by King, DB
“Ever wish you could kill orcs like me?” she asked as she stepped toward him, her voice raised to speak of the rain.
“I’d keep that cockiness in check, love,” he said. “Like the Goddess’s saying goes, ‘When pride is cast into the world, it returns to its wielder with a ten-fold vengeance’.”
She smirked. “And now you believe in the Goddesses.”
“Admitting there is some wisdom in their writings doesn’t mean belief.”
Gwen smiled. “Let’s finish this, shall we?”
The Present
Back in the sparring room, Raymond decided to try something. He couldn’t move the spear up or down, but he could move it forward. It would place him in danger of a jab from one of Runa’s spear pieces, but he decided it would be worth the risk.
Raymond shoved the spear forward, the angle driving the point down into the mat. Runa’s eyes flashed with surprise, but that was all she had a chance to do. Raymond dropped his spear, grabbed hold of one of Runa’s spear pieces, and pointed it up toward her neck. With his left hand, he covered the dangerous-end to not risk actual injury.
“Taken down with my own weapon,” Runa said, her eyes on the spear pointed toward her. “Fitting.”
“And that’s one point for me.”
Runa quickly placed her foot on Raymond’s chest, pushing him back and gaining some distance between them. She tossed her spear pieces aside.
“Bare hands to finish?”
“Works for me.”
Raymond shoved the spear forward, letting it skitter across the ground as it rolled to a stop. He glanced up to see that more soldiers had joined the audience—there now appeared to be a few dozen in total.
“Let’s finish this, shall we?” Runa asked.
She’d echoed Gwen’s words, taking Raymond back to the fight at the camp.
The Past
Raymond watched as the men jabbed the final orc, one after another. Bringing down such a massive creature with spear pokes wasn’t the fastest way to do it, but it was by far the safest. The orc roared as he dropped to his knees, finally falling with one last spear through his neck.
“And that’s that,” Gwen said, stepping to Raymond’s side. “The warning camp’s taken out, and not so much as a single injury.”
He turned to face her, and she did the same.
“Don’t get cocky,” he said. “We still need to cut through the pass and make it back to the caravan. Goddesses only know what’s in there.”
“Oh, come on,” she said. “It can’t be any harder than what we’ve already done.” She smiled and stepped in close to Raymond. “You ask me, I think we should get some place warm and start talking about how you want to celebr—”
She didn’t finish her words. A zip sounded through the air over the pouring rain, an arrow appearing in Gwen’s neck. Her eyes went wide with shock, blood jetting from the wound.
It had all happened so suddenly. One moment she was speaking, her face alive with her usual energy. The next, the life was fading from her eyes, the huge orcish arrowhead having managed to cut through both her spine and her vein. When he realized what had happened, Raymond dropped to his knees to catch her, pressing his hand against the wound in a futile attempt to stem the flow of blood.
But the life was gone from her eyes before he could even process what had happened.
She was dead.
He turned, spotting an orc in the trees that they’d missed, a single low-level grunt who’d managed to scurry away in the confusion of battle and fire off a lucky shot.
Raymond rose, drawing his sword and commanding his men to stay their arms.
He fell upon the orc with incredible speed.
And the beast stayed alive for exactly as long enough as it took to make sure he knew he’d made the mistake of a lifetime.
The Present
“Alright, Raymond!” Runa shouted. “You win, you win! Point’s yours!”
“Huh?”
Raymond came back to the moment. He was in the sparring room, his knee on Runa’s neck as he pinned her to the ground. Her face was blood red, and he glanced up to see what had to have been fifty soldiers watching the fight.
“Get off me before they start thinking you’re really trying to kill me,” she grunted.
Without a moment’s hesitation, he sprang from on top of Runa and backed up. He held out his hand for her, and she took it.
“Winning point goes to the captain of the guard!” Runa called out to the audience.
Cheers and applause sounded out.
“Now,” Runa said quietly. “You won, but considering you almost broke my neck there, I think we ought to drink from your stash.”
“Yes. And… my apologies.”
Ten minutes later, they were in Raymond’s quarters, a bottle of wine in each of their hands.
“You were thinking of her, weren’t you?” Runa asked.
“Was it that obvious?”
She nodded and glanced down. “I understand the pain of memories like that—I have some of my own, as you well know. They take you away, put your body moving of its own accord. It’s… not a good feeling.”
“I apologize,” he said, his eyes on the bottle of red wine in his hands. “It was careless of me.”
She shook her head. “Nothing to apologize for. You’re weeks out from the loss of a woman you loved more than anything. I know you value your fortitude, but you’re allowed to feel pain.”
“Not in front of the soldiers. They can’t know what—”
“They know what happened. Gwen was loved by all of them. And just because you haven’t been moaning and weeping through the halls of the caravan, bottle of Rynthian whiskey in your hands, doesn’t mean they don’t understand what you’re going through.”
“I don’t need their pity. All I want is for this mission to be carried out, so that her death was not in vain.” He shook his head. “You truly think that this mission will be worth it, that we can trust him?”
Runa smiled. “We’ve had this discussion enough times for you to already know what my answer is going to be.”
