‘Shur… shur… shur…’ came the noise when Kush was running through the forest Snoopy in tow.

‘Syuk… Syuk… Syuk… Syuk… Syuk…’ ‘Tak… Tak… Tak… Tak… Tak…’ came the noise as arrows flew through air and struck the trail of Kush’s path trying to strike him where he could. Eight orcs were following 5 with bows and arrows and 3 with stone axes. Like the orcs, Kush too was mowing down trees in his path, in front of him was small hill 60 ft high with a steep slope, he turned around and picked up a couple of arrows in his hands. They were each 3 ft long with wooden shaft, stone arrow head with a nock at the end of the shaft. He slammed the axe the bottom of the hill and started running up, till he reached the half way mark where in one fluid motion he jumped up and turned around in air, flexing his impressive muscles Kush pulled back his hand. One of the arrows was in his hand while the other one was in his mouth, seeing the figure of the god like man flexing the muscles in his hand, the orcs were stunned, he seemed like hero Apollo of the sun holding the Hero Zeus’s lightening striking down foes in the in the battle field. Slowly he let go of the arrow

‘ZOOM’

The arrow went through air like a jet, zipping through space at supersonic speed aiming for one of the orcs at the back, who used arrows to strike Kush. He was almost 1.5 km away from Kush but the arrow hit him. It did not matter that the arrow was blunt, cause it pierced the orc from the front all the same and it carried the orc along with it for a 300 m crashing into many trees and branches before slamming into a tree 6 m in diameter and pulverising half the trunk. The body had many pieces of wood jutting out of it. The orcs who were standing next to him stopped in their tracks when they saw the arrow zoom past them, before they could turn around to check their friend they heard a crash and by the time they saw him they heard another sonic boom

‘ZOOM’

Waves of sound reverberating through out the forest painful for anyone to hear. Before the orcs could turn around to the see the location of origin of the sound the arrow had burrowed through another one of the orcs, but this time it entered his back and destroyed everything and making a hole 1 m in diameter in the orc and went through him and later hit another tree about 2 km ahead of itself and split the bark in half.

This scared the orcs and they were visibly shaken. The three archers were about of turns tail when they realised that their assailant was falling down from the 30 ft height and had no leverage any longer to manoeuvre. Before they could do anything, Kush was already on the ground and was going on to pick out his axe. Archers decided against attacking Kush and were turning around to leave when they realised the flaw in their plan, Kush used this opportunity to dash towards the axe wielding orcs, who on seeing Kush gunning for them spread out. By now Kush had gained an inkling of how to face them threw his dagger at the orc on the right and dashed into the one in the centre ducking a sure blow from the orc on right. Lifting the orc on his shoulders he went through trees after trees, banging into each of them, until he reached a boulder. With the orc in suit he smashed into the boulder like a ram trying to break through castle gates. ‘Bang’ the orcs spine broke as it screamed ‘Squeaaaallll…’ as Kush backed off a little letting it fall on the ground. It spun on the ground in pain. Kush not wasting anytime finished him off with his axe before the other two the orcs could reach him. He then ran away from the two towards the archers who were now making their way towards Kush himself. They realized, that they had to kill him off in group else it will be impossible later and shot arrows at him when they realized he was aiming for them. They split apart and aimed from different directions, but Kush did not change directions and made way for the one in front who had already stopped running forward. When he was only a 100 m from the archer in the front two arrows came at him from the right and left. If Kush continued down this path he knew the arrows would hit. So he extended his left arm forward with the axe and let the arrow just a little over the tip of the axe and let it glide over his axe. Using the flat part of the blade of his axe he redirected the arrow without hindering its forward movement, little by little he guided the arrow using his axe and when it went off the axe blade, instead of hitting Kush, the intended target, it crashed into the arrow coming from the left ‘Crash’ and both arrows were nullified. All this was done in a few fractions of a second while he did not stop running, the archer in the front was too scared to be amazed by this circus act and tucked tail and started to run away from its position on the branches of one of the trees. Just as it was about to jump to the next branch, Kush cut the trunk of the tree he standing on and orc fell. Kush finished him off in a single diagonal slash from the bottom to the top. He turned around, he picked up an arrow from the quiver of the dead orcs and threw an arrow at the which destroyed the tree the orc on the right was sitting at. As the orc was in air dropping to the ground feet first, Kush snuck up behind him and decapitated him, before he could get his bearings. He took his quiver as well and carefully launched an arrow at the final archer killing him too. He then rushed towards the other two axe wielding orcs and launched an arrow at one of them and cut the other in half.

