The Game of Fates

by Joel Babbitt

  He understood the need to hold the line. As little as he thought about others, he could still work this equation. He knew that, if he ran, the ants would just hunt him down and kill him anyway. There was no running from this danger. The kobolds might delay the ants, but they’d still find him. There was just too many of them. They would quickly dominate both of these valleys, and probably the entire southern rim of the Great Forest as well.

  “Spears! Throw at big bug!” he called out. The ant queen had just reached the front of their lines, and some of his warriors were beginning to run, even as the ant warriors made space for their queen mother to fight.

  Here and there a spear was thrown, but none of them stuck much less pierced the armor. Suddenly, from the direction of the stone hill, a long spear with feathers on the back snapped through the armor of the ant queen’s abdomen, sinking in a short distance and causing the ant queen to rear up and wave her mandibles in the air.

  At the same time she stepped forward, smashing an orc warrior beneath one tree-trunk like leg and trapping another orc warrior by his leg beneath another of its great feet, the warrior’s leg snapping loudly as it cried out with the excruciating pain.

  Getting up his anger, Shagra yelled out in rage at the mighty queen. Rushing forward with his sword in both hands, he swung it with all his might at the nearest leg. With a resounding crack a line appeared in the chitinous armor of the leg. Drawing his sword back, Shagra swung again with all his might. This time the sound was a sick crunch, and the ant queen’s leg recoiled with the pain.

  Looking up as the leg withdrew, Shagra moved just quick enough to avoid the massive mandibles of the enraged queen.

  Krulak, leader of the Kobold Cavalry contingent, rode at the head of his force behind the Krall Gen’s Archer Guard. He had no love for the orcs, in fact he had nothing but hatred and wishes of death for them, but right now the right flank was secure, and the ant queen was about to blow completely through their lines… right where the orcs were.

  “Gaenthik!” he called out to the covenant mage who rode behind him.

  “Yes, sire!” the older, wispy kobold yelled back in his thin voice.

  “I need a volley of fire bolts on that monster when we get close enough!” he called out.

  “Yes, sire!” Gaenthik yelled back.

  “Do you think they’ll pierce its armor?” Krulak called back to him.

  “We’ll soon find out,” Gaenthik said, riding up next to his leader. “But let’s see if we can hit her somewhere that isn’t armored.”

  “Good thinking, Gaenthik,” Krulak said, reining in behind the orc part of the line. “Riders! Form a line! Plant spears and draw bows!” he called out.

  Behind him, Gaenthik gathered the other four covenant magic wielders of the cavalry contingent. Soon, the five unarmored kobolds were lined up behind Krulak.

  “Fire bolts, mages,” Gaenthik said in a high voice, the stress of the situation clearly playing on his nerves. “And aim for the tender spots. We’ll not be able to pierce the armor, I would imagine.”

  Breathing in through his nose, then out slowly through his mouth, Gaenthik tried to dissipate the stress of the situation a bit so he could concentrate. In a moment, as one, the five covenant mages lifted their hands and formed triangles with their fingers in front of them. Soon, fire formed between their fingers, fire which they sent speeding toward the massive beast to their front.

  Gorgon grabbed his father by the arm. The older kobold had been about to fire at the ant queen again, but news of the dragon’s arrival on the battlefield was more important from his son’s perspective.

  Flying in over the entire mass of ants, the dragon breathed a cone of fire through the middle of the rear elements of the ant horde. As Goryon, Gorgon, and their two teams watched from the top of Great Bow Hill, ant warriors curled up into tight balls in the flame, many popping like corn in a fire, while many others writhed about on the edges of the flame. It was a horrific sight to see, yet exciting to the kobolds whose hopes of surviving the ants just a few moments ago had been very low.

  “Yes!” Jerrig Queen Slayer yelled next to the pair of muscled warriors. “Kill them! Kill all of the nasty creatures!”

  Gorgon turned to the skinny warrior, who had gained his honor name of Queen Slayer by killing ants, a very important one in particular. “You do realize that we could be next!” he said.

