by M. M. Whan
Someone had some explaining to do.
Carlisle looked at him for a moment, and Eferath could tell by his expression that he had heard both the words he had said, and the ones he didn’t. He nodded before replying. “Nearly two score of the savage creatures before they lost their stomach for the fight and retreated. Apparently, you had killed their leader, and shortly after that, they turned tail and ran like the wind.”
“Impressive.” Eferath remarked quietly, and indeed he was very impressed. For fifteen trainees to take on three score of the mighty mountain orcs, and kill more than three quarters of them was a feat in and of itself.
“They had a great leader.” Denara commented just as quietly, and the four of them lowered their heads in reverence to the dead, and the dying.
“This mission is folly,” Eferath growled angrily as he clenched his fist. “To hell with the amulet.” He turned to see the half-elf and the swordsman staring at him curiously.
“Get everyone ready,” Eferath ordered brusquely. “And prepare stretchers for those who are too wounded to manage the journey. We’re going home.” Eferath explained, staring at both of them directly.
Before Carlisle stepped away to carry out his orders, he snapped his fingers as if the gesture accented the fact that he remembered something important.
“Which reminds me, sir,” the young swordsman said as he reached into a deep pocket. When he brought his hand forth, it was holding a dazzling golden amulet. The amulet itself was round edged, with the emblem of Escoran indented and encrusted with expertly cut jewels to colour the sacred crest.
When Eferath took the piece, it was heavy in his hand, and the golden chain drooping over the ridge of his hand made it seem all the heavier. It was a remarkable necklace, a trinket that would stand out in any king’s treasury. But why did the gold seem to take on a blood red hue to him? Eferath stared up at the man, wordlessly asking for an explanation as to where he found such a thing.
“The orc leader you killed was wearing it about its filthy neck.” He said, his eyes still on the sparkling amulet. “Curious, wouldn’t you say?” Eferath handed the amulet back to him. “You keep it, in honour of our friends who were killed here today, and in reverence to the patrols who were betrayed.” Eferath said grimly, staring at the still smoldering pile of orc bodies at the centre of the clearing.
“Betrayed?” Carlisle and Denara echoed as they exchanged an alarmed glance.
“The orc leader,” Eferath started before taking a long pull from his water skin. “Before I killed him, told me that I was not worth the gold.” Eferath replied, staring down at the short grass while deep in thought. “Under normal circumstances, such an odd statement wouldn’t seem so out of place when dealing with such creatures. But I have to wonder just how such a concentrated group of orcs managed to set an ambush at this exact position.” Eferath folded his arms across his chest, furrowing his eyebrows.
“Do you think he was referring to the amulet?” Denara asked, her fair features took on a grim expression. Eferath was shaking his head even before she finished.
“No, I do not think so.” He replied thoughtfully. “There were too many orcs for such a coordinated, and undeniably effective ambush.” As soon as he finished speaking, he noticed Carlisle’s jaw drop.
“You don’t mean…” He started to say, but the wizard cut him off.
“Preposterous!” The wizard bellowed. “The illustrious kingdom of Escoran would never condone such treachery! Have you gone mad, Eferath? Even hinting at such a thing is treason!”
“Do you have a better explanation?” Eferath prompted, but when the wizard averted his eyes, he continued. “Now I would wager that the loud bang we heard during our battle was indicative of the same thing happening to Edward’s patrol. And who knows what has befallen Corbin! But you can’t tell me that this doesn’t seem the slightest bit suspicious.”
“Pah!” The wizard spat, clearly ruffled. “I’ll not stand by and listen to such treasonous words!”
“No one is saying anything, my friend.” Eferath assured him as he stomped away. “Merely voicing concerns over strange coincidences.” The wizard threw his hands in the air and walked away to join the others while Carlisle and Denara stood beside the young man.
“Maybe you’re not saying anything, but I certainly will be saying something when we get back!” Carlisle fumed. Eferath couldn’t blame him. Too many pieces fit this horrifying puzzle.
