Taterskin & The Eco Defenders: Book 2, Chapter 48
Book 2 ("Tell It to Future Generations"), Chapter 48 of 56
CHAPTER 48
A spear sailed through the air, hitting the ax head squarely, knocking it out of the wannabe vandal’s hand and causing him to jump back and look in the direction that the spear came from, shaking his hand to relieve the aching aftershocks vibrating through his wrist.
The thrower of the spear emerged from the forest, as did dozens of her fellow spear-wielders.
“Are these friends of yours?” the first man asked Chapawee.
“They are now,” she replied.
The women of the forest, large and muscular and adorned in war paint, chuckled at this. Half of them arrayed themselves on Chapawee’s right, the other half on her left.
“Yes, we are friends of hers,” one of them affirmed. “Any defender of the Amazon is a friend of ours.”
“Who are you?”
“Your worst nightmare, multiplied exponentially,” she said.
“There are only a couple dozen of you; I can amass a force of thousands.”
“Wrong again, blackheart. We are the New Amazons, and there are more than thousands of us. And one of us is worth ten of you, anyway — in fighting strength, at least.”
“Hmpph!” was the only response from the men, who hated being bested, but even more so by a group of women — and women who, by the looks of them, they wouldn’t want to meet in a dark alley or on a wrestling mat.
“And that’s not all,” Chapawee added. “We have the animals of the river, the riverbank, and the jungle on our side. There are billions of us. Where does that leave you, with your mere thousands?”
“Animals! We will hunt and kill any animals who try to block our path!”
“You may want to reconsider that,” Scarlet said. “Look around you.”
They did, and saw Sharks circling in the river, who occasionally raised their heads out of the water, fixing the men with that beady-eyed stare for which they are particularly infamous; Tapirs and Capybaras gathering in groups on the riverbank, stamping their forefeet and huffing; Howler Monkeys in the trees at the edge of the forest, yammering up a storm; Jaguars pacing toward them, crouching, with heads low to the ground and poised to spring at any provocation; and various venomous Spiders, Lizards, Snakes, and Centipedes advancing on their position, causing the grass through which they were moving to undulate and shiver and quiver.
And it wasn’t only the grass that was shivering and quivering. The men were, too. After brief reconsideration of their position, they abandoned the field voluntarily. They had not been harmed, or even so much as touched, by any of the animals, or by Chapawee or the New Amazons; nevertheless, none of them ever felt the urge to return to the scene of their crime. Most of them drifted off into obscurity, but a few became politicians or other types of criminals.
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