by Joel Babbitt
And none too soon! Reacting almost instinctively, the entire line of kobolds hid behind the boulders or moved back behind the cover of felled trees to where they had established yet another firing line. Suddenly, almost without warning, a massive brute of an ogre came smashing through the trees, followed closely by a handful of orcs and a pair of smaller ogres.
Durik began sweating profusely. Three ogres! This was a lot to handle! For a moment he thought they had bitten off more than they could chew, and that they should just let them pass.
Manebrow put a hand on his shoulder. “Ready, sire?” he asked in a hushed tone, no hint of fear showing in his voice or eyes.
Durik blinked his eyes and took a deep breath. If Manebrow wasn’t afraid, then he wouldn’t be either. Looking down the slope, he could see that the lead ogre was in just the right place. Standing up, he and the kobolds with him threw all their weight onto the lever they had positioned underneath the large boulder. All around them the other kobolds did the same. In a few moments the massive boulders gave way and, almost as one, rolled down the hill.
Simultaneously, the rest of the contingent stood and began firing into the enemy at the bottom of the short, but steep hill. With a terrifying weight, the boulders tore through the dirt of the slope, leaving deep scars in the dirt and slamming into the surprised group of orcs and ogres. One of the large boulders smashed straight into the massive ogre, snapping its leg like a tree-trunk struck by lightning. Behind the brute a pair of orc warriors tried to dodge the next boulder, only to be smashed by another that bounded down the hillside an instant later.
In the back of the group, the pair of smaller ogres caught one of the boulders together, though stopping it broke the wrist of one of them. The other, however, pushed the boulder off to the side just in time for both of them to catch a volley of arrows in the face and chest.
The handful of orcs had mostly dodged the other two large, ungainly boulders and began to run up the short slope at the kobolds. Two volleys of arrows later, however, all of them lay either dead or wallowing in pain at the foot of the hill.
Within moments the entire group of orcs and ogres lay either dead or dying. Carefully, the contingent of kobold warriors went down the slope, slitting throats and recovering arrows as they went, and giving the massive ogre a wide berth as he thrashed about in pain.
“Stay back from the wounded ogres!” Manebrow called out. “Don’t get near them! Let them flee as best they can, if you want. A wounded ogre is still a very dangerous opponent.”
Drok and his team, who had been approaching the two smaller ogres that lay bleeding in the dirt, stopped and looked at them for a moment, then each threw his spear in turn. After the huge beasts thrashed about for a bit, breaking a spear or two but losing much strength in the process, the team of kobolds moved around to where they had a clear shot at the ogres’ necks. Taking shots at point blank range, soon the two ogres had bled out their lives and Drok’s team was able to recover what spears and arrows had not been ruined by the ogres’ death throws.
“Warriors!” Durik called. “Mount up! Now!” he called with urgency, his voice being partially drown out by the bellowing of the massive ogre, who had by now crawled far into the underbrush. Not far down the path, by the noise of it, another group of orcs was coming, though they couldn’t hear the telltale sounds of ogres among them.
“Well, they sent more than I thought they’d send,” Manebrow said as he mounted his wolf and rode up next to Durik.
“Aye, they’re a bit more determined than I thought they’d be,” Durik replied.
“I’d say a bit more stupid,” Manebrow said, kicking his wolf in the ribs to spur him forward. “I guess we’ve proved the old saying true one more time. ‘Lead a pig by poking it in the rear. Lead an orc by poking it in the face.’”
“And poke them we certainly did,” Durik said to no one in particular. Taking one last look back at the body-strewn path, Durik spurred his own mount as well.
Chapter 6 – Out of the Underdeeps
Gorgon stood looking down the shaft into the darkness below. Far down the shaft little gray figures had appeared in his heat vision. He squinted as he looked down at them. It was so far below that it was almost impossible to make out what they were doing. Was it that Warrior Group from the Deep Gen that they had been chasing down the long stairway into the depths of the underdark? They seemed to be moving – but which direction?
“Jerrig, watch the passageway. Arbelk, come here a moment.” From their seated positions against the cool stone of the landing’s wall, Jerrig stood up and walked over to the top of the path that led down the slope and further into the underdark, while Arbelk stood and stretched his legs as he joined his team leader.
“What is it, Gorgon?” Arbelk asked.
“Look at that,” he said, pointing down the great shaft far down into the very bowels of Dharma Kor. “What do you make of it?”
The pair of warriors watched for a moment in silence.
“Which direction do you think Bantor is taking his warrior group? Are they going away from us still, or do you think they’re coming back?” Gorgon asked.
Arbelk eyes narrowed. A very serious look gradually grew over his silent features as he stood watching.
“Well,” Gorgon prodded, “what say you? Are they running away, or toward us?”
Arbelk shook his head in painful realization. He’d only half believed Durik’s vision until this very moment. Now, as he stood looking into that abyss, Arbelk looked up into Gorgon’s eyes.
“Gorgon, they’re running straight up the shaft,” he said, near panic creeping into his voice.
“What? No kobold can climb like that!”
Arbelk shook his head as he watched the relentless tramp of doom approaching.
“Those aren’t kobolds, Gorgon. Those are ants.”
