Chapter 3
"What should we do?" asked Jo.
"We will wait, we always wait." replied the shaman.
"Shouldn't we at least arm some of the men? Shouldn't we prepare? The sligs are coming, we need to defend ourselves!"
"Arm the men, open the storage and let them choose themselves between sling bow and spear, then open the stables, let the riders rider; but stay here. In the village." Said the shaman. As he said this, Jo, the supposed leader-figure of the small village ran off to do as advised, it wouldn't take long, everyone in the village was a a nearby clearing between some of the houses anyway.
Once the muds had been armed, most opted for either spear or bow, but some choosing sling, they all gathered around the fortress building at the front of the village. Jo had quickly counted out at least one hundred and fifty there, everyone else either couldn't fight, or were elsewhere, doing some of the other tasks in preparing the small village for an attack.
"What will happen?" braved one mud at the front, near to Jo (who was on elum-back).
"We will wait, as we always have. The sligs wont send many to attack us, they know we are small. They know it is pointless to send their whole force. We will survive this."
"I am not so sure of that," said the shaman, and as he did so; everyone heard a thunderous noise. They all quickly turned around, looking for what had made that noise, and saw a tank slowly entering through the main gate some twenty metres off, the tank had carelessly smashed straight through the weak wooden gate.
"Quickly, go now, everyone" Jo said as he turned his elum and ran to meet the tank. Before Jo got close, he was quickly gunned down by one of the mounted machine guns on top of the tank, and as he fell he noticed loads of others were dying the same way. Their arrows didn't harm the tanks, their rocks in the slings merely bounced to the ground and their spears broke on impact.
One the muds began to realise they were no match for the tanks, they began to rout and panic. Scared, many tossed their weapons aside and ran fruitlessly into their tent-like houses, or in the fortress to keep safe.
The tank fired a missile, or leapt forwards and instantly destroyed seven houses, it had attempted to stop the muds routing but it didn't work. it only panicked them furthur. but the sligs had other things with them, in an attempt to round up the muds, from behind the wreckage of the gate shot up thirty flying sligs. Once in the air they shot forth and dropped grenades and bombs wildly, killing many and destroying houses.
Muds were on the floor, arms over their heads whimpering. but it was no use, bombs blew up nearby and instantly destroyed and killed them. Grenades landed by their faces and blew them to pieces, and some were ripped apart by the insanly powerful six machine guns atop the tank. It was mayhem. It was slaughter.
Inside the fortress, the twenty or so muds who were there would hear the screams and death from beyond the thick wooden walls. They heard bombs exploding, their houses collapsing, craters being created. They heard the death of their friends, they heard the screams of despair and pain as the sligs mercilessly ripped them apart limb by limb with the guns, keeping their screams alive as long as possible. The shaman who was within the fortress began to chant, he was trying to posess a slig. Namely one of those within the tank but before he could successfully do so, the tank turned its attention to the relatively weak fortress of the mudokon village.
Another missile came forward, faster than the eye could see, and pummelled into and through the fortress, blowing up and ripping down the walls, destroying all inside and screating fire and death. The sligs had killed them all and not a single slig had been killed. It was ruthless and unmerciful, not a single mud had been spared. The order to take them as slaves had not be given yet. The muds had no chance.
From out of the top of the came twn sligs, without legs. They jumped down and each of them got a pair of legs from compartments in the lower reaches of the exterior, and them grabbed a large heavy bag each from the comparments. They spread around the village placing landmines everywhere, inches under the soil. Once they had covered the land in a couple of hundred landmines, they hopped back into their tank and began to move away from the village. Their work there was done. The landmines would easily kill any other mudokon who happened to come accross the village, to see what had happened or to re-build.
The tank rolled over blood, mud and corpse, crushing the bones and flesh of the mudokons, leaving their (and the elums) bodies to the carrion that quickly decended upon it.
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