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In the following chapter, you will run across the term "Laurasia," which was previously comprised of the continents of Europe, Asia and North America. You will also run across the term "Gondwanaland" which was formerly Africa, South America, Antartica, India and Australia. Enjoy!!

"The Anomalies Involving Pangaea" by Ted Holden

Pangaea: The Continent

Earth Scientists Discover How Continent Broke

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The Battle Of Elah

Chapter #4 Of "Star Scroll"
By R. David Pareis

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"THE FRIENDS OF ING" Ch#2

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"The Battle of Elah" is Chapter 4 of my first novel, "Star Scroll." Enjoy the inner and outer battles. Please be sure to comment in my Guestbook.

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Chapter 4
The Battle of Elah

"And He sent out His arrows
and scattered them,
and lightning flashes in abundance,
and routed them." Psalm 18:14

Enraged by the tenacity of the small Ingdomite army deployed against his battle-hardened Imps, Bale gnashed his powerful jaws and then roared at the icy wind tufting the coarse hair of his Orangutan-hide parka. His long, exposed tail ached from the bone-chilling cold, and he cursed the stump-tailed Imps who had made the parka for their lack of hind-sight on his behalf.

Despite his anger, the frigid weather quickly dulled his boiling disposition. Stomping forward on one of the make-shift boots tied over his deadly taloned feet, Bale swung his numb tail a little closer to the fire. At least his warm-blooded metabolism would keep him active--unlike the cold-blooded Mesosaur and Rutiodon guardians of his master's caldera stronghold.

Turning his sleek-jawed head toward the foreground din of the battle zone, Bale watched as the northern squall obliviously whisked away the condensing breath of both armies like spewed smoke from the throats of dragons. His Imps had been unable to over-come the Ingdomites with their superior strength and numbers, so Bale was forced to consider finding some exploitable weakness in their tough defense.

Bale mentally tuned the amplified senses of his war-helmet upon the enemy movements beyond his front lines. He then focused his cat-like eyes upon the distant waving flags of the Dwarf king's command-post and willed his sight to ten-times magnification. The view along his line of sight was almost instantly analyzed and enlarged with telephoto-lens precision.

Even after using the war-helmet for twelve moon cycles, the the zoom feature of the helmet's optical system still confused his delicate, inner-ear equilibrium. Catching his balance on one of his powerfully muscled legs, Bale focused in on a stout, Dwarf general standing on top of a snow covered boulder while vigorously deploying troops with color-coded banners.

Squinting from too much light refraction off the encompassing white snow, Bale quickly willed his eye visor to compensate for the excessive blue light. It whirred obediently, and the tint changed from yellow to orange. Much better, he thought to himself as he watched the burly Dwarf manipulate the banners with professional ease.

Bale now understood that the Ingdomite troops manuevered according to the signals they received from the flags. He figured the Dwarf king had to be in close proximity to those banners and that he was masterminding the whole battle from reports given to him from unknown lookout positions. He began to scan the eastern ridges parallel to the valley for some sign of activity.

"Kill the Dwarf king, you wingless fool!" spat an all too familiar voice emanating from within the high-tech head-piece like an angry demon.

Startled by Gorn's furious rebuttal, Bale remembered that his indomitable master was watching and listening to his every move through the technology of the war-helmet. Having lost his train of thought, Bale nervously turned his attention back on the Dwarf command post. His Draconian lord had promised him untold favors if he could succeed in capturing the time portal on the peak of Mount Norsdon.

The Pteradracosaur had commissioned his Deinonychusaur lieutenant to march from the dark Sequoia forests surrounding his caldera stronghold in Gondwanaland with an army of 10,000 Imps. Bale had uneventfully lead his Imps over the Peaks of Anak near the Rephaim mountain-city of Castle Arba on the first leg of their journey. But then he was forced to battle his way through the dangerous Cromagnite territories north of the Great Rift Valley. After two moon cycles of intense fighting, Bale had finally defeated the Cromagnites and then had pushed north again through the endless wastelands of the Etopian Desert.

Crossing the fabled Bridge of Nisan spanning the twin mountain chasm between the Atlas Ocean and Tethys-Mede Sea--Bale prodded his army northward along the Rhine-Rhune River--and up through the Black Forests and glacier-scarred, mountain valleys of the West Laurasian subcontinent. Having finally reached the Scandinavian mountains of South West Eden, Bale was determined to push his half-breed children on across the terrors of the Great Ice in order to invade the remote arctic island of Northeast Land.

Bale had been unable to make up the time he had lost in the early stages of the campaign. He had not anticipated the loss of two valuable moon cycles from his schedule in order to defeat the fierce Cromagnite tribes. As a result, the bitter Norselands were already entering the coldest quarter of the four-seasoned sun cycle.

Unknowingly assuming that the Imp army was directed against them, the dual-nationed Cromagnites had fought savagely to protect their ancient hunting and burial grounds. Not only had Bale lost precious time while driving the Cros into the Etopian badlands, but the Black and Red warriors had also reduced the fighting strength of his hybrid army by forty percent.

