The Game of Fates

by Joel Babbitt

  Trallik looked up and further along the trail. They were in the northern foothills now, and they were about to enter a canyon, the same canyon that this orc trail led into. Looking around the flattened area, he saw no signs that the orc had headed away from the trail. To the contrary, as he stooped closer he could see the marks of the orc’s heavy boots making their way back onto the trail toward the mouth of the canyon.

  Arren, standing twice as tall as the young kobold next to him, drew the final conclusion. “It would appear to me that we are not far behind this orc. It is good that orcs do not have heat vision, as he most probably traveled on this trail and passed close by where you were sleeping last night.”

  Trallik looked somewhat discomforted by the revelation.

  “Shall we be after him?” Arren asked rhetorically as he continued along the path toward the mouth of the canyon.

  “I guess so,” Trallik said as he adjusted his pack on his shoulders and retightened the bag of rocks on his belt.

  Trallik and Arren sat on two large, flat stones, the kobold with his legs dangling over the edge of the rock and the elf with his legs crossed, both of them looking down into the low box canyon where they had found the cave entrance. Following Arren’s lead, the pair had not gone into the canyon, but had instead kept above the floor of it, traveling along the lip of one of the short cliffs that formed its walls. As they reached the face of the mountain, the canyon had ended in a rather large cave that appeared to have been recently revealed by something of a landslide. A short set of steps had been carved into the rock that led up to the cave entrance, falling off on one side into a wide crack that had been mostly filled with the debris that until recently had concealed the entrance.

  What had caused the entrance to be revealed was a mystery to the pair, but not only had the dirt and rocks that had covered the entrance at one time been removed, so had a massive boulder that, from the tar that was still evident both around the entranceway as well as on the rock, had sealed the entrance at one time. Now the boulder lay with the rest of the rubble off to the side of the stairs and something, or somethings, had done a sloppy but thorough enough job of removing the remaining debris from the stone staircase.

  Trallik munched on a mushroom cap from his meat sack as his eyes rested on the entrance. He was still pondering on all that Arren had told him, and something within him had been awoken. Perhaps it was a greater sense of purpose, or a reawakening of a dormant sense of duty. Whatever it was, Arren’s words had stirred Trallik’s soul and opened his mind to a much more expansive view of the world.

  “Arren,” Trallik started tentatively. Arren took another bite of traveling bread and looked over at him. “I was wondering. I think your quest is noble. Can I join it?”

  Arren chewed for a bit, swallowed, then looked over at Trallik calmly and evenly. “I think you already have.”

  “I mean more than just guiding you to the Hall of the Mountain King,” Trallik said. “I would take your quest as my own.”

  Arren took another bite and chewed for a bit before chasing it down with a swig of water from his water skin. “My dear, young kobold,” he started. “In fifteen years you may feel that you know who you are and what you really want in life, but I would tell you that you will spend most of your very short life figuring that out. Trust me. I spent much of the first century of my life doing the same. If you reflect on your actions of the last few days, I think you might more fully understand what I mean. While your sentiment is admirable, I think it best that we discuss this at a future time, perhaps after you’ve had more of an opportunity to discover yourself we can revisit this subject.”

  Trallik had opened up and had been turned down, but he did not take offense. He had begun to trust this high-talking stranger, and had begun to see him more as a master than a peer.

  “Take heart, young one,” Arren continued. “Our first day together is far from spent. In time it will become clear whether you can truly take this quest upon yourself. I think before we are done with our journey, you will see things perhaps a bit more clearly.”

  Chapter 10 – Into the Caves

  The pair of strange companions had not seen nor heard anything moving in the canyon below for some time. Finally, deciding to move in closer, the tall elf warrior had lowered the much smaller kobold warrior down the side of the canyon with a slender, yet surprisingly strong rope made of a material he called silk. Moving up next to the entrance, Trallik had stopped and listened for some time before signaling to Arren that he heard nothing inside.