Then ran across all the corpses of the archer orcs and axe men to collect all the quivers and axes and made a pile of weapons including the knives and weapons from the village. He found a cave he knew belonged to bear he had killed and stashed his stuff there and brought out the deer carcass for food. He kept the dog there in the cave and said “So Snoopy, it’s a bit dangerous out there so I am going alone out there to gather some firewood you stay here and guard the weapons and food for the two of us. I will be back before you know it”

“Woof” barked the dog, as in agreement.

Kush then went out towards the forest with a huge bag, quiver and axe in tow and found a suitable tree, which he chopped off. Just as the tree fell the to the ground, 9 arrows slammed into it pulverizing it and continued without stopping towards Kush. Partially blinded by the wreckage of wood in air, he allowed one of the arrows to hit him in his right shoulder, pushing him down on the ground. “Tch” he clicked his tongue, as he back flipped and rolled to his left to dodge two axe attacks in sequence. “You know you…” came another axe attack from his back cutting him off mid-sentence and he saw two other assailants charging from the front.

He opened the lid of the quiver and grabbed an arrow and jumped in air carrying his axe in his right armpit and threw the arrow at one of the incoming axe men. The arrow sped past the few meters between them and destroyed the orc, but the arrow did not stop there and went into the accompanying orc and pinned his corpse on a tree with thick bark after crashing through 16 trees along the way. Before he lands and gets his axe in his hand an axe wielding orc comes and smashes his axe into Kush’s back. The axe head was destroyed but Kush was flung a 2 meters in air again. “Shit, that hurt” he cursed slowly. Kush, then rolled while on ground to his right, this gave him enough radius to get the orc who hit him, slam, cutting its leg off. Blood pooled below orc as it tried to maintain its balance and it squealed loudly for help, Kush jumped and finished the job when an arrow hit him square in the chest right below his stump “Dammit” he cursed again, cause these wounds stung. Kush picked up the arrow and took care of the archer who shot him. With two arrows from his quiver he took care of axe wielding orcs and then ran after the eight remaining archers. Archers kept on changing locations, Kush ran decided on of them and tracked him through the forest, though the difference in speed meant the archer was caught and killed in but a couple of minutes. One by one he killed each archer and grabbed their quiver and collected all the axes. He collected all the pile of weapons and headed towards a 100 ft high hill and sat on top of it. He now had hundreds of arrows and he was beginning to get the sequence of how things were working the no. of people who attacked him doubled every time, like the commander of this force was playing a very sick game with him. So in order to humiliate the commander he would play it like a game as well, he used the arrow of the quiver to hunt down the orcs as well. The next wave of 32 orcs were taken care of with ease by Kush he sat on the hill slope and took out orcs as they came. He swatted down arrows coming at him with his axe and used the arrows in the orcs’ quiver to kill them. He then went down to their dismembered corpses and collected their weapons again. Killing so many of them, made him feel invincible. He went back to the hill. The whole thing happened in daylight as the sun never set. He had been fighting continuously for 18 hrs now since the orc he killed near the brook. Just as he reached the peak of the hill, he was again greeted by dozens of arrows, but to his surprise one of them was made entirely of metal. When he turned around he saw an orc about 7 feet tall orc dressed in chain mail and leather pants running towards him, he had an iron axe in hand which about 4.5 feet tall, looked about as high as his own axe. This one had an even bigger chest and stomach, which did not seem possible to him before but hey here it was. Kush tested it out with his stone arrow which like again moved in with a sonic boom, crossing the sound barrier, but just as it was about to hit the metal orc another metal arrow collided with it, Kush traced back the path of the arrow and found an archer about 300 m from the metal orc. This one was a lot shorter than others standing at about 5.5 feet. This one too had barrel chest and muscular arms, but a tight stomach. The other 62 orcs were still normal 6.5 feet tall grotesque monstrosities dressed in leather armour. The short metal archer did not try and save any of the ordinary orcs so Kush just went ahead with killing them while deflecting the metal archer and waiting for the metal orc to reach he was; the separation was about 1.5 km on ground. The arrows from the metal archer were constantly hitting the hill he was on ‘Wham… wham… wham…’. Finally, just as the metal orc was at the foot of the hill Kush jumped up from the hill and slammed at the metal archer with his axe. The metal orc on realising his mistake turned around made a dash towards the archer. The archer too, dodged and ducked Kush’s swing and rushed towards metal orc himself. But Kush still managed to catch up and killed the metal archer, he then used the metal arrows from the metal archers and finished off the metal orc. “Hmm…” he thought, “this could prove to be tough”.

