by Joel Babbitt
It was the mercenary leader’s opinion that they’d all be better off just vowing loyalty to the Bloodhand Orcs rather than trying this hair-brained scheme to try and destroy them.
After a few moments, Morigar could see that the rest of the group wasn’t enthusiastically embracing his plan.
“Gormanor, Lemmekor, can you not see why we must do this?” he said, almost indignant at their near hostile reaction.
“Where’s Krebbekar, sire?” Gormanor almost spat the last word out.
Morigar was taken aback by the venom in Gormanor’s question. “Why, I sent him to warn Lord Krall about the orc horde.”
“Did you tell him about this plan of yours?” Lemmekor joined in.
“See here, I have no obligation to tell my subordinates. He had his orders, and that should be enough,” Morigar replied haughtily. “Now you two be kind enough to help…” he realized he’d never asked the mercenary leader his name, “help him,” he said pointing at the mercenary leader, “to get the slaves loaded up with the treasure and we’ll start our journey.”
Gormanor, speaking for both of them, stood with his arms crossed shaking his head. “No sire. Since Krebbekar’s not here to rein you in, I guess I’ll have to do it. We’re not going to go see about hiring some dragon. It’s a foolish idea, and it’ll get us all killed.”
Morigar’s ire was up. These were his subordinates, and he was not going to take this disobedience from them. Even their packdog was looking at him like he was a fool.
“You will do as I say, or I’ll have you punished upon our return to the gen!” Morigar threatened.
Even though he was the youngest son of the lord of their gen, he had consistently screwed up every position of trust he’d been given in the past, and the two scouts knew his threat was hollow. Besides, they valued their own lives more than that. Gormanor was more than happy to have it out right here with their ‘leader’. Lemmekor, on the other hand, wanted to keep from aggravating Lord Krall’s son, in line for the throne or not.
“Sire, if you’re determined to go through with this, then how about Gor and I go warn your father about what you plan on doing,” Lemmekor pleaded. Gormanor looked at his companion in surprise, which quickly became frustration.
“We’re supposed to watch over the fool!” Gormanor whispered vehemently to Lemmekor.
“His plan will fall apart quickly without us there to make it happen for him. After all, look at how worthless those mercenaries are. They’re only good for herding defenseless slaves. They’ll run once their leader translates for them where they’re going. One of us can wait at the bottom of the Chop and, when he comes back with his tail between his legs, we’ll make sure he gets home safely,” Lemmekor whispered back.
Neither of them had kept their voices low enough, and Morigar had gotten the gist of what they were saying. With a cold, commanding voice, he said “Go then, but leave the packdog. Warn my father of what is to come. I will deal with you two upon my return.”
Gormanor and Lemmekor looked at each other, shrugged, turned around and began walking toward the southern side of the Chop to start the long journey down the mountain and across the valley to warn Lord Krall of his son’s stupidity. Minotaur just stood there under his burden of orc gold, looking at Lord Krall’s son in a fashion that seemed to let him know he’d rather have gone with the pair of scouts.
Morigar watched them go over Demon’s Bridge and up the far side, standing in stung silence until the pair of scouts disappeared over the southern lip of the Chop. All the while the mercenary leader had shifted uncomfortably from one foot to the other, eventually sitting down as his headache and the lingering heat of the final hour or so of day stretched his endurance.
Finally, Morigar turned back to the mercenary leader. “Alright, then, what will it take for you and your mercenaries to do this thing for me?” he asked. All the high speech was over. There was no more need for trying to convince this rabble. These were mercenaries, and they were all about money. That, at least, Morigar thought he understood.
The mercenary leader stood up and looked over at the bags of treasure as he chewed his lips. He also looked over at some of the better looking female kobold slaves. The thought crossed his mind that, if he didn’t do what this crazy Krall Gen leader wanted, he’d probably lose all of this. Of course, he did still have several mercenaries… He might be able to take the idiot out and then just take the treasure with him back to his home in the Kijik Gen—if he wasn’t a skilled warrior.
