“I can make out nothing,” Willock said, lowering his spyscope and turning towards Jorn and the others. “It looks quiet. Perhaps we are still too far away to see anything. The pass could be unguarded.”
Jorn studied the sky.
“It’s still too light to risk passing through even if it were,” he said. “But I think we can still get a lot closer before dark.”
They set out again, climbing over the rocks and making their way steadily towards the Teeth. Over the fields of rock and ice they silently made their way, growing so close to the Teeth that the towering presence of the mountains overawed them.
They kept inching closer, Jorn eager to get as close as possible to the pass before nightfall. He wanted to scout it all out with plenty of time left in the night to still make the crossing before dawn, if it could be managed at all.
Jorn was about to pronounce them close enough to stop when he saw the vultures. Dozens of them were flying in circles overhead, right in the direction they were walking. As Jorn and the others approached, a cluster of the scavengers on the ground flew off and stopped a few hundred feet away. They perched atop some nearby boulders, watching the travelers from a safe distance. Jorn approached closer.
“Grang!” he exclaimed.
On the slopes of the mountain lay the bodies of dozens of tribesmen and at least as many gruks. They were all strewn about in haphazard fashion, the bodies twisted into grotesque forms and many already half-eaten by the vultures. Arms of all sorts – swords, spears, clubs, and axes – lay scattered about. Many corpses still grasped weapons and others were impaled upon spears or swords. Severed limbs and even a gruk head lay strewn about. The entire spectacle looked like some kind of disjointed nightmare in all its horrible intensity, dense clouds of flies buzzing about the whole stinking scene.
“The wildmen and the gruks,” Ailric said. “They battle one another!”
“Tha’s not uncommon, laddie,” Ironhelm explained. “They almost always fight amongst themselves, whenever someone tries to merge them into one army. Aye, tis true. Some years ago a dark wizard tried to invade Thunderforge with such a force. He thought he had an invincible host but it was not long before his berserker mercenaries and his gruk mercenaries were at each other’s throats. Aye, we cut whatever was left of ‘em to shreds.”
“Berserker chieftains don’t like to take orders from gruks,” Jorn said. “Or from anyone, for that matter. Only someone like Amundágor himself could hold such an alliance together for very long.”
Willock bent down, studying the scene carefully.
“The battle was not more than a day ago,” he concluded.
Ironhelm looked around uneasily.
“Ach. I don’t like being out in the open like this,” he grumbled. “Not during the daylight, laddies. Let’s find a place to hide.”
They found a spot surround by a pair of large boulders nearby and took cover on the far side of them. They rested, watching the last of the afternoon slip away. It grew colder as the sun dipped below the Teeth, briefly filling the gap in between with a brilliant orange light before fading to a dull gray as night came on quickly in the mountains.
“We’ll wait a bit longer,” Ironhelm said as they consumed a cold dinner of sausages and dry, salty cheese. “Aye, then we should scout the pass.”
“The real question is sneaking through,” Willock said. “If the pass is guarded, I don’t know how we could manage it.”
“I can get us through,” Ronias suddenly spoke up. “But it will not be easy. The magical invocations involved are powerful.”
“Tell us what you’ve in mind,” Jorn said.
“It is simple, really,” Ronias said. “I can make us all invisible. It will be as though we are not even there insofar as any observer is concerned. We can pass by unnoticed.”
“Go on,” Jorn said. “How will it work?”
“The spell will create a sphere of invisibility around my person ten feet in all directions,” Ronias said.
“Invisibility!” Ailric said. “I have seen such spells worked in magic shows at fairs. Always one can still see the faint outline of the wizard. An invisibility spell will do us no good.”
“During broad daylight or in a room well-lit with wizard’s lamp you see a faint outline,” Ronias said. “True enough. Dim moonslight is another matter, however. I assure you, we’ll be quite invisible to any observer. However, there are certain shortcomings to the spell which must be dealt with. It affects the eye, and none of the other senses. We can still be heard or smelled, for example. We must stick close together, and move slowly enough to not be heard. But I can make the spell last only about twenty minutes, at the most, so we must not be too slow either.”