Bale had been surprised that his master had not forseen how bravely disciplined the smaller Ingdomite army would be despite their renowned ferocity. He certainly had not planned on fighting an open battle in the frigid wastelands of South West Eden. Had it not been for the secret reconnaissance of Gorn's spies concerning king Benthor's war plans, he might not have been prepared for their surprise attack in the Valley of Elah.

Too much was riding upon the success of his mission. If he could conquer Ingdom, Bale had already decided to ask Gorn to provide him with a hen from his long extinct species. He had become unbearably lonely in his servitude to the Draconians. With a new hen, he could begin regenerating a new Deinonychusaurus pack. With luck, they might be able to repopulate the strange, multi-continental world which had completely wrenched itself apart since his species had died out.

Bale was still haunted by the tremendous guilt associated by causing the downfall of his entire species. By offering him great power, wealth, and knowledge, the Draconians had used him to betray all of his own kind. Little had he realized that it was the same tactic the ruthless Draconians still used on countless other distant planets since the fall of his proud race.

To make matters worse, the deceiving Pteradracosaur had not fulfilled his dark covenant with him--for Gorn had already deserted him once to perish despite all of his invaluable aid to the Draconian League. Bale desperately hoped the same thing would not happen again. In another time he might have rebelled against their authority, but now he could no longer plan anything which Gorn did not already know.

He had long resigned himself to the fact that he would always have to serve Gorn. The Draconian was far too powerful for him. Besides, Gorn had written his name on a neural net within the restored memory of his mind. To resist him would mean doom.

Bale belonged to a Saurischian species known as Deinonychusaurus--a raptor somewhat resembling a dwarf-sized Allosaur in appearance. Bale's entire race had become extinct some 60 million years before the first humanoids were given dominion of the Earth. His predatory ancestors had hunted in prides similar to lions.

Bale had been surprised through animal observation during his long trek northward that the stripes on his back were very similar to those of some of the feline predators roaming the jungles and plains of Gondwanaland.

The Deinonychusaurs had been highly intelligent creatures which the Draconians adopted as pets. Unfortunately, they had been just the kind of species which the Draconians sought to control and exploit. Bale had perished horribly, along with almost every other specialized land creature, as a result of the planetoid of Phaeton being purposefully imploded by the Draconian League in order to obtain its super-compressed core-gem.

Phaeton had been the largest of the major planetoids orbiting within the Asteroid Belt located 2.8 astronomical units from the sun. The orbiting planetisimals within the Asteroid Belt had been inhibited from forming into a fifth solid planet by the complex gravitational field of the giant gas-planet--Jupiter. This phenomena occurred in conjunction with the influence of the solar system's Ice-Line which seperates the smaller solid planets from the much larger gaseous ones.

As a result of Phaeton's destruction, a great profusion of eliptically precessing planetisimals were knocked out of the Asteroid Belt's orbit, heavily recratering all the solid planets within the inner solar system. A succession of major collisions eventually left the Earth dark and devoid of specialized life forms for millions of years.

Undaunted by the catastrophy, the Draconians simply abandoned their native, yellow-dwarf star-system--but not before mining heavy core elements from the exposed asteroid craters of the Caloris Basin on the planet Mercury and the Mare Orientale on the Earth's Moon--in order to build space station portals gravitationally powerful enough to assist them in harvesting precious heavy metal traces in far distant nebula clouds left behind by supernova explosions.

Draconian greed had no limits or remorse, and an intragalactic war soon broke out between the Draconians of the Thubin system and the Cheruvians of the Vega system who opposed them. That ageless war had raged for millennias with almost a third of the neighboring Local Group galaxies having been forceably conquered by the immortal Draconians.

Gorn had released Bale's imprisoned spirit from his own pearl of the Phaeton crystal--the Orb of Adesh. Then he placed Bale into a newly cloned body procreated from Deinonychusaur gene samples stored in his complete life-form museum. Gorn then down-loaded Bale's stored intellect from nueral memory banks within his ancient caldera laboratory. Bale cringed as he remembered the inescapable lake of fire where Gorn kept all his victims as a power base. His torment within the Orb of Adesh had only been halted in order for him to serve his master again.

Only about the size of a grapefruit--the orb nevertheless possessed the tremedous refractory powers of super-compressed, planetisimal crystal. The Draconian League had unequally cut and distributed the core-gem pearl amongst themselves before launching outward on a multi-galactic conquest.

The Draconian League's portal raids carried them deep into the nearest twenty-two clumped galaxies dominated by the Milky Way and the great spiral Andromeda galaxies. The three dimensional sphere of these Local Group galaxies comprise a relatively small Poor Cluster of galaxies confined within an imaginary sphere roughly one Megaparsec in diameter.

The reason Gorn had brought Bale back to life was to procreate a new Centaurian species to counteract the Cheruvian guarded humanoids. The battle for the dominion of the Draconian's home planet was at stake. The Imps were the experimental result of genetically splicing sections of Bale's extinct genes with those of the forest Orangutans. The Imps were a quick tempered, unspeakably ugly lot with purple-sacked snouts full of sharp teeth, and taloned hands and feet. Nevertheless, Bale considered the Baboon Imps to be his half-wit, half-breed children.

