The Game of Fates

by Joel Babbitt

  Ahn-Ki shook his head. “That’s what makes it so perfect, my lord. Lord Karthan and those loyal to him have built a little fort on the north side of the valley. All we have to do is go there, kill Lord Karthan and his few warriors, then we go and take over the Kale Gen from Khee-lar Shadow Hand.”

  “But if Khee-lar take over gen, then he be lord, so we just kill him,” Drakebane said, his brow furrowed in deep thought.

  “We could, my lord. However, since he failed to kill Lord Karthan, by law of your tribe, he is not fit to rule in Karthan’s place. You, however, having just killed Lord Karthan, would have the right to rule that gen, and you could keep Khee-lar as a minister, to help run things in the gen so you don’t have to.”

  Drakebane nodded in agreement. That was the tradition passed down through many generations of his fathers to him. It was how leadership among the orcs always seemed to work. He who killed the orc chieftain was always entitled to lead the tribe… if he were strong enough to hold onto it.

  At the foot of his throne, his son Grimbane nodded sagely, as if he understood. Drakebane scowled to himself. Grimbane was strong, but he understood nothing. That made him no challenge to Drakebane. He thought for a moment then smiled.

  Yes, Grimbane would lead the first charge. He had other sons to take his place.

  As Ahn-Ki walked away from his employer, he was amazed at how simple it was to guide the mostly mentally defenseless orc leader. He imagined it would be just as easy to control the kobolds through the dragon’s power, and cut the orcs out of the picture entirely. And once he controlled the kobolds, well, that’s when the money would really begin to flow…

  Jominai the new adventurer class from this year’s trials of caste stood before Lord Krulak, Lord of the Kobold Gen. His new solid steel breastplate and helmet shone with a highly polished luster. Beside him, dressed in the traditional chain mail of an elite warrior, stood Marbo, as a house guard warrior he had served in every warrior group and had led warriors in combat in every one of them before being assigned to Lord Krulak’s personal guard. It was because of his vast experience that Marbo had now been assigned to be Jominai’s chief elite warrior.

  The fact that the new leader caste didn’t have a warrior group assigned to him yet didn’t bother Marbo. After all, leaders from the Kobold Gen typically saw their first action while leading warriors from other gens. This time would be no different, he imagined. The Bloodhand Orc Tribe had stormed into the valley again, this time demanding warriors for some unstated purpose (though their spies among Shagra’s Kijik mercenaries had already told them that it was for a raid against the Kale Gen). Marbo didn’t particularly relish the thought of raiding another gen’s halls, but if it was that or have his own gen’s halls raided… well, too bad for the Kales.

  To lead warriors from the degenerate gens would be why Lord Krulak had called them here today; to tell them about the ambassadors their gen had sent to the degenerate Nipjik, Five, Kijik, and Picor Gens telling them to assemble their warriors at the northern end of the Border Hills. Of course the other gens would grumble; they would complain that ‘the Kobold Gen won’t leave us alone,’ but they would come. They would come because the Kobold Gen had what none of the other gens of this valley had. They had magic; magic to heal and magic to harm as well. These powers were gifts from the ancestors and The Sorcerer, gifted to the Kobold Gen, who, as sons of the First Sire, were inheritors of his powers, as well as his responsibilities.

  Why did the leaders of the Kobold Gen bother? Apart from their mandate to lead, as recorded in the Scrolls of Heritage, they knew that if their gen didn’t do the organizing, none of these gens which had splintered from them in ages past would step forward and provide the necessary leadership, and the world was too dangerous of a place to risk standing divided.

  Being barely fifteen years of age, and having just been elevated to the leader caste from yearling status not even a week before, Jominai knew nothing of politics or what was going on in the world outside their halls, and only generalities about the heritage of his own gen. In fact, if it hadn’t been for Marbo telling him, he’d not even have known that the Bloodhand Orcs were in the valley. He had enough sense, however, to keep his mouth shut and not let on that he hadn’t known they were here until just a few moments before this meeting. Now, as the young bronze-scaled leader caste cleared his voice, he wished he’d studied orc more thoroughly in their gen’s halls of learning.

