Overlord Read Free Page A

the mist seemed to climb into the sky and then quickly dissipate. The northern lights were gone and the night was still.
    The earth where the stockade had stood was barren. Gone were grass, fire pits, and moat. The wood of the earthworks vanished as though it had never been. Tents, weapons, even the barbarian savages had vanished. Only the strange buzzing continued as the last of the clouds evaporated, and even that eventually faded and then disappeared.
    The Ninth Legion and the savages attacking them north of Hadrian’s Wall that summer of 117 AD , vanished without a trace, then swelled into one of the great mysteries of the world.
    After that night the Ninth Legion was woven into the fabric of legend.
    NANKING, CHINA
    DECEMBER 1937
    Colonel Li Fu Sien of the Nationalist Chinese army anchored the ends of his defensive lines with massed artillery. As he observed the Japanese across the bridge on the far side of the Yangtze River where the enemy waited to cross, the colonel knew his men were ready for what was to come. He removed the binoculars from his eyes and looked down at the commander of his artillery. The hated enemy would not cross the Yangtze River without the loss of many men.
    His soldiers were indeed ready. They were near mutinous in their desire to get at the men who had committed the worst atrocity in human history not three days before. The Rape of Nanking would haunt the Japanese people for the rest of human existence. This would be the historical price for the murder of over three hundred thousand civilians inside the city. Men, women, and children had been bayoneted, shot, raped, and beheaded. Yes, his men were ready to exact vengeance on the Japanese soldiers across the river.
    The colonel heard the rumble of thunder and as he looked toward the sky he could see the swirling mass of clouds start to collect over the river. The boom of thunder felt as if the guns of the heavens had opened up upon the world. He watched as colors started swirling not only in the winds, but they also illuminated the funnel cloud that was starting to form. He raised his field glasses and aimed them at the Japanese troops across the river. He could see they too were growing concerned over the strange turn in the weather. Suddenly the colonel let the binoculars slip from his grasp as the pain struck first his ears, and then his eyes. He grasped the sides of head in pain, as did the men around him.
    Around the two armies the wind started a slow circle as the bright green, yellow, and blue lights intensified, making the Chinese colonel look up. His eyes widened when he saw the swirling, circling funnel cloud moving over the land like a zigzagging snake or a mythical dragon of old. Then he saw the static electricity run over his exposed skin and under his hat. Men were starting to panic as the moving tornado—one that resembled a hurricane more than its landlocked cousin—closed over his men and then the river and finally the Japanese soldiers on the far shore.
    The colonel fell to his knees as the gale-force wind struck him and his massed troops. Before he knew what was happening, he, his men, most of the Yangtze River, and finally the Japanese vanished. Each man in both armies felt the penetration of the electrical field as it passed over, around, and then finally through their bodies. Soon each human being just phased out of existence. Equipment, rations, and men vanished in a blink of an eye.
    The strange tornado seemed to leap, settle, and then turned itself inside out and then shot back into the skies. In the eye of the tornado the blackness of space could be seen in the far distance. But there was now no soldier, enemy or Chinese, within twenty miles that would ever report it.
    The two armies and every piece of equipment weighing less than a thousand pounds had vanished from the face of the earth.
    TEHRAN, IRAN
    DECEMBER 1978
    The streets were now quiet. The rampage of students had settled to an uneasy array of midnight shouts