  “Yes, but right now that dragon’s killing ants, not us!” Jerrig replied, a confidence which he’d not had before gaining his honor name helping him to stand up to his much more physically imposing team leader.

  Gorgon Hammer just shook his head.

  “Son,” Goryon called out to Gorgon as he moved Troka and Arbelk out from the front of the Great Bows. “Dragon or not, that ant queen needs to die! Get back to your Great Bow for now. There’ll be plenty of time to fight that beast when it comes closer.

  As Gorgon returned to his Great Bow and aimed toward the ant queen, the dragon wheeled around and began flying away from the kobold line, blowing a cone of fire down on another mass of ants as it went, instantly catching the woods on the south of the battlefield on fire.

  “Firing!” Goryon called, then pulled the lever. In a few moments, as the Great Bow missile finished its graceful arc, another spear plunged into the ant queen’s side, this time a little deeper, as she had turned more perpendicular to the stony hill.

  Arren e-Arnor walked carefully between the rows of wounded kobolds lying under the shade of the trees at the edge of the large clearing. While many looked at him in wonder and amazement, many more were not capable of even noticing him. It was like this in every battlefield he had ever been to; the wounded hauled off behind the main line of each of the forces while the able fought on. It seemed the only way to keep the morale of those on the line intact; to separate the miserable and distraught from those who still had to have hope.

  With bow in hand, and resplendent looking in his silvered armor, the elf prince walked carefully through the clearing. The light of midday was tempered by the cloud of ash and smoke that had begun to settle over the valley, the same cloud which had brought him to seek shelter with the noble kobolds of the southern valley rather than allowing him to slip away off to the north, now that he had escaped the dragon’s hunting.

  As he approached the far end of the clearing on the top of the hill, he could hear the running of many little feet. Squinting to pierce the shadows under the boughs of the trees at the clearing’s edge, he could see hundreds of panicked kobolds running in his direction.

  Stretching his bow over his back quickly, he jumped up and grabbed a branch, pulling himself up and onto the branch in one fluid motion. Below him on the forest floor, kobolds began to stream past by the hundreds. They didn’t seem too panicked, however, and he wondered at that. It almost appeared preplanned. What was perhaps most surprising was that there were a few orcs among them. Not many, maybe only twenty or thirty, but they were there nonetheless.

  As Arren watched, the kobolds began forming up in the center of the clearing, by unit it appeared by the similarity of their dress and gear among members of the same formations. Then, as he was surveying the scene, a kobold stopped at the bottom of his tree and looked up at him.

  “Arren!” the little kobold called. Another kobold, this one clearly female, stopped next to him.

  Arren looked down at him curiously. After a moment, he smiled in recognition. “Trallik, my little fellow!” Arren called down. “Tell me, what news of the battle?”

  “This huge dragon showed up! It’s burning our valley!”

  “Yes,” Arren called back, “I noticed that. Tell me, what of the ants?”

  “They’re chasing us, but we’re going to form a perimeter here in the clearing!”

  “But what of the dragon?” Arren asked.

  “I don’t know, but we’re hoping it doesn’t come after us before we can fight off the ants,” Trallik said. The female kobold grabbed Trallik’s arm and pointed back the way the
y had come. It was obviously time to go.

  “Well, good luck with that!” Arren said. “I’ll see what I can do to help. Please tell your people to not shoot me!”

  Trallik nodded and began running after the female he was with. Not twenty steps later the first of a flood of ant warriors was passing beneath Arren’s tree. As he watched, hundreds of ant warriors flooded by, crashing headlong into the kobold’s newly formed shield wall. As the moments passed, more and more ant warriors came flooding through the trees and out into the clearing, pressing around both sides of the kobold line, until the few thousand kobolds gathered on the broad, flat hilltop had to finish forming a large circle, swords and spears pointed outward, with hastily gathered wounded companions lying about the inside of it among the units of archers and wolf-riding cavalry.