“Yes, yes,” he said. “Trust the Goddesses. But you realize that we’re not in the land of the Goddesses any longer, correct? The west is governed by the Archspirits, and they are cunning, love to pit mortals against one another for their own amusement.”
“You think Arachne cares about anything other than her children?” Runa asked. “The Archspirits are powerful, yes, but they have their own desires. Gaining their allegiance is merely a matter of courting them. And that’s what Logan will learn to do. We’ll be here to ensure that Logan gains the power he needs to save the kingdom.”
Raymond sighed. “I hope you’re right, my old friend. The War Wizards in the past failed, after all. They’re all dead, if you need to be reminded. If Logan were to fail, he’d be taking part in a grand tradition of War Wizards being consumed and destroyed by the power they were meant to wield.”
“It won’t happen,” Runa said. “I have faith in the Goddesses. We merely need to make sure that Logan is protected as best we can manage.”
“Yes, you’re right. King Corvan won’t be pleased if we came all the way out here, consumed a resurrection stone, only to get Logan killed or embroiled in some Archspirit’s scheme. I can’t… I can’t bear the thought of all of this—of Gwen’s death—being in vain.”
Runa reached over and placed her hand on her friend’s knee. “Have faith. The Goddesses will see us through.”
“Your faith is something I wish I shared. But I fear I don’t have it in me.”
“Not yet. But I have a feeling the Goddesses will reveal themselves to you in time. Something tells me you and I are going to play a grand role in their plans.”
Raymond raised his bottle. “Then let’s drink while we can.”
Runa smiled. “I’ll drink to that.”
Chapter 14: Logan
With a pair of slow drags, Logan cleaned the thick, dark blood of the orc chieftain
off his blade, one side then the other.
It hadn’t been easy to crack the orc, to make him spill his guts.
But it sure as hells had been a pleasure.
The brutalized corpse of the orc chieftain lay in a heap in the tent, the cuts that had encouraged him to talk marked all over his body.
There was nothing left to be done. Logan slipped the blade back into its sheath and left the tent. The air was cool, the sky that same murky green. The dismal environment of the waste instilled an even keener sense of loss in him for the Elderwood Forests.
The eyes of the men flicked onto Logan as he emerged from the tent. Some of their faces were pale, and he could sense that the cries of pain that had exploded from the tent during his ‘conversation’ with the orc chieftain had sat uneasily with them.
But he knew orcs. They only understood two things—power and pain.
The men turned their attention back to their work of loading supplies into the caravan. The beasts of burden were still alive, thankfully, which meant they could easily lead the wagon back to the rest of the caravan.
Logan spotted Jaleth among the soldiers. He caught the elf’s eye, flicking his chin up quickly to signal to him that he was wanted. Jaleth trotted over.
“Yes, sir?” he asked.
“What’s the situation in the caravan?”
“The servants are shaken,” Jaleth said. “But I can’t really blame them—they were only an hour or so out from thinking they would be spending the rest of their lives as slaves. Or worse. But no injuries or anything of the sort that would prevent us from making the rest of the trip back.”
“Excellent. And what of the new slaves?”
“The same.” Jaleth rubbed the back of his neck as he glanced away. Something was on his mind.
“Speak, soldier.”
Jaleth turned his attention back to Logan. “I’ve seen slaves before. And slaves who have been in bondage since youth, well, they don’t have much in the way of spirit. These slaves do. To me, that seems to suggest they haven’t been slaves for long.”
“Meaning they were recently captured and put into slavery.”
“Right.”
“And that means this slaver band is likely one among others operating in the area, capturing the innocent and putting them in chains.”
“My thinking exactly,” Jaleth said.
The idea of a single soul being enslaved was enough to make Logan’s blood run hot. Were it up to him, he’d scour the land until every last slave was free, and each slaver put to the blade.
But he knew he didn’t have even close to the manpower to accomplish a task like that. At that moment, he led a small squad of soldiers, his powers still fledgling.
Logan vowed to increase his power, to command armies capable of executing his will. But for the time being, he'd have to be patient.
“What do you wish to do with them?” Jaleth asked.
“Take me to them.”
Jaleth nodded before starting back to the caravan. Logan went with the elf, and moments later, they stepped through the entrance on the bottom floor.
It was a mess. The caravan had been ransacked, anything of value that hadn’t been bolted to the floor stolen. The servants were here and there in small clusters, keeping their distance from the slaves, who were gathered in a large group on the other side of the first floor.
Logan turned his attention to the servants and spoke. “Anyone who was with the caravan, go to your quarters on the top floor.”
His command wasn’t disputed. The servants, most of them familiar faces, rose and made their way up the stairs to the sleeping quarters on the second floor. Once they were gone, only the slaves remained. Logan could see the fear painted on their faces, could sense that they all wanted to know their fates, but were afraid of the possible answers.
And he saw what Jaleth saw, that they weren’t slaves from birth. They lacked the glassy eyes and spirit-broken disposition of those who hadn’t known anything but servitude.
A thought occurred to Logan as he stood there, each slave waiting eagerly for whatever his first words might be.