“What do we do, sir?” Denara asked, and as Eferath looked at her he saw that her eyes had become hard, and her jaw was clenched.
Eferath took a deep breath. He needed to be careful with what he said. “For now, nothing.” He said. “Right now, our objective is to reach the Academy in one piece. Once there, we can inform the academy officials what transpired here and get them to send out a search party for the other patrols.”
“You hope you’re wrong, don’t you?” Denara asked him and Eferath could only nod.
“God’s help you if you’re wrong.” Carlisle added quietly.
“Aye.” He said, looking out over the battlefield. “But if I’m right. Then may the God’s help us all.” Eferath let that sink in before he walked away. Eferath needed to get his bandages re-dressed, and see if his peeved wizard could spare another healing spell.
Soon after, the remainder of the patrol marched along the path, back the way they came.
Or so they thought.
* * * *
Syline carefully picked her way through the mass of bodies that marked the remains of Corbin’s patrol, and their near complete and total defeat at the hands of the savage mountain orcs. The hardened half-elf warrior could not bear look upon the half-eaten bodies of the human soldiers. It didn’t take long for her to spot Corbin’s body, lying face down on the ground with over a half dozen of the brutes lying all about him.
“Impressive.” She remarked quietly as she counted the arrows sticking out from his body. She had to be quick, though. The mountain orcs might return soon, she knew. Such a feast would be hard for them to pass up. Syline delicately removed Corbin’s royal brand and deposited it into her cloak. Dorien had required proof that the deed had been done, but Syline still found the task repulsive.
Syline continued on her way, referring to the map she was provided that would lead her the quickest way to where Eferath’s patrol would be. By mid-afternoon, she had reached the mouth of the ravine and was surprised by what she saw.
Bodies everywhere.
She carefully made her way through the maze of charred and smoldering bodies. From what she could tell, this particular patrol killed many orcs before a fireball finished them off.
“A pity.” Syline said remorselessly as she picked her way from body to body, trying to find proof that the young commander was among the dead. “These boys put up one hell of a fight.”
Syline didn’t second guess herself for agreeing to this mission. She loved Dorien. He had taken her in when she was but a waif and cared for her. He showed her new purpose; a purpose that didn’t involve the stress of wondering where she would lay her head down for the night, and whether wherever that was had a roof to protect her from the elements.
She owed Dorien her life, after all. Syline was barely older than a girl when she sought succor at one of Escoran’s homeless shelters. Two men, who were also homeless, thought to take advantage of her. She would have none of it, though, and stabbed one of the men in the groin. The other man beat her senseless, then took her knife and brought it down to end her miserable existence. That was when Dorien had arrived. He swooped down like a chivalrous knight and carried her away to safety.
Syline had vowed then that she would do anything for the man, as repayment for the kindness he had shown her.
Syline was roughly halfway through the ravine when she spotted the sergeant crest embroidered onto the shoulder of the patrol leader’s uniform. Using her dagger, she cut the fabric and removed the rank.
“
Dorien will be pleased.” She said a moment later, a wide smile on her face as she stared at the rank insignia before stuffing it into her traveling pack. The body was burned beyond recognition, and the smell nearly made her retch in disgust, but the half-elf was certain that it was Eferath.
“Only one more patrol to find.” Syline said with a grunt as she eagerly left the fetid stench of the ravine. She took a moment to stare at her map. Edward’s patrol was the last on the list. Dorien didn’t care so much about this particular group, but was concerned that, when the news got out of the deaths of both patrols, he would have some fancy explaining to do.
Dorien had promised to dispatch scouts to monitor the safety and the progress of the patrols, but the only scout he had sent out was her. She was glad for the mission, though. The academy commander’s paranoia and melancholy was becoming taxing. She loved him dearly, though, and there was nothing he could ask her that she would not do for him. Of course, there were times where she felt he only used her as his own personal assassin, but those thoughts were usually dismissed as quickly as they came.
