CHAPTER SIXTY FOUR

LXIV
John, atop a humongous black horse that he had, charged directly toward Mischa, his countenance eloquent with fury. He held his trusty sword, the same one he’d brought into the Den of Errour – but it wasn’t glowing. Mischa wasn’t a threat.

Mischa cowered, his confidence having been completely annihilated by Josiah’s insults; he was prepared to die. But loyal Rupert managed to push him out of the way at the last minute, and John rode harmlessly past.

His army, however, took this as their hint to charge as well, so 50 Danes rushed forward, unsure whether they should be marching with the zombies or independently. The zombies, on the other hand, were more interested in eating those delicious Dane brains – so they did, and half of John’s army was wiped out.

“God dammit,” he said, turning his horse around to go after Mischa once more. “I knew I should have made some sort of battle plan.”

As for Mischa’s side, Rupert was doing all of the fighting. He’d already managed to decapitate ten zombies with his bowie knife, zombie decapitation being one of his many specialties. The odds were still far from being in Mischa’s favor, but they weren’t quite so slanted anymore. This galvanized Mischa, who actually killed a zombie of his own, before being knocked to the ground by another – but then a third zombie ate the second, inadvertently rescuing Mischa from a horrible fate.

Moments later, Mischa narrowly dodged a fatal blow from John’s magical sword. He could feel its edge graze his cheek and was left with a painful scratch.

Rolling across the ground, Mischa called out, “Comrade! You try to defeat John! I will handle these zombies!”

“Are you sure about that, Mischa? You seem pretty incapable of winning against anybody. I mean, you’re just pathetic,” said Rupert. “Besides, I should be able to finish these zombies off quickly enough to have plenty of time left for John.”

“Oh, all right,” said Mischa. “I will just try not to die until then.”

A daunting task.

Meanwhile, Josiah was watching everything, looking down at the battle with great amusement. Cyprus was beside him, also amused.

“Look at those fools, fighting each other with such reckless abandon. And they used to be friends, Cyprus! Friends, until I turned them against each other! Oh, this is so evil. So very, very evil – I love it!” yelled Josiah.

“It is certainly entertaining, Mr. Malum,” agreed Cyprus. “But the Russian is doing much better than I thought he would. Well, his army is, anyway.”

“His arm – oh, you mean that one guy he has with him?” asked Josiah.

“Right, him.”

“Yes, I never would have expected Mischa to find such a competent ally. I’ll have to dispose of him if Mischa actually wins this thing – he could be a threat to my maleficent omnipotence,” said Josiah.

“Really?” asked Cyprus.

“No, of course not – nothing can threaten that. Except my one weakness,” said Josiah.

“And what might that be?” asked Cyprus.

“Can’t you just read my mind and find out?” questioned Josiah. “You do it all the time. It annoys the hell out of me.”

“I could,” replied Cyprus.

“Then why don’t you?”

“Maybe I just don’t feel like it,” said Cyprus. “It gets boring after a while, you know, just reading people’s minds all the time.”

“Oh, okay,” said Josiah. “Well I’m not telling you my weakness. Because that wouldn’t be very evil. And I am-”

"Yeah, yeah, I know..."