Chapter
Eight
The Orken and The Call
Timeline:
With an unexpected twist of cunning by the little gnome, Gnine Tinkerdome, the odd and elusive young woman, Inshala ‘la fey’ Frostmane has joined the Serenity Home company on their mission to catch the cutters responsible for burning many homes and shops, and murdering the much revered Master Cathber Gwet’chen Bolgrig..
This story starts right after
“What is in your hand?”
L
ady Moira, to the front and center, along with your charger, if you will. Udoorin, take the right and cover her flank. Ranger Morel, you are on the left. Make sure they do not come at her from that side. Ranger Laila, you will stay with Master Gnine, the Temple Guardian, and the girl. Make sure no one gets past either of them.”, growled Aager Fogstep in his gravelly, grating voice as he pointed at each and where he wanted them.
Everyone had awoken when the man in dark leathers had barked out and called them to arms. Ranger Bremorel was already awake and she immediately went for the campfire and rekindled it to life, as only the Temple Guardian, Lady Magella, Ranger Laila, and the little gnome, Master Gnine had some form of dark vision and could, not quite see, but ‘discern’ their surrounding, up to a certain range. As for their guest, Aager only guessed that she could.
“Would you rather I charge them, Master Aager?”, Lady Moira asked merrily. “As numerous as they are, orcs do not fare well against charging cavalry and tend to scatter.”
“Will they not gather behind you once you trample over a few of them?”, Udoorin asked a bit dubiously.
Moira beamed at him.
“But of course, comrade Udoorin.”, she said happily.
“Uhhmm.. I don’t understand..”, the young man mumbled with a baffled expression.
“When they converge on me, their backs will be turned on you!”, the tall paladin girl explained with a merry grin.
“But.. will you not be vulnerable, then?”, Udoorin asked, a bit freaked out at the young woman’s ‘joyous’ attitude.
“This is why we wear plate armor..”, Moira replied, rapping at her chest plate with a ringing knuckle. “..to fend off potentially lethal blows. Guess it is time I had it tested outside the tournament arenas.”
“I.. I would rather we didn’t test anything on you.”, the young man said with a flushed face. “Lady would skin us alive if something happened to you.”
“That’s sweet. But it is also what I have sworn to do, comrade Udoorin; to fight evil and put ourselves in harm’s way hence others wouldn’t have to.”, she said with a happy glint in her eyes.
From a distance they heard many feet, deep in the dark, running towards them.
“Tell them.”, Inshala ‘la fey’ Frostmane was saying from the rear in urgent whispers.
“Why don’t you tell them yourself, my dear girl. They would listen to you.”, Lady Magella replied.
“I.. I do not belong, Temple Guardian. You do. They.. He will listen to you.. I have seen him do so when..”, she said, her face flushed a bit, then continued, “..I was watching you all.”
Lady Magella sighed.
“Master Aager.”, she called ahead.
“Temple Guardian.”, the man in dark leathers growled in acknowledgment.
“Lady Inshala—”, she began.
“—No. I am only Inshala.”, the young woman hissed.
The Temple Guardian sighed again.
“Inshala, here, offers another avenue we might take”, she said.
“Which is?”, Aager growled, without looking back.
“Tell him.”, the young woman hissed again.
“She is saying, and I quote, ‘a confrontation avoided is better than an enemy overcome.’”, Lady said.
Aager frowned.
“I doubt the orcs will see the wisdom in that. And dead enemies can never confront you again, Temple Guardian. I will not have an orcish raiding party lurking behind us.”, he grated.
“I don’t think you see the wisdom in that either.”, he heard the young woman mumble angrily from behind.
The trampling of feet was even closer and they could hear the orcs’ harsh grunts as well, now.
“This is going to get really messy and very fast.”, they heard Bremorel’s voice. “We can barely see them.”
As if on cue, there was a shimmer ahead, and suddenly, and with a shallow glow of green, moving bodies some sixty or eighty yards away became visible, not like some ambient light, but the orcs themselves had started ‘glowing’, all individually outlined with some bizarre green light!
For the brief moment of a surprise, the orcs froze where they were..
“Lady Moira, I believe it is time we see the legendary charge of the famous Durkahan paladins.”, Aager growled as he drew his short sword and dagger.
“A sad but necessary choice.”, Lady Moira said with a nod, leaned over, grabbed her helmet, rammed it over her head, pulled at its strap under her chin, tightened the buckles of her shield, drew her longsword,
“For the Great Heavens!”, she roared..
..and charged!
“She sure knows how to make an entrance.”, Udoorin said, ogling after the paladin girl and her charger. Then he hefted his great battleaxe, found its balance, then he too charged into the night.
“Yesh!”, hissed Bremorel from nearby and dashed.. at the glowing orcs, and soon enough, she heard the massive clash of something big, the trampling of hooves, the grunts of orcs, the ringing sound of steel on steel, and Lady Moira chanting something to the Great Heavens above! And just like that, she was almost on top of the first orc, its back turned to her and ogling at the charging paladin, holding a long, cruel-looking spear..
..which is when she finally drew her great, two-handed blade out of its sheath strapped across her back.
With a swift, silent spin, she slashed and felt her blade meet the vague resistance of padded armor and heard a satisfactory grunt as the orc crumbled on the ground, its back opened with a horrible, horizontal gash. The ranger girl did not wait for a gloat. She downed three more, never going for dramatic head loppings or stabbing his blade deep into her enemies, but always with a slash that would carry her to her next opponent with its own momentum.
Udoorin, on the other hand, was in his ‘chopping’ frame of mind. Looking at him, one might mistake him for a woodsman splitting logs, accept he was crack-opening orc skulls. And he seemed to want to make sure each orc was more than dead since the corpses he left behind seemed to have their arms, their legs, and several other limbs missing! While some might argue his method as ‘overkill’, he would likely disagree and define it as ‘being thorough’.
Lady Moira’s approach had been nothing like either of them. She had charged with her great holy steed, Ayla, and once she had gained full momentum, she had rammed right through the orcs, trampling those that were directly before her and knocking those nearby. And then she was out the other end of the raiding party in less than a few short seconds.
“Back, Ayla!”, the fiery girl shouted, “Our dear friends are in peril! We must go back!”
The great warhorse reared on her hind legs, spun around, and charged back in, though not with the intention of trampling this time for there were friendlies in the field too, now. The giant steed came down on the first few orcs like a down-hill avalanche, then Moira was slashing and cutting her way through, right and left, all the while blocking any sword, spear, axe, or club with her shield until one of the orcs somehow managed to grab onto her leg and tried to drag her down..
..and a dark patch appeared out of the night and sliced its neck open..
The orc let loose a wet, gurgling sigh, and toppled over as Master Aager did a very brief, barely discernible appearance here, slicing open a throat, then there, poking in a kidney, then elsewhere, leaving a tiny gash on a jugular, or a hole in the heart, always darting in, never staying in one place more than a second or three.
An arrow struck one of the orcs right through the skull and it toppled over with a surprised expression on its face, then another grunted and gurgled, as another arrow shafted into its throat. With unbending accuracy, Laila rained her variety of death from where she stood guarding the Temple Guardian, Lady Magella, the little gnome, Master Gnine, and the young woman, Inshala, who watched the slaughter with a very unhappy face.
Gnine gave Laila, Lady Magella, and Inshala a quick glance, cupped one hand, and sent the glowing, ember-like mote that appeared in it, right into the crowd of orcs. There was a low, muffled ‘thud’ and one of the raiders shrieked in pain as its torso suddenly burst with fire.
“Good shot, Master Gnine.”, Laila said as she drew her bow all the way to her delicate, elven ear, and released it, and quite seamlessly, she drew another and sent that one as well.
“Uhhmm.. you don’t seem surprised..”, the little gnome mumbled.