Bale was a six-foot tall bi-ped armed with sickle-taloned feet and razor-clawed, three-fingered hands. He made an imposing sight to the Friends of Ing who had never seen his like before. His most distinguishing characteristic were the Terrible Claws on his almost bird-like feet. The five-inch sickles extending from the upturned second toe of each foot were used for both climbing and killing.

Upon his head sat the war-helmet that his master had given him prior to the start of the campaign. Although his brain was larger and more clever than any of the lower creatures of his era, Bale still required the amplified senses and knowledge that the computerized head-piece gave him in order to perform with higher reasoning. With the war-helmet, Bale was a force to be reckoned with, but he had only recently become self-aware that he was nothing more than a remote-controlled puppet for his master.

Bale signaled to his waiting archers to begin another barrage--making the Dwarf command post the target of their aggression. Simultaneously, he hurled ten fresh phalanxes of axemen with bronze-spiked shields at the Dwarf front lines which had earlier swallowed one of his barbarian platoons. Snow had begun to fall even heavier, and the temperature dropped lower as another squall moved down the pyramid-like slopes of Mount Horn.

The valley floor's sedementary flood plain had turned into a bloody, body-strewn slush due to the two armies violent activities. But now, the slush was beginning to refreeze, and that change was ironically more to the advantage of the Imps despite the fact that they were suffering more because of the cold.

Benthor had been meeting with his commanders when the signal came in from Joshua that an incoming archer barrage was imminent. As they raised their shields and scampered for cover behind glacier deposited boulders, hundreds of bitterwood arrows began to rain down upon them.

Benthor had not yet reached cover when he slipped and fell on the icy sludge underfoot. He took a stone-tipped arrow in the shoulder before any of the others were able to reach him with shield protection. They quickly pulled their liege out of further harm's way, but the damage had already been done. Within minutes, the entire Ingdom host knew of their king's wounded condition. Bale had watched the event gleefully, until he was nastily urged on once more by the bellowing voice of his Draconian master.

The tide of the battle had turned dramatically since the bitterwood arrow had buried itself in Benthor's right shoulder. From his observation point, Joshua could tell that the weary Ingdomite army had lost heart, but they bravely continued the battle without the leadership of their dynamic king.

Joshua had apprehensively watched the poisonous barrages through his binoculars and saw his uncle fall. He had also helplessly watched as the battle took on a deadly new course. General Flak was no longer deploying the Ingdomite troops with banners in response to Joshua's signals. Despite his efforts, his own small war party had now become a forgotten, peripheral entity, and Joshua anguished over what he could possibly do with so few warriors under his own initiative to prevent Ingdom's defeat.

Bale and his Imps had taken full advantage of the confusion by sorely pressing in upon the command post. It was an all-out attempt to win the battle by capturing and killing king Benthor. Some of the Ingdomite generals had rallied their troops in a defensive stand, but it was obvious that they would not be able to hold off the frenzied Imps who could smell the scent of victory in the early evening air.

The weather continued to grow even worse, and Joshua realized with horror that defeat in the desolate valley would be brutally harsh--particularly for the losers of the battle. He wondered if he should retreat back to Ingdom ahead of the Imps, but he couldn't bear the thought of doing nothing to save his uncle.

He was about to give his restless war party the command to fire upon the surging Impish host, when he heard Pang howl above the wind from the high ridge directly above him. He hesitated, frantically hoping that the wolf had some plan that might turn the tide of the battle once more.

"Kill the head of Bale!" he heard Pang's insistant howling voice wail above the noise of the battle and the elements. He could barely hear the wolf because of the wind's direction.

"Destroy the head...and the body cannot harm you!" came the eerie wolf's voice once more.

Straining his eyes in the near twilight, Joshua blinked against the blowing snow and searched for the helmeted Imp commander. He finally found him atop a great boulder at the rear of the enemy line. The beast had sent everyone in a final deadly attack to secure the victory--but in the process Bale had left himself exposed and foolishly vulnerable.

Joshua quickly picked up his compound bow and chose an arrow from the quiver--carefully inserting it into the firing position on the bow string. Taking a high aim, he drew back the arrow against the 80-pound tension of the bow and lined it up on a distant landmark well above Bale's head. He exhaled slowly and then gradually released the arrow. It shot out in a deadly arc and sailed over Bale's head to land in the icy mud twenty yards past him.

Joshua almost cursed with disappointment, but Bale seemed unalarmed and completely ignorant of the arrow that had missed his head by only a foot. Joshua grabbed another arrow and fired once more, but a gust of icy wind moved the arrow at the last moment, and it too landed harmlessly beyond the beast.

This time Bale seemed somewhat suspicious, for he began looking nervously around himself. Joshua had already reloaded a third arrow with grim determination and let it fly once more. This time the wind diminished and the arrow flew true--striking Bale squarely in the center of his helmet. The force of the blow toppled the beast off the back of the high boulder which he had been using as a battle lookout.

