finally backed away and held up his hands in mock surrender.
“Okay, okay. I'll say sorry if that's what you want.” he said laughing. They humphed at him and stalked away. “I know you enjoy getting scared,” he yelled at them then turned and ran away to find Nikkelon.
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The next week passed uneventful. The reason: the centaurs went into hiding. They had found a large open plain. That wasn't the hiding place. The hiding place was a huge hill at the north end of the plain. Covered by brush at the base of the hill, was a concealed entrance that had a rotting plank door on it. The doors had been locked but a couple of swift, hard blows with an ax had chopped out the rotted wood that held the chains in place.
Garnock and his generals had lead the way down the steps into the interior. With torch held high, Garnock slowly descended into the pit as it seemed it was. When he finally reached the floor, the first several soldiers spread out around the large room lighting it up with their torches. It was the perfect spot to go into hiding. The walls were cold, gray stone, the only ventilation was a tiny slit covered by brush on the outside high up near the ceiling.
The next morning, Garth and Nikkelon were exploring down one of the passageways they had found, and found that it led to an ivy covered door. When they looked up, they could see the sky, but the rock walls were straight up and down. Skandar, who was better by now came down the passageway just then and saw them. With a little boost from Garth he caught the ivy and started using them as ropes to scale the wall.
It took him about five minutes of slipping and sliding every now and then and a vine breaking on him to get to the opening at the top.
“What do you see?” yelled Garth up to him.
They heard his voice somewhat faint and sounding distant as he had climbed up out of the hole. “It leads out onto a rock covered slope above the plain. And...” now his voice was even fainter and they had to really strain to hear what he was saying. “There's this cliff that the entrance to the hiding place is in the side of....and....oh!” Then all was silent for awhile.
“You all right?” yelled Nikkelon. No answer.
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Skandar had been carefully maneuvering through all the rocks to get towards the edge of the cliff when he had spotted a flash from the edge of the forest below. Upon further observance, he had noticed a soldier, off his horse, at the edge of the forest looking out over the plain. He knew that by the help of his telescope that he had remembered to bring along when they had ran away from the castle. The man seemed to be searching for something.
Skandar knew that if he moved, he'd probably be spotted, since he was wearing armor and the sun was out. Cautiously, he slipped off his breastplate and helmet. Then he slid out of anything that would flash in the sun and give him away, then he slowly started sneaking back up to the hole. Every now and then, he looked back to see if the guy was watching him. He never was. Finally, by inching his way on his belly across the open area, he made it to the hole and slipped down over the edge.
When Garth and Nikkelon saw him slip over the edge, they had a feeling that something was wrong. That feeling was even more assured when they saw his white face, and his scared look. His face told them everything.
“Soldier.” was all he said as he jumped off a small ledge six feet above the floor and ran out to find Garnock. Garth and Nikkelon glanced at each other, then followed.
When he found Garnock, he told him what he had found, then what he had seen from there. Garnock had dismissed them then called a meeting with his generals.
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Zebulon and his company had been traveling most of the day when they came to the top of a mountain. Down in a valley on the shores of a beautiful lake, sparkling in the sunset, was a castle. Bigger and more beautiful than any Zebulon had ever seen, and he had traveled around quite a big. It seemed like it had been carved out of the side of the cliff because it protruded straight out of the face of the cliff.
It looked like whoever had built it had blasted away rock on top until just one big hunk of rock was left standing, then carved the castle out of the hunk of rock. Whoever had done it, had then covered the rock shelf that the castle was on with sod so that it had nice lush green grass on it. Then he had blasted out a roadway leading down onto the shores of the lake. From there, you could access the woods and the world beyond.
The windows that had solid in them, seemed to have some kind of colored crystal in it so that when the setting sun's rays caught it, it made the most spectacular sight that you've ever seen. You didn't notice it till the setting sun caught the windows, that there were actually certain pictures in the crystal panes. Mostly of centaurs who looked like either generals or kings. He noticed that the topmost window had a picture his great great great grandfather in it standing beside Garnock's great great great grandfather.
It was then that recognition hit Avelignese. “I know this castle!” he suddenly exclaimed breaking the silence. “This is the castle that, before the minotaur wars started, our leader, Garnock the first, was going to give to his son, Garnock the second, as a wedding present. Sadly, he was killed in the last battle with the minotaurs. Garnock the second got married and not a word was said about this remote castle. No one's ever lived in it. I only know about it because I was one of the select few who helped build it. Only Garnock's most trusted men, whom he knew could keep a secret, helped build it. No one else even knew of it.