  Holding one end of the rope, Arren threw it around a tree, then taking the other side he lowered himself down, collecting the rope up after himself and wrapping it neatly before reattaching it to one side of his pack. Approaching the cave entrance, he drew the long-bladed pole weapon he favored from his back and whispered a word in a tongue that Trallik did not recognize.

  Trallik gasped as the clear crystal on the end of Arren’s weapon shone with a pure, white light. “How did you do that?” he asked, astonished.

  “What… the light?” Arren asked. “It’s but a simple spell to light the way for those of us who do not have heat or dark vision.” Arren looked at the kobold for a moment as if sizing him up. “You’re not going to be surprised at every little thing I do are you?”

  Trallik was a bit taken aback by the question. “Um… probably not.”

  “Well, good. After all, one does pick up several tricks in five hundred years of life, and bores quickly with people’s gawking at them.”

  Trallik nodded innocently.

  “Well, now. You’ve got heat vision, and you’re not wearing armor. How would you like to go first into the cave, probably far enough ahead of me so that my light will not disrupt your vision?”

  Prompted into action, Trallik walked up to the entrance. As Trallik stopped to sniff the air from the cave for a few moments, Arren walked up behind him. The pair had thought the cave entrance looked strangely round, not a natural shape. Now that they were closer, they could see the marks of chisels and other tools around the inner part of the entrance. That, and the smoothness of the floor showed clearly that, though it appeared to have originally been naturally formed, it had been expanded and improved at some time in the past.

  From inside the cave came a gentle flow of air. From the base scent of it, Trallik could tell that some underground flow of water had to be the cause. He could almost taste the limestone in the air. The fresh scent of the air was completely tramped, however, by the overriding foul smell of orc.

  “I smell orc,” Trallik said in a low voice.

  Arren, standing just behind him, replied in an equally low voice. “So do I. Does your nose tell you anything more subtle?”

  Trallik tried to block the overriding reek of orc from his nose, to sort out whatever else might be in the air. For several moments, Trallik stood and sniffed. That there were other scents was sure, but Trallik was not able to make out anything other than the scent of bats and rats. Turning to the elf, he shook his head.

  Arren motioned toward the entrance, encouraging Trallik to move forward.

  Tentative at first, perhaps because of his last horrible encounter in a dark place like this, Trallik crept slowly forward, keeping close to the right wall. Only a few tens of steps into the entrance the path was obstructed by a large pile of boulders that had mostly blocked the passageway, leaving enough room for a kobold to walk upright over it but not larger folk like orcs or his elf companion. It was obvious to Trallik, however, as he clamored to the top of it, that the rocks and dirt that formed the obstruction had been well packed down by the passage of many less dexterous travelers. In the near darkness, with Arren’s light behind him and just enough light from the outside to prevent his heat vision from functioning, Trallik was glad that most of the small pebbles and unsteady rocks had already settled or been kicked off the path, allowing him to crawl quietly up the slope.

  At the top of the pile of boulders, Trallik shielded his eyes from the lig
ht behind him. Arren seemed to understand what Trallik was trying to do and, with a whispered word of command, he extinguished his weapon’s light. In a few moments, Trallik’s eyes began to adjust to the inky darkness of the passageway beyond the obstruction.

  The entire passageway was cooled by the gentle flow of air, leaving the details of it mostly obscured in an inky blackness to Trallik’s heat vision. Though it would make it harder to be stealthy, Trallik knew this could work to his advantage, as the bright heat signatures of living things would contrast even more sharply in such an environment.

  Seeing nothing living, Trallik scrambled down the far side of the obstruction and sat listening for a moment as he searched for a good-sized rock to keep in hand. He already had a bag with a few good stones, but these stones here were not rounded by the rain and winter’s cold. There were many sharp edges on the rock he eventually selected.

  Standing again, Trallik began to make his way cautiously down the long, winding passageway toward the heart of the mountain.