“Grang’s teeth,” Jorn muttered. “That’s cutting it close.”
“That’s not all,” Ronias continued. “The slightest brush or nudge against anyone outside the sphere and the spell simply ceases to function. An invisibility spell is, in essence, an illusion. The illusion being, very simply, that the invisible person is not there. But it only functions in regard to sight. It does nothing to fool the other senses. A touch thus destroys the illusion. Brush against one gruk and we would all suddenly appear visible.”
“I’d hate to find myself surrounded in the middle of an enemy camp like that,” Flatfoot said. “Well, again, that is.”
“We still don’t really know what we’re facing,” Jorn said. “We need more information.”
“Wha’ are you suggesting, laddie?” Ironhelm said.
“Only what you already did,” Jorn said. “A scouting expedition. Hugh and I will creep a bit closer and see what there is to see.”
“I should be able to get a good look through the spyscope if we can get close enough,” Willock said. “The area around the pass is barren and open. There has to be a spot where I can get a look right through the pass.”
“Do it, then,” Ironhelm said, nodding. “Aye. Jorn, you go with him. And make sure you don’t get too close, laddies.”
“When did I start taking orders from you?” Jorn snorted, casting Ironhelm a hostile glance.
“Not this damned argument again!” Ironhelm said. “Take it as a request, if tha’ satisfies your damned inflated ego or take it as an order if you want something to whine about. Stay here, go with Hugh, or go shit on a rock.”
“Fine,” Jorn said, reaching for his bow. “I’ll go with Hugh, then, if that’ll get you to shut up for five minutes.”
Jorn and Willock left, creeping off into the darkness. Ironhelm took another bite of sausage, grumbling to himself in dwarven.
“He remains an obstinate one, doesn’t he?” Ailric said. “I don’t really know what Braemorgan sees in him. Lord of The Westmark, indeed! He’s no more lordly than a stable boy after drinking half a keg of cheap wine.”
Ironhelm glared at Ailric.
“Mind your tongue, Sir Ailric,” he growled.
“Why should I? He gives out orders to all of us, as though we were all his chambermaids. He’s a drunken, crude, lowborn exile.”
“He seems like a nice enough chap to me,” Flatfoot said. “Maybe a little rough around the edges, I grant you, but who isn’t at that age? Especially in Linlund, I dare say.”
“He’s been through a lot, Ailric,” Ironhelm said, ignoring the gnome. “Maybe too much. Tell me, laddie, do you know why it is tha’ you and him don’t get along?”
“What? No, why?”
“Because you two, you’re exactly the same,” Ironhelm said. “Aye, tis true.”
“What?” the knight said, sputtering. “That’s outrageous! How can you say that?”
“You know, now that you point it out,” Flatfoot said, laughing. “It really is rather obvious.”
Ailric cast the gnome a glare then turned away from both of them.
“Exactly the same!” he muttered.
_____
It was too dark to get as clear a picture of the pass as he would have liked, but Willock could still see a
great deal through the spyscope. The first thing he noticed was that this pass was a lot wider than the Widowing Gap, at least three or four times farther across, and not nearly so well-guarded. There was no wall built across its length and no carefully thought-out system of defenses, or at least none that he could see. He stared through the lens for long minutes, watching the darkness for any sign of movement.
“It is hard to see anything,” Willock said, lowering the scope.
“We’d best take a closer look,” Jorn said, starting to stand.
“I wouldn’t advise that,” Willock said.
Jorn scrambled forward, ignoring the woodsman’s advice and working his way closer to the pass entrance. Willock shook his head and sighed, hurriedly putting his spyscope away and grabbing his bow. Cursing under his breath, he caught up to Jorn. The younger man ducked behind a large rock and peaked again at the entrance to the pass. Willock crept up right next to him.
“Are you mad?” he whispered. “This is too dangerous.”
“It’s too quiet is what it is,” Jorn said. “Where are all the guards?”