"By the stars, Joshua...you've done it!" shouted Ody with surprise and admiration. Although he was one of the best archers in all of Ingdom, Ody knew that even his great bow and skills could never have delivered such a deadly blow from so great a distance.

"Bale is dead," Joshua said in a mumble.

But the rest of his war-party began to repeat the words in a growing chant which they shouted over and over again in unison while pointing at the prone body of Bale. At last, both hosts below them stopped fighting and stared dumbfounded, first at Joshua's archers on the ridge, and then at the fallen figure of Bale lying crumpled in the snow-drifted flood plain to their north.

"Bale is dead!"
"Bale is dead!"
"Bale is dead!" shouted Joshua's jubilant archers.

For a short time the raging elements quieted down and the absense of the wind was the only answer that could be heard in the death-like silence of the valley. The stunned Elves and Dwarves of the Ingdomite army, as well as the entire Impish host, continued to stare in disbelief at the arrow protruding between the orange-lensed mask of the immobile Deinonychusaur.

But then the voice of Pang began to howl loud above the valley like that of a Cromagnite Spirit Wolf.

"The head of Bale is dead! The Imps are doomed! Ingdom has won! Long live Benthor. Long live Joshua!"

At first it started as a low growl, but then it grew into a deafening cresendo as the throats and hearts of every Ingdomite warrior shouted and screamed out their victory cries. Confused and superstitiously afraid, the Imps panicked and fled up the valley to the north into the cold embrace of icy death.

They had lost their powerful leader, and they were terrified by the howling voice of the black wolf who stood defiantly on the ledge overlooking the fateful valley like an ill-fated messenger of doom. Joshua kept the Imps running by ordering his archers to fire upon them as they fled past their position. Hundreds of Imps fell dead in the drifted snow before they could stumble out of range.

No one noticed Bale as he crouched slowly on groggy legs and tail while trying to get his breath back. He painfully pulled loose the bleeding neural connections within the now worthless helmet and tossed it aside. His thick, bony forehead was marred with a long, bloody furrow gouged into it from the impact of Joshua's arrow. Bale roared weakly at his fleeing troops but to no avail. His army was routed, and without the war-helmet, he would be unable to lead the host effectively against Ingdom.

Grabbing a few of his panic-stricken Imp officers to be his servants, Bale took one last look at the jubilantly distracted human on the east ridge who had destroyed his moment of glory. Hatred boiled behind his blood-soaked eyelids as he determined to take his revenge upon the unlikely savior of Ingdom. His hate filled eyes also took in the black wolf silhouetted on the highest ridge whose spirit-like voice had frightened his warriors into desperate flight.

Then Bale turned and ordered his two cringing servants to pick up his war-packs lying beside the now useless command post. Shortly thereafter, the three slinking figures disappeared amid the confusion of resurgent wind and heavy new snowfall. Once they hit the other side of the valley, they turned south and skirted around the Ingdomite war camp heading straight for warmer climate. Bounding furiosly through the deep snow like a rabid kangaroo, Bale never gave a second thought to the four-thousand-odd Imps who would inevitably freeze to death in the northlands without his leadership.

The Battle of Elah - Part 2

King Benthor lay flat on his back within the command-post lodge while two anxious herbal doctors probed the gruesome arrow wound in his right shoulder with blunt bone needles. They both looked up startled when their work was interrupted by a burly Dwarf officer who threw open the seal-skin flap and shouldered his way in to check on the king's condition.

General Flac pulled up short, obviously surprised to find his liege still alive. Benthor's sweating forehead was deeply furrowed, and his eyes were tightly closed in pain as he fought to silently endure the necessary examination of the wound. The general quickly regained his composure and then made his way over to Benthor's good side.

"My king...your young barbarian nephew has somehow managed to save us. The lad mysteriously acquired the help of a sentient black wolf. The lobo's haunting voice from a high ridge stampeded the entire Impish host immediately after Joshua knocked the Imp commander off his observation rock with one of his Sagitta arrows," recounted General Flac to his feverish king.

Benthor visibly struggled to remain conscious while General Flac finished giving his report.

"After the victory was secured, I sent my scouts to search the battlefield, but they have been unable to find the body of the fallen beast," finished Flac while eyeing the king's neck for a gold chain.

Benthor's herbal doctors continued to calmly pry at the stone war-head which had penetrated deep into his shoulder. They expertly worked in tandem to free the poisoned arrow by pushing flesh aside while moving the shaft from corner to corner. The process was very tedious--and bloody.

General Flac could tell by their rigid facial expressions that the triangular shaped arrowhead had them worried. Like the head of a poisonous snake, it had lodged its point deep into bone and ligament. The doctors were very anxious to remove the bitterwood arrow, but then Benthor roared in pain and suddenly brushed them aside. He mustered his remaining strength in order to answer General Flac in short, rasping breaths.