Troka propped himself against one wall as he struggled to catch his breath. Attempting to hold his breath for a moment, he tried to listen carefully for some sound that would indicate he was close to catching up with Bantor’s Warrior Group.
“No good,” he panted to himself, “blood’s pounding too hard.”
Pushing away from the wall, Troka walked a few steps and took a deep breath. Just as he started to run again, the loud braying of what had to be a war horn sounded throughout the passageway.
Stopping and leaning on his knees while he panted, Troka lifted his head and looked quizzically back the way he had come.
“What’s that all about?” he wondered out loud. Remembering the great goat’s horn on the landing where the rest of his team was waiting for him, Troka realized that the only one that could have sounded the warning horn was his team. To further complicate matters, now that he had mostly caught his breath, not far ahead of him Troka could hear the voices of what had to be the rearguard of Bantor’s warrior group talking among themselves.
“Ah! Do I obey immediately, or do I press forward just a little further?”
Hesitating for only a moment, Troka continued down the passageway.
Bantor’s second was a grizzled old warrior. He’d convinced Bantor and the other wizened heads of his warrior group to ‘go deep,’ as he put it. It hadn’t been hard, anyway. No one wanted to leave their home to rejoin a surface gen that had cast them off before any of them were born, and even the least self-serving among them had dreams of inheriting their gen’s entire enclave. Yes, those that stayed behind would gain power and stature once the fools who had followed the paladin returned with their tails between their legs.
His thoughts were broken as the sound of the alarm horn drowned out the shuffle of many feet through the sand around him. Turning, the old warrior saw one of the surface-dwelling warriors that had accompanied the paladin running up from behind.
“Halt there, Kale warrior!” he commanded.
Troka stopped in his tracks, his hands far away from his weapons as he breathed heavily, the shield on his back finally coming to rest against his bruised back.
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“Sire,” Troka began to plead, “my companions… they must have… sounded the horn… there’s danger…”
“Stop this silliness, Kale warrior. We’ll not follow you back. We will not be delayed! Go back and bother us no more.”
Troka shook his head. “But sire… we were sent… to pass a message along. No one is coming after you. They’ve all fled for the surface. We were not sent to stop you, only to tell you that Lord Sennak the Younger has not sent anyone to chase after you, but rather hopes to see you when this is all over.”
“Well, you’ve delivered your message,” Bantor’s grizzled old second stated flatly. “Be gone with you, now.”
Troka hesitated. “But sire, what of the horn?”
Bantor’s second didn’t answer. He simply turned and continued after the rest of his warrior group as they marched on to their doom.
Troka turned and, shaking his head in frustration and sadness, began to run back to the landing.
“Hurry!” Gorgon hissed as he leaned all his weight against the massive rock he had uprooted from the slope.
At the edge of the landing, not three paces out onto the narrow ledge that rimmed the massive shaft, Arbelk chipped away at the little bit of dirt and rock that seemed to be holding a large shelf of flat, slate-like rock in place.
“Just a moment! I’m working as fast as I can,” Arbelk replied. “Don’t want to fall.”
“Death by fall… death by ants…” Jerrig mused. “Not much of a choice.”
“Don’t talk like that!” Gorgon snapped as he heaved the rock over the edge and out into space, where it tumbled end over end, striking the walls and plowing through the ranks of the advancing ant horde as it skimmed down the last few hundred feet of the shaft. After watching the impact of his efforts, Gorgon turned to Jerrig. “We may escape them yet.”
Jerrig, having returned with a few, much smaller stones of his own, began dropping them into the shaft as Gorgon went back for another large boulder. “Not likely,” he muttered under his breath. Below them, the flood of ants up the thousand feet or more of shaft below them came on quickly and relentlessly, with seemingly no concern for their own safety.
“Where’s that Troka!” Gorgon huffed between heaves against the boulder he was rolling into place. It hadn’t been long since they had sighted the ants and blown the horn, but every second counted now, if they were going to have any chance of escaping the ant threat.
“Here, Gorgon!” Troka yelled as he came bounding up the slope and onto the platform.
Over to the side, Arbelk scrambled to get out of the way. With a suddenness none of them expected, the entire shelf gave way, dumping tons of earth and rock down the shaft in a gathering storm of projectiles. Simultaneously, Troka and Jerrig fell in on either side of Gorgon and the three of them rolled the boulder off the edge and into the abyss.
Satisfied with the destruction their efforts were sure to cause, Gorgon yelled over the din. “Let’s go!”
Jerrig immediately headed for the broad stairway, followed quickly by Arbelk. Troka grabbed his sheathed broadsword in both hands and slung it over his back, then quickly took off running after his companions.
Taking one final look down the shaft, Gorgon shook his head in frustration. Down the shaft, now almost a quarter of the way up, he could detect no holes in the ants’ ranks, no slowing of their relentless march. It was as if every hole punched was patched the very next second.
Turning, Gorgon looked down the slope. No one would be returning from there, he now knew. That whole warrior group was as good as dead, or would be as soon as the ants found them. And find them they would.
