Turn The Page Chapter 10 - Walter's Plan Goes Wrong! (Don, don, don)

Chapter 10 - Walter's Plan Goes Wrong

     The excuse for a crew of partially armed men passed the town square, where everyone but the ranger tired out, and had to have a drink of water. Then they kept on running, still screaming like barbarians despite being out of breath.
     By the time the majority of the group arrived at the gate, every single bad guy had already noticed them because of the yelling. The fancy portcullis had been battered pretty badly, and Walter was wheezing for breath. He thought of why he had forgotten to bring Stormbringer, but then he concluded that he might have had short term memory.
     The volunteers were thick in fighting by the time Walter arrived, brandishing some wooden tools. One unlucky volunteer was already dead on the ground, blood pouring from his side, and many bad guys armored in iron had fell with arrows in their foreheads.
     Walter was about to run to the assistance of a volunteer when there was sort of weird shadow next to him. Walter quickly used his limited logic skills to determine that a boulder was flying over the wall. Walter stepped backwards once, and a boulder landed right next to Walter's toe, where he was standing a moment ago, squashing a volunteer and three of Merek's warriors. Walter flinched.
     Walter saw Merek, the bald guy, and a few others dashing towards the great hall, but knew he was not fast enough to catch them. Suddenly, the portcullis burst out, and the guards bracing the portcullis fell on their bottoms. A giant wooden log burst through where the gate was, and was dropped on the spot. It accidentally dropped onto one of Leo's soldiers' toe. He screamed louder than the volunteers had when they were charging, and would've jumped up and down if he wasn't pinned there by the battering ram. Many troops dashed in, holding maces and spears and sticks and shields.
     The bad guys ran, but were shot down with bows, or were chased down by Lord Leo's knights on horseback.
     "Move it!" screamed Lord Leo from somewhere in the crowd, and everybody moved-ited. Lord Leo turned to Walter, and asked, "who was it?"
     "It was all these people, of course, except for that one," Walter pointed to a dead volunteer, "And one of them under that rock." Walter pointed at the big boulder that had squished a volunteer. As he said so another rock flew over the wall as if to underline the point. Luckily nobody was hurt by that one.
     "I meant who was the leader!" Lord Leo exclaimed.
     "The leader was Merek," said the ranger calmly.
     "Anyway, were you saying that it was Merek the whole time, even with him going to market?" Lord Leo asked.
     "Wellllll, the thing is, he was never really gone. He just stayed near the borders, but I didn't tell you because I kept on forgetting," Ulric said.
     "Short term memory," Lord Leo muttered. "As far as I know so far, we haven't gotten him. He deserves a proper execution. I'd always thought his advice was getting worse. Let's get 'em! CHARGE!"
     Lord Leo's army and Walter charged, but no one saw the ranger melt into the shadows and disappear.


     The good-guy soldiers dashed towards the great hall, still yelling, with Walter lagging behind again. Halfway through, everybody got tired again, and paused for a drink of water, "borrowed" from a merchant's shop. After five minutes, every got up and continued yelling.

     Soon they arrived at the great hall, and Lord Leo kicked the door open, mainly because it looked cooler to kick doors than to just open them. Behind the door were the citizens. Everybody cheered. "WOOOOH!"
     Walter caught up just as Lord Leo asked where Merek had went, and all of them pointed in the direction where he was last seen.
     "He went thataway!" They yelled.
     The whole band of soldiers immediately ran towards the place where he was last seen, which was Lord Leo's bedroom.
     Walter came along, hoping to do some real fighting, not just helping out. Lord Leo led the group, and when they arrived, Lord Leo opened the door, and sure enough, there was Merek, along with the rest of his troops, which was a teeny weeny amount compared to Lord Leo's army. What was unexpected was that Lady Loreena and Alice were in there too. Lady Loreena was being held by Merek, and there was a knife to her throat. The bald guy was holding Alice, but he had went extreme, and there was a battleaxe to her throat.
     Some archers nocked their arrows and prepared to fire, but Merek simply laughed.
     "You shoot, these two people die!" Merek said, sounding really evil. He gestured to Lady Loreena and Alice. "I knew I shouldn't have told you that I was the bad guy of the story!"
     "You never did!" Walter said.
     "I mumbled it to you on your first day here!" Merek replied, even eviller than earlier.
     So that's what he mumbled, Walter thought.
     "Oh. Nice to know," he said.
     "Now," Merek said, sounding even eviller. "If you want your family to stay alive, here's what you're going to do."