The sun had nearly reached the horizon when Syline came upon the tracks of the third and final patrol, and followed them to the prescribed ambush point. The smell of rotting, burnt flesh was stifling, and she could see thick white smoke rolling up from the small bowl-shaped clearing. She moved closer to investigate, but the clearing was strangely quiet. She approached the clearing, staring at the great pile of bodies at the centre of the clearing, still smoking from the fire below.
All orcs.
Surprise gripped her, and her training spurred her into finding cover as quickly as possible. From the cover of some shrubbery, she surveyed the area. She noted that only a handful of bodies were human, and the dead orcs were numbering at roughly two score. She couldn’t believe what she was seeing. A patrol of only fifteen soldiers defeated almost sixty of the fierce mountain orcs!
Near the edge of the clearing, at the only other opening besides the one she used to enter, she spotted what looked like the remains of a hastily made camp. Cautiously, Syline made her way over to the camp, and used her tracking skills to discern the patrols’ direction. She noticed the tracks began to head off toward the way she came. She also noticed, with no small amusement, the tracks suddenly veered off toward the exit on the other side of the clearing.
As quickly as she dared, the half-elf took off after the final patrol. Though she was not worried about them surviving the exercise, she was curious about the patrol that had managed to pull off a victory against such impossible odds.
She was curious about how they would do against Rugarkavatimilian.
* * * *
Eferath looked back at his men as they moved with heavy feet, and heavy hearts. Their pace was poor, but Eferath didn’t mind. His soldiers deserved a reprieve from their trials. They had lost good friends today, and those feelings were not likely to disappear in a short period of time. Despite the odds, Eferath and his men survived. But the cost! Good men and women had died for reasons that Eferath didn’t yet know, but was determined to find out. He was anxious to get back, but what he would do once he got there, he had no idea. For reasons he couldn’t explain, his thoughts lingered on Edward and his well-being. He had a bad feeling that the explosion he heard during the battle was a very bad thing indeed.
Eferath knew there was nothing he or any of them could do, even if the other patrol needed their help. He had consulted the map they were given, and it would take too much time to get there. Past the point where soldiers would supposedly be dispatched to check on their wellbeing. As hard as it was for him to accept it, Eferath knew the best thing he could do for them was to get back to Escoran to report what happened.
Several hours into the march, Eferath was beginning to wonder why the scenery hadn’t changed in well over an hour. Perhaps it was his imagination, but he couldn’t recall the path to be so long. It would be dark in a few hours, he knew as he stared up at the sky which was just starting to shift from blue to orange and pink. Their path was cast in shadow, and it was then that Eferath discovered that something was very wrong.
The shadows were cast in the wrong direction! He didn’t have the time to think of that, now, as one of his men signaled a halt from up ahead.
Eferath was relieved to see their tree-flanked path beginning to clear, but the relief didn’t last. As Eferath made his way to the front of the column, he expected to see the wide-open country, and the mighty, sprawling city of Escoran below them.
Instead of a flat, wide open panoramic view of the kingdom of Escoran, Eferath saw nothing but a massive mountain cave. The cave was the largest the young man had ever seen or even heard about. The mouth was over fifty feet high and at least that wide, forming as close to a perfect arch as a naturally occurring rock formations could manage. There was a particularly nasty reek flowing out from the cavern that effectively turned Eferath’s stomach inside out.
It wasn’t the size of the cave that made the hair stand up at the back of his neck; it was the odd, shallow grooves carved into the stone floor. They were everywhere, always in strange four-line patterns.
“What are they?” Eferath asked aloud to no one in particular. His men dispersed and studied the area to see what sort of tool or creature could have made the grooves.
“Sir!” Called over one of his soldiers, and he hurried over to see what he had discovered.
“What have you found?” Eferath asked as he knelt down beside the man. “Do you know what made those marks?”
