Over the next hour, I was able to learn quite a bit about the local situation and the general situation in this part of Aretia. It turned out that the orcs, like most of the other groups but the dwarves, had a semi-nomadic life-style, with a fixed village that they wintered in while travelling the region to gather and trade for supplies during the warm months. They only practised agriculture on a very limited scope, preferring to stick to their old traditions and ways, despite the possible advantages of settling down permanently. I didn’t even try to argue, missing far too much information and despite some of the villages I had seen seemingly doing just that, having a permanent settlement. It seemed that Sakgu was mainly repeating what she had been taught, that the life-style of her people was the right one and was used everywhere, without ever questioning if that was true. It was a curious realisation that, despite having travelled most of her life, the Orc had never travelled outside of their home-range, leaving her mostly ignorant about more distant places.

I would have to talk to Adra again, she had at least travelled from her home Grove north, eventually getting captured and ending up in Tegi. She had travelled the backwoods, avoiding civilisation, so the information she had were just as limited in many ways but they were better than having no information.

But Sakgu’s information on their current objective was a lot more concrete. It turned out that different groups of centaurs were annually raiding the Aretian heartland for goods and livestock but this year, their raids had been striking deeper and they had added people to the list of targets to be captured. Normally, the orcs were trying to defend against the incursions but didn’t bother trying to hunt the centaurs down, the centaurs being simply too mobile. That needed mobility also meant that they were a little limited unless they were utilising Magic Bags, which they didn’t, maybe for fear of triggering serious, large-scale conflict, not just the brief, relatively harmless raids. 

Now, however, with some of their people taken and rumours of a large-scale centaur incursion further north-east, they were taking things a lot more serious and had gathered a warband, with multiple scouting parties out, hunting down the centaurs, with the objective to kill them all as a deterrence and recover as much of the stolen loot as possible. 

Their warband was quite powerful, as I learned, a main group of some eighty orcs, all above level fifty, led by an orcish legend, at least a local legend, called Dura Firebringer, who supposedly was above level hundred-fifty and able to call down fire to burn her enemies. In addition to that, there were multiple scouting-parties, all with four to eight scouts, ranging out to find their enemy while making sure that the warband could continue on unopposed, bringing the total number of fighting orcs to hundred-twenty. They didn’t have a real supply-train, not planning to remain in the field for long, which allowed them to carry their supplies in Magic bags with them, giving them speed to catch up to the retreating centaurs, mostly due to them having taken captives. 

The mention of that Dura made me both curious but also worried, very worried. Just the level was enough to make me worried and it wasn’t helped by the fact that it sounded like she was some sort of Fire-Spellcaster, an element I instinctively disliked, it being loud, brash and far too aggressive for my liking. But I wanted to meet that woman, my curiosity strong enough to overwrite my caution, mainly because truly powerful spellcasters seemed to be rare and there was the possibility of advanced arcane knowledge. Learning from the dwarves had opened up a completely different magical paradigm for me and there was the possibility that the orcs would allow me something similar. 

It was a little concerning that the centaurs were actively raiding in the area but without confirmation that the centaurs here were connected to the centaurs we had come into conflict before, I wasn’t willing to actively move against them without some sort of compensation. Sure, if they aggressively came into contact with us I wouldn’t say no to gain some EXP but I wasn’t about to hunt them down. Not without a good reason, like a quest to do so. I made sure to mention that we might be willing to join them, given the right motivation but it seemed as if Sakgu believed that they had enough power in their warband. I had no information whether she was right or not but her belief was enough to drive my vigilance up a notch, making me excuse myself with what had to be the oldest excuse in the books to get a moment of privacy.

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Hidden behind a few bushes, I asked Lenore to leave her Hallow, flying overhead and giving warning if we were moving towards an ambush. She would also be able to tell me what we were running into, regarding the orcish warband, especially if they had looked like they were prepared for us or not. According to what I had been told, they were travelling during the day but we should be able to meet up with them without too much trouble. 

When I returned to the group, I noticed a curious smirk on Adra’s face, reminding me that my excuse only worked so far with people who knew me and that my Traveler Avatar-Body simply had no need for the activity I had used as an excuse. For now, that wasn’t too much of a giveaway for natives, only for those who were aware of that peculiarity and the fact that I was a traveller but it was something to keep in mind. 

Quite soon, maybe an hour and a half after we left our original camp, Lenore was transmitting her vision to me, the range we could easily communicate over decidedly increased since I had crossed the second Divide, or maybe due to the increase in Attributes coming with it. The reason didn’t really matter, only that I was able to see the orcish warband from the air, moving through the forest in a reasonably ordered formation. She was able to spot a couple scouts moving around the orcs but couldn’t be sure she was seeing all of them, not with the variety of skills used to hide from an even bigger variety of detection-methods.

What we both could see was that the main-body of the orcish warband seemed to be relaxed, not nervous or hyper-vigilant, secure in the fact that their scouts would warn them from any foe strong enough to pose a serious challenge. It made me wonder, what would happen if they ran into a singular being powerful enough to both evade their scouts and pose a threat to them but then, such a being would, almost by definition, be powerful enough to make resistance mostly futile. If such a being attacked them, the ordinary grunts would have to hope that the more powerful members of their band were able to resist or their struggle would be hopeless, regardless of their initial vigilance. 

I could see that the information given to me by Sakgu looked to be true, at least regarding the orcish numbers. It gave me hope that the rest was also reliable, even if I wouldn’t be able to relax until having met that Dura and parted, without getting attacked. 

Before long, our group was close enough for Sakgu to give a loud signal, using some sort of whistle that sounded like a bird, causing the scouts around the warband to react, some of them shifting to cover our approach while a ripple went through the main body, as people seemed to focus on the present, getting ready to act. It wasn’t necessarily a readiness to fight, they didn’t take out their weapons or affixed their shields to their arms but I could imagine that some of them had been daydreaming, lost in their thoughts, as I often was when marching and now waking up, focusing on their surroundings.

The bird’s call was answered by a similar call, a quick progression of notes coming from a similar whistle that Lenore spotted in the hands of a scout. She could differentiate between the calls made with a whistle and the call of a real bird but to my ears they sounded the same. Maybe it was just a bird-thing, I didn’t know.

However it worked, we were greeted with more interest than suspicion by the scouts, even if they looked quite surprised when they realised that Sakgu had brought non-orcs with her. Despite the surprise, we were quickly guided towards the main-group and its back quarter, where Lenore could easily see a powerful aura thanks to her sight. Powerful and unrestrained, standing out like a bonfire, making me both curious and a little scared. But more powerful than the feeling of fear was a wish to stamp the fire out, to smother it and return the world to a cold darkness. The sensation was wholly unexpected, forcing me to strongly clamp down on it, so I wouldn’t cause trouble for our group.