Monsters and Magicians by Robert Adams

Author:Robert Adams
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Fantasy, General, Science Fiction, Fiction
ISBN: 9780671697976
Publisher: Baen Pub.
Published: 1989-01-15T05:00:00+00:00

The tank and its mule cart had been enough retardation to any land of a steady advance on the now-inaccessible track, but trying to get them cross-country was an all-but-insurmountable problem to Kaoru and his part of an infantry company. No one could move any faster than dog-tired men could hack a way through vegetation, haul away obstructions and fill holes or soft places, all the while sweating, tortured by all manner of noxious insects and leeches, having to be every wary of poisonous snakes, scorpions and huge spiders. Edges of machetes and axes quickly became dulled and so close to useless that it was necessary to keep a section constantly sharpening the tools. Ropes snapped and had to be knotted together to await resplicing at a later time. And all the while that so many were striving for them, the tank officer, his crew and two mule drivers sat by in idleness, making rude comments about infantrymen in general and these in particular, while flatly refusing to aid in their own salvation by joining the work crews. Nor could Kaoru do aught to change the situation, since the ever-sarcastic and arrogant tank officer outranked him by one grade.

By superhuman efforts, the column had, by late

afternoon, advanced all of about three kilometers, Kaoru estimated, and when the lead line of axe- and machete-men broke through into a more or less clear area filled with tumbled and overgrown stone ruins, he called a halt for the day. Enough was enough; he doubted his men could endure much more such labor this wet, waning day.

A squad was sent to scout out the ruins and returned to report no signs of recent human habitation. So they went into another wet camp. After he had reported and given the compass bearings of his position to battalion, Kaoru was briefly castigated for making so little distance from the previous night's position, but then he had expected such.

Soon after dark the sky above cleared, stars and moon shining bright and full over the forested hills. The roar of aeroplanes was heard twice during that night, but the camp had been well laid out and well camouflaged, the efforts of Kaoru's force aided by nature in the form of many large trees with thick, overhanging foliage and by the long-forgotten builders of the stone ruins in provision of so many places wherefrom the glows of smokeless fires could not be seen from above.

But warplanes and hostile men were not the only enemies of these Sons of Nippon in the trackless wilds of Burma, circa 1945. In the wan, grey and misty false dawn, a tiger tried to get at the mules and ended by ferociously mauling the guard, whose bayoneted Arisaka rifle made precious little impression upon the four hundred pounds of cat. However, the screams of the man brought the nearby tank crew to wakefulness, and the effect of over a hundred rounds

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of 7.7mm ball from the hull machinegun rapidly reduced the predator (and the unfortunate guard, as well) into a virtual blood pudding.

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