by Travis Bughi
It nodded.
“Speak up,” she said.
“Yes!” it squeaked. “I like! I live! Want live!”
“Of course you do.” Emily nodded. “Now hold still.”
She knelt down and grabbed the arrow in the goblin’s leg. It had punctured through, so she snapped off the back end and pulled the head completely out the other side. The goblin screamed, but then shuddered in relief as she began to bandage the wound.
“What you want?” it asked.
“Several months ago, your band of orcs and goblins traveled down to a small village bordering Juatwa, looking to buy fresh slaves for your mines, which had collapsed.”
“Ach!” it coughed. “How you know this?”
“Because your leader is an idiot,” she told it, “and talks too much, especially to people that sell slaves. Anyway, you and your band only bought five slaves from that village, thinking you’d capture more once you found a new place to start digging in the Khaz Mal Mountains. As it turns out, your leader didn’t know of a good place to raid and had to pay to find out about a dwarven outpost that was lightly supplied. You’ve found the dwarves, obviously, and captured more slaves by raiding them, but now I’ve found the dwarves, too, and I mean to take those slaves back from your orcs.”
The little goblin gulped and looked around. The mess it had made when it soiled itself was starting to smell, but the dwarves didn’t relax the tight circle they’d formed around it. Their faces spoke of murder, and the goblin’s attention quickly turned back to Emily.
“So,” it said, “you want what?”
“I’m looking for a samurai,” she replied.
Chapter 2
Emily had only experienced cold a few times before venturing into the Khaz Mal Mountains. The first had been in the presence of a vampire’s aura, which made the air chilly enough that one could see their own breath. After that, she’d encountered the rivers and streams in the Forest of Angor, which her amazon friends had referred to as ‘melted ice.’ Emily had never drunk cold water before and hadn’t much cared for it since. Third, Emily had experienced the Savara desert at night, which was surprisingly frigid considering how hot it was during the day, nothing some bodily contact or a thin blanket couldn’t fix, though. Emily’s other brushes with cold temperatures had been trivial compared to those three—the ocean water could be chilly, especially in a storm—but not a single one of those experiences compared to the frosted tips of the Khaz Mal Mountains.
For one, she had been completely unprepared for snow.
Oh sure, she’d layered up. She’d spoken to anyone and everyone about how to prepare for her journey north, and nearly all had warned of the perils of dying from exposure.
“There will be snow,” they’d said, “and nights perilously cold. Shelter will be scarce and food scarcer. You might want to stock that quiver full. Even if you do find trees among the rocks, you won’t find feathers to fletch them. The only things that fly in Khaz Mal have scales and breathe fire.”
After only a few days of traveling north, she’d wished she could breathe fire. No snow had dropped yet, but each night brought an icy chill that made her shiver and tuck under her blankets like a child. She was instantly thankful that she’d traded her leather skirt and vest for fur clothing and shoes. She’d felt heartless handing them over, but metal studs had trade value, and warmer clothes would ensure her survival.
A single night in the shadows of the Khaz Mal Mountains was all it had taken to clear up any misgivings—she’d even started growing out her hair to keep the wind off of her ears—and the cold had only intensified from there. No, Emily had not been prepared for snow, neither mentally nor physically.
Mentally, her first experience had been amazing. She had been sleeping under a tree when she awoke to the sight of snow falling all around her. It floated like a feather, touching the ground so softly that it never made a sound, covering the land in pure white, like a clean blanket that sparkled and shined in the light of the rising sun. She’d touched it carefully, lips parted, astounded to find it so soft. It broke apart in her hands and cascaded down from trees. She distinctly remembered laughing with joy, making a snowball like the village kids had told her to do, and drawing circles in the snow. For what felt like the first time in a long time, she’d felt like a kid again, and the world held nothing but happiness for her.