Retrieving his hammer from its place against the wall, Gorgon blew the warning horn one more time, perhaps only to salve his conscience, then took off at a run after his teammates.
Sennak, now Lord Sennak the Younger of the Deep Gen, paused at the top of the massive shaft that led thousands of feet down into the underdark, almost to the shores of the undersea. Far below the last few stragglers from his warrior group, the sound of the warning horn from the middledeeps resonated. Looking far down into the depths, he saw a large number of creatures, by the warmth of them, gathered around the bottom of the shaft. Halfway between them and himself, Sennak saw what had to be some of the Kale Gen warriors on the last landing, rolling rocks into the shaft.
“What is it, my lord?” the chief of his personal guard came up beside him. Sennak was still getting used to being addressed as lord, and to having a personal guard.
“It appears that something is massing down at the bottom of the shaft,” Sennak replied. “Do you think it’s Bantor’s warrior group?”
Both leaders stood looking down the shaft as the last group of kobolds passed by them and into the passageway that led up to the Crossway, and from there to the cliff known as Sheerface.
“Sire, Bantor’s people won’t be climbing walls like those seem to be doing, and I really don’t think the Kale warriors would be dropping rocks on them, either.”
Sennak’s blood ran cold. He looked up at his companion. “Chief, hurry the people along, and pull every spare warrior out of the column. I want you to form a reserve… a rearguard. It may be that the paladin’s prophecy is actually true.”
Having seen the flood that was coming at them, both of them knew what serving as a ‘rearguard’ meant. It was not a task to be given lightly.
Sennak had not really believed Durik’s prophecy himself, despite the power that had accompanied the giving of it. Perhaps it had been his father’s influence. Perhaps it had been his own blindness. Whatever it had been didn’t matter now. Sennak was glad he had given in to his fellow warrior group leaders’ demands on this point, and had gathered his people to flee their homes.
“Sire, would you have me send warriors down to help Bantor and his warrior group?” He didn’t know why he’d asked that. If they weren’t dead already, there was nothing they could do for them now. The ants would rip them apart. There would be no mercy.
Sennak shook his head. There was nothing that he could do for them now. Their only hope was that death would be swift, for it certainly wouldn’t be painless. He shuddered to think what the approaching horde of ants meant for Bantor’s entire warrior group, and for the Kale warriors the paladin had left behind.
Sennak turned and quickly followed the rest of his warrior group into the passage. Now was not the time to mourn. Now was the time to run.
“Come on, now! Get moving!” Gorgon yelled at his companions. “Only what I said to gather, nothing more!”
They had stopped at the landing where they had previously dumped their armor and packs only long enough to catch their breath, leaving their armor where it lay. They had long since dropped their shields, knowing they’d be of little use against the ants.
Gorgon walked over to Troka. “Come on, now, Troka. Get going!”
Troka, who had run far already, was gasping for breath after climbing so many of the broad, spiraling stairs up from the middledeeps to the landing that led to the halls of Lord Sennak. Rather than answer Gorgon, he just nodded wearily and began to jog toward the stairs.
Looking over the edge, Gorgon could see the ants more clearly now. They were obviously gaining ground on the four warriors, as he could now distinguish individual ants in the mass that was flooding up the great shaft. At this rate, Gorgon was pretty sure that his team would make the upperdeeps, but doubted they’d make the Crossway.
Shaking his head in frustration, Gorgon continued on after his companions, urging them on, and resisting the primal urge welling up within him to run past them and abandon them to their fate.
Chapter 7 – Flight to Sheerface
It was barely dawn in the world above, but it had been a long night for Kale. He felt genuinely relieved when the noisy peace of so many sleeping kobolds was disturbed by a messenger from Lord Karthan padding through the sand of the arena to fetch him. The tension in the council chambers had been almost palpable after the Kale Stone
had displayed such power upon his touch the night before. He had thought that Lord Karthan might send assassins instead of messengers after that, but the messenger clearly stated that he should bring several of his warriors with him.
Not that he really had many warriors, but that was a separate issue. After all, only those of his family followed him out of loyalty, though there may be a few outcasts that would follow him out of curiosity.
“Gather up those that will come, brother,” Kale said as the messenger left the small group of curious onlookers.
“Don’t doubt, brother,” his brother responded, sensing that the sense of purpose that had gotten them here had begun to wane. “They follow you still. I will gather the strength of our houses.”
Calling out to the group, Kale’s brother instructed the assembling warriors to bring their weapons and gather. Slowly, singly and in small groups, the warriors from the outcast families gathered in front of the pair.
“And what now, Kale?” one of the warriors asked in a none-too-convinced tone.
“It’s time to gather. Lord Karthan has called for us,” Kale’s brother answered for him.
“Oh, so that’s it, then,” another warrior said. “When their lord says jump, we jump then? I didn’t leave my home in the underdark to become minions to some lord.”
“Yeah,” chimed in another. “Where is this danger you mentioned? The only danger I see is losing all the things we left behind in the underdark to the scavengers that stayed behind!”
“Please! People!” Kale’s brother called out to them. “You all felt it. We all know that there is an evil approaching! The Kale Stone. It has called on us through my brother to flee before this threat. We must trust the Kale Stone!”