On the flat steps before the wall of the dead, Anonster and Shoot found themselves hard at work piling alien corpses on a great mound at the wall. Muscles strained under the lifeless bodies. The sun had just passed below the mountains and the promise of the night's cold was first spoken by the breeze which rose off the sea. "You ought well today," Antenor said to Shoot as he tossed the body he carried onto the pile, "for a woman."
"As did you," congratulated Shoot, laughing at the insult. "Maybe if I am injured you will be able to keep up with me." Shoot grunted as he heaved a cool body onto another, as Antenor dragged a body by the ankles.
"Maybe," started Anonster, "I was so far ahead you did not see me."
Behind them, the Wolfenboss lifted two bodies over his shoulders and made his way towards the two youths. "More likely offering your backside," chuckled Shoot.
"Jealousy does not befit you, my friend," smiled Anonster as he threw another at the heaping pile of the dead. The Wolfenboss climbed on to the bodies of his enemies and each dead raider on his shoulders was soon at the feet of Anonster.
"Move it men!" called out Syrup, out of breath and at the base of the pile. "Pile those raiders high!" She took one last look at the raiders' camps as wind tossed crimson behind her. "We're in for one wild night!"
"Yes, sir!" roared the Wolfenboss.
That night, on the worn roads on the cliffs by the River Twygz, quiet gripped their black frame. The water below lapped onto ageless rock, once dry and hollow by the machinations of a tyrant, but now, trees that were dry for decades had life in them once more. In those trees, a light breeze whispered through them out into the darkness. These beings served the will of Tatanga for so long, neither remembered the exact date of their subservience. Clouds rolled against the quarter moon and black banners flooded the sky. Their eyes were as dark as night, their teeth filed to fangs and their desires, soulless. Their war drums pounded like the heartbeat of a roar of a prehistoric dinosaur. Their form was wordless, faultless and moved in perfect unison. Each collective step struck the ground of Sarasaland as if Rudy and Kalypso were making love. When their feeth pounded the ground, it was hardly the feet of men, for their nails had been shaped to claws. Their skin was covered with black armour from which their muscular figure protruded from ornate plates inlaid with gold. Only dead men knew what the ancient writing on them looked like in depth. These were the personal guard to Tatanga, his planet's warrior elite, the deadliest fighting force in all of the galaxy. One of them turned to the pirate camp as his demonic brothers passed behind him. There was barely a hiss of breath as he bared his saw blade like teeth. His black eyes were shark like and sought pirate blood. They were the Kamens.
A nameless Kamen at the front of the column held up his fist and, as one, they stopped. He lowered his fist slowly and took a few tentative steps out of formation and scanned the obstacles in his way. It was a wall of stone of fresh alien dead, so many feet high and it ran from cliff wall to cliff wall practically damming the River Twygz. He stared at the grotesque sight of his comrades and something new arose from his belly. It froze his joints and made his breath catch in his throat. It was something he had not felt in his countless forays in the battlefield. It was fear.
Now, while the pirates of Kitchen Island were fresh and at full strength. Before wounds and weirness took their toll. The mad Tatanga threw the best he had at them for Wario had taken Syrup's bait. The Kamen at the front reached with shaking hands to two sabres at his back. Stepping slowly away from the wall, he freed the two arcing blads and nervously watched the wall for movement. Then, he and his comrades began to scale it, get to the other side, go to Rogueport and link up with Tatanga.
Within the wall of the dead, the dull gold of a pirate's helmet was barely visible. The unblinking eyes of Syrup was hidden among the dead. Nine years ago, she never thought she would lay in wait in a mass grave of her own making. "Pirates, push!" roared the Wolfenboss in her steed. From behind the wall, a hoard of crimson and bronze pressed as one against the wall with black faces which tumbled with the Kamens on top of them, sending them crashing into the consuming River Twygz. Many survived the fall but were brought face to face with the surging swell of pirate shields, spears and devolution guns.
Syrup shot her devolution gun to full capacity, turning three of Kamens in front of her into ooze before tossing it down and picking up a spear. She landed a strong foot into the chest of a skewered man and pushed him with a single powerful stroke of her spear.
With his shield, Anonster blocked a blade strike meant for the Wolfenboss, who flashed the young soldier a look before ramming his spear into the eye of the attacker. This was the hardest fighting they had ever faced. War cries howled from the immortals as they faced the pirates. "Stand your water!" roared a particurly ugly Kamen. Yet he was bumped into by a retreating soldier, who was hopping away from the carnage on sailboats. The Kamen commander grabbed the soldier and threw him back into the fighting, even though he knew, fighting on sailboats or while wading in water was not really anyone's specialty but those of the Kitchen Island pirates. "I said stand your water!"