“Claws, sir.” The man answered grimly. “Big ones.” Eferath stared at him hard, his gaze alternating between the soldier he was kneeling besides, and the one-inch deep grooves carved into solid granite.
Anything that was big enough to carve such deep gouges would probably be fierce enough to use them.
“That’s not all, sir.” The man said and he was suddenly very quiet.
“These are fresh.” Eferath surmised as he ran a gloved finger through a few of the grooves. The claw marks were in a swept pattern and the depth of the grooves shallowed out at one end. It wasn’t from a fight, Eferath could see. It had the distinct property of something very large passing through here recently.
Eferath looked around him while he crouched, looking for anything else that might explain what kind of creature it was. His eyes passed over something and immediately discarded it as nothing more than a white rock, but then Eferath took a closer look at it. It was a very odd shaped rock. Eferath stood, then walked over to the odd stone before crouching again. The rock was heavy, and curved to a point, roughly the same size as his forearm.
Eferath dropped the stone to the ground from fingers that had suddenly gone numb. He felt the cold dread seeping in and was certain that he was as pale as parchment.
“Any idea what made these tracks?” A voice asked, nearly making Eferath jump out of his skin. Eferath looked over his shoulder to see Carlisle leaning over him.
“Dragon.” Answered another voice, spoken very quietly. It was Denara. The half-elf approached and crouched in front of Eferath, fingering the tooth-shaped stone lying on the ground. The fact that she had reached the same conclusion he had did nothing to settle Eferath’s nerves.
Eferath looked all around them for a moment, stricken with an idea. “Shouldn’t there be scorch marks, then?” He asked suddenly, clinging to the little bit of hope that his limited knowledge about dragons offered him.
“Not all wyrms breathe fire, sir.” Denara answered matter-of-factly, and the grim undertone to her voice sent another wave of chills down his spine. “Some breath noxious gas; some breathe acid; other ice, and so on.”
“We need to get out of here. Now.” Eferath said very quietly as if the beast were right behind him.
Using nothing but his hand, Eferath signaled for his men to fall back to the edge of the clearing as quickly, and quietly as possible. Just as the men reached the perimeter of the clearing, a great, ringing clang! so
unded as one of the soldiers dropped his sword.
For what seemed like an eternity, no one moved. Eferath hardly dared to breath, fearing that the sound of his lungs inflating and deflating would wake the sleeping giant. Seconds passed, and when nothing immediately happened, everyone began to relax a little. Eferath glared over at the soldier, who shrugged apologetically.
A great, terrible roar split the air. It was so loud the ground shook beneath Eferath’s feet and threatened to topple him. Hands clapped over ears to protect from the deafening bugle, but had little to no effect. Eferath was frozen as if the stone grew hands and held him in place, staring forlornly at the tree line, mentally gauging their chances at escaping before the beast even caught sight of them.
The ground shook as the massive beast’s footfalls slammed onto the ground steadily, and surprisingly quickly, getting closer and closer.
The creature came charging through the opening of its cave, and Eferath’ heart nearly stopped as he saw the sheer size of the beast. The stone wyrm was so big it had to duck its huge head and long neck just to keep from striking the roof of the cave, and had to lay on its belly just to crawl out. Even then, the spikes and ridges jutting out of its back scraped against the roof with a nerve-jarring squeal. The monster’s skin was black as jet and shiny as if it were a polished onyx statue. Spots and streaks of silver dotted the massive creature’s body sporadically that certainly gave its hide a unique stone-like appearance.
Its head was elongated, and dragon-like. It looked like a cross between a snake and a crocodile with large pointed ears and a long snout. Its forked tongue flicked out between its dozens of razor sharp teeth like a reptile tasting the air for prey.
It growled, and the vibrations sounded like an avalanche; A very big avalanche. As the creature crawled out of its cave, it stood to its full, magnificent height and unfurled its massive black wings that had a span more than twice its height with a hooked claw at the “elbow” of each.