Jorn inched even closer to the road. He peered down it into the darkness, straining to make out what he could. He stepped forward, almost tripping over something on the ground in front of him. Looking down, he saw the faint outline of a gruk corpse, an arrow still sticking through one of its arms. Jorn jumped back, clutching the hilt of his sword.
“This is madness, Jorn,” Willock whispered urgently, not yet seeing the body. “We could be spotted already.”
“No,” Jorn said, pointing towards the ground in front of them. “The pass is clear.”
He stepped out onto the road, creeping forward. Looking around, he saw more corpses strewn about the road, both gruk and Wildman. All seemed to have died in battle. He tried to count them as he moved forward, but they grew too numerous to keep track of. There had to be at least a hundred of them, perhaps more.
Jorn turned back to Willock.
“Grang’s teeth!” he exclaimed. “At last a stroke of luck! It looks like these gruks were guarding the pass. The tribesmen must have taken it and pressed on further.”
“The guards could be back at any moment,” Willock said.
“Right,” Jorn said. “We can’t delay even a minute.”
_____
“They’re all dead,” Jorn said. “We have to get to the other side now.”
“All dead?” Ironhelm said. “How can you be sure, laddie?”
“The pass is clear,” Jorn said. “It might not be in a while, but it is right now. Come on, Durm, you’re always rushing us along. If now isn’t the time to rush, then it never will be.”
“Ach. You may be right, laddie,” Ironhelm said, glancing over at the pass again. “Damn, but it seems risky. Aye, damned risky.”
They crept along in the moonlight, the bodies of berserkers and gruks scattered about on the ground all around. On either side rose the Teeth of Kaas, straight up for a thousand feet in two walls of sheer granite.
It was dark, down at the bottom of the great cleft, and Jorn held Ronias’ glowing dagger as he led the others through. Their weapons drawn, they moved swiftly in complete silence. A ceaseless wind howled through the mighty gap all the while, cold and unrelenting. They lowered their heads against it, stepping over the corpses.
It did not look like a large battle, no more bodies laying about the pass than they had encountered that afternoon on the slopes below. Whichever side had won, if any had, Jorn could not at first tell. The answer soon became apparent to him. A group of gruks bodies lay close together near the center of the pass where it narrowed to barely fifty feet across, their bodies riddled with arrows.
After that, they did not see any more of the fur-clad bodies of the northmen. Jorn nodded to himself. The berserkers must have assaulted the pass from its eastern side, the gruks making their stand as best as they could at the narrowest part of the pass. By the looks of it, there were either not that many gruks guarding it or most of them had already fled.
Something approached them in the darkness ahead. Jorn froze, raising his sword. The figure emerged from the shadows, a wild-haired berserker limping towards Jorn. He leaned heavily on a broken spear shaft, an arrow sticking out of his thigh. His legs were bare, and covered in blood. He noticed Jorn, grunting something and halting in place.
The wounded man stood straight up, glaring at Jorn and holding up the spear shaft in front of him. Growling, he lunged forward.
Jorn was surprised how well the berserker could still move despite his wound, but the berserker was still no match for him. He countered the attack and slashed back before the man could recover his balance. His sword cut into the berserker’s neck deeply and the barbarian fell to the ground without even a whimper.
“Wha’ was tha’ he said to you?” Ironhelm asked.
“What?” Jorn said.
“He grunted something. Did you know wha’ it was?”
“It was in the tongue of the wild men of the north.” Jorn shrugged. “A debased form of Linlundic. I think he asked who the hell I was. He thought, for a moment, that I was one of his own. Then he saw the rest of you.”
“Who cares what the scum thought?” Ailric said. “We’d best be on our way, before a whole squadron of his comrades show up.”
_____
The Valley of Amundágor.
Jorn could hardly believe they’d made it, at long last. They followed the road a short distance down the opposite slope, searching anxiously for a means to get off it as soon as possible. They soon spotted a thin trail that branched off the main road to the left where they would be less vulnerable to being spotted. The moonslight, Arnos now nearly half full, lit the path before them.
