Yggsdrasil
Chapter 19: A place to spend the night.
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and clean up the mess on the way to it.
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Scouts soon located the best spot for a campsite and returned. It was behind them. The Scouts reported to the First Sergeant and the First Shirt reported to the Captain. The Captain then gave orders. Immediately the caravan began to retrace its path. They were all heading back toward the head of the road. To the portal.
Lamar rode Jeb and they lazily walked back the way they had come in such a panic. Might as well get started on the clean up.
Chain of command is important in the Army and Lamar was an officer. He followed the chain of command, mostly. When it suited him to do so. In this case it meant that he told the First Sergeant what he wanted done. The First Sergeant then told the Platoon Sergeants. The Platoon Sergeants told the Squad Leaders who in turn told the Soldiers. It seemed cumbersome but it worked. Soldiers immediately begin to field dress the road kill.
Lamar noticed that Kirki was riding his bear beside him. The bear was almost the size of Jeb and so Kirki was easily visible. Kirki was trying to tell him something. It had to do with the road kill.
Lamar called to the First Sergeant.
“Sergeant Halsey we have a problem” he said “tell the men to step back from the carcasses.”
The order went down the chain of command and the men stepped away from the dead animals and watched in amazement as the Kindred wagons, somehow they learned that the locals called themselves “Kindred”, pulled by six giant buffalo each, filed out onto the yellow bricked road and rolled past them at a jog.
They were further amazed that when the wagon passed a carcass some type of mechanism latched onto and loaded the dead animal into the wagon. The wagons were obviously in communication with each other and shared the carcasses. None were missed . The men were delighted. That was one messy job that they wouldn’t have to do. They mounted their horses and followed the wagons to the new campsite.
The Trolls, having nothing else to do and no where to go, followed.
The mysterious yellow bricked road on which the stampede had occurred exited the portal and only went several tens of yards before it made a sharp turn. Had it not turned the road would have gone out onto a little peninsula. oddly enough it had deep, really deep ditches on both sides for that distance and the ditches went UNDER the road when it turned. If there were any water in those ditches it would be ejected over the cliff on both sides of the sky-fort. Perhaps that was the wrong word. Peninsula is what it would have been called had the Mesa been surrounded by water. It was not. There was no water. Just air. Lots and lots of air. There was no visible bottom looking off those cliffs. Far, far, FAR below there were clouds. It was if it were floating in space.
Surely not.
The little peninsula in the sky was fairly spacious. It covered several hundred acres, perhaps a square mile. On it were woods and a small meadow. It even had, against all logic, a spring fed pond near one edge. That pond spilled over the side of the escarpment to produce a magnificent waterfall and a gorgeous rainbow.
Nothing could be seen in any direction but sky, clouds and more sky. It was literally the edge of the world. The peninsula protruded PAST the edge of the world. The ground below on all sides, was so far away as to be invisible, it was really strange to be looking DOWN at sky. It was dizzy-making. A person might fall. It would be best not to stand too close to the edge.
The neck of the promontory was narrow and exquisitely defensible, literally crying for fortification. Even minimally fortified a few armed men could hold off an army with relative ease. It was a much better campsite than any other given patch of forest or meadow.
Sgt. Halsey began organizing. That was what he did best. He was, after all, the First Sergeant. His job was to see to it that things got done. His superior told him what they wanted done and he made it happen. He liked it that way. It made life simple for him. He set different squads and platoons to different tasks. The least skilled men were to do the grunt work.
Too bad about the Trolls, they were brutes and each could probably outwork a dozen humans. No one trusted them yet so as they arrived they were placed under the watchful eye of well armed guards. They, and everything else, moved onto the promontory.
While busy organizing things Sgt. Halsey noticed the big Texan, some other humans and some of the little people file out onto the headland and get comfortable. That was the language group. The captain had asked around for anyone with multiple language experience. They were exempt from all other tasking. Learning the little people’s language had priority.
First Sgt. Halsey oversaw his men. But mostly he wanted to stay busy. If he was busy he wouldn’t panic. He wanted to panic. He wanted to run screaming into the woods and maybe jump off a cliff or something. Given their circumstances that would be frightenly easy to do. He was terrified and pretty much scared spit-less. He was compensating furiously.
of Trolls and , Bears and Griffin….
…on an island in the sky…
..oh my
Didn’t rhyme. HE didn’t care...It kept running through his mind.
This wasn't covered in the manual, not explicitly. Implicitly it was. Keep busy. Allow himself or his men exactly NO time for panic , he knew that. So he kept busy and he kept the men busy. He promised himself a nice little mental breakdown later. He'd worked for it, he deserved it and he was going to enjoy it.
Just not right now.
Right now he organized.
He glanced occasionally at the Captain and the language group. There was serious waving of hands and upper body movement. The knife slashes and the blood brother thing was new though. Sgt. Halsey had heard of Blood Brother Rituals among the Indians but not seen one. Perhaps that Texan was part Indian. Being Black that seemed unlikely but a lot of unlikely things had happened recently. The Blood Brother thing seemed messy. Maybe that meant all was going well, or maybe they were desperate and willing to try anything
Oh well, not his business.
Sgt. Halsey made sure that the cook wagon had coffee going constantly. Any time any one wanted a hot drink Halsey wanted it available. That would mitigate the booze problem. They didn’t HAVE a booze problem
Yet.
He didn’t intend to allow one to develop either. He knew that HE wanted to get drunk now, very bad, others would also. He had to nip that in the bud right off. He put the booze under lock and key and sent the only key via runner to the Captain.
Some of the foods stores had broken open during the rough ride. They might as well be used for supper. He told the cook to put on a large spread. This evening they would feast and tonight they would sleep like the dead.
To be Continued
If you missed the start of this book
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21