Turn The Page Chapter 9 - When One Sieges His Own Castle

Chapter 9 - When One Sieges His Own Castle

     No sooner than when Lord Leo's magnificent army marched out of sight of Hasty Castle, Merek jumped up and announced, "Now that Lord Leo has gone to war, I'm in charge of you weirdos."
     Weirdos? Merek was referring to the citizens as weirdos! What could this mean? I know, of course, but you and Walter don't. Yet.
     Merek began belching out instructions to everyone. "I've received news that the army attacking our neighboring allies are too strong to overcome. Lord Leo will not come back from this battle. I am your new Lord!"
     Everybody in the crowd gasped. The guy that would attempt to take over the castle was Merek after all!
     Someone in the crowd cried, "What the heck, I mean Lady Loreena should become ruler then!"
     Everybody else in the crowd cried, "Hear,hear!"
     Merek found an excuse. "But he's not dead, so I'm in charge!"
     Some more people cried "What the heck", but Merek was just too good. Sometimes it doesn't matter how logical your argument is. You just have to say it loud and repeat it many times. Within an hour, all the men and boys were burning down buildings that were unnecessary for Merek. Some men tried resistance, but there were quite a few men who had been planning to help Merek, and they had prepared whips specially for people who didn't obey them. Merek had succeeded for the moment.
     Walter sighed as a bald bad guy ordered him to start burning down the fountain. He had obviously not had a very good education. Walter lit a torch on fire, and started jabbing it onto the stone.
     "Stop messing around and set it on fire, you stupid kid!," screamed the stupid bald guy. "Here, it's like this." The stupido grabbed the torch, and threw it into the water.
     "Oh," said Walter, concluding that the bald person's big nostrils were bigger than his brains.
     "Here," said the person again. "Set that tree on fire!"
     "If you think it's so obviously easy, why don't you set it on fire?" with that, Walter blew out his torch and threw it at the guy. "Catch!"
     The person caught the torch easily with one hand, laughing stupidly. "Hah, it's obviously easy to catch a EOOWCH!" The person dropped the torch. He had caught it on the burning side, and his hand was already bigger and redder than his face (which means you have low intelligence).
     The bad guy flipped out, and grabbed Walter with his unburnt hand, which was relatively small now compared with his other hand, which was half the size of his body already and growing. He lifted the page in the air and flipped him over. "Now you'll join the fountain in burning! Bwahaha!"
     Walter thought this was funny, and also went "Bwahaha". The bald guy was about to throw him in when he heard a deep noise of a war horn.
     "What the?" said the bald person. Walter chose this great moment of distraction to kick the bad guy's head. His shoe squished into the bald person's head, wrinkling up. "Aargh," went the bald person. He dropped Walter in surprise, and clutched his head. With another "BWAHAHA," Walter fled.


     Merek panicked when the warhorn sounded. "Go defend this castle from any invaders now! All people not a bad guy like me has to go to the great hall. NOW!"
     People threw their torches at nearby bad guys, grumbled, and scrambled to the great hall. Walter ran off to get his wooden weapons.
     Soon Walter reached the place. Walter looked around for his lance, but it was nowhere to be seen. He grabbed his sword. Then he dropped it. Right next to the wooden swords, were metal ones. Just then, soldiers came and took the steel swords, leaving Walter with his sword. Walter grabbed his shield and hid it as best he could beneath his tunic. He took the sword, and was going to charge into the crowd of bad guys when someone said, "Hey," very quietly. Walter looked around, but nobody was there. Then something shook in the bushes, and the random "hey"er beckoned out of the green supergreen bushes. Walter couldn't see the rest of this "shady character" no matter how hard he looked.
     "What do you want?" whispered Walter.
     "To drive out Merek, but I thought it would be safe to assume that you aren't in his plans," replied the person. "You aren't one of his minions, right?"
     "No."
     "Then come here!"