  “My Lord Krulak, Servant of the First Son,” Jominai stalled an extra moment by using the longer title as he desperately struggled to gather his thoughts. “Knowing that Krulak, your son and heir, will be leading our gen’s levy of one hundred from the warrior groups, I ask only for four elite warriors to provide guidance to the leaders of the other four gens’ contingents, a small staff team of five warriors, and six messengers to provide communications between us.” Jominai paused for a moment. “I would additionally ask, however, that my contingent be equipped with riding wolves for all and packdogs as necessary, to facilitate communications and ensure we can remain independent of the degenerate gens’ larders.”

  Beside the young leader Marbo nodded his approval. The young one had not buckled under the pressure of meeting with the Lord of the Gen. There might be hope for this young one yet.

  Lord Krulak, considering the pair for a moment, nodded his agreement. “Very well. Chamberlain, see to their needs as stated,” he directed an old, wizened-looking kobold who sat on his right hand. Lord Krulak thought for a moment, then added a bit more. “My son is taking a handful of oracles with him, and covenant magic users as well. I think it only good for our relations with our sister gens to send an oracle, and a covenant mage with Jominai’s Company as well.”

  Jominai had felt the burden of leadership rather heavily already, but adding an oracle of the ancients—one gifted by the ancestors with power to heal and protect—as well as a covenant magic user—one who had mastered the draconic incantations that summoned the minor powers The Sorcerer had gifted to their gen—significantly increased the level of stress Jominai was feeling. His natural meekness threatened to cave in the bravado he was trying to affect.

  Turning his attention back to the pair, Lord Krulak continued, “I expect frequent reports, and I expect you to follow my son’s lead. Remember that, as leader of the Kobold Gen’s contingent, my son Krulak is overall leader of the levy from the gens. You will maneuver as he sees fit to direct. Your troops are auxiliaries to his own. I would expect that most of your challenges will be in keeping the actions of your disparate group of levies coordinated, and in ensuring they follow the lead of my son.”

  “Aye, Lord,” Marbo nodded. “I understand well the challenges we’ll have with this lot. We’ll handle them well, together.”

  Accepting Marbo’s words at face value, Lord Krulak nodded his approval and dismissed the pair with his blessing.

  Though the task was daunting, after all it was his first real leadership experience, and despite the fact that he was to lead levies from the degenerate gens, a task that many in the Kobold Gen would consider with disdain, Jominai’s heart leapt at the adventure that awaited him. He’d always felt the desire to lead warriors in combat, to have the opportunity to write his own chapter in the annuls of the gen; and now here he was, about to embark on his first grand adventure. Despite the excitement he felt, which filled him almost to overflowing, the young adventurer class was barely able to hold his tongue as the pair walked away from their meeting with the lord of their gen.

  Beside the young warrior leader Marbo did feel some semblance of excitement, but his was much more tempered by the realities of what lay ahead for them: the blood, the death, the arguments with leaders from the other gens, the headaches of feeding and supplying such a disparate force, and probably the worst of all was the fact that they were going to be working for orcs.

  Why the leaders of the gens didn’t stand up to this small orc army Marbo just didn’t know. After all, if they actually mustered all the warr
iors here in the valley they could raise a levy of many thousands. Add to that the minor battle magic that still remained among the covenant mages of his gen, and they likely stood a good chance.

  Marbo shook his head. It was a naïve thought, he knew. After all, though they had a number of sorcerers among them, a couple of which were more powerful even than his gen’s several mages, the degenerate gens didn’t have the steel weapons and expert training, nor the discipline that the Kobold Gen had. They would be routed with the first ogre charge, if not the first orc charge. It was a sad state of affairs the gens of the Valley of the Mountain King found themselves in, that was certain, but Marbo had hope that someday, somehow, it would change.

  Arren e-Arnor sat looking pensively out over the valley from his vantage point just above the lip of the canyon where the passage to the southern valley lay. He had carefully exited the passage under the mountain, having heard ogres there not long before, but there were no signs of anything untoward lingering in the area.

