A mighty sustained roar filled Feric's mind; his body thrummed with the power of the engine he straddled as he led his army at breakneck speed across the rolling green hills toward the Wolack border. Cannon shells whistled overhead, the earth shook to the rumble of wheels and treads, and a great cloud of gas fumes and dust boiled into the air. The sounds and smells, the gigantic power and dashing speed, took his breath away and set his heart soaring. Glancing at Best beside him, Feric saw that he, too, was carried away by the glory of the moment; they 145
exchanged comradely smiles as the tanks behind them began firing their cannon.
Feric led his great army up one last hill, crested the rise, and beheld the Wolack border. A barbed-wire fence demarked the Heldon side of the border with machine-gun towers at regular intervals; then there was a half-mile strip of no-man's land and a line of crude stone Wolack pillboxes set about three hundred yards apart. The Helder positions had been evacuated, and great gaps cut in the fence. As for the line of Wolack fortifications, many of these had taken direct hits from the cannon and were naught but steaming, rubble-strewn craters. Others were partially destroyed, with the smashed bodies of Wolacks strewn about the ruined stonework.
Even over the din of the engines, Feric could hear the great cheer that went up from his troops as they saw the fortifications of the Wolacks before them. As one last barrage of cannon shells exploded in a neat line amidst the Wolack pillboxes, sending great fountains of gray stone, brown earth, and red flesh into the air, Feric gunned his engine, and roared down the hill through a gap in the barbed wire, and across the border into Wolack, with Best's motorcycle humming along at his heels. Immediately behind came the SS elite guard, swinging their truncheons and bellowing a hoarse battle cry. Then the squadron of tanks spread out, and their heavy steel treads crashed through the wire. Thousands of motorcycle SS shock troops crossed into no-man's land along a wide front in their van.
As Peric led the vanguard of his troops across no-man's land toward the Wolack lines, the SS motorcyclists fanned out to form a long skirmish line on either side of his motorcycle. At hundred-yard intervals, this forward wall of heroes was reinforced by tanks blasting away with their
'machine guns and cannon. Behind the shield of this SS
phalanx came the trucks of the motorized regular infantry, backed up by the great lumbering steam dreadnaughts which sent hails of mortar shells crashing into the Wolack fortifications.
Soon the forward line of SS reached the Wolacks. Feric himself drew up on a partially demolished pillbox, from which scuttled about half-a-dozen Wolacks—a hunchbacked dwarf, a Parrotface, a brace of Toadmen, and other assorted monstrosities—all fleeing mindlessly from the fray like the craven dogs they were. Swiftly, Feric 146
chased down a Parrotface and dashed out its reeking brains with one heroic swipe of the Great Truncheon.
Beside him, Best, his blue eyes glowing with patriotic fervor, came upon a dwarf and dispatched the creature with a quick hail of truncheon blows.
Suddenly Feric spied a gross froglike mutant with wet leprous skin training a rusty rifle at Best's head. Instantly, he opened his throttle and rammed the front wheel of his motorcycle into the monstrosity at forty miles an hour, slamming the creature aside with a scream and a shower of viscous purple blood. He spun the cycle about his heel, roared back, and smashed the creature's skull with his truncheon, for good measure.
Best paused long enough to utter an emotional "Thank you, my Commanderi" Then the lad plunged back into the heat of battle.
All around Feric, the SS men were splitting open the skulls of the Wolacks and driving them madly in all directions. A fear-crazed Blueskin ran blindly at Feric's cycle with a truncheon in his hand; Feric decapitated the creature with a swipe of the Steel Commander, the head rolling under his wheels, while the body stumbled on a few paces before expiring. It was no proper battle, it was a rout! These Wolacks milled about aimlessly like insane cattle; they were all cowards and weaklings who had no taste for honorable combat!
Feric raised the Great Truncheon of Held high in the air, its silvery shaft emblazoned with the honorable blood of battle, and raced his motorcycle forward beyond the ruined fortifications, leading the SS vanguard deeper into Wolack. There was no point wasting precious time dispatching aU of these creatures; the occupation forces that would follow the motorized columns into Wolack before the sun had set would be more than adequate to mop up this pathetic rabble.