"I knew Joshua was special ever since I took him through the time portal. Rally all our troops...and get them busy...making shelters and fires. Make a count of the dead. Pile all the corpses...and get them ready for burning. We won't be able to bury them...not out here in this glacier-stripped valley...there are far too many."

General Flac could see that Benthor's face was also pained with the grief of so many Ingdomite casualties of war. A general won or lost battles by glorious profession, but a king was responsible for all the lives of his people. Wise old Benthor knew that the romance of war was only for the foolhardy adventurists who had never experienced it.

General Flac recalled that the awful reality of war was gruesome death and hell, widowed wives and orphans, and crippled men with amputated limbs. War not only snuffed out the living, but also those who might have lived through them. Flac fancied that he could see the loss and pain of every dead and wounded warrior reflected in Benthor's weak red eyes and labored breaths.

"We're going to have to ride out this squall...and then march back to Ingdom when the weather breaks."

"Yes, lord Benthor," said Flac before turning to leave the tent. He had come hastily after the battle to steal the hidden blue key from around Benthor's neck, but there was still too much life left in the old badger. He decided to try again later. Besides, Flac thought, the chances were still good that the king would not last through the night.

"Flac!" called out Benthor while grimacing in pain.

"Yes, my liege?"

"Send Joshua to me. I must see him...before the fever takes my mind."

Benthor's bloody barrel chest labored--the feathered shaft of the bitterwood arrow rising and falling with each struggling breath.

"Yes, my king," said Flac with a somewhat troubled expression on his mud-smeared, snow-encrusted face.

He marveled that Benthor would confide in his half-breed nephew rather than himself. He wondered what Benthor might say to the tall upstart who had somehow rescued Ingdom from sure oblivion.

It was true, Joshua had somewhat proven himself worthy of his royal Dwarf heritage in the battle, but the lad was quickly becoming a threat to the political power structure of the Union. Flac had openly resented Joshua's interest in the Elf princess, for there had never been an inter-marriage between the royal families. The intrusion of the Blackwells seemed destined to destroy Ingdom's heritage.

Flac determined that if Joshua continued to grow in power and prestige, as surely he would after his heroics in the Valley of Elah, that he would be forced to gather the trusted members of the Dwarf political regime and the Elf Senate. They would discuss whatever measures would be deemed necessary to ensure their longevity.

Once outside the tent, General Flac reluctantly sent a messenger to fetch Joshua by order of the king. Until the old fool was dead, Flac had no choice but to obey the king's commands.

Joshua didn't know what to expect when he ducked into Benthor's tent. The king looked ghostly pale and clammy, and he seemed to be somewhat at odds with his doctors who were wanting to extract the arrow before he talked with anyone else. But the charisma of Benthor's dominating authority had kept them in check long enough for Joshua to arrive.

"Joshua! Come over here, lad. I'm glad that I am able to talk to you...before they take this cursed thing out of my shoulder."

As Joshua drew near, Benthor secretively pressed something hidden into the palm of his hand. At first he couldn't think of what it might be, but then he realized that it had to be the portal key. Joshua slowly pocketed the chain and key so that neither of the doctors saw it. He understood that Benthor could not allow the portal key to fall into the wrong hands while he was recovering from a war wound.

"Listen closely, Joshua. When the battle field was searched...no one was able to find the Imp commander."

Benthor's bearded, sweating face contorted in pain once more as Joshua digested the news. Since they had not pursued the Imps north across the frozen lakes, no one knew for sure what had happened to the panicked hybrids. If their commander was not dead after all, then they would have no choice but to assume that the Imps were still a threat to Ingdom Castle.

Benthor looked deep into his eyes and Joshua knew that his uncle had already come to the same conclusion.

General Flac suddenly re-entered the lodge and shook the snow off his cape in the doorway. His eyes looked up at Joshua's with a hint of anger.

"General Flac...come over here. I want you to witness this. I am bestowing upon Joshua...the minor crown of the Highlands of Ingdom," Benthor rasped between coughs and gulping air. The fever was getting worse, and he would soon be unable to stay conscious.

"But Uncle Benthor...I," began Joshua with stunned disbelief.

"Silence! I am king...and my word is law! You will obey me in this. Flac! You will see to it...that the young lad...gets total support while I'm incapacitated. He will rule in my stead...until I recover. I will hold you personally responsible...if anything happens to him. Do you understand? Promise me!"

"I understand, my liege...and I promise," said Flac with reservation before bowing his head in obedience.

"Good. Joshua, fetch me my antler pack...over there on the caribou pelts."

Joshua complied quickly and opened the pack for Benthor to see inside.

"There...the black and gold scepter with the lion's head. It is yours. Rule Ingdom well, my son."

With that, Benthor fell back onto his bedding and finally waved for his doctors. They quickly pushed General Flac and Joshua out of the lodge and into the bitter night air.

It was still snowing lightly, but the wind had died down again. Taking a deep breath, Joshua looked up and thought he saw a bright star shining through the heavy sky for just a moment. The squall was finally breaking up.