  Now, as the elf warrior sat contemplating the scene before him from his crack in the rocks, he remembered the description given to him of the Hall of the Mountain King.

  It is a short, flat mountain that is hollow inside and open to the sky. It has a small gateway on the east side, which leads to an open courtyard that is split by a deep chasm. On the far side of the chasm, the external part of the Hall of the Mountain King lies. The outer constructions, all of which lie inside the hollow mountain which acts as a rather high wall for the place, are of stone construction, consisting mostly of towers with arrow-slits in them, and other such defensible structures. The central passage down into the halls themselves is directly accessed through the gatehouse whose drawbridge spans the chasm.

  Such was the description given to Arren by the head of his chapter of the Council of Watchers before departing on this quest, which Arren had committed to memory as was the custom with mission details among those of his order.

  There, on the far side of this northern valley, was a mountain that could easily fit the external portion of that description, sitting squarely below a much larger ridge of mountains. As Arren studied the terrain, he could see an ancient north-south road which seemed to still be in use by the inhabitants of this valley, and which led directly to the Chop off to the east. Much less visible, but still obvious by the marks it left on the land, was a smaller road that broke off from the main north-south road, heading east and eventually ending up at the small, flat mountain.

  Unfortunately, by the scorch marks and scarred earth, Arren could clearly see that the area was the hunting grounds of a fire-breathing dragon, most likely a red dragon. This too matched what he had read in the journal of a hired man-at-arms who had accompanied a paladin of his order on a quest to this area perhaps a decade now in the past.

  Of course, it took dragons decades to establish a proper lair, only rarely being present at the beginning, until they moved their treasure there of course, at which point it was very rare to not find them at home, squatting on their hoard. Some of the local kobolds he’d met elsewhere had told him much more, that in fact there were two dragons now present, an ancient female and her much younger, much smaller male consort.

  Arren grimaced. Cursing his luck that the very place he was trying to get to was the very place these dragons had chosen as their lair, he stood up and began to make his way down the slope into the northern valley.

  Marbo’s assessment of the levies that the degenerate gens had sent to meet his gen’s forces had put him in a foul mood, like always. As the dark-scaled ‘warriors’ stood in their ragged ranks in front of the chief elite warrior, scratching their bottoms, picking their noses, slapping each other, and in every other way acting in a manner unbecoming warriors, Marbo was tempted to immediately lay into them with his intricately carved cedar stick, the mark of his office.

  “Alright you lazy piles of dung! Attention!” he called out in his best parade-ground voice. Hearing the inherent authority in his voice, and for some seeing the promise of pain from the cedar stick, the rabble that would soon be known as Jominai’s Company began looking around at each other, wondering what to do. Some of the older ones, who had served under Kobold Gen warriors in the past, snapped to attention with their weapons at the ready, their stiff poses being mimicked, more or less successfully, by the plethora of young kobolds around them.

  Marbo almost smiled to himself. “I am Chief Elite Warrior Marbo,” he called out, “and you will do whatever I say.” Many of the younger warriors from the other four gens looked surprised at this. One in particular, a rather large whelp from the Kijik Gen, seemed to have something to prove.

  “Yoo no Kijik! I do what Kipja say. He lider from Kijik, no yoo!” Several other young ones around the large kobold voiced their support of his statement.

  Standing in front of them, Kipja, the kobold who had led his fellow Kijik warriors here, shook his head. It was a sad truth that the Kobold Gen warriors were the best, hands down, and that whenever his brother gens tried to lead themselves, it always seemed to end in disaster. For their own benefit, the Kobold Gen’s four sister gens’ warrior leaders had long ago learned to follow the lead of the Kobold Gen. Besides… they had magic, and that counted for a lot.

  Marbo was waiting for this outburst. He walked briskly up to the young bruiser, who almost seemed to shrink within himself at the grizzled veteran’s approach. Upon arriving he thrust his snout directly into the face of the much taller, much larger kobold.

  “What did you say, fat one?” he spat vehemently, poking the whelp in his soft chest with a finger from one of his muscular, rock-solid arms for emphasis. The young kobold was trembling and almost at the point of tears.