“Will you do it for two bags of treasure, and the pick of the slaves of your choice?” Morigar proposed.
The mercenary leader thought about it for a moment. Even if this crazy Krall Gen leader did have the willpower to go all the way to the Hall of the Mountain King, he was certain that he’d never have the courage to actually talk to the dragons. Besides, he and his warriors could stand outside the little mountain and, when the Krall Gen leader went in, they’d just run away, taking the treasure and all the slaves for themselves. And if that didn’t work for his warriors, they always had the option of killing him along the way…
“Yep, we doo,” the mercenary leader finally accepted Morigar’s proposal. With a handshake, the pair of leaders sealed the deal.
Gormanor and Lemmekor reached the bottom of the Chop about the same time as Krebbekar and his riding dog. The two young scouts had seen Krebbekar down the slope far ahead of them, and they had run at breakneck speed down the Chop, risking turned ankles and, at the sharp corners, possibly even death. They had come to the realization that Krebbekar wouldn’t take the matter of Lord Krall’s son going off in the unsavory company of northern gen mercenaries quite as lightly as they did.
As the pair came bounding down the last length of the path, their legs wooden and their feet numb from so much controlled falling, Krebbekar looked back at them. Instantly, the long and restful walk he’d had ended, the old familiar stress of dealing with incompetence returned, and by the time the two scouts had arrived he was standing there with arms folded across his chest, ready for whatever they had to say.
“Sire,” they both started simultaneously. They hardly ever used such words with him, even though he was the leader caste in charge of Lord Krall’s House Guard.
“One of you at a time!” he stated firmly.
“Sire, Morigar sent us to tell Lord Krall that he’s off to hire a dragon,” Gormanor blurted out.
In all his long life, Krebbekar had never heard anything quite like what Gormanor just said. And for however much longer his life would be, Krebbekar would always remember this moment. In fact, once the events of the coming days were safely ensconced in the past, it would become one of his favorite stories to tell, and it would be repeated hundreds of times. Later on, when money became common in the Krall Gen, and fermented Wallaya root broth was being sold at the Hall of Trade, that story would often serve to get him a free drink.
It did, however, take a while, and it took repeating it twice for Krebbekar to actually begin to fully grasp the whole scope of what Gormanor’s statement entailed. Finally, after chewing on the implications of the entire situation for a while, Krebbekar decided what to do.
“Both of you go and give warning to Lord Krall about the orc horde, where the ants are located, and what Morigar plans to do, how he plans to do it, and who he plans to do it with.”
“What are you going to do, sire?” Gormanor asked meekly.
Krebbekar patted the neck of his riding dog and scratched behind its ears. “Whether or not he’s doing something terribly stupid, he’s still my charge. I will go after him.”
“Yes, sire,” they both said, looking guiltily at the ground.
“He didn’t actually send you, did he? You refused to go do something so stupid, isn’t that right?” Krebbekar guessed it.
Slowly, the pair of scouts nodded.
“You know we were charged with protecting the fool. Surely by now you knew the greatest danger to Morigar is Morigar.”
Ag
ain, the pair of scouts nodded slowly.
Krebbekar just sighed and shook his head. He should never have trusted the young fool, not even for a day, not even until dawn. Slowly, for his aching joints’ sake, Krebbekar started back up the mountain.
“So, what is your name anyway?” Morigar asked the leader of the kobold mercenaries as he rode along perched on the back of his riding dog. Behind the pair the packdog Minotaur walked along without anyone to hold his reins.
Trudging along beside Lord Krall’s son, the mercenary leader was certainly dustier and dirtier, and less in the mood for conversation. But he would oblige his employer for now.
“I call me Kijik Gen Lider Nipnip,” the northerner said proudly.
Morigar suppressed a laugh at what he considered a rather silly name.
