A mounted enemy officer with a disfigured face galloped along the road through the beech forest. He was in such a hurry that he had left his guard of honor behind him and when he saw that he was alone he became terribly frightened. He was in a foreign country where he didn't feel safe and secure. He looked anxiously around to see if there were any enemies in the vicinity and although he didn't see any he knew they could be lying in wait in the thickets.

The enemy in blue uniform was determined to get him and wouldn't give up until he was dead and buried. Smirgul didn't even trust his own soldiers. If it wasn't for their fear of the whip and the red-hot iron, they would have stabbed him to death in order to get more power for themselves. Smirgul had no nose and there were just two ugly holes where it should have been. His nose had been bitten off by a shoal of predatory fish when his father, the late emperor Smirgul, had let him bathe in a dangerous lake as a punishment for being coward. Most of the people in Murtsch-Takesjdell however had their noses intact!