“After all the years I have known you, nothing you do can surprise me, Master Gnine.”, she replied with a grin. “Though I am a bit hurt you kept it to yourself all this time. We are friends, after all.”
“I.. Look, I didn’t want to make a fuss of it, alright. I can do things few others can. Just.. don’t make too much of a bid deal out of it.”, Gnine muttered.
“Magic-in-a-fist!”, Inshala blurted suddenly, staring down at him.
“Well, sort of.”, the gnome said with a flush.
“So you are a wizard. Kept that to yourself, indeed, Master Gnine.”, Lady Magella said, giving the gnome a long stare.
“Well, sort of..”, Gnine admitted as his face flushed some more.
“Why did you hide it?”, Lady asked.
“Is this the right time for this conversation?”, the gnome said a bit irritably, cupped another glowing ember in his palm, and hurled that into another orc!
“You did the glowing thing too?”, the Temple Guardian asked.
“What? No. I thought you did that.”, Gnine said turning to stare at her.
“I do not possess that kind of magic, boy.”, the she-dwarf replied with a scowl.
“Who then?”, Laila asked..
..then all three turned to stare at the young woman who had sort of backed a few feet and was standing there with her face cast down and staring at her own, small, naked feet.
“You did that?”, Lady asked.
The girl continued to stare at her feet.
“My dear child, thank you. Some of us can see in the dark, but those that are fighting now could not. You have likely saved them. You should be proud.”, the she-dwarf said with a broad smile.
“I helped them kill others. There is nothing to be proud of here, Temple Guardian. Orcs are not always nice. But they had not attacked us. We are going somewhere, and so were they. We did not know where they were going. We did not try to talk to them. We did not ask them where they were going. We did not ask them why they were here. We just attacked them.”, the girl mumbled.
“Deep thoughts, girl.”, Laila said. “But not exactly the right time.”
Gnine didn’t say anything. He only formed another fiery mote in his hand and hurled that at the orcs as well. Lady Magella, however, seemed like someone had just hit her over the head with something hard and heavy.
The girl was right.
What’s more, she, herself, was a Temple Guardian of Life..
They hadn’t hailed the orcs. They hadn’t ordered them to stop. They hadn’t offered them any food or trinkets for information. As a matter of fact, they hadn’t asked them anything. They had simply attacked them just because they were orcs.
She stared ahead and into the night where the grunting shouts and screams of the green-outlined creatures were running around and falling as Moira, Udoorin, Bremorel, and Aager butchered them.
To be fair, and in all candor, orcs were, indeed, large, brutish, somewhat cunning, borderline sinister, and ‘snatching’ creatures. They were also not really all that different than some of the northern barbarian tribes, they, themselves, being somewhat tribal in nature. They also raided their neighbors when they saw them weak, killed their men, kidnapped their women, as viable offsprings were possible between orcs and humans, looted their food and gold, burned their homes, then ran away. But then, so did the average bandit, cutthroat, or thug. Yet, while the average bandit was hunted down and caught, then tried, and finally imprisoned or hung, on a singular level, orcs were killed where they were sighted.
“You.. are right, Inshala. We should have listened to your advice.”, she admitted honestly.
“Lady.”, Laila said harshly. “These are not some angry farmers. They are orcs. You do know what they do whenever they get the chance. They raid villages. They kill or kidnap people. They loot and rampage. I don’t even need to remind you what they did to Bremorel’s mother and father.”
“I do not know what orcs did to Ranger Bremorel’s mother and father, Ranger Laila. But I know what humans did to me. I also know what they did to my Father. Did they not also burn your town and hurt your people as well?”, Inshala mumbled even as she continued to stare at her feet. “Shall we kill all the humans, then?”
“Humans and orcs are nothing alike.”, Laila hissed as she downed another orc with vindictive satisfaction.
“No. They are not. Orcs only raid for what they need. They take it, and then they run away. Humans kill for what they do not need. Always they kill, they spread, and they take, then they kill more and take more even though they can not use what they have taken because their lives end before they can use what they have taken. These orcs were not raiding. They were merely running in the night.”, the young woman said quietly.
“I do not disagree with you, Inshala. But I can not agree with you either. And I think it is too late to talk with them now.”, Laila fumed.
“Yes. It is too late to talk. We have killed them all. And now there is imbalance.”, the girl said sadly.
“Clear!”, came Bremorel’s voice from somewhere ahead.
“Clear!”, Udoorin’s rumble was also heard.
“It is safe.”, Lady Moira said as she galloped towards them and stopped a mere short few feet from them as she pulled off her helmet and patted Ayla, her great steed, on the neck.
Master Gnine, your lantern, if you will.”, growled Aager from far ahead.
The little gnome pulled down his tiny pack from his back, undid its easy knots, and produced his small, delicate lantern. He knotted his pack again, threw it over his shoulders, and walked off into the night. Soon enough, the whole area was flooded by some bright light and the rush of their carnage came into view, and it was quite ghastly. Many orcs lay sprawled and trampled, their corpses broken and unrecognizable. Others were cut down and slashed from somewhat above, likely by Lady Moira. Many bore the marks of massive gashes opened by Ranger Bremorel. Whatever her other faults were, the ranger girl knew how to use a blade; none of her victims had been subjected to wounds any more than ‘just right’, as gruesomely deadly her application had been.
Young Udoorin, on the other hand, had been anything but ‘just right’, and he seemed to have taken his sense of ‘thorough’, quite to the extreme. Where he stood, only bloody body parts remained and one could only call his work ‘a mess’, to put it politely.
Master Aager’s application of murder had been uniquely disturbing, in a ‘silently applied’ sense. The orcs that had died by his hands could be sleeping if one didn’t look carefully.
A dozen or so arrows were also on display, a testimony to Ranger Laila’s participation in the fight. A careful analysis, however, would reveal the fact that perhaps the young half-elf girl might just have a fetish for headshots!
Aager stared at the downed orcs and he did note several of them were charred and burned.
“So, the gnome could do more than sparks.”, he mused. Then his eyes drifted over to where the big, burly young man was standing. And the ‘mess’ he’d left behind.
“Really?”, he growled at him. “You had to cut them down that many times?”
“What?”, Udoorin said with a flushed face. “I wanted to make sure they stayed down. You never know until you are sure.”
“Young man.”, Aager grated. “A body is incapable of functioning once its head is removed. The hands, the arms, the legs, and the torso become moot after that.”
Udoorin’s face flushed some more.
“Was the green light that outlined the orcs, your doing, Master Gnine?”, Aager asked.
“No. That would be the pretty girl. She lit the enemy for us, seeing as we were Hell-bent on killing the orcs, but beyond that, she didn’t participate.”, the little gnome said. “And I can see why she wouldn’t. Some of these orcs carry bloody bandages on them.”
Aager also stared at the bandaged orcs and there were any number of them. Some had arms splintered with makeshift twigs and crudely wrapped. Some even had missing limbs that had been cauterized.
“Any particular reason you did not light the field with that lantern, Master Gnine?”, he growled as he knelt down to inspect the orcs.
“Several, actually. But most of them are technical in nature.”, the gnome replied a bit evasively.
“Which would be?”, Aager asked.
Gnine sighed.
“I am, at best, a novice artificer, Master Aager. I don’t mind putting together a contraption or two once in a while. But I am, by no means, an expert. This lantern is quite complex and very delicate. I did not wish to risk it, for one. And two, it requires my continued concentration to maintain the light, which is not limitless. Also, I would have needed to be here, in the middle of the fight with you, Bree, Lady Moira, and Udoorin to have made good use of it. Inshala’s spell was tactically more effective. While I pride myself on my little invention, it would have helped everyone equally, including the orcs. Hers only lit and outlined the orcs, helping you see them but not helping them see you while instilling panic among them.”, he explained, interestingly, without any of his usual, slightly pomp attitudes.
“Huh.”, the man in dark leathers grunted.