The black wolf, Pang, sat along-side a nearby fire where Joshua had left him before entering the royal lodge. The Elves and Dwarves around that fire had given Pang a wide berth--being somewhat in awe of Joshua's new mysterious ally.

Even so, the weary Ingdomite warriors close-at-hand greeted Joshua with new respect and admiration, as he and the indignant general approached the fire to warm themselves. The whole war-camp had been ablaze with many fires, as well as worried conversations.

Most of the cold, weary men were eating dried strips of caribou jerky while perfecting their war stories over limited rations of barley ale. Many of them sported blood stained bandages of some kind. Wails from the tents of the wounded still managed to keep all their nerves on edge.

Some of the weary men would have to be deployed for night watch duties, Joshua thought to himself. Just then, General Flac cleared his throat to speak to the camp.

"May I have your attention please!" proclaimed the general with a flair that came easy to men of authority. The Ingdomite warriors within earshot stopped their activities and strained to hear what the ranking Dwarf officer had to say.

"Our Lord Benthor is at this very moment being attended to by his herbal doctors. The king is in good spirits and sends his greetings to each and every one of you." Flac paused for a moment for the news to filter out toward the edges of the camp.

"The king has commanded that his nephew, Joshua Blackwell, to whom he has given the royal scepter of the Highlands of Ingdom, reign in his stead until his health permits him to return to the Royal Throne of Ingdom Castle!"

The men of Ingdom were stunned into silence. But as they grasped the significance of Benthor's wisdom, shouts of acknowledgment began to be heard throughout the camp as General Flac forced Joshua to raise the ancient scepter for the men to see. A week before, Joshua had been nothing more than a curiosity freak who had returned from banishment. Now he held the ruling scepter of the Highland provinces.

"My friends, may I also have your attention!" broke in Joshua, who was uneasy with his sudden, new acclaim. He caught a glimpse of General Flac glowering hatefully at him from nearby. In that moment, he realized how the Union's carefully laid plans to dethrone Benthor might have been seriously jeopardized by his uncle's clever action. Even if the Union managed to overcome him, King Benthor had already laid the ground work to destroy General Flak's military and political career.

"You have fought and won a mighty battle for Ingdom this day!" shouted Joshua above the diminishing din.

The camp once more burst into cheers as the men brandished their swords and spears in one hand while trying not to spill any of their meager rations of ale in the other.

"Tomorrow, if the weather permits, we will begin preparations for our march back to Ingdom. In the morning, I will need volunteers to build a litter, upon which we will carry King Benthor all the way back to Ingdom Castle. Who will volunteer?"

Hundreds of swords sprang into the night air amid the shouts of jubilation over the prospect of returning home. Joshua had to hold up his arms to quiet them down.

"Very good. I hope I get just as many volunteers to carry that litter!" he shouted with a wide grin.

A roar of laughter greeted him in response. Someone began a chant somewhere in the back of the camp--someone whose voice sounded like the exuberant young Turk. Others soon picked it up.

"Hail Benthor! Hail Joshua! Hail Benthor and Joshua!"

The camp shook with the chant until Joshua raised his arms once more for attention. The snow had finally stopped and the sky was beginning to clear. Joshua could now clearly make out the asterism of Orion flying between the fast moving, wispy clouds. The bright star he had noticed before had been Rigel.

"The coming Prince of Light looks down upon your victory tonight!" he roared while pointing up at the mythical star figure with his golden scepter. Everyone in the camp stared up in fascination.

"But know this! The Creator of the stars and Earth...the Most High God...who hangs the stars of Orion upon nothing for us to see this night...He is the One who has given us a great victory today. Give Him all the praise and the glory instead of Orion. For the Most High is a far greater King than my uncle or I."

As the men all stared up into the starry heavens, it was as if a blinding veil had suddenly been lifted from their eyes. But as the whole camp continued to watch the asterism of Orion, a sudden meteor shower streaked across the wispy night sky toward the north. The Ingdomites immediately crouched down to the ground and began to mumble among themselves, as if they had seen a bad omen.

Just as the Imps had been superstitious of the black wolf, Joshua could now see that the Ingdomites were also subject to supernatural fears. Joshua quieted their uneasiness by telling them that the Most High God was still shooting out His arrows at the routed Imps. They were quick to recall that it had been Joshua's Sagitta arrow that had crushed the head of their powerful enemy.

Sending his warriors back to their warm campfires, Joshua told them to turn in early for there would be a lot of work to be done in the morning. They all cheered him and Benthor once more, and then busied themselves preparing their bedrolls for a well deserved night's rest. As an after-thought, Joshua delegated authority to the silently fuming General Flac to post lookouts, and then he and Pang set out to find the fires of Ody and his Elfin archers.

It was an hour later that Joshua, Ody, and Pang talked with one of the north-side lookouts as they left the war camp to investigate Bale's disappearing act. Pang limped ahead of them on his snow encrusted, rabbit-pelted splint.

As they picked their way through the bloody, frozen corpses of the slain, they neared the glacier deposited boulder which the Deinonychusaur had used as his command post. Pang bristled and grumbled under his breath, but a deep blanket of snow made it impossible for Joshua and Ody to make out any sign of danger.

