Chapter Seventy-Two: First Contact
Watchman Glass stared around at them, waiting for someone to explain. Rosa spared them the pain.
“Watchman Glass, we’re glad you’re here. There have been some new developments.”
“Oh?”
Errol finally spurred into gear. “We discovered a merchant with us has a long distance communication power.” He gestured to the merchant woman with them. “She can communicate at great range with anyone she meets personally. We thought it prudent for her to meet you.”
“Oh, of course! That sounds handy! Fire away!” Glass said. Tom could see her eyes flicking back and forth in the low light, obviously reading a notification on her wisp.
“It’s done,” the merchant said. “Can we go?” Much as she wanted to help, she was nervous at being out in the Deep with the potential of running into orcs again.
“Not just yet. Watchman, would the Lord General want to meet with her too?”
Glass thought about it briefly. “Probably, I would say. Can you hang out here a while longer? I’ll nip back and ask him.” They agreed, and Glass shattered, teleporting away. A few hours later, a portal opened up right next to them, the steel one, this time. Glass, and a unit of Guards came through.
The Lord General followed. “Evening. We’ll need to be quick about this, I’m afraid I don’t have much time. The orcs are beginning to test the walls for weakness.” A moment later, his eyes flicked back and forth, just as Glass’ had.
“Right, done. Thank you for making this happen. It’s a golden opportunity. The ability to communicate directly with your force will make a world of difference I hope. Any reports?”
Errol briefly shared their initial plans with him, but had nothing of substance to feed back to the general at this stage.
“Keep up the good work,” he told them. “Goddess be with you all.” And with that, he strode briskly back through the steel arch, his Guards following him. Glass remained behind.
“He’s got a lot on his plate, at the moment. The orcs are just testing the waters at the moment, but they’ll ramp up operations soon enough. They’ve completed the encirclement now, even if the majority of it is light. I should go, too. The general thinks they’ll try sneaking in Idealists soon. We need as many eyes and ears as we can get.”
They said their goodbyes, and then started back to Rea’s cave. On the way there, they ran across several orc stragglers, but nothing that posed any real threat. None of them even came close, Sere sighting them from far off, and Sus and Sol dispatching them with ease.
Once they returned, and dropped off the merchant, they set back out again straight away. They had work to do.
They made their way back towards May’s Crest, but at a slightly more northern bearing, aiming to arrive at the next village to the east. They planned to use Sere, Sus and Sol to scout orc operations, and see what weak points they could identify as targets for future operations.
At dusk, three days later, they had made it close to the village rings when they ran into an orc raiding party. They were sweeping through the Deep, just inside it, perhaps looking for the captives, or villagers that had fled. They were on an unknowing intercept course with them. Tom relayed the information, and they planned an ambush.
They stuck together in a group, Tom and Errol in front with Sesame, and Rosa and Cass behind. Sere had bodies on the orcs, tracking their approach. Sus and Sol waited ahead of them, ready to swoop. Cass’ cat was similarly perched in a tree ahead of the group, waiting to drop amongst them.
Twenty orcs came picking their way through the forest. Not necessarily slowly, but definitely more carefully than the usual sprint they maintained in the daylight. They had just reached Sus and Sol’s positions when they caught the scent of humans, obvious through his familiars’ vision by them sniffing at the air with purpose.
The orcs growled at each other, but there was no screaming or howling. It was unusual. Instead, a large female pulled a couple of more obviously hot-tempered orcs into line, and then they spread out, advancing.
“They’re trying to encircle us, coming up slowly. They might think they’ve found a camp, and plan to take captives,” Tom said to the group.
“Shit!” Cass said. “What do we do?”
“We carry on. It’s twenty orcs, and it looks like they’ve got one Idealist with them. I have them marked.”
“Agreed,” Errol said. “We can’t run now. Better to fight on ground of our choosing.”
Rosa said nothing, just checking her bow. Tom had been right, and Scriber’s mice had enchanted it while she slept the night before they formed groups. It was still made of ordinary materials, but enchantments still made a world of difference. She nocked an arrow, and plunged several more into the dirt by her feet.
“The Idealist is in the centre, still coming at us. I’ll Hush her. Errol, can you take the back?” The burly man nodded, and shuffled around behind Rosa and Cass, placing them in the middle.
Tom watched through his familiars as the orc drew closer, those on the wings slowly curling around them. One lagged too far behind, and Tom sent a pulse to Sol. The smaller male owl swooped silently out of the night. The orc had no idea it was dead until his talons were clamped around its neck, breaking its spine cleanly. He repositioned.
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The orcs crept closer. Shadows began to resolve in the light, slinking towards them, unable to make them out. “Pink flickers on the Idealist orc in five… four… three…” Tom whispered to Cass.
On the count of one, he cast Agony, then Hush. Pink lightning arced in and out of the orc’s body. Tom watched through Sus’ eyes as Cass cast skills on it, and the Idealist orc dropped to the ground dead, haemorrhaging blood from its eyes and ears and nose.
The other orcs stumbled, not quite understanding what had happened yet, but knowing something had occurred. Unfortunately, the inbred orc response to uncertainty was violence, and they charged them.
Tom felt vigour flow through him, suddenly feeling stronger, more alert, and calmer. Errol had activated one of his skills. Tom was glad for it; he was running low on the poisons Bubbles had given him, and needed to save them for dire occasions. Tonight, he had simply scarfed some raw, poisonous moss for a low heal over time.