  Gorgon, Goryon, and their two teams soon found themselves very much alone on the steep-sided stone hill as the entire kobold line withdrew under pressure from the ant queen and her hosts, and with fear that the dragon may very well come after them next.

  Running up onto the lip on the south side of their position, Gorgon Hammer yelled down to the rest. “They’re reforming in the clearing!” he called.

  “Son!” Goryon called. “Grab your hammer! It appears the ants didn’t like our little part in this battle!”

  Running to the eastern edge of their little hilltop, Arbelk, Jerrig, and Troka stopped in horror as they saw what had to be at least a hundred ant warriors all piling up on top of each other, working together to build a living ramp that their companions could climb to get at the great bow teams.

  Turning to look at each other for a moment, Arbelk and Troka ran back and hefted one of the great bows, dragging it, stand and all, to the east edge of the hilltop. While Jerrig picked up rocks and threw them down on top of the ants, Gorgon joined the other two and together the three of them aimed the Great Bow downward and fired into the mass of ants, skewering several of them and causing part of the ant pyramid to collapse.

  “Load! Load! Load!” Gorgon called out as Arbelk and Troka fumbled with the iron levers.

  Suddenly, from the rear of their little hilltop position, a few ant warriors came chittering up to attack. Turning his great bow, Goryon fired the massive bow, cutting one ant warrior in half and skewering two others before he dropped it and picked up his own hammer and shield. Yelling a challenge, he charged at the dozen or so ant warriors who had already arrived, followed by the three other warriors of his team.

  Arren watched as the kobold archers fired volley after volley into the ants that ringed the perimeter, while the shield wall fought desperately for every inch of ground. Though he hadn’t counted formally, such a task would take too long after all, Arren could see that they were easily outnumbered by at least two to one by the ant warriors. Despite their best efforts, soon the kobold perimeter began to compress, as warriors were slain or driven back. Though they tried to regain every bit of lost ground, it was clear that the ants were having more success driving the kobolds back into the center of the circle than the kobolds were having in maintaining their perimeter.

  Then, suddenly through the trees came a series of crashing sounds as branches and trunks went flying. Soon, pushing through the trees, Arren saw the largest ant he’d ever seen. It was immense, bleeding, and thoroughly enraged.

  As the elf watched, the ant queen pushed through the trees not twenty steps away from him, arriving at the edge of the clearing to the sound of two large trees falling over at the same time. All about her, the warriors of her brood were going crazy with the pheromones she was releasing, chittering and charging in a super-heated frenzy. Spotting a clear path toward the obvious targets of her anger, the ant queen shook the ground as she stomped forward toward the kobold perimeter.

  Quietly pulling the bow from his back, Arren withdrew one of his bilandrium-tipped arrows. It wasn’t everyday that he would fire one of these, the silvery metal being exceptionally valuable, but then it wasn’t everyday that he met a giant ant queen either. Looking at the tip of the arrow, he ran his fingers along the magical runes engraved in it, then arranged the fletching, straightening out the eagle’s feathers placed to straighten and tighten the arrow’s flight.

  Nocking the arrow to the bowstring, he pulled it swiftly back to his ear. Then, sighting along the length of the arrow, he released the bowstring. The arrow leapt from the bow with a power that only arrows enhanced with the power of Dharma Kor could possibly channel. As Arren watched, the arrow sped toward the massive monster as she approached the trembling little warriors standing firm in their shield wall looking at their death approaching. As the arrow struck, a small mist of blood appeared on the side of the ant queen’s head.

  Suddenly, as if she had been swatted with a massive hammer, the ant queen’s head jerked to one side, and her legs splayed out to keep her from falling over. All about her, ant warriors ran away and the kobold shield wall began to step backward.

  As Arren’s second silvered arrow struck her head also, the massive front legs of the trembling beast slipped out from under her, dropping her head to the trampled grass of the clearing. Her front legs were followed by her middle set of legs, though her rear legs stayed strangely erect, holding her abdomen high up into the air. Like an animal with distemper, she thrashed about, trying to get her legs underneath her, while at the same time wildly lashing out at anything around her with massive mandibles.