  “I didn’t think so!” Marbo said as he turned and began to storm down the line, looking for any other hints of the slightest dissent. After a few moments, without any support from their individual gen’s leaders, all overt challenges to Marbo’s authority seemed to melt away like frost before a particularly fierce sun. Yes, he would have a few that would get surly later on, once he started to turn up the heat on them, but a few quick strikes of the stick would keep those in line.

  Stopping at one end of the front rank, Marbo nodded to himself as he pounded his cedar stick rhythmically on his palm. This gets easier every time.

  As the midday sun began to edge toward the mountains that bordered the northern valley on the west, the contingent from the Kobold Gen arrived at Jominai’s small training ground at the northern edge of the Border Hills. They were an impressive sight to see. Resplendent in freshly oiled chain mail armor, with helmets and spear tips shining in the late afternoon sun, they sat proudly and with looks of utter confidence on the backs of their wolves. Though the handful of covenant mages had no such armor or weapons, their mere presence was as daunting as the presence of the handful of the oracles of the ancients riding with them was heartening.

  Riding at their head, Krulak, son of the Lord of the Kobold Gen, wore the traditional breastplate of the leader caste. The chest piece, helmet and the plates covering his legs and arms were shined to such a luster that the steel of them looked almost mercurial. The new bronze casting of the traditional tower and eye of the leader caste shone brilliantly on his shield as well.

  With an impressive precision, especially considering they were riding wolves, not dogs, the Kobold Gen contingent rode into the small training meadow, circling around it completely before coming to a halt at the eastern end of it. Clearly enjoying himself, a very animated Krulak gave the order to dismount as he hopped off his wolf’s back, giving the fearsome beast a rub behind the ears before striding forward toward Jominai with open arms.

  “Brother kobold!” he exclaimed as he embraced a rather subdued Jominai. Seeing his less than enthusiastic reaction, Krulak grabbed him by one shoulder. “Have you ever felt more alive? Ah, how good it feels to ride at the head of warriors again!” His sweeping gesture encompassed both his company and Jominai’s Company. Seeing Jominai starting to w
arm up a bit to him, he gave him a conspiratorial wink. “Much better than hanging around in the gen reading reports and doing paperwork, wouldn’t you say?”

  Jominai nodded, a half-smirk, half-smile creasing his features.

  Seeing his leader a little uncomfortable, Marbo decided that the sodden group of misfits from the four degenerate gens might actually be able to march together in some semblance of order, without completely embarrassing themselves in front of the Kobold Gen’s contingent and, as such, it was finally ready to present to his leader.

  “Listen up, warriors!” he called out. All eyes looked his way. Those who were seated immediately came to their feet. Seeing they were reacting, Marbo called them to attention.

  “Um… I have to go,” Jominai said meekly, quickly walking over to take his place behind his chief elite warrior. Remembering suddenly that Krulak was the overall commander, Jominai turned briefly and called softly to him. “We’ll follow your lead, Krulak,” he said before turning back around, silently pleased with himself for figuring his way out of an awkward circumstance.

  Having called the entire contingent from the degenerate gens to attention, Marbo did an about face and looked his young leader in the eyes. Pounding one fist to his chest in the traditional salute handed down through the generations from the time of The Sorcerer, Marbo gave his report.

  “Sire, Jominai’s Company stands formed!”

  “You seem to have worked something of a miracle here, Marbo,” Jominai complemented his chief elite warrior in a much lower voice.

  “Just doing my job, sire,” Marbo replied in the same low voice.

  Jominai returned the salute and both of them dropped their hands to their sides at the same instant. With that Marbo did an about face and moved out smartly toward the rear of the formation.

  Taking one step forward, Jominai did his best to affect the image of a warrior leader, a role he was still very much trying to fully assume. The presence of Krulak, who was a much older and more seasoned leader than Jominai, as well as the presence of almost a hundred of his fellow Kobold Gen warriors, not to mention the oracles and covenant mages, only enhanced the stress he’d already felt in anticipation of this moment. He cleared his voice once more, just to ensure that his voice didn’t crack. He certainly didn’t need to further emphasize his youth with these warriors.