The orcs barrelled towards them, and Tom heard a string thrum, then felt the whoosh of air as an arrow passed him, and a shadow faltered and fell. A bar of fire flared, burning through the night. Rosa swept it down the line of orcs trying to flank them, and several caught alight and began to scream.
Minutes of mayhem followed, though it felt longer. Tom backed right up to Rosa and Cass, and cast Agony as fast as he could. Sesame hunkered down to the other side of them, rebuffing any orcs that closed with great, grisly wounds. Errol summoned a simple looking wooden club, and a great wooden tower shield, forming the third point of a triangle around their casters. He was an immovable object from behind his shield, any orcs that came close struck down with brutal swings from a club that suddenly grew much longer than it had seemed.
Rosa and Cass fired off skills one after the other, slaughtering orcs wholesale. Sus and Sol glided through the night on silent wings, picking off any orcs that became distracted. Cass’ panther eviscerated a pair of orcs that tried to hang back with throwing knives.
It was over before they knew it. Corpses smouldered all around them, until Rosa drained the heat from them to stop the forest going up. She gathered up all the smoke, too, lest the smell alert any other orcs.
Sere swept back out in a ring, tracking a few orcs that had decided to flee. Sus and Sol dispatched them efficiently. As Sere’s ring expanded, she came across several other orcs, random ones, who had heard the brief battle, and were alternately moving in to investigate, or moving off to notify other orcs. Sus and Sol dispatched all of them, too.
Ha! Ha! Silly! No sneaky! Ha! Sere sent him, glorying in her scouting abilities.
Too slow… Sol sent, glad to be helping, but not overly enthused.
Fuck you! Fuck! You! This from Sus, who seemed to thrive on the outlet for her grumpiness as she crushed an orc’s skull. Tom gave Rosa the side eye. He had a good idea of where Sus had picked up that language from.
All of them had managed to get through the fight without taking a single wound, except for Tom, who was bleeding from a shallow gash on his arm. He didn’t even remember taking it, and it was already sealing up.
Their confidence was buoyed, after that first fight, and they pressed in closer to Wayrest. They arrived at the village rings well after dark. From there, they worked their way slowly north for the next day, almost until they had reached the eastern trade road. They picked off the odd orc, here and there, until they were close enough that Sere and the owls could scout the bulk of the army properly.
That night, they hunkered down at the base of a huge willow that had grown next to a shallow pond. Tom set up his wardpoles around them, and then sent his birds out to scout.
Sere wasn’t as efficient at nighttime, and she also didn’t have as great of a range on the bond as Sus and Sol did, so he left the majority of her bodies close by for early warning of any approaching threats. Sus and Sol he sent silently winging their way towards the army.
The bulk of it was camped around Ren’s Delve, a mining village in the second ring near Corin’s Grove. Though it was the dead of night, the camp was anything but. Orcs swarmed about the buildings, thousands and thousands and thousands of them. Tom fought with revulsion, with anger. It was one thing facing the temerity of an orc raid. It was quite another seeing an entire orc host camping in human land. His land.
Surprisingly, most of the buildings in the village had been left intact. The town hall seemed the likely spot for the Smith to have set up, but it was too large for Sus or Sol to get in unnoticed, and too far for Sere to get close. Perhaps they could infiltrate far enough into their lines at some point, but for now, it was impossible.
Tom noted huge activity in the distance, at the main mine entrance, on the side of a shallow hill. The tiny figures of orcs streamed in and out, carrying ore and equipment. The forges nearby in the village were belching smoke into the air. It was not a good sign. The last thing they needed was for the orcs to get better equipment.
He could see orcs returning from every direction around the rings, laded with produce from the fields and orchards, burdened with scavenged loot of every kind, and in a few, terrible cases, dragging human captives. Tom sent a silent prayer to Goddess that they weren’t Idealists.
Most worryingly of all, there were large amounts of orcs coming and going from the Deep to the north east, bringing huge loads of timber with them. It was unrefined, for the most part, massive teams of orcs straining to drag massive, felled trees down the trade roads, but it was obvious what they were to be used for.
The orcs were building siege engines. As Tom sent Sus and Sol back and forth, trying to glean any details he had missed, he caught piles of trees in various stages of refinement. Most looked odd, stripped of bark and branches, lightly carved and shaped, but the orcs were not renowned craftsmen, and Tom was no siege engineer. Best he could tell, they might be the beginnings of battering rams.
As he scouted more closely, he saw that those same parties bringing timber were also accompanied by hunting parties, many of them laden with fresh kills. He could see orcs drawing water from wells in all the nearby villages, too.
The orc army was so large that it fully encompassed Ren’s Delve, and had overflowed into nearby villages. In the manner of orcs, they became more diffuse as they spread, those without any given task simply milling around, fighting or rutting.
It was thicker towards the wall, but the army stopped some distance before it, well out of range of most weapons and skills. As he watched, he could see one of the Smith’s chieftains preparing a hundred strong unit of orcs to attack.
They would do no damage whatsoever to the walls. It was absurd to think that they could. But it was equally as obvious that that was not their intention. They were testing, seeing what the enchantments did, seeing how strong they were, finding their parameters. Eventually, they would understand them, and from there they would know how best to leverage the massive amount of force they could bring to bear on them.
With a sigh, Tom recalled the owls. He had gained a good overview of the siege preparations, and found several vulnerabilities they could exploit, but it was disheartening in the extreme watching orcs occupying their land.
They packed up the wardpoles, and began the trek back to Rea’s cave. The first meet was in a few days. Tom was eager for good news from the other teams.
They needed it.