  The pair of travelers had gone far into the heart of the mountain, learning how each other moved and getting familiar with each other’s abilities. At first Trallik had thought that the overlapping bands of metal that formed Arren’s armor would rub together, making much noise in the confines of the caves. However, as he traveled ahead of the elf into the heart of the mountain, his own breathing and footfalls sounded louder in his ears than any sound from Arren to his rear.

  Along this main path, which had obviously been widened and straightened from its original form, many lesser paths broke off at many an odd angle. The main flow of air, however, continued to come from the broad passageway to their front. At each of these side passages, many of them being no more than crawl spaces or cracks in the rock, Trallik stopped, sniffed the air, and scanned for any signs of living things.

  Trallik had found many rats this way, at least in the outer portions of the passageway. He had been tempted to collect a few of them for later eating, but he did not want the noise that such an activity would bring, so he resisted the temptation.

  Now that the pair was much deeper in the mountain, the increasingly moist air, mixed with the droppings of both cave insects and the rotting bodies of a couple of foolhardy rats had started something of a fungus colony on a small shelf-like passageway that was little more than a crawl space. As Trallik took out one of his knives to harvest some of the fresher mushrooms, a flicker of light reflecting off a moist portion of wall farther inside the side passage made Trallik freeze in place.

  Arren, who had been sitting in darkness listening to Trallik make his way ahead before continuing, also saw the slight flicker of light. Remembering the layout of the passageway, he decided to not relight the crystal and instead felt his way toward Trallik. As he approached the young kobold with sightless eyes, Trallik reached out and grabbed his hands, guiding him down to his level. As he did so, another flicker of light appeared, and this time it seemed to be staying for a while. As the pair looked up at it emanating from the lip of the shelf-like passage next to them, they heard voices.

  The voices were too soft for Trallik to hear, but not so for the elf. As the pair sat in silence, Arren summarized the first few sentences he heard for the young kobold.

  “They speak a crude dialect of orcish,” he whispered almost under his breath. “It appears that a group of orcs has encountered another orc… whose name is Shagra.”

  Trallik waited in silence as the elf again listened. He was amazed at how sensitive the elf’s ears were. To him, the low, gravelly voices of the orcs were little more than a distant echo.

  “The leader of the group of orcs says that he’s no friend of Shagra’s, and that he wants to know what happened to a couple of his warriors that their chief said he had to send with Shagra,” Arren continued to translate.

  After a couple of moments, the pair heard a loud battle cry, followed by the sound of swords clashing. After a moment more, a cry of pain rang out through the caves. It was cut off abruptly and the sound of an armored body falling to the ground seemed to end the conflict.

  There was a long pause. Trallik looked at Arren, who seemed as curious as he. “I can crawl down the passageway. Should I?” he whispered to the elf, who was staring blindly at his face.

  Arren nodded slowly.

  Trallik set his backpack down next to Arren and stepped on top of it, to help him get up onto the ledge. Keeping clear of the mushrooms, Trallik crept toward the opening at the back of the ledge. It was barely large enough for him to creep through on hands and knees. As he started into the narrow passage a loud orc voice shouted a command. Trallik knew only a handful of orcish words, so he did not bother to stop and listen.

  After only a spear’s throw worth of crawling, Trallik had made it almost to the far end. The passage bent around some to the right, and he had come across one part that opened into something of a small, low chamber, the floor of which was littered with bat guano. After hurrying past that and scurrying over rock and fungus, Trallik had come to a much larger chamber, whose ceiling was full of bats, all hanging upside down in repose. He came out of the crawlway onto a high ledge and now had a partial view of the orcs. As he came up behind a rock that partially obscured the crawlway, he saw that he had come out well above the orcs.

  Being careful to stay hidden, Trallik looked down from his perch. Below him in the tall cavern he could see what appeared to be an entire orc war party, some thirty or so of them all in cold metal armor and carrying cold iron weapons. Most of them stood looking around at each other in an unsure fashion. By the way they stood, Trallik could tell that there were three leaders, all standing to the front of the group. They seemed to be looking to their front.