“Who here is a blacksmith?” he asked.
The slaves seemed confused. Whatever they’d been expecting him to say, it hadn’t been that.
“Anyone?” he asked. “Surely, there’s a blacksmith among you.”
They whispered to one another, as if trying to figure out if this were some trick.
But one rose, a tall, broad-shouldered man with fire-red hair and a thick beard to match. “I’m a blacksmith,” he said. “And a damn good one.”
The man regarded Logan without fear.
Logan liked him already. “Your name?”
“Callwin.”
“And are you the only blacksmith?”
Callwin said nothing at first. He went to open his mouth, but before he had a chance to say a single word, a young man stood up at his side. The youth appeared no older than twelve years. He was lean and tall, with the same broad shoulders and red hair as Callwin. But, due to his youth, he lacked a beard.
“I’m a blacksmith,” the youth said, his voice clear and calm. “Well, an apprentice.”
“This is my son, Kevin,” Callwin said, placing his hand on the boy’s shoulder.
“How good is he?” Logan asked.
“The second-best smith in the Summer Hills—and I’m the first.”
The Summer Hills. Logan recognized that name as one far to the east of the Elderwood Forests, a land of rolling plains and soil as black as tar.
Quiet nervous laughter rose from the group, as if they were all wondering if Callwin’s forthright nature was having the effect of angering Logan.
“Then I have a task for you both,” Logan said. “Go outside and see what orcish gear can be salvaged. We need weapons, armor—whatever is out there. Find what is usable, what is junk, and what can be repaired.”
Callwin nodded. “Now,” he said, crossing his arms over his stout chest. “I’m more than happy to perform such a task. And I’m sure my boy feels the same way. But if you’re going to be putting us on errands, I have to wonder if ‘digging our own graves’ will be among them. I’m not about to do a lick of work for a man who plans on throwing me and mine into a pit.”
Logan felt every pair of eyes in the room on him. The other slaves shifted away from Callwin nervously, as if expecting a beating to be served.
“I’m going to give you all a choice,” he said. “I’m a member of an elvish caravan, making our way to the eastern kingdoms. If you wish, you can join us. If not, you can take your chances in the wastes. Either way, freedom is yours.”
The slaves looked at one another apprehensively. Jaleth moved in closely to Logan and spoke in a hushed whisper.
“Sir, we don’t have the resources to support such a group,” Jaleth said.
Logan wasn’t in the mood to be second-guessed, but he appreciated Jaleth’s candor all the same.
“The matter will be discussed back at the caravan,” Logan said quietly. “For now, obey.”
Without another word, Jaleth stood up straight and folded his hands behind his back.
“If you decide to stay, I’ll want to know what sorts of skills you have, what you can bring to the caravan,” Logan said to the slaves. “If you have no skills, then we can train you. But the choice is yours. If you wish to stay, speak to Jaleth, let him know your name, where you’re from, and what skills you have. Understood?”
The slaves nodded in unison.
Logan turned to Jaleth. “Mark down all of the information and pass it on to me when you have. And assign any able-bodied man or woman to scavenge whatever supplies are left in the camp.”
“Of course, sir.”
“And tell me—who other than yourself would you trust to scout ahead?”
“Camred,” he said. “One of the other Arachno Assassins who helped take the caravan. Oak-brown hair, one eye blue, the other green.”
“Excellent.”
Loga
n nodded and broke from Jaleth. From behind, Logan could hear the commotion of the slaves rising to approach Jaleth. Callwin met Logan’s eyes one more time, as if trying to size up this strange soldier who’d saved the lives of him and his son.
“Alright, alright,” Jaleth said. “We want a nice, orderly line. Tell me your name, your occupation…”
His voice faded as Logan stepped out of the caravan. Once out, he scanned the soldiers for Camred, spotting him right away. Logan waved for the elf’s attention, the soldier hurrying over on command.
“Camred?” Logan asked.
Camred nodded.
“I need an Arachno Assassin to hurry back to the caravan and inform Runa and Raymond of what happened. Jaleth recommended you highly. Are you up to the task?”
“Most certainly,” he said, his two-colored eyes glimmering with excitement, an eager smirk forming on his lips.
“Then move. Let them know we’ll be on our way as soon as we’ve finished resupplying.”
“As you wish, sir.”
Without another word, Camred’s rune glowed, Arachne’s spider power flowing through him. With bolstered speed, he hurried off into the distance and disappeared.
Once that was done, Logan ascended the ladder to the second floor of the caravan and oversaw the situation. He watched as Callwin and his son moved around the battlefield, picking up weapons and pieces of armor, appraising them before sorting the gear into piles. Now and then, Callwin would get his son’s attention, pointing out to him one detail or another on a piece of equipment, likely explaining to him why it was or wasn’t worth saving.
One by one, slaves filed out of the caravan and made their way into the camp, searching for supplies. Logan was pleased—it wouldn’t be long before they picked the orc camp clean and could be on their way.
Logan knew Jaleth was right, however. As the caravan’s numbers swelled, so would the need for more supplies, more resources. And that was all assuming Runa and Raymond would accept the addition of more mouths to feed.
