Roho and a team of spirits were in their ghillie suits well behind enemy lines. Their job was to slow down the Himyarite army as much as possible in order to give time for the Paulsland military and militia to get into place to stymie them.

So far, they have destroyed every minor bridge on the only road from the northern border to Five Village Island. Cut down every tree able to fall on the road between the Himyarite army and Five Village Island. Laid out thousands of traps. Left out “hidden” caches of food that were filled with dysentery and parasites.

The various teams of spirits had managed to kill a little more than a hundred soldiers that went into the tropical forest alone to relieve themselves. Now the Himyarites had to have a battle buddy around when they go relieve themselves. So far, they had taken out thirty-six people in the new battle buddy system. Before long, they would have to send three men out to do their business.

At night they had the guards keeping watch in squads of two, but one night a couple of teams of spirits were able to slowly crawl through local vegetation and take out four of the guard stations. With those eight guards down, they managed to kill another forty-seven men who were sleeping and then light a bonfire as they left. Guards are now in squads of five, and they doubled the number of squads.

The spirits were delighted that the Himyarites had five times as many guards out at night. On clear nights when the moon and stars were out, it made it really easy to spot them and get some bow practice in. The Himyarites were learning, though, and were now making camp where there was at least two hundred yards of space between the edge of the camp and the tropical forest. That was fine; it slowed down the enemy.

Each and every time the Spirits attacked, a large force of tired Himyarites, who were desert dwellers, went into the forest looking for them, and they had no idea what they were doing. Roho alone had added three kills from the Himyarite response. It didn’t take the Himyarites long to learn that the Spirits didn't attack groups of five or more. Roho, and his men were okay with that. The more men searching for them at night, the less distance they traveled during the day.

So far, the Spirits had killed around three hundred Himyarite soldiers, injured a few hundred more, given a few thousand bacterial and parasitic infections, and slowed them down substantially. It's almost like this type of warfare was new to the Himyarites.

Just to keep the Hymerites guessing, the spirits changed the size of their teams as they saw opportunities. Sometimes that meant combining teams, other times, that meant splitting teams up. To make things more fun, none of the teams knew what any of the other teams had planned. It means that every day or night, the Himyarites could have random problems pop up, especially since even the spirits didn’t know when the next unlucky event would occur.

A couple of days ago, Roho noticed that although they were doing a fantastic job of slowing down the Himyarite army, supplies were reaching the army unhindered. The spirits were so focused on getting ahead of the army, that the Himyarites didn’t have to protect their supply train at the rear. What was most annoying was that only a couple of soldiers protected each group of wagons that fed the people that intended to destroy their country. That was going to change.

Roho led his men twenty miles north of the army and waited alongside the one road that connected the Himyarite colony to Paulsland. Roho had to admit that it was brilliant of King Paul to limit Paulsland expansion, so there was only one road for the Himyarites to use in their invasion. It made ambushing so much easier.

Roho and his men found a place with the right tree coverage and vegetation, then blended into the background. The spirits knew what ghillie suits looked like, and they could barely see each other; bored soldiers with sore feet had no chance of spotting them.

Roho and his men waited for seven hours before they heard the wheels of carts in the distance. After a few minutes, two soldiers came into view, followed by oxen pulling carts, with their handlers next to them.

The soldiers were lazy. Instead of carrying their shield or spears, they stored them in the cart. Their armor was worn loosely because they were trying to get some air to flow through their armor to deal with the heat of the day. Finally, their swords were sheathed. They were completely unprepared for an attack. If their commanding officer saw them in that state, they would get flogged, but lucky for them the spirits were going to make sure their officers would never again see how lazy they were.

There was one man next to each of the three oxen carts. As they walked alongside the oxen, they occasionally struck them with a flexible stick to get them to hurry a little faster. The sprites took note that they all walked on the left side of the carts.

Each of the spirits did the calculation in their heads. The spirits were spread out, five men on both sides of the road. They would wait to attack until all the men were encircled by their ambush. When the Himyarites were in their envelope, the men closest to the soldiers would move first, striking them down. Then the first two ox handlers would be killed, and the last one would be taken captive. Tactically it would be a better move to capture the one in the middle, but they had no way to know how many ox handlers would be on this trip, so they made the decision to capture the last one in line for simplicity’s sake. They had been taught in their line of work simple instructions are better than the best tactical instructions.

The spirits waited patiently as the soldiers passed the fifth spirit, then the first ox handler passed, then they passed the fourth spirit as the second ox handler passed the fifth spirit, then the soldiers passed the third spirit, while the final ox handler passed the fifth spirit. All of them were now in the trap, and they didn’t know it. Their eyes seemed to slide right off the ghillie suites the spirits wore.

