“What on earth are you talking about!” Skylark whispered. “Sometimes you just don’t make any sense at all.”
“I can’t help it if you don’t go to martial arts movies. Think Michelle Yeoh —”
The Great White Egret hid her face in modesty at Arnie’s praise. “The things you speak of are to do with hidden dragons, crouching tigers. Let us turn to the immediate present and your current dilemma. We unreservedly join you in your battle against ambition, avarice, theft, murder and the wish of the seabirds to become conquerors of the world.”
And the hour of battle was again upon them.
With a sudden uplifting of wings, the seabirds advanced like a weather front broiling up from the south.
“This time we will not retreat,” Kawanatanga cried.
Boom. The shotgun, which Arnie had ordered brought forward, sent its shells whistling through the seabirds.
Boom. Under the instruction of Chieftain Ruru, the second shell soared through the air and exploded its pellets.
The front lines of the seabirds faltered, but Kawanatanga urged his army forward. “Get through before the landbirds have the chance to re-load! Toroa, advance with your albatross squad and take out that shotgun.”
The seabirds pushed — and, as they had done that morning, entered again into the throat of Manu Valley.
“Manu tu, manu ora, manu moe, manu mate,” Arnie cried. “If you stand you live, if you lie down you die. Hold firm. Be steadfast.”
Again Chieftain Teretere led the swift clan. White undertail coverts dazzling, they rained across the sky as if fired from a thousand crossbows. On their tails came Chieftain Kahu and his hawk battalion, Chieftain Parera and the paradise shelduck iwi, and other windhovers of the open sky. Meanwhile, Chieftain Ruru was having his own desperate battle as the albatrosses descended on his owl warriors.
Boom.
A quick re-loading gave the owls some respite. The Great White Egret whispered to her kung fu warriors and approached Arnie. “Chieftain, may I lead my fighters into the fray? These are ideal fighting conditions for us.”
“The sky is yours,” Arnie answered.
Yu Shu Lien and her nine warriors advanced. They held their staffs in their claws. The Great White Egret bowed her head before Kawanatanga: “Enemy lord, turn back or face us.”
Kawanatanga gave an incredulous laugh. “What can ten do against a thousand?”
“Actually,” the Great White Egret answered humbly, “quite a lot.”
She gave a sharp order. “Hai. Hohooo.” Next moment, the kung fu warriors were jumping, flying, circling, tumbling, somersaulting in and out of the ranks of seabirds. Every time they made a move they slashed with their staffs, slicing three seabirds at one blow. They wove in and out, under and above, stabbing and jabbing giant holes in the approaching army. At the end of their first feint, they retreated and bowed.
“Wow,” Skylark whistled.
With a roar of anger, Kawanatanga urged his army forward. Next moment, the Great White Egret and her warriors were fighting for their lives. Together with the windhovers, they were pushed backwards, ever backwards, over Manu Valley. Watching, Arnie was trying to calculate the moment when the maximum number of enemy were engaged. In particular, he was waiting for the black seashags from the future, the greatest threat of all, to enter the envelope of air immediately above the Great Forest of Tane.
They were in the zone. “Yu Shu Lien, windhovers,” Arnie yelled, “dive, dive, dive —”
On the order, the windhovers folded their wings and dropped like stones toward the green canopy of the forest. Would the black seashags follow them? Would they take the bait?
The seashags swooped after their descending prey. The windhovers dropped through the forest and disappeared.
“Come on, you black devils,” Arnie whispered to himself. “Follow the windhovers through. Go through —”
It was Kawanatanga himself who sealed their fate. “Kill the cowards. Bring back to me their heads as trophies. Especially bring back that Chinese bitch!”
One by one, the black seashags banked, and in a trice the forest swallowed them. They founds themselves in a maze of sky-splitting trees and ferns, a glowing forest which took their breath away. Soon, all of this would be theirs. All this beauty. All this awesome taonga. All this virgin land. But where were their prey?
“They’ve gone to ground! They’re playing hide and seek! Where are you, my little lovelies.”
Lower and lower the seashags descended. They fluttered through the dense canopy, weaving this way and that among the dense branches. At last, they broke through into the space between canopy and ground where they were able to cruise, wings outspread, between the trunks of the trees.
But why was it so quiet? Why was it so silent? And such a humid, oppressive silence too. The seashags began to grow uneasy.
“Do you still pursue us?” the Great White Egret asked.
She was swaying on a slender branch. In a sudden movement, she swung her long bamboo staff, decapitating an attacking seashag. Next moment her kung fu warriors were flipping from branch to branch, knocking down the enemy birds.
This was the moment Chieftain Kaka had been waiting for.
“Pokokohua! Taurekareka!”
He sprang the ambush, and his tribe of parrots came out from the holes in the trees. They leapt in twos and threes onto the seashags, riding them like cowboys, forcing them to stall and fall to the ground.
The seashags hissed and bucked trying to dislodge their unwanted riders. No sooner were they grounded than Chieftain Koreke of quails and his tribe came running fast on twinkling legs. They rose with a whirr, aiming themselves like bullets at the downed seashags. Desperately the seashags snapped at their attackers.
The Great Forest was silent no longer. Everywhere, the ground birds were hastening to the attack — all the woodhens, pukeko and kiwi, as well as the pheasants, partridges, rails, coots, crakes, moorhens, pipits, and wagtails.
“It’s a trap! Get out while you can!” the seashags yelled.
But once the trap had closed, nothing could save them. The air at ground level was dead, still, without any underwing airflow to provide lift. Even if they managed to become airborne, their manoeuvrability was limited and there was not enough air space to achieve a fast getaway.
“Aue, my canoe is done for,” a seashag cried as he clipped a tree and fell to the ground again. All around him the smaller birds were waiting and whirring. Flashing their crimson or green feathers, red or yellow crowns, and orange fronts, they attacked like swarms of brightly coloured avian piranha.
“Ma iro kite,” the ground birds shrilled. “We will see the maggots when all of you lie on the ground after the battle.”
High in the sky, Kawanatanga finally understood what was happening. He saw his seashag battalions disappearing into the forest canopy and not returning.
“Why didn’t you warn me?” he asked Karoro. “The entire forest is a great Venus fly-trap. Re-group! Keep out of the forest! Return to your battle formations!”
Seething with anger, Kawanatanga waited for the restoration of his birds’ attack configuration. He counted himself lucky that he still had half his seashag battalion. “The victory can yet be mine,” he said.
“So what do we do now, Chieftain Arnie?” Kahu asked.
“We’re outnumbered but we’re just going to have to fight on with every beak and claw until it’s all over,” Arnie answered.