“I note most of them seem to be carrying sacks.”, the little gnome said. “Perhaps they raided someplace.”
Aager knelt down and opened one of the sacks and peered in it.
“Huh.”, he grunted again. “Food. And what appears to be personal belongings, all Orcish craftsmanship.”
He ghosted over to another dead orc and sliced open his fallen burlap sack as well.
For the next ten minutes or so, Aager went from one dead orc to the other, inspecting the contents of their burden. When he was done, he looked up to see the Temple Guardian on her knees nearby, also inspecting the contents of one of the sacks. Laila was holding her position three feet behind Lady Magella ‘at ease’ with an arrow cocked and her bow half drawn.
The young woman, Inshala, was standing in the middle of the carnage, one small hand over her mouth. With the other, she had gathered her skirts and was keeping them slightly pulled up as if not wanting any blood smeared on it. Her eyes were wide and she was staring at what ‘these people’ had done. The people she had opted to join. And willy-nilly, she had helped them, and consequently, she had become part of the slaughter as the aggressor, also.
“She was right. We should have listened to her wisdom.”, he heard the Temple Guardian’s bitter voice. “These orcs were on the run.. from something that had already attacked them. And looking at their burden, likely destroyed their homes. And we just finished their job for them.”
Aager did not comment.
“I see no women among them, though. Orcs, as far as I know, are quite protective of their women, and their children. More so than a lot of men out there.”, she mused.
The man in dark leathers kept to his silence.
“One is still alive!”, they heard Bremorel’s voice. When they looked up, they saw her raise her great blade!
“But not for long, you son of an ugly goat!”, she hissed— ⊗
“No!”, Inshala yelped.
“Stop!”, Lady barked.
“Hold your steel!”, growled Aager.
⊗ —and brought her blade down!
No one quite understood what happened next.
One moment the ranger girl was standing over the orc, glaring down at it with hate-filled eyes and bringing down her greatsword, the next, she was sixteen feet off the ground, hanging by the arm with her sword pointing at the night sky, wrapped by thick, gnarly strands of choke vines that had ‘punched’ right out of the dirt!
“What the..”, the ranger girl blurted as she stared at her sword arm, then down at her dangling feet.
“P.. please, Ranger Bremorel.. Do not kill him..”, Inshala pleaded as she came running.
“You? You did this?”, the ranger girl spluttered.
“I.. I am so sorry.. but you were going to kill him..”, the young woman said almost in tears.
“Yes. That was the idea!”, Bremorel hissed, glaring down at her.
“But.. he didn’t do anything to you.. None of them did..”, Inshala very nearly moaned.
“Release me and I will forget the fact that you have just assaulted a ranger!”, the Bremorel demanded angrily.
“But..”, the girl shied back.
“Ranger Bremorel.”, Lady Magella came stomping at them. “You will refrain from such demanding attitudes, and you will also refrain from threatening your companion.”
“I am a ranger of the Kingdom, Lady. You do not have jurisdiction over me.”, she flared as she struggled to free her arm, and herself from the choke vines.
“Inshala.”, Laila approached cautiously. “Please release my cousin.”
Her tone was not belligerent but cool, somewhat distant, and it had a demanding sternness in it. Her cheeks seemed flushed and puffy also, much like they became when she was aiming at a target from the fletch-end of one of her arrows.
Inshala stared at her.
Many things the young woman might not understand, from a social point of view, but apparently, she was good at reading body language. She stared at her, blankly at first, then a tiny crest appeared on her frows. Her face flushed as she pinched her mouth to an unhappy shape and she clenched her fists, but she did not back down. Then she gave Laila a non-challenging but steady look.
“Will you hit me with a stick, then, Ranger Laila? It will hurt, but I am used to it.”, she asked, her voice trembling a bit.
Laila’s expression changed and she just stared at her.
“You are from Dim Woods, are you not?”, the odd girl asked.
“I am from Dim Woods.”, Laila told her. “So is my cousin.”
“Have I held that against you?”, Inshala said.
“Why would you hold that against me?”, Laila asked boldly.
“The men of Dim Woods did oft hurt me.”, the young woman replied.
“I never did hurt you. And neither did my cousin.”, Laila said angrily.
“No. You did not. But your words do not match your face, nor do your hips agree with them.”, Inshala said.
“My what?”, the ranger girl asked, and now her face turned into surprised bafflement.
“You are looking at me like I am one of them.”, Inshala said, pointing at the dead orcs. “And you stand ready to pounce. Your words say one thing, but your body says another.”
Laila stared at her.
“You find it incomdrependable..”, Inshala continued, then paused, her face suddenly turning red.
“Imdombripenpebale..”, she said.
“Uhhmm, what?..”, Laila mumbled, totally baffled now.
“Inpomdremendible..”, she gave it another try but failed.
Laila stared at her, some more.
The young woman squirmed as she tried, very hard, to find some relief from her predicament.
“Incomprehensible?..”, Aager prompted with a growl.
Inshala never looked up at him but her face turned into some dark maroon color.
“Yes.. that..”, she mumbled, then added, still pointing at the carnage. “You find it incomdrependable that all Dim Woods’ men are bad. But you do not question your thought when it comes to these.”
“For Heaven’s sake, girl, they are orcs!”, Laila flared.
“Hey, don’t mind me, I’ll just swing by!”. Bremorel said, still hanging from the choke vines.
“My Father did not slay those that he did not like. Many races, beasts and monsters, orcs and ogres lived in his forest. So did elves, humans, and dwarves. Elves knew I was there, yet they never let me come near their village. The dwarves, my Father never told them about me. The humans attacked me when and wherever they saw me. They beat me and did they whip me. Orcs never hurt me and ogres welcomed me even though I am not an orc, and neither am I an ogre. So.. Let us then, Ranger Laila, hear what he has to say before you judge them.”, the girl said somberly. “For as sure as it will be dawn soon enough, he will die without your help; someone has put a hole in his heart with iron and he is living on shallow time.”
And she knelt down and sat next to the dying orc.
Very carefully, tenderly, even, she took his bloodied head, made a pillow of her lap, and rested it there.
Lady Magella, young Udoorin, the little gnome, Gnine, and the paladin girl, Moira, were standing some few yards away, listening to the exchange with odd looks on their faces.
Aager?
Aager never understood why he felt what he did; white and blind fury.
And..
Awe, perhaps? If so, it was the first time in his entire life that he’d felt it. And it wasn’t precisely what the young woman had said, but how she had delivered it. It was naively idealistic, to be sure. Orcs were orcs, after all. But there hadn’t been any fiery passion in her voice as one would expect from the young and the zealous.
She had said it with calm, settled, and somehow, ‘content’ oration as if she were the morrow of some vast ocean, just after a churning and savage storm, and that very same voice carried her words all the way down to the dark depths of his empty, cavernous, and dead heart, seeped into the marrow of his very bones..
..and settled there.
The orc’s eyes fluttered and opened.
He stared up at the night sky, his face confused and his eyes glazed.
Then they turned a little and settled on the pretty, somewhat angular, and mournful face looking down at him.
“You.. you are the daughter of Boss Cat-ber.”, the orc croaked with a wet, gurgling voice. It was hard to figure out whether it had been a question or merely a statement.
“I am the daughter of Boss Cat-ber, yes.”, Inshala confirmed, staring down at his ugly and brutish face.
“Bo.. Boss Cat-ber has a pretty.. daughter..”, the orc whispered with a broken grin as dark, oozing blood seeped from the side of his lips.
“Do you really think so?”, the young woman asked honestly, and a bit girlishly.
“I.. see so..”, the orc wheezed. “I am.. dying..”
“Yes.”, Inshala said. “I am sorry.”
“Do not be.. I am.. free..”, the brutish creature said, and coughed, splattering blood on the young woman’s face and dress.
“Free?”, the girl asked.