Physically though, the snow was her worst enemy, and now Emily hoped a dragon would come and burn it all away. She didn’t even mind if the dragon killed her along with the snow, because living with the stuff was horribly exhausting. After the first storm, she’d had to fight for every step, trudging through the thick snow like it was a mass of kobolds hanging on to her legs and climbing over her body. It froze her feet and her legs, and yet still she would sweat worse than she ever had in Savara because damn was it hard to walk! The cold air made her lungs hurt, and it got colder with every hand’s width of snow that fell. Sometimes it would get so bad she’d burn an entire sunrise traveling only so far that she could throw a rock and hit where she’d started.
Even without the snow, Khaz Mal was a less than forgiving place. Its mountains rose tall and sheer, jutting out of nowhere like a fortress wall made of deadly cliffs and jagged drops. No hill in the Forest of Angor compared, and she laughed now at how impressed she’d once been by their mass. The only thing close in size to the mountains she saw were the krakens of the sea, and even those were a distant second. The mountains here rose out of nothing, delaying Emily for days and forcing her to try multiple routes to climb a single pinnacle standing in her way.
Worse yet, like she’d been warned, food was nigh impossible to find. She had the food in her pack, the occasional berry bush tucked away under a thick rock, and the leftovers of any poor creature cooked black by a dragon’s breath. That third one happened more often than one might think, and Emily had quickly learned to take cover when she heard the whoosh of wings approaching. She’d hidden from thunderbirds before; dragons weren’t much different.
She had yet to see one breathe fire, but that was fine by her.
For now, she had to concentrate. The goblin had led her and the dwarves to a snow-covered cave entrance guarded by a single, sleeping orc. They were all hiding behind the nearest mountain wall some thirty paces from the cave’s entrance, well within range of Emily’s bow. The dwarves at her back and the goblin between them held their breaths as she drew her bow.
This target was bigger than the last, still humanoid, but bigger and even uglier than the goblin. The orc’s skin was a dark green, and its brutish appearance reminded Emily a lot of the ogres back in Lucifan. A bulky body with long arms, wide shoulders, and short legs made it seem equal parts odd and atrocious. It smelled, too, like rotten eggs, which Emily got a good whiff of from being downwind of it. She crinkled her nose as she took aim, but breathed evenly through the rot and cold. When the arrow pierced the orc’s neck, it lurched awake, gripping the wound in shock and gurgling blood, falling to its knees before the cave’s entrance, unable to cry out or alert its friends deep within. Before it could crawl away, the dwarves charged and put the orc out of its misery with heavy hammers to its skull.
“You’re certain the samurai is in there?” Emily asked of the goblin.
“Yes, yes!” It nodded.
“You can go now, and if I were you, I’d go far. These dwarves aren’t likely to forget you.”
The goblin needed no second warning. It whimpered and took off as fast as it could limp. For a single moment, Emily felt bad. The goblin was unlikely to survive with an injured leg in the harsh landscape of Khaz Mal, but it was the best she could offer. The dwarves held grudges zealously, and if the goblin stayed around, he’d soon find his head under the weight of a warhammer.
“Emily,” Hadkar whispered.
The dwarves were forming up to charge into the cave. Emily shook herself from the goblin’s plight and focused on the battle at hand. It was strange how easily her mind could wander at pressing t
imes.
“Ye are rather good with that bow, missy,” Hadkar said, “but ye best be careful inside. It’s dark, and I don’t want to get one in the back.”
“You won’t,” she scoffed, “and I have my knife if I can’t get a shot off.”
The dwarves went first and not as quietly as Emily would have liked. Their clothes were mostly fur and leather like Emily’s, but the chain links woven into the fabric chinked with their movements. Their boots were heavy, too, grinding on the rocks, then echoing off the cave walls. Amongst the noise they made, Emily couldn’t tell if she was adding any of her own. Her footsteps seemed silent, but what was the point when her allies’ were not?
What a waste, killing that orc quietly, she thought.
And then the sharp sound of metal striking rock echoed up to her ears.
Clink, clink, clink-clink, clink, clink.
An image of pickaxes driving into stone conjured itself into her mind, and swinging one of those picks was a man with long, dark hair and equally dark eyes. Emily’s heart quickened.