Just as he finished off collecting the arrows and axes on the hill

‘SSSwwwwoooo’ came an arrow, Kush was not anticipating them to be so quick and it hit him in the back again, lifting him up and throwing him off the hill and while he was in air and helpless in came another metal arrow parallel to ground but about 10 m above the ground and was about to hit him square in the between his chest just a bit below his heart, this one was dangerous but he used his hands, this prevented the metal from piercing all the way but it still went in by about a centimetre and started bleeding almost immediately. Kush let out a muffled groan as he followed a parabolic path to the ground when an orc appeared in air, the orc had had jumped up about 5m from the ground and was about to strike him square in the torso cutting him in half. Kush used his left hand to grab onto the blade of the axe at the last moment and used his powerful grip to grab on to the blade preventing it from touching his torso but the axe had cut his palm a little below his four fingers and a little above the webbing of the thumb. The powerful orc was surprised at this. He could cleave boulders cleanly using his swings, but could not move past a couple of centimetres on this man’s grip. “This was insane!!!” He thought. Quickly shaking off the thought, he continued his swing uninterrupted, moving full circle. Hoping his grip would slip on blood, but Kush did not give him this opportunity and let go of the blade of the axe and was flung from the centripetal force of the swing, throwing him in air again. He was turning uncontrollably, just as he was heading down again, another metal orc jumped towards him

“Oh no you don’t”, Kush said as he punched hard at metal orc, before he could maintain his balance in air and punched him down into the ground. Kush then dropped to the ground on his feet. The 124 ordinary orcs led by the 2 metal orcs and 2 metal archers were starting to feel like a unit rather than the haphazard group which attacked from every which way before. He picked up the axe of the metal orc he had just punched and finished it off. Rushed into the horde of ordinary orcs, killing a couple in every swing. He had given up on defence and was hit a lot along the way, he expected not get shot from the metal arrows while among the orcs, but the metal archers did not care for their allies and continued firing, grazing Kush a more than 10 times. Kush’s palm was not getting any time to heal cause of swinging continuously and he was bleeding from all over his body. In the process he had taken care of 20 orcs. He then started running towards the hill for his axe. The orcs realized this and started firing arrows in his path. One of the metal arrows sheared a significant part of the calf in his right leg. “Ahh…” he roared like an animal but still continued limping towards the hill. He put some strength in his left leg and jumped, was about grab his axe when a metal arrow came in went straight through his left shoulder and then carried him with it and finally got stuck in the hill ‘SSSuut…’. “AAAHHHH…” screamed Kush, pain and anger mixed in his cries. He grabbed the arrow with his left hand and bearing extreme pain, he lifted his body up and tried pulling out of the arrow but couldn’t because of the fletching. But seeing the emergency of the situation, he clenched his teeth and pulled himself through the fletching. Swung his body through air and with jerked the arrow out as he jumped to the spot where he had stuck his axe in the ground. While in air another arrow was about to strike him again, but he struck it down with the arrow in his hand. His eyes were filled with anger, one moment of over confidence and carelessness and he had injured himself so much, on landing, he spun around immediately and threw the arrow at the archer who shot him last, but after destroying a few of the many dozen stone arrows heading towards him, it was about to reach the metal archer when the other metal archer struck it down with his arrow. This pissed Kush off a lot, as he grabbed and axe and went through the sea of close of to hundred arrows taking them all head on and struck the ground in front of the platoon of orcs

“Boom”