“The Call..”, the orc whispered. “..of the Dark One.. has begun.. once again.. as He did many times before.. This time, He sent His Orken to recruit us. They came in numbers.. Much bigger than us. And stronger.. But no mind.. No heart.. And no mercy.. Our chieftain.. He refused.. and died first.. Then they killed us.. Our men and our women and our children.. Our whole tribe.. Only we survived.. Wanted to warn Boss Cat-ber.. But we learned that he died.. And now we have no Boss.. Only the Call, and His Orken dogs.. So we ran.. to reach the Great Northern Tundras.. The Ice Wolf Horde.. They would have accepted us..”
The orc struggled and turned his head to see the bloody field.
“But.. I don’t think.. that is going to happen now..”, he said with another bloody grin.
“No. It is not. I am sorry.”, Inshala whispered, tears running down her face.
“Do.. do not be..”, the orc gurgled. “I.. I am blessed.. Among all the mortals in this world.. only I get to die.. in Boss Cat-ber’s daughter’s lap..”
“Inshala. My name is Inshala.”, the girl whimpered.
“Heaven’s Willing, Inshala..”, the orc wheezed..
..as his body deflated and went limp, his grin faded, and his eyes turned glassy.
A morbid silence settled over the bloody field as the young woman carefully took the orc’s hands and crossed them over his bloody chest, then, very gently, she set his head on the ground and wept as the choke vines slowly withdrew and settled the ranger girl back on her feet again.
Bremorel rolled her sword arm several times, then, with a swift spin, she sheathed her great blade over her shoulder and just stood there.
“He was dying anyway.”, she said irritably to the odd girl who was now sitting quietly next to the dead orc looking down at him with sad, mournful eyes. “Why did you stop me? What did you gain by this confrontation?”
“Gain?”, Inshala said, her tone disturbingly quiet. “I have gained nothing, Ranger Bremorel, for I did not stop you for me. I stopped you, for you.”
“Eh?”, the ranger girl cocked an eyebrow.
“You are not a murderer, but still a ranger now.”, Inshala replied silently, still staring down at the orc.
Inshala joined them again two days later. Come dawn, the group had remounted, somewhat subdued, and had taken off. The strange girl had told the Temple Guardian that she would catch up to them in a day or two. When asked, she had mumbled, “There is something I must do.”, or some such while trying very hard not to stare at the dead orcs.
Lady had sighed but hadn’t pushed her. She had, however, made her promise that she would come back, as she was part of the company now, and that people did not abandon their friends.
The girl had promised, but the Temple Guardian had gotten the impression that even though the young woman probably knew what words such as ‘company’ and ‘friends’ meant but beyond that, it was possible she had absolutely no idea what they really were.
Making a girl promise to come back for reasons she didn’t know, nor understand, likely made the she-dwarf gnaw on her own knuckles for two days straight..
..until the girl did appear, once again, and in the middle of the night, breathing into Master Aager’s ear;
“You are not a good person.”
..to his frustration.
Tenacious, stubborn, persistent, mule-headed, odd, and slightly off, were the likely words that crossed his mind, but he showed none of them.
“You are late. Again.”, he growled.
“I do not belong to you.”, she hissed at him in return.
Aager refused to repeat, nor did he wish to entertain that particular conversation again.
“Who do you belong, then?”, he asked with his gravelly voice.
“I do not belong.”, she replied, in a lost, confused, and hopeless tone. “The only one I belonged is gone. I am now alone. I will live alone. And I will die alone.”
Aager turned around and stared in her direction. Their campfire had died down and settled to comfortably glowing embers, giving heat but not much in the way of light. Even though he could not see her, the man in dark leathers was sure she was there somewhere, slightly off to his right. Hence he addressed her in that direction.
“Alone is good. You should enjoy it. No distractions, and no worries.”, he growled.
“Alone is alone. And it is distraction by its lack of another. One heart beats for itself, alone. When it stops, no one knows. Two hearts beat for one another. When one dies, the other will know. Thus we have existed and thus we have been, and in peace, we have departed, for we know, our life and our deeds now live in the other. Behold; thus we live forever, through our deeds that we have passed onto the other, who shall live, if only to make others remember us.”, the girl’s voice came from the night.
“I find your words pretty, but naive.”, he grated.
“You are not a good person. I see that. Feel that. And naive, you call me. And naive I may be. And oft silly, also. Yet you wish to stay afool of others in hopes of finding solace and comfort, trapped in your own cage, hence you will not lose what you do not have. Naive, you call me, and naive I would rather be, than a fool who is alone among friends.”, the girl’s voice came, not accusatory, but quite and quietly sad.
“You have something to report?”, the man in dark leathers asked, feeling decidedly agitated.
What the girl had said didn’t make any sense.
At all.
Yet it did, at the same time, in a sense that was quite beyond her years. He could just imagine Master Cathber, the young woman’s father, saying such demented things, though for the brief few times he had seen and conversed with him, the old man had never talked to him like this girl had. True, when he said things, they tended to have at least two meanings at the same time, each usually being quite opposite the other, but at least they had been somewhat ‘grounded’. After all, one expected the occasional ‘odd’ from a man who was rumored to have lived for eight hundred years. Just not from a young woman in her early twenties.
He could also imagine the venerable Senior Temple Guardian, Demos Lightshand, saying things such as what this girl had said. But again, not as vague. He had always been surgically succinct when addressing him. One could go as far as saying, his choice of words had been ‘custom tailored’ specifically for him, just as hers had been. So far as he had known him, old Demos had never been a man of high drama, and nor had he shown any symptoms for the need of theatrics. When he spoke, he made sure his words were comprehensive and straightforward, although at times rather phrasal, also. And the few times he had spoken with the man in dark leathers, all he had asked had been about his well-being. Looking back, Aager was now quite sure the old Temple Guardian had never really inquired about his physical welfare, but rather that of his soul. And this girl was just like those two. Accept, she was far too gone into the depths of the unknown —a something Aager had dreaded, shied from, silently abhorred, and decisively stayed clear at all costs. After all, your average Drashan never really dealt with the unknown, but would rather make sure to kill it, usually in the form of stabbing it to death, just to be on the safe side!
“Yes.”, the girl said.
“Report, then go get some sleep.”, he growled.
There was an unhappy pause in the night and Aager got the fleeting impression that the young woman’s plight was due to his obstinate, or even incorrigible, stance.
“We should turn south, and not go any further east.”, her voice said finally.
“Why?”, Aager asked.
“The lands beyond are dead. Burned, charred, and salted, and it is a land the living do not belong.”, Inshala whispered.
“Explain.”, the man in dark leathers grated.
“Themalsar.”, the young woman replied in a hushed voice..
..and came ghosting out of the night to stand right before him and even in the dim light of dying embers, he noted, the young woman was extraordinarily pretty, even though her kind of beauty was somewhat unconventionally angular, very much feral, and certainly in a cantankerous way. He also noted the fear in her eyes, even though she stood less than a foot away from him. She was staring up at him, her funny, conical buns perfectly braided, and her dress clean and free of dust or the orc’s blood. Too clean, one might think, for someone who had been on the road for as long as she had been, and trailing after them through the woods and the bushes, no less.
And she was staring at him through her storm gray eyes, quite boldly, he noted, also.
“Huh.”, he grunted silently in the depths of his dark and desolate heart. “You are afraid. Of everyone here. Just not of me.”
“The ruins..”, he growled. “..are not our concern. We do not plan on entering it.”
The girl continued to stare at him, and for a long time. Long enough for it to go quite beyond what would have been socially acceptable. Too bad one didn’t know what would constitute as socially acceptable, and the other didn’t really care for such niceties anyway!
“The grounds, for miles around the ruins are cursed. Hence they were burned, charred, and salted. One, however, may never know what might come out of it.”, she said finally.
“I do not fear the living. I have less to fear of the dead.”, Aager growled.
