The Bulldozer Plan soon got underway. The impatient warband leaders returned to their own turf as soon as the meeting ended and mobilized their players, who left camp in groups, axes and saws slung over their shoulders, and headed for the nearest trees.
Deep in the swamp, damp miasma hung like a solid curtain, shrouding twisted trees and tangled vines.
Last night's crushing defeat burned at the nerves of every surviving Snake-Man like an unhealed wound.
The air still reeked of blood and rotting corpses, mixed with the acrid remnants of gunpowder smoke, reminding them of the disaster that had struck like divine punishment.
Some Snake-Man Warriors assigned to perimeter security and patrol dragged their weary, frightened bodies through the dense swamp forest near the human camp.
Their slit pupils warily scanned toward the human camp, their scales opening and closing slightly in the cold, damp air as they searched for any sign of danger.
Suddenly, a new sound, unlike anything they had ever heard, broke through the swamp's deathly lament.
It did not come from cannon barrels, yet it carried another kind of terrifying rhythm-continuous and mechanical-that made the Snake-Men's scales stand on end.
A young Snake-Man Warrior, whose scales still bore scratches from last night's barbed wire, cautiously climbed to the top of a huge dead tree covered in thick moss and peered toward the sound through the dense foliage.
His cold, slit pupils instantly narrowed to thin lines, reflecting a sight that made his very soul tremble.
At the edge of the swamp, the once-lush woodland that formed part of the barrier protecting their home was disappearing at an astonishing rate, as though an invisible beast were devouring it.
Countless human soldiers dressed in colorful, bizarre outfits moved among the trees, swinging enormous iron tools that