Date: Mon, 14 Jul 2008 09:07:52 -0400 From: J Subject: trio 72--part A SOLE'S LOST SCENE En route back from the Apache camp toward the mixed camp, Sole was spotted. Two other guards saw him leave. They saw the body he hid in the brush and checked it. They started to follow him. They tracked past the other body near the opening to the two giant stone rock hills. Hurrying by this dead comrade, they caught up to the sight of the back of Sole. Sole hurried through the brush, past the two giant rock cliffsides. He then moved past sandy areas and started going faster and faster. He looked back a few times but didn't see anything. Yet he felt something was wrong. The hair on the back of his young blond neck rose.He looked up and saw a trio of vultures overhead, circling. Probably wanting the dead guards he slew. Or maybe they were waiting for something else...someone else to die. Sole swallowed. Why he was so nervous, he wasn't sure: certainly he can handle the best of warriors even at the worst of times. He shrugged it off and moved onward. He moved further down a long slope than he had to. He was sure he heard running water. It made him want to go to the bathroom. This also reminded him of how thirsty he had become in this heat. The two men following Sole was large, tall, thick, and older. More experienced. They didn't let Sole see them, yet they weren't about to lose the trail. They were confident in their quest for their prey. With a keen pair of eyes, the first one saw the trail Sole made. The other moved ahead, confident enough to track by himself. The two guards looked like twins but weren't. They were built similarly. Later, Sole wondered if they were brothers. The two Apaches followed the trail to the river, which gushed past them. It was more violent than usual. "Where'd he go?" The other one pushed past his pal, nudging into his friend at the same time to prove his superiority in a playful manner. "Tawk, you could not track your grandfather in his grave." Tawk grew angry, "I can. I tell you the trail grows cold up ahead." His brother, Rega, moved to the river side further ahead. He found a place where the river sort of sagged out and slowed down, a sort of small lagoon, not large by any type of description. The river slowed down a great deal here. "You are correct, brother. It does indeed." Tawk came up to him and the pair went into the water, up to their ankles. "But where, where has he gone?" Rega nodded, "I don't know." He stared at the water, which churned with white froth from the former roughness. "Yet I see..." Tawk squinted, "What do you see? I see not the bottom. I see nothing." "I thought...no, it cannot be," Rega frowned, "We must have lost him..." "Wait,20no, I think ye are the correct one." Tawk moved in closer to an object he thought he saw. It was yellow. Rega followed him and bent closer. Tawk was closest though. Suddenly, rising up from the water, drops of the water gurgling into his outtie belly button, stood Sole, a knife in each hand. He was soaked and his teeth were grit, his nose wrinkled in a snarl, "GGRRRRRRRRRRRR! AHHHHHHHH!" He plunged both knives into the bigger men...and just where do you think he plunged them? In their belly buttons. Which were large, oval shaped, and shallow. Tawk bellowed and bent back but Sole kept the knife going in until he felt the stomach was at his first two knuckles. His pointer finger and his middle finger. Squawking, Rega folded, his upper half coming over the knife. Sole made sure he finished them there and then. He drove the blades in and the two men were done for. They moved their hands at the offending intruders on their gut holes. It did no good. Sole stabbed them inward and didn't dare let the knives out until he was sure they were done for. "You track well! Too well!" He twisted the knives and mangled the belly buttons beyond recognition. Then he pulled out, putting his knives downward but then jerking them up into the air in victory, and let the two giants of men fall past his elbows and down into the river, making a huge pair of splashes. The bodies would drift with the river---away from the enemy camp. Sole nodded and was satisfied.