“Well, Nipnip,” Morigar said in a tone that was less than complementary, “How loyal do you feel your warriors are, and how capable do you feel they are? Are they up to the challenge of facing a dragon?”
Nipnip looked back at the straggly line of kobolds, each small group in the line composed of a mercenary or two and a few slaves. The brisk walk down the Wall (the mountain that Morigar called the Chop) and along the main north-south road through the valley had done much to shake the effects of the orc brew and had beat the slaves with their heavy burdens down a bit, making them more docile and easier to herd. His warriors, all twenty of them since the Kale Gen warriors had killed two of them and taken Mahtu captive, hadn’t been allowed by the two Krall Gen scouts to take their chew weed with them and they were in a rather bad mood because of it.
“They follow me for all time,” he said. “…and they follow you,” he said, deferring to his employer in his habitual style. “They good warriors.” He was proud of his warriors and knew they would follow him… as long as they weren’t asked to do anything stupid. He felt comfortable in his leadership and knew that Morigar was no challenge to his authority.
He’d lied to his warriors about why they were going to the Hall of the Mountain King, of course. He wasn’t about to tell them it was to talk to the dragons. Instead, he told them that the dragons were away (he hoped that was true) and that Morigar wanted to go get some artifact or another from there.
He also told them that, if things went wrong, they should be ready to kill the fool.
In fact, he was planning on killing him. After all, the dragons had enough treasure without this Krall gen fool giving them more. He was certain that he and his warriors could put it to better use.
“What’s this road called that we’re on?” Morigar asked. He had been surprised to see the ancient cobblestones of the road poking through the dirt for the last several hundred paces.
“Is Guard’s Path. Is dwarf road this piece. Very old,” Nipnip explained. Not far to their front and off to the left side of the road was a massive boulder in the shape of a bird’s head.
“And big rock is name Birdstone. At Birdstone we rest.”
Morigar looked back over his shoulder. He could see no one coming down the Chop after them yet.
“Alright, but not for too long. The orcs have already passed under the mountain, so we need to get going. We’ve a war to win, after all.”
Nipnip just grunted his acknowledgement. The sun was about to rise, and they had been up since around noon the day before, having slept in after a night of revelry. He didn’t want to press on right now, but he had to keep up appearances.
Just then, an idea came to him.
“I tink slaves need sleep,” he said.
“I think they are slaves and will do what we tell them to do,” Morigar countered.
“Ah, is too bad. Pretty slaves rest with yoo, maybe,” Nipnip seemed almost sorry that his employer would miss the revelry.
The pair went along in silence for a while with Morigar looking back every once in a while with a lecherous eye at the trail of slaves, and once more up the mountain behind them to ensure he wasn’t being followed. Almost on cue, Morigar broke the silence.
“Well, perhaps we can stop for just a few hours.”
Krebbekar’s helmet had long since found itself lashed by the chin strap to the saddle of his riding dog. The intricately embossed pattern of Lord Krall’s tree symbol was visible from his leather armor strapped to the back of the poor beast as well. Now, as he was almost to the top of the Chop, he stopped to unbuckle his sword from where its scabbard had been banging against the flank of the dog, pausing long enough to wring sweat from his flaxen shirt before buckling the hot leather belt on.
Despite the fact that it was the third watch on a cool spring night, the exertion of the past couple of days had just about drained Krebbekar of all his strength. Now, on his second trip up the mountain in the past day, it was all he could do to put one foot in front of the other.
“If I ever catch that overgrown whelp, I’m gonna kill him,” he muttered to himself. His attitude, which was normally rather calm and focused, had grown fierce with the exhaustion of the effort of both climbing the Chop and prodding his riding dog along as well.
Finally, in what was a rather anti-climactic moment, he reached the top and found it deserted. His dog immediately went to its haunches and took much prodding to get it to move.
“Come on girl, not much further to go,” he said in a level, frustrated voice.