The ground split up for about 100 m from the location of strike. About 30 orcs were tossed in air from the quake of ground including a metal archer. Kush jumped straight for him, ignoring all the incoming attacks and plunged his axe in the heart of the orc and he landed with the orc stuck to the blade of his axe, lowering his axe plunged in the orc, he split him in two. As soon as he was done with this one, turned on the heels of left leg, killing any orc in a horizontal slash and then dashed towards the other metal archer. The metal archer on realizing this started backing away toward the metal orc while shooting arrows at Kush who deflected them without exception. He couldn’t match Kush’s speed and brought out his dagger for close combat. It was like bringing a knife to a gun fight, he was slaughtered in one slash, Kush relaxed a little. He then easily finished of the other metal orc and made short work of ordinary orcs. Bleeding all over, he hastily walked to collect all their weapons and sat on hill. He had to formulate a plan for the metal orcs and archers, his grip had weakened and injured shoulder meant, he could not throw the arrows very well. He picked up the chainmail of the orcs and put it over him. Since it was a chainmail not an armour, it fit him well despite the size difference, he put up two more chainmail on himself, defence right now was important and his massive strength meant his movement was not too hindered. His wounds were healing at a speed visible to naked eyes, but were still not enough as the next platoon of 256 orcs had arrived, as was signalled by the metal arrow speeding towards him cutting through air. Kush deflected it with his axe, still sitting on the hill. Sombre expression in his eyes, he looked at the metal archer who shot the arrow, his mind calm trying to figure out what to do and quick, cause once the ordinary orcs got in position things could get dicey again. Bearing the immense pain in his arm from the shoulder and palm injuries he gripped his axe, he then jetted across the space between the metal archer and himself and before anyone could realize what happened one of the metal archers was down. Keeping the huge ominous dark axe in front of himself, he spun on his left foot’s toe and once again jetted to the next metal archer his axe horizontally in front of himself with one of the blades pointing outwards. His powerful arm ensured when he collided with an orc, it was the orc which was cut in half and the other face of the axe did not even near his chest. Once he reached a metal archer he did waste time and killed it off. He then repeated the same for the third metal archer but as he was reaching the fourth one a metal orc came from the side. Every time Kush jetted, he was maintaining an elevation of few cm above the ground only, so when the metal came in like battle ram, Kush did not expect it and was thrown off course diagonally. His powerful left leg and the injured right leg managed to stop him in a short distance, but he was slashed by another metal orc from the side. His powerful tough skin and chainmails meant he did not die from the direct attack but the muscles on his back were cut open, blood forming a pool at each step of his slow plod. He knew time was of the essence so when he saw other orcs and archers aiming for him, he dashed into the crowd of orcs to use the orcs as meat shields. The continuous blood loss made his vision blurry, he used the pain from his right leg to maintain consciousness and he changed directions towards the final metal archer but found two metal orcs there to defend the archer and archer himself poised to shoot. Kush was too injured to do any complex moves, so he pushed ahead, once he deflected the consecutives arrows from the metal archer he was attacked by the metal orcs from two sides. Another metal orc was chasing him, but he was of too low a consequence as he was too far away. Kush rammed his head in one of the metal orc but his weakness meant he was step too slow and an arrow from metal archer and a few stone arrows as well, grazed his back. This left a long streak of gash, starting from his previous injury down to his lower right end of the back. He was hurting even more but he grabbed a hold his dagger and plunged it into the neck of the orc he rammed in and sliced its neck, he left the dagger in its neck and took a hold of the orc’s axe. It was a lot lighter, the defence of these orcs was not enough to warrant the use of his axe and since he was brutally injured, it was time to switch to lighter weapons. He then used the axe to parry the attack of ordinary orcs, breaking their axes in the process. All of this, every move, was happening in fractions of seconds, the orcs were only able to survive due to their numbers and the fact that they were a warring race, built and trained in the ways of war, duel, fight and plunder since they are born. They were surprised at the strength, toughness, regeneration and most of all the endurance of the human male, it was like fighting an undying zombie, slowly fear was filling the hearts of the orcs, but they still continued fighting. Kush knew he did not have a lot of time so he once again, he set on with his goal to finish off the last remaining metal archer and succeeded this time, decapitating him in time. He then used the arrows from the quiver and plunged it in the eye of the metal orc rushing him. It took him another 30 hours of fighting to finish off the last remaining orc. He was now spent, his skin pale losing all the red tinge in his body, weak and cut at atleast a hundred places. He had been fighting for 5 days continuously now. He did not understand why he did not die despite being an ordinary human, but for some reason he did not care. He picked up his axe and dagger and walked to the cave where Snoopy was, using the axe as a walking stick. He used a bit of strength he had left to move the boulder covering the cave to go in and then the last bit of strength he had to move the boulder back in place. He dropped to the ground, but was unable to pass out due to the smell of rotten meat of the deer carcass, Snoopy came to him and started lapping his face.

“Heh heh boy. Don’t worry I will be alright. Sorry I don’t have anything good for you right now, but the tree bark in my left end of belt seems edible. Go try some”

Snoopy went to the left of his waist and pulled out a soft juicy tree bark, green in color. It was about 20 cm and tasted sweet. He then brought the bark to his mouth and pushed it towards Kush indicating him to have a bite first “Woof…” he barked.

“Hey buddy, don’t treat me like your poison tester” he said mockingly. But the dog adamant barked “Woof…” and use its nose to push the tree bark towards Kush. (AAWWWWW!!)

Kush then bit into the bark a bit and the dog too started eating from the other side. Kush after a few bites, sat up and put his head down in his knees, Snoopy jumped to his lap and the two then slept despite the putrid smell of dead body in the cave.

After a few min of Kush sleeping, the boulder blocking the cave entrance moved, though just a little…