Behind them loomed the Teeth, in front the dark expanse of the valley. The tiny, distant lights of hundreds of campfires were concentrated almost directly west of them amidst an ocean of inky blackness. Scattered here and in the darkness were a few isolated groups of campfires, probably outlying encampments.
“The enemy camp,” Ironhelm muttered.
“The Great Temple of the West,” Jorn said. “Grang’s teeth, I can hardly believe we’ve made it this far.”
“We’d best find someplace to hole-up tonight,” Willock said. “Somewhere well-hidden, yes, and farther off the main road.”
The woodsman took the lead now, working his way in twisting fashion down the side of the mountain. It was all a barren landscape of bare rock save for the occasional patch of moss or hardy mountain shrub.
After another hour of working their way steadily down towards the tree-line, they entered a thick forest of pine covering the mountainside. They did not halt, however, leaving the trail and searching for a suitable spot to camp. Willock wanted someplace well out-of-sight of the little trail, easily defensible and near somewhere he could get a good look at the valley below.
Willock at last called a stop when they came to a small clearing next to a pair of tall boulders. They slumped to the ground, exhausted. Ronias went to work at once heating up a large stone near the center of the little clearing, providing some measure of warmth in the cold mountain darkness.
Willock, meanwhile, scouted the area quickly. A hundred yards from the clearing he saw a small outcropping and climbed atop it. The campfires were still out there, somewhat closer than before. He was glad, in spite of all their hardships. They’d passed through the Teeth of Kaas unscathed and would, in the morning, finally get a good view of their objective. Scanning the valley, he saw a line of torches, far closer than the distant torches, off to the right and heading up the mountain. He nodded to himself in the darkness, watching the line of troops heading up the road to the Teeth of Kaas.
_____
“What another stroke of good fortune!” Flatfoot said, leaning back. They were sitting around the magically-glowing stone, enjoying its heat and gentle light.
They ate a late dinner and settled in for the night. They had gathered some branches, propping them up agai
nst the boulders to make a tolerable pair of lean-tos that kept enough of the wind out.
“Think of it,” the gnome went one. “Normally the pass is guarded and troops are passing through all the time. It is astounding, really. A mutiny of some kind among the berserker mercenaries leaves the pass temporarily empty just when we arrive. An hour later, that new column of troops Hugh observed comes marching back up and the pass is well-guarded once more. We slipped through precisely at the right moment. Absolutely outstanding luck!”
“Luck?” Ironhelm grumbled. “Wha’ the bloody hell does luck have to do with anything, laddie? There is no such thing, anyhow.”
“No such thing as luck?” Flatfoot said, shocked. “Surely you jest.”
“I never jest,” Ironhelm said.
“How can you question the simple existence of fortune?” Flatfoot said. “Or, as we gnomes call it, gnarhanna. Think about it for a moment. We could have approached the pass at any time and it would have been nearly impossible, or at least quite difficult, to pass through undetected. By sheer chance, however, we happen upon it at the precise moment when we could pass through with relatively little trouble. Earlier, the gruks are still on guard. Any later, those reinforcements block the way.”
“Call it luck, fortune, or chance, it’s all nonsense,” Ironhelm said. The dwarf shoveled his last bit of dinner into his mouth. “All is fated according to Une’s plan. Do you think Une is some gambler with events, casting dice ? Ach. Wha’ you call chance, or luck…it’s an illusion. Nothing just happens, laddie. Aye, tis true.”
“Lord Ironhelm is wise. I’ve always believed in fate and not just blind chance,” Ailric said. “You might say everything that has happened on this journey was for a reason, even if we couldn’t see it at the time. The encounter with the dragon, Sal’s getting kidnapped, even the loss of the horses. Even if at the time we thought these things bad turns, it turns out they weren’t.”
“How can that be?” Flatfoot asked.
“The entire string of seemingly bad luck all brought us to The Teeth at the most fortuitous possible moment,” Ailric explained. “If any of it happened the least bit differently, we wouldn’t have arrived at the precise moment we did. It was simply meant to happen this way.”
Child Of Storms (Volume 1) Page 51