The young woman, Inshala ‘la fey’ Frostmane, gave him another long stare, not quite scrutinizing, nor was she sneering at him. Seeing the lack of impression lines, the young woman had likely never sneered at anyone in her entire life, possibly because she could not understand why anyone would.
The look she gave him was..
..Pity.
Aager frowned.
Then, hidden deep under his dark hood, his frown deepened and something started to boil inside of him.
No one gave him pity, dammit. Not once in his entire life. He certainly had never asked for it. Neither had he shown said pity to anyone. And now, this wild, feral, and quite cantankerous girl was giving him pity?
Aager stopped right there as something clicked in his mind, for that is exactly what was going on; this wild, feral, and quite cantankerous girl was giving him pity, even though none was ever offered to her. In all candor, it was possible that Aager Fogstep never felt shame in his entire life. Or regret, for that matter, but he knew ‘hubris’ when he saw it. And just at that very moment, he saw it in himself.
In the eyes of the girl who didn’t even think he was a ‘good person’, he saw pity.
“You were gone for two days. What did you do? What was back there that needed your attention?”, he asked, staring down at her from the depths of his hood.
“No one needed my attention. Only my care.”, she replied and she frowned.
“Care?”, Aager asked.
“Yes.”, she said simply. “What you wronged, I balanced.”
The man in dark leathers continued to stare at her, waiting for her to elaborate.
“I buried the orcs you felled. All of them. Now, they have returned back to Mother Nature, and thus are they at peace.”, the girl said quietly.
“You spent two days burying orcs?”, Aager asked, a bit disturbed.
“We do not get to choose our parents. And we do not get to choose in which body we are born. We might wish otherwise, desperately so, at times, willy-nilly, are we born as we are. Some as human, some as elf. Others as fauna and as beast, also. And some as orc while others as ogre. It is not up to you to judge which is the better by the look of them. You never knew them. You never had to make their choices in life. Only your own. Should I judge you, then, so thoroughly, and leave you for the crows where you fall as well?”, she whispered. “Thus I have cared for them and given them what little surcease I may, also.”
“The men that beat and whipped you. Shall you give them your care as well, should you find them downed one day?”, he grated mercilessly.
“I am a naive girl, and oft silly. And not without fault. Hence I shall do my best not to be the one to have downed them, nor the one to have to bury them.”, she replied as she lowered her head and stared down at her own naked feet.
Aager raised his eyebrows.
“Is there something you are not telling me?”, he growled.
The girl raised her face and stared up at him again before she replied.
“Yes.”, she said simply.
Aager did not prompt her. He just waited.
“You are not a good person. And you are alone, also.”, she whispered.
And left.
No one really knew why Master Aager had the company veer south and back into the forest the very next morning. He had sent the ranger girls to spread out as they had before, with Bremorel taking the lead and Laila following her, a hundred yards behind. The rest would follow her, again at a hundred yards distance, pulling the horses along with them through the woods.
The horses certainly had not appreciated all the undergrowth.
Laila had cocked an eyebrow at the order, and so had her cousin, Bremorel. They didn’t mind running through the forest. As a matter of fact, Laila loved it. Her cousin, on the other hand, loved running and it didn’t even need to be in a forest, really. But the idea had made having horses sort of moot.
Aager did not go into the details of his choice in the change of route but merely hinted at the fact that he did not want the company going anywhere near the old ruins of Themalsar and subject them to whatever that could be lurking in there.
The ranger girls hadn’t said anything to his cursory explanations on the matter, but they had given side-long, squinting glances at the young woman with the flushed pink face, who had been decidedly and overtly silent all morning and certainly avoided even looking at them. Perhaps she had lost what little trust she had in them after what had happened with the orcs. She walked, not among them, but distinctly apart from them as a sparrow came and settled on one of her outstretched hands, followed by a scurry of squirrels that hopped down on her shoulders from some low branches, chirruping and chattering with tiny, squeaky noises.
The company had taken a break for a late lunch and the two rangers were munching on the hard, leathery rations the Temple Guardian had prepared and handed to them. They had taken their post among the roots of a particularly gnarly oak at a good distance from the rest, both keeping an eye on their surrounding while chewing on the dried meat and hard bread.
“We do something to offend the Temple Guardian that I am not aware of?”, Bremorel asked, staring sourly at her chew.
“I don’t know about you but the only thing she can complain about where I am concerned is my lack of attendance to her sermons.”, Laila replied, gnawing on her bread.
Bremorel snorted.
“I am guessing she didn’t bother with her usual because we are in a bit of a hurry, hence these shoe leathers.”, Laila continued.
Her cousin grunted sourly as she bit into her petrified bread and hard meat.
“Is it me or is there something going on between that Aager-guy and—”, she mused thoughtfully after a while.
“—Don’t even finish that sentence, girl.”, Laila said sternly.
“What? Why?”, her cousin asked, a bit surprised.
Laila sighed.
“Just don’t, alright?”, she said.
“I am just saying. I mean, have you noticed the way she watches him, like, all the time?”, Bremorel said, looking curiously at her cousin.
“Girl. There are some things that’ll never happen. Like fire and water getting along, and those two. One talks in weird riddles, and the other absolutely abhors riddles and anything to do with things that can mean more than what it says. And there is the fact that she very much dislikes killing, as we saw with those orcs. I mean, we are talking about orcs here. Though I must admit, that is the first time I witnessed a verbal interaction between an orc and someone else. It was..”, she said and paused.
“Sadly poetic?”, her cousin finished.
Laila cocked an eyebrow at her.
“What? Told you I read.”, Bremorel said, a bit defensively.
“You said your choices were between law and religious scripts.”, Laila replied amusedly.
“I did. And I stand by my word. Can’t help it if someone in the Temple library hides.. uhhmm.. other kinds of books inside said law and religious covers.”, her cousin said with a pink face.
Laila laughed.
Then her laughter faded and her face went bleak.
“Sadly poetic, indeed.”, she confirmed quietly. “I mean, had that not been an orc, but a human, or an elf, I would have been slobbering all over the place.”
“You and me, both, cuzz. Did you see the way she just snatched me right off the ground? I almost wet myself.”, Bremorel admitted.
“Can’t say I wasn’t freaked out, either. But I truly believe she does not like killing. And I also believe her when she said you are not a murderer but still a ranger. By that one act, she saved your moral integrity, which is deep, and hard to be aware of. Not in the heat of battle. I doubt even Lady Moira could have pulled herself short in a situation like that.”, Laila said thoughtfully.
“She scares me.”, her cousin mumbled.
“Funny how she is more scared of us than we are of her, isn’t it?”, Laila grinned brittlely.
“Accept that Aager-guy. So far as I know, she is the only person I have seen that could stare into those pits he has for eyes without being forced to shy away.”, Bremorel noted.
Laila sighed again.
“To bring the rooster home, that girl dislikes killing and while I can’t say Master Aager likes it, I doubt he feels any remorse when he does. One cares about life, and not just in some vague, idealistic, or philosophical sense, but truly values it and respects it, while the other just doesn’t care for it. Other than displaying professional courtesy to everyone around him, he gives absolutely no value to life, including his own, which is just creepy.”, she said quietly.
“Why do you think we are cutting through the woods again? Even had we circled around the forest as we had planned, we wouldn’t have been all that near those bloody ruins.”, Bremorel asked as she bit into the last bit of her bread.
Her cousin shrugged.
“I am guessing Master Aager does not want to risk his ‘precious’ rangers.”, she said a bit bitterly.
“Yeah, aren’t we precious?”, Bremorel grinned sardonically as she rose. “Well, c’mon.. Let’s run some and burn the shoe leather we just ate before it settles in and we suffer a fit of constipation.”
“You just had to make it sound weird, didn’t you?”, Laila said sourly.