"What is it, Pang? What do you sense?" asked Joshua while slowly unsheathing his ivory-handled sword. The blue steel blade of Maranatha shimmered in the light of his gas lamp.

"That small mound in the snow over there," growled Pang while pointing curiously to their left like a retriever.

Joshua held his lamp a little higher while walking over to the small, snow-covered mound. As he got closer, a chill went down his spine, for the feathered-shaft of a graphite arrow was protruding out of the center of the mound. The arrow was unmistakably his, for it had two green rings marking the end of shaft--his own personal identification mark. He dug in the snow with the tip of his blade and uncovered the now worthless sense-helmet that Bale had tossed aside.

Although he had rendered the Draconian war helmet useless, it was evident from the barely penetrated under-padding that he had not killed the clever Imp commander. Joshua handed his lantern to Ody and then picked up the helmet which gave off a few audible crackles of protest. He unscrewed the black-razored hunting point and then forcefully pulled his arrow out of the light-weight helmet--sliding the recovered shaft carefully into the bow's quiver over his right shoulder.

After a few minutes of careful searching, they were able to locate his other two arrows. Before they turned to head back to camp, Joshua hewed the crackling war helmet in half with his sword for good measure. It discharged one more loud spark of protest--and then became eternally silent.

"Benthor was right. Ingdom may yet be in danger," said Joshua while staring out into the encompassing ring of darkness.

Ody nodded in agreement while glaring at the severed helmet as if it still posed some unknown threat to his people.

"Bale is nothing without Gorn's voice in his ears," said Pang before turning on all fours to limp back toward camp.

Lying on his back within the royal tent, King Benthor struggled for life against the bitterwood poison in his system. The excruciating pain of his war wound kept him unconsciously oblivious of the noisy camp outside. In Benthor's feverish dreams, he was back at Ingdom Castle and he saw a vision. All the people of Ingdom were pointing up at the sky.

Curious as to what they were watching, Benthor turned and saw Joshua riding upon the gold-fringed cosmic clouds from the east with many followers. Then he saw another vision in which Joshua stood with a mighty lion facing east at his right hand, and a bull facing west at his left hand, and an eagle facing north behind him. Benthor marked these visions in his mind and pondered them in his heart.

Earlier, the herbal doctors had struggled while tending to the wounded king. The stone-chipped, chert point of the arrow had cut deep into Benthor's shoulder. By the time they finally managed to extract it, the king had lost a lot of blood. They had been forced to stop the bleeding with a red-hot poker, and King Benthor had passed out from the pain while continuing to burn up with fever.

They had administered the right leaves to the wound to draw out the bitterwood poison, but they were very concerned with his weakened condition and faint pulse. They would have to watch him carefully for the rest of the night.

After the king's two doctors had left for their dinner fires, Joshua and Pang greeted the posted guards at the royal lodge. The tired Dwarves did not like the idea of a wolf being in the presence of their ailing liege and resisted the lobo. Pang abruptly told them to "go bark at the moon," and boldly slipped through the lodge flap, leaving his embarrassed master to smooth the guards ruffled feathers.

Benthor looked as deathly pale as some of the corpses Joshua had seen on the bloody battlefield outside. He took out an onion and small flask of cooking vinegar from under his coat and knelt beside Benthor. He then cut up the onion with his knife which he had sterilized in a campfire. It did not make his eyes water.

Spreading the chopped onion inside a brand new handkerchief from his own pack, he saturated the onion with vinegar and folded the cloth to make a fever pack for his uncle. His parents from the future had taught him the ancient remedy for fever. Joshua then placed the fever pack on Benthor�s chest near the fevered wound.

He waited for about half-an-hour and then removed the fever pack to open it. The onions had shriveled as if they had been cooked in a frying pan. The vinegar had opened Benthor�s skin pours and the onion had drawn the burning fever out. Benthor looked much more relaxed and was no longer sweating from the fever caused by the poisoned wound.

Still worried from his uncle�s blood loss, he kneeled and silently prayed for Benthor�s recovery. As the night hours slipped away, Joshua lost track of when the praying ended and the sleep began, but he'd been in deep slumber for quite some time when he was awakened with a start by a cold nose whispering in his ear.

"Lie down on those pelts over there, master. I hope you don't always make as much noise when you sleep. Don't worry about King Benthor. I will stand guard the rest of the night to make sure the Dwarf guards do their job."

Joshua still had not gotten used to the wolf's ability to talk. He patted the wolf on the head and then gratefully laid down on an open section of the fur-pelted, lodge floor.

Pang positioned himself near the tent flap with one eye open for the remainder of the uneventful night. The wolf had grown very tired by the time he moved to wake up Joshua just before dawn. The sleepy wolf reported that he had watched Benthor's doctors check him a few times during the night to clean the wound and to wipe his face and arms with snow. The wound had been ugly and swollen, but the poison's fever seemed to have completely dissipated.