  From the patterns of the heat that they exuded, Trallik could tell that most of the orcs were feeling quite a bit of stress and adrenaline. Looking around at what could be the source of their quandary, he saw nothing. Shifting to the other side of the boulder to attempt to get a different view, he saw another orc, a large brute who, by the heat escaping from his left arm and side, had been wounded, probably by an arrow. He stood, somewhat shakily, with his sword in his good hand over the decapitated body of another orc who lay in a pile of bat guano on the sandy floor. As he watched, the large orc repeated something that Trallik had heard multiple times already as he had made his way down the crawlway.

  He did not speak orcish, but it seemed obvious to him what the large orc meant by the gestures he was making to the dead body and by the uncertainty of the other orcs. It seemed that he was intimidating the other orcs into submission. He had already killed what appeared to be their leader, and now he seemed to be directing his words, or more likely threats, at the three sub-leaders.

  As Trallik watched, the tension in the room mounted as the three sub-leaders decided whether or not they should attack the larger orc—or join him. After a short while longer, and some discussion on the part of the three sub-leaders, first one sub-leader knelt, then the second. The third one, however, seeing his two peers submit themselves, shouted angrily and rushed forward. With one quick swing, the larger orc decapitated the rash sub-leader. With a thud, the orc’s body fell heavily to the sand, its head falling at the feet of his warriors. With the death of the last who stood in his way, the rest of the orcs quickly knelt before the large orc.

  It was at that precise moment that Trallik’s hand, as he was attempting to get a better view of the large orc, bumped a rather small bat hanging upside down from a small stalactite. Unfortunately for Trallik, that small bump was enough to knock the bat loose. It fell to the floor of the shelf Trallik was on, screeching and fluttering as it went. As Trallik watched in absolute horror, the little bat flew upward to the top of the high vaulted ceiling of the tall chamber that he and the orcs were in. Turning to see what had caused the disturbance, the large orc locked eyes with a very distraught Trallik.

  Having been roused by the small bat that Trallik had disturbed, the huge bat population, which apparently had be
en content to stay put through the orc argument, decided that now was the time to evacuate the area. In a matter of moments, the entire chamber was filled with the confused flapping, bumping, and screeching of many hundreds of bats.

  As orcs batted at the swarm of flying rodents, Trallik turned quickly and thrust himself into the hole, crawling as quickly as he could back down the crawlway toward the elf. He was not alone, however. Tens of bats swarmed between his arms and legs, and many more screeched madly as they bumped into his hindquarters, legs and tail.

  Though battered and terrified, Trallik’s scales kept him unmarked and, after a short time, Trallik finally crawled out into the small mid-passage chamber and pulled himself off to the side, breathing heavily. His heart was racing, his emotions screamed at him to attempt to flee in absolute panic, and his loincloth was no longer dry. Trallik had gotten himself into quite a mess.

  It was at that precise moment, as Trallik sat trying to calm down and think, that he saw a glint from the pile of bat guano. Impulsively, he grabbed a rag from his large belt pouch and used it to pull a fist-sized clear rock out of the pile of droppings. Wiping it off as carefully as he could with bats still flying about him in confusion, Trallik wrapped the guano-smeared ball without touching it and stuffed it into his pouch before sitting back against the wall.

  Chapter 11 – Morning in the Krall Gen

  As dawn cast its light upon the still blue waters of Lord Krall’s Lake in the heart of the Krall Gen, Ardan was getting anxious. It had been the better part of two days that the company had been at the gen and he’d not yet seen his love Miratha. He’d not had a chance to get away yet, now that he was in charge of a team, and he’d not seen her at the Hall of Commerce yesterday during Manebrow’s planning meeting. He’d not been able to get a good view of her home on the other side of the lake, as Lord Krall’s great hall mostly obscured it. But he had seen smoke coming from her chimney last evening beckoning him with the thoughts of a fireside, food, and her.