They picked up their longbows, made sure they had left no evidence or tracks of their presence, a habit that had been engraved into them since their early years as initiates, and started ranging out.
“What did that orc mean when he said ‘The Call of the Dark One has begun?’”, Bremorel asked as she jumped over a fallen tree.
“I do not know, Bree. Couldn’t have been anything good. It certainly sounded ominous. I feel we are a bit out of our debt here. But at least we have a name for those orc-like creatures that slaughtered the cutters, destroyed the wood elf village, Nurturing Heaven, and attacked us.”, Laila replied grimly.
“Yes.”, her cousin said with a similarly bleak tone. “Orken.”
It took them the better side of the following three days to finally get out of the forest to be marginally far enough from the cursed ruins of Themalsar and the blackened and bitterly salted grounds surrounding it.
Master Aager had silently seethed and chafed at the inevitable loss of time, but only until the ranger girl, Bremorel had called them to a somewhat shallow spot where the trees blasted, decayed, and rotting!
The company had stared at the dreary sight of the dead trees as they creaked and ‘moaned’, and at the grayish-black soil where wisps of green and nauseous fumes boiled out. They also noted the skeletal remains of something huge that might have had a few too many arms. They also saw long, curving horns, one of them shattered at the stem, poking out of its petrified skull that seemed to stare at them through deep, hollow eye pits. The rictus grin, half-hidden in the fuming dirt hadn’t added to the overall joy either, and it seemed to cringe at their approach, giving the impression of clattering wind chimes, if wind chimes were made of marrowless, dry bones.
The Temple Guardian, Lady Magella, had said a few, short prayers and waved her hands as if abjuring some evil while the paladin, Lady Moira, had started chanting something as she drew her long blade, perhaps preparing for battle, just in case the skeletal remains of the creature with horns and the too many arms would suddenly come to life.
Rangers Laila and Bremorel had taken a position on the far side of the bloated patch of woods, their bows ready, each with an arrow cocked and half drawn.
Young Udoorin and Master Gnine had just stared at the ghastly sight, and at the skeleton while Aager secretly commended the young woman, Inshala, for her sound advice to turn south and cut through the forest and avoid the ruins, and the salted lands surrounding it, altogether. Whether he believed the odd girl or not was unimportant. Traveling through this, and for days, certainly wouldn’t have been healthy, even if nothing came crawling out of the diseased ground.
The ‘odd’ girl, however, had shown an unexpected reaction. She had gasped and given out a wailing cry, her hands clasped on her tiny mouth, and her eyes wide and large.
“No!”, she had moaned.
“It is alright, my dear child.”, Lady had told her kindly. “There is nothing to be afraid of.”
“But.. you don’t understand.”, the girl had wailed. “I came here before.. when I was little..”
“You came to this ghastly place when you were a child?”, the Temple Guardian had asked incredulously.
“But.. it wasn’t like this then. The trees.. They were alive and green. And there was grass and birds and squirrels and mice here. It’s all gone. They are all dead!”, the young woman had said in tears.
“What? How is that possible?”, Lady Magella had asked, ogling at the girl, then at the dead and rotting trees.
“The curse of Themalsar.. It.. it is spreading!”, she had sobbed, and just like that, she had sat where she stood, turned herself into a tiny ball, and wept..
“My Father’s forest is dying!”
It had taken quite a bit of coddling on Lady Magella’s part to bring her around. Not that it had helped much. All it had done was to make the girl slobber and splutter incomprehensibly. Moira had tried to approach her, which had set her off into a panicked frenzy, at which point the sunny paladin girl had not taken umbrage, but happily told her that all was fine and that they would be like sisters before she knew it. Then the ranger girls, Laila and Bremorel, had tried to cheer her up, promising to savagely slaughter the people responsible for the spreading rot, which had made the Temple Guardian scowl furiously at them for their tactless efforts and sent them off!
Young Udoorin had decided not to get involved at all since both the issue and the person in question being clearly out of his league. The little gnome, Gnine, had considered another, not quite the same, but a similar ‘magic trick’ to lighten her mood, because obviously repeat tricks was just too beneath him and was simply boring. He had juggled the idea in his mind, then perhaps ‘sense’ in the form of a possible, bludgeoning object coming his way at screaming velocity from the she-dwarf had seeped its way through, and hence he had chalked the whole idea as ‘too hazardous’ and kept to his silence.
“Get up.”, growled a voice.
Lady turned around to stare up at Aager. Her worried expression turned to a frown, then a scowl, and finally settled on something akin to wrath but the man in dark leathers did not take notice of her, nor did he give her time for verbal admonition.
“Get up.”, he repeated mercilessly. “We have work to do and your moping over dead trees like a little girl is not helping. Should you want to fix this, then do something about it. If you can’t, then you are wasting your time and ours. Right now, there are only three of the cutters left to answer for their crimes; one that burned our town, and two that murdered your father, getting away. Either help us, and yourself, catch them, or you can sit here and sob while they escape.”
The girl sniffed and looked up at him.
Ogled really.
“You.. you are not nice..”, she blurted.
“Never said I was. And never tried to deceive those around me that I was otherwise. Talk is cheap. It is ‘deed’ that matters. When I see wrong, I do something about it, and I don’t really care how I get it done. What I don’t do is sit and moan. Either way, you may come with us and help us catch those that did you and your father wrong, or you may stay here and weep. I and the others have work that needs to be done and you are keeping us from doing it. Get up!”, Aager grated coldly, then he looked down at the boiling she-dwarf and added, “I suggest you grab your gear and prepare to move out, Temple Guardian. We will be getting out of these woods soon enough and will ride once again and hard all day.”
Then he turned to the ranger girls and coughed in their direction.
“Ranger Morel, Ranger Laila, please spread out. Now!”
And finally, he turned to the remaining three, just so they wouldn’t feel left out.
“Lady Moira, you will take point for the main company at full marching step. Master Gnine, you will follow her with the Temple Guardian. Master Udoorin, you will bring the rear. Move!”, he ordered with murderous fury through gritted teeth and stared coldly at them all until everyone was moving as ordered..
..including the young woman, who had a shocked and burning expression on her face as she followed Lady Magella at an ‘almost bump into’ distance.
For the next hour or so, only the panting and the marching of the company were heard, along with many unpleasant verbal berations directed solely at the man in dark leathers from pretty much everyone except the young woman, Inshala, possibly because she didn’t know any swear words. She just followed the furiously blistering she-dwarf, literally holding on to her pack straps with a dazed, burning, and a very much admonished expression on her small, pouting face.
It had been a matter of much contention as to what they would do, now that they had reached the eastern end of the vast and great Ritual Forest, possibly because the area where the trees finally ended and the grassy, but otherwise, empty land, stretched for a good weeks travel from the ruins of Themalsar, which was located at the north-easternmost end of the forest, all the way south to the Arashkan river that would pour into the Endless Sea, or, if the cutters had already made it out of the trees and headed further east, they would reach the cliff-beaches of Endless Sea in two or three days walking distance and board a ship if one was waiting for them, in which case, the game was pretty much over anyway.
While the Temple Guardian, Lady Magella, hadn’t offered any thoughts on the matter, Lady Moira, the young and athletic paladin girl, very much seemed to want to look for the cutters closer to the cursed ruins.
Ranger Laila wanted to patrol the tree line, which was a good idea, just abhorrently impractical in the sense that said tree line was a week’s travel just the one way, and another to cover the same distance over. Her cousin, Ranger Bremorel, wanted very much to hide and ambush them, another good idea, but equally abysmal, since ‘where’ they would set their ambush mattered in a stretch of area that would take the same time it would to bloody patrol it!
Young Udoorin had tentatively offered to split the company into smaller groups of two’s and set them up at various intervals, hence statistically raising the probability of at least one of the groups to chance upon the miscreants by three folds, an idea that had caused eyebrows to rise for his use of words like ‘probability’, ‘statistical’ and ‘interval’.