Pang had watched he doctors repack the wound with pure honey to prevent infection, and then they had sleepily trudged off to return to their own tents. Sometime later, General Flak had stuck his head inside the flap, but he had not entered after noticing Pang watching him carefully.

Joshua then got up to inspect his uncle. Although Benthor still looked as pale as the living dead, at least his breathing seemed more regular than the previous night. Both he and Pang felt more optimistic about Benthor's chances for survival.

Pang was just about to go relieve himself when a bundle of blurred feathers swooped through the open lodge flap and winged its way over to Benthor. Joshua sat frozen still, startled by the screeching of the peregrine falcon until it settled itself upon one of the antler's on Benthor's war pack.

It was Aquila, Benthor's most trusted messenger and friend. The fierce-eyed peregrine examined his wounded master and then turned his attention back upon Joshua and Pang. The wolf casually nodded while Aquila ruffled his head feathers.

"What brings you to the aid of Ingdom, brother wolf?" screeched the falcon boldly.

"I am now in the servitude of Joshua Blackwell...in gratitude for saving my life. News from a sister caribou brought me to this remote valley to help Benthor against the Draconian's invaders," replied Pang with a steady gaze.

"I welcome you then, as a friend and ally," retorted the falcon.

Aquila then asked Joshua for news of the battle and Benthor's war-wound. Joshua gave the unblinking bird a report of the whole campaign with as much detail as he could remember. After he finished, he asked Aquila to fly back to Ingdom with news of the victory. He then secretly gave the falcon the blue key that Benthor had given him the night before, with orders to take it to Queen Miomi for safe keeping.

Pang was forced to tell Aquila about Joshua's Highland scepter since Joshua had neglected to make mention of it in his report.

After eating a distasteful but necessary breakfast of frozen caribou for strength, Aquila departed for his return flight back to Ingdom Castle with the all important news of victory. The blue-steel key to the Fountain of the Deep was firmly tied to one of his taloned claws.

There would be much grief in the kingdom despite their victory. The body count had revealed the cost of war. 903 Dwarves and 877 Elves had died either in battle or from their severe wounds during the night. Another 1018 suffered from a wide range of lesser wounds.

They had counted over 2000 slain Imps on the battle field, and reports were coming in from scouting parties sent north that many hundreds more peppered the brutal landscape along the shores of the frozen lakes at the end of the valley. Most of the Baboon-Imps were thought to have disappeared in the snow and ice of the frozen tundra.

Nothing but steep mountains lay to the north and west, so it looked as though not many of the Imps who crossed the fabled Bridge of Nisan would ever return to Gondwanaland. Pang had found the almost indistinguishable snow-track impressions of the Deinonychusaur and two of his servants running off toward the south. Joshua felt relieved that he would not have to push his crippled army on a forced march back to their mountain fortress.

Although the sun was shining brightly, the temperature was still bitter cold. Unable to dig in the frozen ground, they piled all the bodies and unwanted battle debris in a huge pile downwind from camp. The bonfire sent black smoke billowing high into the mountain sky. The mood was solemn considering the loss of so many comrades. Their grieving families would have little to remember them by, except their swords and money pouches. The survivors had too much to carry and too great a distance to traverse before they could return home once more.

The rest of the day was spent building sleds and repairing snow shoes. Benthor's litter was prepared and all needed supplies were packed for departure. Not much war booty had been found in the Imp's camp. Some of the men picked up Cromagnite weapons and souvenirs that the Imps had captured to give their friends back home.

Such was the novelty for momento�s of war. But the ones who fought the battle would carry unwanted momento�s of the campaign for years to come. Against opposition, Joshua released the fifty-three prisoners of war. The Imp army was soundly defeated, and he felt no need for any more shedding of blood. The weary and down-cast Imps were given a little food and were told to never return to Laurasia again.

Joshua felt that his army's meals should be rationed to conserve their supplies until fresh game could be found. There would be no fruits, vegetables, or mushrooms until they returned to the fertile Ingdom valley. Benthor had regained consciousness by early evening. He wanted ale and venison--he got water and broth.

Everyone turned in early that night, exhausted and anxious to be on their way home. Joshua couldn't help but think how worried Celia must be for her brother, and he hoped for himself. He thanked God that of the 100 men he had been given to lead, that he had not lost one. He didn't feel much like a hero--he didn't feel much like a king--he just felt tired and lonely in a bizarre world of endless danger.

Pang had become his ever-present shadow and friend. The wolf seemed to add some new dimension to his already tall stature among the Friends of Ing. He didn't think of future Earth much anymore. North Carolina seemed like a fantasy story-land from his distant past instead of his impossible future. He had entered the time portal as an immature young man. Now everyone knew him as a warrior and a king.

He and Pang spent the night again in the royal lodge. Before turning in, he retrieved the little pocket Bible out of his antler pack along with a flashlight and read Psalm 18. He drank in the words like refreshing water--a comfort to his soul. Praying himself to sleep, he subconsciously dreamed of Celia's gentle love waiting for him in the safety of Ingdom Valley.

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