     Once Walter had squeezed himself into the bush, and been thorned many thousand times, Walter still found it hard to find the person, but finally decided the smooth part of the bush was a cloak. It was Lord Leo's ranger.
     "Now," said the ranger. "You don't expect to kill all those guards with a wooden stick and a round trash can lid, do you? And do you realize that your lance is next to the sewer entrance?"
     Walter thought, and realized that was what he was going to try to do. How, well, let me put it this way, how dumb of Walter to expect to beat all the guards up that were twice as big, twice as heavy, twice as stupid, and more than three times as old as he was!
     "Um, actually, no. I was just going to practice with them."
     "Well, to kill anyone, you need a weapon and reinforcements, so here's what we're going to do, if you're not especially brave or stupid, which I believe you are," the ranger said. "We're going to sneak into the great hall and get combat volunteers. Then we'll charge into battle. I'll shoot some guards with my awesome bow skills, and the volunteers shall pick up the weapons and fight."
     "But all the bad guys have armor and fancy schmancy stuff while we're dressed in our normal everyday clothes! How do we win?" asked Walter.
     "You also have short-term memory!" The ranger looked like he was facepalming, but Walter wasn't sure, as he couldn't tell if the face was underneath the cloak, and he wasn't sure if he was seeing the ranger's hand, either. "The warhorn means that Lord Leo's back!"
     "Oh yeah," said Walter, a look of understanding crossing his face. "Wait a minute, how'd you know? I mean, about the sewer thing."
     "Huh?" asked the ranger. "Oh, I was in Lord Leo's room the whole time. I don't think you saw me. I know Lord Leo didn't."


     The smart person and the dumb person came out of the bushes, and Walter saw that somehow, the ranger didn't have any bruises or scratches from the thorns at all! Walter already had a bajillion bruises and scratches and booboos. The ranger looked around for bad guys. There was one posted on the wall, staring at the green green forest. The ranger produced a large longbow made of the finest wood, out of nowhere.
     The bow was big, but it was not particularly fancy. It was made of elm, and was around 5 feet tall. The arrows were even unfancier, but they were very long and had unusually sharp points. Now the ranger, who wasn't really as tall as he seemed from afar, selected one, fitted it onto the bow, and nocked it. Before Walter could blink, the arrow swished through the air and landed on the bad guy's helmet, and pierced through. The guard immediately fell off the wall into the green green forest.
     "Let's go," said the ranger, and they went.
     As they were running, Walter heard booms, and people shouting. Walter looked at the walls and saw a boulder fly over the wall and squash a bad guy flatter than a piece of paper. Walter had never seen real combat before, so this was new to him. Firing the catapult must've been fun. Getting squashed by the catapult wasn't as fun. Walter's thoughts were interrupted when he smashed into the doors to the great hall. He hadn't watched where he was going.
     The ranger opened the doors, and all the people inside cheered. "Woooo!"
     The ranger quickly explained his plan, and asked for volunteers. About 6 men volunteered to risk their lives. A little kid around four volunteered too, but his parents held him back. The men prepared for the little fight. The ranger reached inside his cloak while the volunteers punched the air in front of them. The ranger took two knives out of a scabbard, one was really small, and one knife was almost big enough a sword.
     The ranger threw the small one at a volunteer who was sitting down at a table. The knife landed right between his pinky and fourth finger, and tossed his almost-sword to another volunteer. The almost-sword missed the volunteer's armpit by an inch, even though he was standing against the wall at the other end of the hall. Soon all was ready, and the men promised their families that they would definitely come back (spoiler alert: not all of them did).
     The men walked out of the door, closing it behind them in the face of the next volunteer. When the volunteers were assembled, the toughest-looking person, who was, in fact, the toughest-looking guard that had questioned Walter's escort, used his great leadership skills to give commands, consisting of "here's the plan, we kill the enemy without dying" or "prepare to die" or "follow me!", and the volunteers charged, yelling like hooligans. the tough guy and the ranger in the lead, Walter lagging behind on short legs.