Only Master Gnine had not found his idea as, ‘relatively novel’ and even ‘mildly plausible’, possibly because he had been very much offended due to the fact that the big, blundering lummox had so casually discarded his very existence as a ‘rounded down fraction’ when forming the groups!
It was then, that Aager had noticed the young woman, Inshala had gone missing.. again.. to his dismay..
The girl was becoming more of a distraction than the little gnome had ever been without even trying!
As it turned out, however, she was not quite as gone as they feared, but gone in a sense that put them in confounded despair; the girl had sat, some fifty yards deeper in the forest, and onto the ground, her eyes closed, her face serene. She had one hand sunk into the soil, and the other, she had stretched out to her side, her hand open, and with her palm facing up!
Huddled behind some bushes, the company watched as she murmured a song and lo..
The girl had a beautiful voice, made more so by her artless tune and breathless flavor. Whatever it was that she was singing, it felt, more than it sounded, like a calling, or even a beckoning. There was no demand in her song but a silent pleading, as if she had a favor to ask and would pay in kindness that she offered freely, a ‘currency’ that seemed to actually mean something to whoever understood it. And the company just stared at her, quite and quietly concussed.
Then they heard a loud, irritating caw, and a large, charcoal black crow dropped out of the forest canopy and settled on her outstretched palm.
The crow stared at her with its beady eyes..
..and cawed again.
“Hello, beautiful.”, Inshala said, as she opened her own eyes and smiled at the ugly bird.
The crow stared at her some more, then let loose another rattling caw.
Or perhaps it was a blare. It certainly sounded like a blare!
“I called you to ask a small favor. If you would but help, I would be happy to give you something shiny. I know you like shiny.”, she said happily.
The craw continued to stare at her..
..and cawed!
Apparently, the crow had a rather limited vocabulary.
“I seek three men. Two of them wear dark, one does not. They were traveling through the forest heading somewhere around here. But we have no wings and must crawl, unlike you, who does have great wings and can travel far and fast.”, she continued.
The crow tilted its head a bit and then cawed.
“Really?”, the girl asked. “You have seen them?”
The crow cawed again in reply.
“Where? Where did you see them?”, she asked excitedly.
The ugly bird unleashed a long, irritating blare.
“Not far? But you must know, your ‘not far’ is not the same as my ‘not far’, for I must crawl there. I have no wings!”, the girl said with an impish grin.
The craw gave her a steady look.
“Ow. That really is not far at all. Thank you. Now, what would you like in return?”, she asked.
The craw cawed with demand!
“I.. I do not understand. Why would you do this?”, she asked.
Another caw.
“And did I ask you to do this?”, she said with a small frown.
Caw!
“Perhaps.”, the girl said, her face going slightly pink. “But I strictly remember not asking you, or your murder to pester him.”
Caw..
“No, it was not ‘funny as Hell’, and you shouldn’t say such things. It is not nice.”, the young woman said with a small pout.
Caw, caw, caw, caw, caw!
The girl sighed.
Then looked up to where the company was huddled, frowned a bit, then turned slightly to her left, past the crow in her palm, and back.. at where Master Aager was standing, alone, and hidden deep in the shadows of thick overgrowth and trees.
“Antonix’ka wants his coin back.”, she said without addressing him by name.
“Perhaps Antonix’ka should not have peppered me with his gold, then?”, the man in dark leathers growled.
“He made a mistake. He was eager to please me, even though I never asked him to do what he did. He wants his coin back.”, the girl replied, her face turning from pink to red.
“Perhaps. What will I get in return for the coin?”, Aager grated.
The girl ogled at him.
“I.. I do not understand.. I do not know your rules..”, she said as color slowly drained from her pretty face.
“You want me to give the coin back. What will you give me in return for the coin?”, the man in dark leathers repeated harshly.
“Just give her the bloody coin, boy!”, Lady Magella blared exasperatedly from behind her bush!
“This is fair bargain, Temple Guardian. Something for something. Or nothing for nothing.”, Aager told her through gritted teeth, though, perhaps, like, maybe, the man in dark leathers was grinning behind his half-mask. Then he turned to the young woman, Inshala, and repeated his question. “What will I get in return?”
The Temple Guardian spluttered with indignation!
“Wha.. What do you want? I.. I do not know what you want..”, the girl asked, a bit desperately. “I have herbs. And some soaps. And some homemade rose oil. And this spear.”
“I have no use of a spear. Nor your herbs. Seeing as what your rose oil did to the girls in this company, I would like to pass on that one as well, and no amount of soap will wash off my sins. One wonders, however, why don’t you give Antonix’ka a gold coin yourself?”, he growled.
The girl fell silent as she squirmed where she sat.
“I have no coin.”, she said finally, and in a deflated tone.
“You have no coin?”, Aager asked.
“I have no coin.”, the girl repeated, pouting now.
“How is it, the daughter of Master Cathber has no coin?”, he asked, more out of curiosity, really.
“What use is coin to him in his own forest?”, she said hotly. “As for me, who would barter and bargain with a half-demon such as myself, for me to carry coin?”
Aager did not say anything for a while as he stared at the girl who was looking down at her own lap now, and with shame.
“Very well. I shall give you the coin. In return, I shall want something from you, and you will do it.”, he grated.
“What do you want me to do?”, the girl mumbled.
“You will stay with us and never run off again without telling me. This, you shall promise, and will make sure to keep it.”, he growled.
Inshala raised her head, turned around, and stared at the man in dark leathers, hood, and half-mask, quite stupefied.
“I.. I do not understand..”, she blurted.
“Your understanding is not part of the deal, Inshala ‘la fey’ Frostmane. Only your promise. Do we have a deal?”, he asked mercilessly.
The young woman seethed where she sat. Or perhaps not. Her face was burning, and she was, not quite glaring at the man, but with great agitation. Then her shoulders slumped, her brows and her face drooped, and her tiny mouth turned to an unhappy pout as she gave in.
“I will accept this unseasonable and cruel bargain, for you have left me with no choice and bound me to submission.”, she said, her voice trembling.
“You can always say, ‘no.’”, the man in dark leathers growled.
“I may not. You have taken my choices from me; I have already heard what Antonix’ka had to say.”, she almost wailed.
There was a moment of smoldering silence when the man hidden in the shadows grimaced.
He had merely wanted to find a way to make sure the odd girl would stop being a distraction to everyone the way she disappeared on them and he would end up sending the rangers looking for her because the Temple Guardian, Lady Magella, would start blistering everyone around her for their lack of concern for a little, troubled, and orphaned girl, which was ironic, since very nearly everyone in the group was ‘troubled’, one way or the other, and orphaned also. But that knowledge, apparently, hadn’t deterred the scowling she-dwarf from taking her under her wings, just like she had taken everyone else, whether they wanted it or not!
“And would you accept if I gave the coin for free?”, Aager grated finally.
“Antonix’ka may, but I shall not. And the bargain will still not be complete”, she said with despair.
“And why not?”, the man in dark leathers asked.
“Antonix’ka has not bargained with you. He has bargained with me. Should you give him the coin, he will have gotten a coin, but my debt will not have been paid, and I shall not accept ‘free’ from you.”, the girl replied, her face, a true display of misery, distress, and frustration.
Aager stared at her and the girl told her why..
No voice came out of her small mouth. Only the shape of the words formed there. And Aager read her lips. It hadn’t been hard for him to read them at all. Inshala had a distinct, strawberry-red mouth and she had told him what she always told him. But for whatever reason, she had never said it to him when there were others around as if not wanting to shame him or have him labeled, hence petrifying his current stance more than it already was.
As graceful as her approach had been, however, it still had fallen short of the man in dark leathers and only made him very, very angry.
“Then your binding is your own doing.”, he snarled and flipped the coin at the bloody crow.