Slowly the dog came to its feet and reluctantly followed him across the span of Demon’s Bridge and to the far side of the pass. There, Krebbekar found a good-sized rock and, after putting his blanket down to pad his aching bottom, he sat down and began to scan the northern valley for any sign of his lost charge.
“You know, Nipnip, I am a son of the Lord of the Krall Gen,” Morigar was saying as he lounged around in the knee-high spring grass, watching the mercenaries prod the slaves to wake them up. “And if we do this thing right, we could both be very powerful in my gen.”
Nipnip had heard things like this before. He didn’t care much for power. All he wanted was plenty of money. After all, with money one could live… comfortably. With lots of money, one could live extravagantly. That was how he liked it.
“I no need power. I want money… no thing more.”
Morigar had found his hook. “You know, Nipnip, I could ask this dragon to kill my father and my older brother too. That would make me lord of my gen.”
He paused to look at Nipnip to see if his words were having any effect. It didn’t appear so. He leaned closer to Nipnip.
“And I could make you my minister.”
Still no effect.
“You know, the minister is the person in charge of all the money in the gen.”
Nipnip sat up. “He do money?”
“You do money, my friend,” Morigar corrected.
“Hmm… Maybe we hire dragon… to do that,” Nipnip mused. And maybe they wouldn’t kill the fool. After all, fools could be manipulated.
Looking down into the bowl of the valley from his vantage point in the foothills of the northern mountains that formed the northern rim of the northern valley, Arren e-Arnor caught sight again of the small group of what had to be mostly kobolds that had been camped at the large bird-shaped stone. It had been hours now since they had arisen and resumed their forced march. Now, in the light of mid-day, as they appeared over yet another rise on the trail between the bird rock and the Hall of the Mountain King, Arren could see that most of the group were porters of some sort, bent under the weight of whatever it was they were carrying.
Far behind them now, in fact not even to the bottom of the Chop yet, was that lone kobold and his riding dog that Arren had seen come over the pass with the dawn, the same one that had seemingly spurred the much larger group into action with his appearance over the Chop. Though Arren didn’t know their relationship, he could see that whoever was in charge of the large group didn’t appear to want to wait for the lone rider.
Chapter 9 – Through the Underdark
Durik panted lightly as he took his helmet off and brushed the sweat from his br
ow. It had been a long, arduous climb so far and the water skins they’d filled in an underground stream a while back seemed to be emptying quickly. Surely time passed more quickly in the loneliness of the underdark, without the sun interrupting the timeless existence to be found here. Ahead of him Mahtu squatted, pointing out something to Arbelk and Gorgon who squatted on the top of the rise with him. Behind Durik, Manebrow was helping Jerrig and Troka get the large boar-hide bag of climbing equipment up over a shelf and onto the rocky climbing path where Durik stood.
Mahtu had promised to take them to what he called the ‘Cross Way’; a long, mostly straight and level passageway that led, unbeknownst to both of the surface gens, almost directly between the Krall and Kale Gens as it traversed the valley from far below. When Durik had questioned him more thoroughly, Mahtu had mentioned that he’d only traveled to the passage once and had never actually traversed its length himself, and that was six years ago as part of an escort for some orc scouts… Durik hadn’t wanted to know more.
One interesting thing Mahtu had told them about, however, was some group of outcasts that were calling themselves a gen. In fact, they were calling themselves the ‘Deep Gen,’ if Mahtu was to be believed. In pressing him further, however, Mahtu revealed that he really didn’t know more about them than their name, and that they seemed to have dominated the underdark beneath the southern valley. Durik and the rest of his party wondered if perhaps the outcasts that they had encountered during the two moons they had spent training in the underdark prior to the Trials of Caste might, in fact, be part of that Deep Gen. Manebrow thought probably not, since the outcasts they’d encountered were unorganized and mostly naked, using rocks and long sticks made from the shafts of the great underground mushrooms for weapons; all signs that they were just normal outcast rabble, scavengers and nothing more.