The dwarves descended into the cave, which quickly became a tunnel. It sloped down into the mountain, turning when crevices allowed, and occasionally, a pocket of light that pierced an unexplained hole in the cave’s roof would show the way. The striking grew louder and louder, and then they rounded a bend and the tunnel opened into a shallow, torch-lit cavern filled with a near-dozen orcs, a few less than that of slaves, and half as many goblins.
The dwarves roared and charged, and Emily released an arrow at the first orc she saw. She had considered drawing two arrows, but quickly dashed the thought. Without a steady source to make more arrows, her precious ammunition needed to be conserved. Fortunately, she had allies.
The dwarves shouted so loudly they made the cavern ring with their voices. They divided amongst the orcs like seasoned warriors, one or two for every orc while just one of them went to scatter the goblins. The orcs roared their own reply, hefting weapons and meeting the charge while the goblins shrieked and scattered like kobolds. Two of the five goblins were hacked apart by an axe, a third was cornered and surrendered, but was shown no mercy, while the last two made for the exit. They found Emily blocking it, though, and died one to an arrow and another to a dagger.
The orcs fared much better.
They met the dwarves, roaring in bloodlust, apparently unfazed by the overwhelming odds they faced. All of them carried bladed weapons that must have weighed as much as Emily herself, but one wouldn’t think so by how easily they swung them. The orcs’ ugly faces twisted with glee, looking downright terrifying in the low light as they fought against opponents half their size. The two sides clashed like waves in a storm. Hammer and axe met greatsword and cleaver. One orc lost a leg to an axe and then immediately died when a hammer struck its face. Another took a blow to the gut, fell back, and then screamed as the hammers continued to fall, beating it to a bloody pulp upon the unforgiving rock. One orc attempted to dodge its foes, leaping aside to avoid a swinging axe only to be cleaved from behind by another. Some orcs did better, kicking one dwarf in the face and sparring with a second until other dwarves joined in. Only two dwarves were struck down, their orc attackers getting in a kill before being mercilessly hacked down themselves.
One of those two dwarves was Hadkar. He had been the first to charge. Eager to see combat and holding his hammer high, he hadn’t been prepared to either parry or dodge. The orc’s giant cleaver took him in the collarbone, slicing down into his lungs. The blade caught there, and both the orc and the dwarf died before the weapon could be freed.
Admittedly, Emily felt only a twinge of remorse. She had liked Hadkar, and he had been one of the few to throw his support to her cause. Unfortunately, she’d been long numbed to death, and that alone pained her more than anything else.
An angel would weep, she thought. I am growing colder by the day.
She also turned a cold shoulder because she was distracted. As the battle with the orcs came to a swift end, her eyes swept the torch-lit pit for the slaves they had just freed. There were ten in all; six were dwarves, and only four were human. Among those humans, one had long, dark, straight hair and nearly black eyes, and though he shivered in the filthy rags of what had once been a samurai’s kimono and looked perilously thin, that had not stopped him from turning his pickaxe upon the first orc within range once the dwarves had charged.
“Takeo!” Emily shouted and sprinted to him.
The samurai’s lips parted, but he had no voice. The disbelief on his face did not dissipate until Emily’s arms wrapped about him, and then he collapsed into her embrace. Emily felt his face nuzzled into her neck and his cheeks wet against her skin.
“You’re alive,” she said, heart soaring.
“You gave me a command,” he managed to whisper back.
His skin was like ice, and he reeked, but Emily ignored both. She pulled him down to sit on the cavern floor, his pickaxe forgotten where he’d left it buried in the nearest orc. His wrists and ankles were in shackles, and Emily glanced around for a key.
The dwarves were embracing their enslaved kin. They were not as reserved as Emily or Takeo and openly bawled as they held each other close, though a few stood around Hadkar and the other fallen dwarf, maintaining silence with bowed heads. The other three humans, two men and a woman in as bad a shape as Takeo, huddled together and shared both relieved and apprehensive glances as they looked at the unfolding scene.
“Where are the keys?” Emily asked Takeo, grabbing the shackles around his wrists and ankles.
“There aren’t any,” came a gruff voice behind her.
Emily looked to see Helga Grumdisnev, Hadkar’s older cousin, standing over them with a two-handed axe.