Syrup parried a blow and then delivered a strike into another Kamen. One of the Kamens leaped onto the shield of a pirate attacker. His toes grabbed the bottom of the shield like an ape's hands, pulling the swords at his back free and slicing him across the neck of the soldier. This was the first fatality on the side of the pirates. It was the sign that they had begun to lose the river to the Kamens and were being pushed back, wading their sailboats however far back they could.
Syrup found herself fighting two Kamens at a time, grimacing through clenched teeth. She fell back as the Kamens took their toll on the now withering pirates, locked in hand to hand struggle on their sailboats with the Kamens. A Kamen's gnashing teeth were just inches from Syrup's teeth. She was barely able to draw her sword to draw the Kamen's blood. Then, from the heart of the Kamen horde, the largest of their fiercest ranks rushed forward, leaping over multiple sailboats at a time. He was a full seven feet tall at the shoulder, his veins bulged like serpents as he roared and he collapsed a pirate shield with a single kick while in the same moment decapitating another foe. This was Tooty Kamen. The giant Kamen focused his milky eyes on Syrup, who quickly dispatched the two Kamens that had occupied her. She locked eyes with the giant and he charged for her. Syrup recovered a spear and thrust it at the charging monster, who rose into the air in a thundering strike, cutting clean in two the spear shaft of the captain. He landed with his full near four hundred pounds of crushing muscle onto the shield of Syrup. Almost certainly he would have crushed her to death had she not been cushioned by the water below the mutilated bodies of the fallen.
Syrup, laying and near floating on her back, recovered her wits just long enough to have her sword kicked from her hand. Tooty roared again, pulling Syrup's helmet off, spinning it to the rest of the blood-filled river. Tooty pulled his blade down toward the exposed head of the captain, but she raised her arm, catching the raw metal blade with a roof block on her bronze covered forearm. From deep within her spirit, which was shaped into a warrior once after nine years of piracy, Syrup managed to lay a crushing right hook to the jaw of the giant, who split blood as he roared in defiance. Tooty tossed his sword down as he moved right into Syrup's face, roaring as he opened his mouth. A mixture of blood and saliva poured in the rivulets between the sharpened teeth of the giant while his eyes fixed on Syrup's neck. The captain's muscles could only strain beneath the mass of the Kamen giant.
In her desperation, Syrup called, "Cractus… now!"
The giant Kamen was inches from Syrup's neck when he heard the battle cry of the pirates of the Emerald Pass. Tooty was only momentarily distracted, but it was enough to allow Syrup to strain the last remaining inch to a devolution gun. She kicked the giant off of her and in the same motion, shot Tooty between his head and shoulders. The monster's head turned into ooze separate from his body.
From a small concealed thicket, once a cave, at the side of the cliffs closest to the center of the Kamens, the world moved. Then, rocks fell on top of Kamens to reveal the charging pirates of the Emerald Pass. Cractus led his men with ferocity as they cut into the Kamens. Cractus fought his way over the sailboats right ot he Kamen commander, who was prepared to cut down his own men to reach this secondary pirate leader. "Fight or die where you stand!" roared the Kamen commander. The eyes of the soldier closest to the commander went wide as he could see past his commander to the ambushing pirates descending upon them. The commander saw his fear and turned just in time to be devolved by Cractus' gun.
"Go!" roared Cractus. "Show the Kitchen Island pirates what we can do!" Cractus turned quickly, throwing his spear into the chest of a Kamen. He drew his sword and fought on, gun in one hand and blade in the other. He thrust and he jabbed, his arm barely being cut even after he missed a strike. In exchange to the cut, he plunged his sword into the heart of a kamen. "Call us amateurs, will they?"
The pirates of the Emerald Pass shouted and cursed, stabbing widly. They were more brawlers than warriors. They were farmer and plotter, blacksmith and warrior. They were free men all, teeth clenched in a battle rage, shooting blasts, thrusting spears and swords through the frightened throngs of their enemies. They were pushing, their legs driving shields against piceous bronze. They forced dozens of heavily weighted Kamens off of sailboats and down into the depths of the River Twygz below. They made a wondrous mess of things. They were brave amateurs and they did their part.
Syrup pushed forward, her small but powerful muscles flexing, made hungry by the wide-eyed terror of the Kamens. They fell over each other in the water to flee the attacking pirate captain. As the slaughter continued below, from the cliff overlooking the battlefield, silhouetted by the crescent moon, Tatanga watched as his invincible immortals fell like wheat under the sickle of the pirates. An alien who believed himself to serve a God, and yet he found he just felt a terrifying chill up his spine. Tatanga's lips tightened, he breathed through his flaring nostrils as below him, even his war drums were silenced.