With murder in his eyes, Aager Fogstep turned around and disappeared into the woods, perhaps to stab an unoffending tree to death!
It would seem, that there just was no clean, nor a clear win over this girl, and however he played it, her incomprehensible mind just seemed to end up destroying his brutally pragmatic Drashan senses.
Dammit!
They are dead.”, Ranger Laila said, staring down at the two men in dark leathers, hoods, and masks. “Quite brutally killed, I might add.”
With the two ranger girls in lead, the company, directed by the strange girl, Inshala, marched to where the ugly crow, Antonix’ka, had ‘said’ to have seen them. The fact that their guide had learned where their query was from a bloody, cawing bird, had irked both the ranger girls, though Bremorel had found the idea of having such a pet to be quite novel, and she had spoken about all the possible advantages having one might entail until they had found the spot where the two cutters and the smarmy sneak thief had left the forest. They had then started tracking them down but only for half a mile or so where they had discovered their camp and the corpses of the two cutters. And now, everyone had gathered around the gruesome site and they were staring down at the still smoking bodies..
“What do you see?”, Master Aager growled.
“There were three of them, Sir.”, Laila said, as she knelt down and inspected the ground. “These two were the last of the batch that murdered Master Cathber. One was fine, the other was limping but on the mend. They came here. Perhaps late last night and set up camp. The sneak thief, however, did not sleep here with them. Perhaps he didn’t trust them. I am not sure but I can see a fourth set of prints and it seems to have appeared out of nowhere. Whoever he was, I believe him to be a ‘he’ and a human, past his prime, though not by too much.”
She frowned a bit, nodded to herself, then pointed at a particular spot.
“He appeared right there as if he dropped out of the sky, and if you note the way the cutters are sprawled, I would hazard a guess that he caught them by surprise and slew them without any warning and quite instantly; there was no struggle between them.”, she said, inspected the ground for a bit more, then continued, pointing at another spot just a few feet to their right. “Then he walked over here and picked up some things.”
“Any ideas as to what they could be?”, the man in dark leathers grated.
“I am not sure. A pack or perhaps a wooden box. I can see its indentation on the ground. Perhaps it was the thing that Master Gnine described. The whatsit his uncle was working on.”, she said and paused again before continuing. “There was something else here. Something long, possibly eight or nine feet in length, about as thick as my forearm and sort of twisted.”, she replied.
“A staff, perhaps? I recall Master Cathber carrying one with him at all times when I saw him, though I never witnessed him using it for something other than a walking stick.”, Aager growled silently.
“It is possible. Maybe. I also remember seeing him with that staff as well. When we were on protection duty during the Bane-Song operation. Anyway, the man took both of them and just.. disappeared.. There are no tracks of where he came from, nor any tracks after he took the two objects. I don’t understand..”, Laila admitted, her confused expression reflected in her tone.
A depressing silence settled after that while Laila retraced her steps and re-read the tracks in case she’d missed something.
“Teleportation.”, came a frowning voice and everyone turned to stare at the little gnome, Gnine.
“Come again?”, Laila said.
“Teleportation; the ability to travel from one place, or plane of existence, to another at a molecular level!”, he explained, though his shoulders were slumped in defeat. “Very high-end stuff. We are dealing with a powerful wizard, here.”
“How do you know?”, she asked.
“That’s the only thing I could think of that would bring someone out of nowhere, then send him off again, without leaving any tracks. Not to mention the dead cutters.”, he replied in a depressed tone.
She, and everyone else, continued to stare at him.
“Look.”, he said as he pointed at the still smoking assassins sprawled on the ground. “They’ve been burned, but not by conventional fire. Fire rarely works in the form of a ‘beam’, per se, because it likes to spread fast. That is why you almost never see something, anything, burned at just one, focused spot but charred as a whole. These guys have just the holes in their chests. True, the edges of the holes are singed, and so are the holes themselves, but otherwise, there are no signs that they were burned. And unless there is some form of projectile involved, fire will not ‘make’ holes. It will start somewhere and spread out. These cutters were killed instantly. I know it because you just said so, which offers only one explanation that comes to my mind; Lightning Bolt!”
“How do you know such things, boy?”, Lady Magella asked, squinting at him.
“Do I ask you how you know the things you do, Temple Guardian?”, Gnine said in a tone just this side of angry belligerence.
“Well, excuse me!”, the she-dwarf spluttered.
“Do continue, Master Gnine.”, Aager growled, just to fend off that bickering, if nothing else.
Gnine coughed as his face flushed.
“Well. As I was saying. A lightning bolt would kill instantly if the caster was powerful enough. And it would carve a hole like this, and leave burnt marks around the edges. You must understand, that lightning is extraordinarily hot.. like, super hot.. But because it is also super fast, the area where it hits just doesn’t have the time to catch fire. Only smolder a bit, hence the scorching. Unless of course, it is applied to something that is combustible by its very nature, such as lamp oil or dry crops. That’s why there are wildfires after a lightning storm in summer.
“Seeing as their visitor had the skill to teleport, I could safely say he was powerful enough to carve these two idiots dead quite instantly.”, he said, still looking depressed.
Aager squinted down at the little gnome for a bit before he asked, “You have something to add, Master Gnine?”, he grated.
Gnine’s face soured.
“If we are going up against this guy, we are screwed!”, he blurted.
“Language!”, barked the Temple Guardian.
“I am sorry, Lady.”, Gnine said in a tone that hinted he clearly wasn’t. “But for what we are up against, my choice of language is the least of our problems.”
“Thank you, Master Gnine for your insightful oration.”, the man in dark leathers said through gritted teeth to fend off that bickering too.
He stared down at the dead cutters in silent frustration. Once again, fortune had offered them a dead end, as he suspected it would. But he did wish it would also give them at least one bit of good news. Something they could work with..
“Found him!”, they heard Ranger Bremorel’s voice from a distance. “The smarmy sneak thief was not as careful as he should have been. We got him dead to rights this time!”
The man in dark leathers stared up at the sky. It was late afternoon and quite rapidly nearing dusk. He stared long and hard at the Heaven as if wondering just how much more they were going to toy with him. Then he let loose a dreary sigh. Aager Fogstep had never believed in the greatness of the Heavens above, though, in all candor, he never defied them, nor had he ever blamed them for his own follies. He merely thought it’d be rather nice of them if they left him out of whatever game they were playing at, that’s all.
“Where do they lead, Ranger Morel?”, he asked in his low, gravelly voice when they came to where the ranger girl was kneeling and carefully inspecting the ground.
Ranger Bremorel frowned as she pursed her lips.
“Uhhmm..”, she began.
“What is it, Ranger Morel?”, Aager asked again, staring down at the lithe back of the kneeling girl.
“The tracks go straight. It seems like he has decided to discard all caution and has simply started running!”, Bremorel said with stupefied disbelief.
“Is that a problem?”, the man in dark leathers growled.
“No. It’s just.. He is just running. Blindly. And leaving all these juicy tracks! This is a ranger’s wet dream!”, she blurted, then stopped as her face suddenly turned to a very dark shade of maroon!
Aager stared down at her and if he was amused it didn’t show on his face, hidden under his dark hood and half-mask. Bremorel certainly thought he was laughing at her.
“I take it the tracks will be easy to follow?”, he almost ‘purred.’
“I.. yes.. I mean, even a toddler could follow these tracks..”, she muttered.
“We do not have a toddler, Ranger Morel. So I guess you will have to do.”, he said quietly.
If the young ranger’s face could have turned darker, it would have required a painful sun tanning.
“Where do the tracks lead, then?”, Aager asked. “Do they go back into the forest?”
“No. I believe he is quite sick of these trees. He has decided to go straight and north.”, she mumbled. “And there is nothing north he can hide but..”
“..Themalsar.”, the man in dark leathers finished.
Then he looked up, once more, at the dusk sky and grated.
“Really?”