“The orcs don’t use shackles that can be removed,” Helga explained. “Ye’ll have to break them. Stand aside.”
Emily did so, and Takeo parted his legs as wide as the shackles would let him, leaving the chain on the rock. Helga spilt the chain in a single swing and then did the same for the chain between his wrists.
“The rest will be removed when ye get back to our home,” she said. “Name’s Helga Grumdisnev.”
“Takeo Karaoshi,” the samurai said, “and thank you. I’m sorry for your fallen comrades. I owe you my life.”
“Aye,” Helga said flatly. “Don’t mention it.”
The dwarf turned and marched toward Hadkar’s body. The others were cutting strips of clothing off the orcs and wrapping them between two of the orc weapons to make stretchers. They placed Hadkar and the other dwarf onto those stretchers and lifted them up. Other strips of clothing were cut from the orcs to make blankets for the former slaves. The orcs were large so there was plenty to go around, even for the three huddled humans, who seemed less apprehensive once their chains had been broken.
“Everyone up,” Helga said. “We need to leave afore the other orcs get back. I don’t want to be losing anyone else.”
“Can you walk?” Emily asked Takeo.
“For you, I could fly.”
Chapter 3
It did not take nearly as long to get back to the dwarven outpost as it did to get to orc pit. For a day and a half, they traveled as straight as the mountains would allow at a relentless pace. Helga would not tolerate rest. In her words, they could either sleep at the outpost or sleep in their graves.
“Only ten orcs,” she muttered. “They only left ten orcs to guard that place. Cocky bastards, thinking we’d never find them. I don’t know where the others be hiding, but we’ll find them and kill them.”
“Aye!” came a chorus of cheers from the other dwarves.
The dwarven elders estimated that a good thirty orcs and goblins, combined, had come to stake a claim on their dwarven land. In bands of ten, they had been raiding small scouting parties of dwarves, who traveled in groups of less than five. After only two attacks, the elders had learned their lesson, and that was why they hadn’t allowed Emily to travel with fewer than twenty dwarves, thinking such
a number would discourage the orcs from attacking. The original plan had just been to find the orcs and send back for reinforcements, but when Emily’s captured goblin said that only ten orcs were in the cave at any one time, Hadkar had decided that the glory was worth the risk.
Emily didn’t think Hadkar held that same opinion now.
Helga certainly didn’t. She didn’t like the idea of being caught in that cave when a second orc party returned home. Worse yet, as Emily had shown, the dwarves were already being scouted by goblins. Fighting then and there would have been a huge risk, and Helga wasn’t about to make it worse by lingering in the open.
“Orcs and goblins,” Helga spat in a conversation with Emily, “they be a step above beasts and a step below us. Just smart enough to be trouble, but too stupid to know they be fighting a losing battle. They won’t care that their fellows are dead, but they might get angry anyway and come after us in the night. We rescued our kin. That was the goal. I want to go home and bury me cousin.”
The cold kept the two fallen dwarves from decaying, and when the group reached the outpost, those carrying the stretchers entered first. Silence was their only greeting.
The outpost was an impressive structure built into the land with little care for aesthetics. Rock had been hewn into large square blocks of a size that would hold up the weight of a mountain. Most of the outpost was tunneled into the mountain, leaving very little exposed to the elements. There were several small exits and entrances, no larger than a dwarf, that perforated the place, but one large entrance dominated the view of the outpost. It was tall enough for a mounted knight to enter and wide enough for ten dwarves to walk abreast. The iron gates blocking their path were dragged back on thick hinges, allowing the group entrance.
Within, the outpost was just tall enough for Emily to walk without hunching, though she occasionally had to duck under a doorframe. Everything was made of stone, from the walls to the beds to the tables to the benches, even the nightstands. There was no such thing as moving furniture. If one desired to sit where no chair had been permanently built, the floor would do just fine, and the dwarves saw nothing wrong with this. They also saw nothing wrong with stone beds, though Emily had not understood this until she was provided enough blankets to keep warm. After a couple of layers had been set out, her stone bed had proven far more forgiving than the cold ground she’d been sleeping on for months now.