Although the men were in their trap, it wasn’t time to spring it yet. The spirits waited until the soldiers passed the second set of spirits to attack. When they moved, the soldiers didn’t notice, but the ox handlers did. In another time, in another place, the look of shock on the ox handler's face would have been comical. Following the looks of shock came noises of surprise from the ox handlers, but in the second it took the ox handlers to register something was wrong and make a noise, the spirits were already on the soldiers. That’s when the rest of the spirits moved.

The soldiers barely had time to show surprise when they saw the first set of spirits move before the second set of spirits wrapped their right arm around their sword arm and used their left to cut their throats. After the soldier's throats were cut, the spirits held the soldier's sword arms close to their bodies and waited the handful of seconds it took for their life to flow out of them.

The first and second ox handlers were so shocked and focused on the attack on the soldiers that they didn’t notice the spirits that came up and swung their swords at their necks. This attack was more brutal than the throat slicing, but since the ox handlers were not wearing armor, they were not going to waste time holding someone so they could slice their throat.

The third ox handler didn’t have time to scream before he was tackled to the ground by two spirits who yelled out, “SURRENDER! SURRENDER!” in the Himyarite language.

The ox handler yelled out, “I SURRENDER, DON’T HURT ME!” To the ox handler’s eyes, the forest came alive and killed everyone else. He didn’t know if they were monsters, ghosts, or something else. He was willing to give a sacrifice to every god in the Himyarite pantheon if only they would protect him from whatever was attacking him. One thing was certain; he did not think he was getting attacked by people. When they spoke to each other in the Paulsland language, he became more convinced that they were monsters.

Roho ordered, “Strip the soldiers of their armor, kill the oxen, and start butchering the bodies. Use the carts as firewood to burn their armor, weapons, and oxen. We are not going to leave oxen carcasses here to feed our enemies, or weapons so they can rearm themselves. Check the carts for wine while you’re at it.”

The spirits immediately cut the throats of the oxen, stripped the armor and weapons off the soldiers, and threw them on top of the oxen. Then they rolled the carts over the carcasses and began preparing to burn them.

In full view of their one living captive, they cut the heads off the bodies, then cut off the arms and legs before slitting open the abdomen and pulling the organs out. Then they used the intestines as a rope to hang the heads and several organs across the road. The bodies and limbs were skinned to look as gruesome as possible, then hung on surrounding trees.

Once that was done, Roho asked, “Did you find any wine?”

“Yes, sir.”

“How much.”

“A couple of dozen small bottles.”

“Put those to the side, like we were taking them with us but then had to leave in a hurry, then fill the bottles with ten grams of concentrated opium.”

The soldier whistled and said, “Are you trying to kill a herd of elephants.”

“No. But if they pass a bottle around, I would like for every soldier that takes a sip to die.”

“If you want a sip to kill them, then we will need to put fifteen grams of concentrated opium in each bottle.”

“Do it.”

The spirits were given concentrated opium for various reasons. If you needed poison, one gram of it could kill five people, and if you needed to perform a quick surgery in the field, it could deal with the pain.

Gory part

After the wine was spiked, Roho turned to the two spirits holding down the captive and said, “Break his arms and legs, and then give him a survivable amount of concentrated opium with a syringe in the stomach.”

The captive had been praying to all his gods up to this point and was relieved when one of the monsters let him go, but that relief was soon forgotten when the monster broke his arms, then his legs, then stuck some sort of stinger in his stomach.

“Drag him under the hanging body parts, and cut open his stomach, make sure to avoid any blood vessels. We want the Himyarites to find him alive; that’s why we gave him the concentrated opium; we do not need this example going into shock too early. Once his stomach is open, pull out his intestines and twine them together with the other intestines hanging over the road. Make sure you don’t pull his intestines too far out; we don’t want to damage his heart or another organ. We want the Himyarites to see this corpse talking.”

And so, the spirits followed orders, and the poor Himyarite man watched as the monsters pulled his guts out and twined them together with the guts of his companions. He screamed in terror, but to his surprise, it really didn’t hurt. When the spirits were done, they started a fire burning the oxen, the carts, weapons, and armor, while the Himyarite man stared up into the dead eyes of his friend's heads that were strung out on their intestines, which he was connected to by his intestines.

Roho would have been delighted to know the Himyarites sent a squad of soldiers to investigate the smoke, and they found the ox handler still alive spouting nonsense about monster plants that attacked him and his friends. The soldiers had no idea what to do with the man or all the body parts, so they sent a soldier back to ask for directions. While they waited, they found the wine, felt they needed a drink, and by the time more soldiers arrived with a much senior officer, they were dead, with the same ox handler spouting off nonsense.

End of gory part

By the time the senior officer had arrived, the spirits were fifteen miles away and waylaid two more groups the same way. The Himyarites had to stall their advance to send troops back to protect their convoys. It still took a week to catch up with the spirits, and by then, the soldiers were scared of the tropical forest.

General Bayin had to siphon off fifteen hundred troops for wagon train duty after that.