Dramocles: An Intergalactic Soap Opera by Robert Sheckley

avalanche.
    Outnumbered, the Vanir armies fell back, abandoning their seaports and settlements and reassembling in the vast forest of Illsweep. Many hand-to-hand combats took place in the deeply shadowed woods, and the Monogoths were cut down in great numbers. Yet more and more of them came, and it seemed only a matter of time before they wiped out the Vanir.
    Harald Hogback, high king at this time, had to face the loss not only of the war, but perhaps also of the Vanir race. He decided upon a desperate stratagem. The core of his army, the redoubtable Skullsmasher Brigade, was still mostly intact, though fearfully battered. These fifty thousand men, berserkers all, were facing a Monogoth army of about a quarter of a million men. Hogback decided it was vital to preserve his troops for the future of the Vanir race.
    After casting the rune stones, Harald Hogback ordered the Vanir women to set up the great copper cauldrons and prepare a feast. This done, he detached the Skullsmashers from the defense line and led them deep into Illsweep forest.
    The Monogoths pursued hotly, but their way led through the Vanir camp, and they smelled the boiled beef simmering deliciously in the copper cauldrons, and sniffed the mounds of boiled potatoes with creamy horse-radish and parsley. It was too much for them, raised as they all were on an exclusive diet of hot dogs fried in lard. The Monogoths gave a single great cry and rushed at the viands. By the time their sergeants had restored order, the Vanir had made good their retreat into the depths of Illsweep.
    Hogback led his troops into a vast limestone cavern hidden in the woods beneath a cedarn cover. He commanded his men to lie down and make themselves comfortable. Then Harald intoned words over them, using the last of his store of Old Magick to cause the entire host to fall asleep. With this accomplished, Harald ordered the entrance sealed. And so the berserkers slept, and continued to sleep, right up to the present day.
    This was the story that Haldemar told Vitello as they rode into the forest of Illsweep. And Vitello wondered at it greatly, and asked what had happened in the war between the Monogoths and the Vanir. Haldemar told him that those superlative warriors, despite their seeming indestructibility, had been prone to the illnesses of civilization. The Monogoths were wiped out by an epidemic of hoof-and-mouth disease, and the Vanir soon repopulated their own planet.
    “And the Skullsmasher Brigade?”
    “They still lie in sleep,” Haldemar said. “These are the troops that we need.”

 
    24
    The forest was astir with muffled and secretive movements. Pale sunshine filtered down through the tangled canopy of branches. Vitello could hear the piercing cry of the moviola bird, that shy resident of the upper treetops, with its plaintive cry of “Ida Lupino, Ida Lupino.” Haldemar rode beside him, and several members of the household guards followed close behind. Soon enough they came to a glade in the woods, and standing in the glade was a tall man clad in forest green, and this was Ole Grossfoot, guardian of the sleeping host.
    “They’re over this way,” Grossfoot said, pushing back the mop of reddish brown hair from his glittering eyes.
    The brigade’s original home in the vast limestone cavern had to be abandoned when Grossfoot discovered leaks in the rocky wall, bathing his charges in limewater and threatening to encase their extremities in stone. Moving them had been difficult. There were no moving companies on the planet Vanir. Grossfoot had turned to Fufnir, the Demon Dwarf, and his people. The dwarves had managed to carry the sleeping soldiers onto the forest floor without mishap, except for Edgar Bluekiller, whom they accidentally dropped over a cliff.
    Grossfoot then sent a petition to Hjrod Dugelnose, the master builder, requesting that he construct wooden shelters inscribed with rune lines of great power. Dugelnose agreed, but was killed while robbing a tavern in