  All around the ant queen, it was as if a shockwave had gone through the ant warriors. Suddenly, where they had been deliriously focused on breaking the kobold line, instead they looked about with uncertainty. Without their queen mother motivating the ant warriors with her mind-controlling pheromones, they soon became a mass of disorganized warriors, each looking to its own needs, fighting among themselves as they fed on the bodies of the dead from both sides.

  From all around the circle of kobold warriors a loud cheer slowly erupted, starting with those nearest the ant queen, until all who saw the ants’ confusion joined in. Taking the cue, the Kobold Gen cavalry that had been holding back in the middle of the circle charged forward, breaking out of the circle and driving ant warriors before them.

  With a cheer, many sub-leaders of Kale Gen companies, and in fact units all around the circle, began to surge forward, driving the distracted ants before them. Soon the ant warriors began to route, being driven into the forest by bands of kobold warriors, each determined to exact revenge for the destruction the ants had wrought.

  Coming down from his tree, Arren walked calmly over to where Trallik and his female companion stood, companions of the kobold who seemed to be most in charge in this large mass of gleeful warriors.

  Chapter 18 – The Lord and The Dragon

  Gorgon was so absorbed in smashing ant warriors with his two-handed hammer that he only noticed they had stopped attacking when there were no more milling around the top of Great Bow Hill. Breathing rapidly, he looked about himself, slowly coming to the realization that the danger had ceased.

  On the east end of the hilltop Jerrig was forming his hands into a diamond, a point of fire forming and flying out from between his fingers to strike down an ant warrior at the bottom of the hill. Arbelk and Troka, on the other hand, were loading up the great bow to take a shot at the ant warriors who had stopped to feast on the corpses of the mingled dead where the kobolds had held the line at the top of the slope.

  At the rear slope of the hilltop, Gorgon saw his father and two of his warriors desperately trying to save the life of their fourth companion and teammate whose neck had been punctured by an ant warrior’s arm spike. Blood was spurting everywhere, however, and in a couple of moments he stopped thrashing about. It had been a day of much death already, but Goryon took his warrior’s death personally. Much to Gorgon’s surprise, his father had tears streaming down his face. It was the first time he had seen his father cry since his mother had died.

  “Gorgon! Goryon!” a call from behind him brought him back to the present. Jerrig was point
ing up into the sky. A low dread had crept into their hearts, even as the ants’ attack had begun to fall apart, but none of them had paid heed to it. After all, none of them had expected to live, so what was fear?

  Instantly, Gorgon knew where the fear came from.

  “The dragon!” Jerrig called, and everyone on the hilltop turned to see where he was pointing.

  “Hurry!” Gorgon called as he ran to his father’s great bow and grabbed an iron lever to begin loading it. “Troka! Fire that great bow you’re holding!”

  Troka backed up. “I don’t think I’ll hit,” he said.

  From behind Troka, Gorgon’s father Goryon ran over to the already loaded great bow, pushing Troka out of the way. Carefully he aimed through tear-filled eyes, then ever so slowly pulled back on the trigger. In an instant the missile flew out into the air, seemingly hanging in mid-air as it spun away from them and toward the dragon.

  He didn’t understand it, but in his heart, Gorgon just knew his father had hit the great beast.

  Suddenly the dragon turned, as if to come in for a quick landing. The great bow’s bolt struck him exactly at a joint in the middle of his left wing, however, causing it to fold. Like a kite whose string has been cut, the dragon plummeted the remaining hundred or so feet to the ground, landing in the middle of the clearing and in the middle of the thousands of rejoicing kobolds.

  Kobolds ran in all directions as Mananthiél fell from the sky. Landing heavily, he waited a couple of moments, then rolled over to his feet before slowly standing up on all fours. He was still a bit wobbly from the impact, and many things in his body hurt, but he knew he was not among friends, so he moved as quickly as he could. Though dragons had immense power compared to the lesser races on Dharma Kor, he knew that half of keeping the raging mobs at bay was the fear he projected, and the fearsome image he maintained.