Self delusion is a wonderful thing. I was so proud of my plan. Surely, if they came looking for me at all, the guard would first stop at the inn where I had been staying. There they would interview the staff, finding out that I told them I would return after investigating business opportunities in the south. They would have to split their forces in case I came back. Who knew how long they would spend on that wild goose chase? Then, if they didn’t find me, they would need to retrace their steps. That would buy me some time.
Maybe I was jumping at shadows like I did when I fled the nonexistent orcs from Resource Camp 3. Perhaps they wouldn’t be able to connect the dots. After all, there were a lot of people wandering in and out of town for a variety of reasons. Having a bedraggled, beaten, down on his luck adventurer wander into town was likely not a daily occurrence but it probably happened often enough that it was not some noteworthy event.
Self delusion is a wonderful thing. It took me until the next day for me to find out the answer was yes. I was being pursued.
Yeah, I was feeling pretty good as I made my way north, walking uphill most of the way, congratulating myself on how smart I was, how amazing, how clever. The first night, I hiked until I was too exhausted to keep moving and then wandered into a copse of trees for a couple of hours of fitful sleep. The next morning, I broke out of the mountain valley, weaving back and forth on a switchback road as I made my way to a mountain pass, evergreen trees dense on both sides of the road. At the top of the pass was a small waystation, nothing but a small guard contingent and an inn for travelers. I didn’t stop, not wanting to tempt fate with the guards. For all I knew, they had some way to communicate with their compatriots back at town. Instead, I just kept trudging over the pass and headed down into the next valley below.
While I walked, I spent some time pondering my gift of tongues. I had no idea what language I had been speaking in, but I am certain that it was not English. The thing that got me started on this train of thought was the names of the places that I had heard. Yes some of them sounded like they were drawn directly from the pages of a pulp fantasy novel. Pargossian Empire, anyone? But the names of the orcish settlements weren’t at all what I expected. Westfield, Sleetfield, these were pleasant sounding names for places and not the ugly grunting names with too many vowels and not enough consonants that the same literature caused me to expect to hear. Was there some overlay between my perception and reality that distilled language down to its essence and spit out its meaning in a way that was understandable to me? Frankly, it reminded me of the language localization options that were implemented in some of the video games that I had played.
If there was such a buffer, what else might it be useful for? What other abilities might I learn?
Although my ruminations occupied me for a little while, I soon became fairly bored. I thought ascending the pass was hard work, but descending was difficult as well as it transferred the stress on my body to a different set of muscles and tendons. I was going to be pretty damn sore by the time I made it to flat ground.
For the rest of the morning, I didn’t pass a single person walking in the other direction. The climate on this side of the pass was drier, and the flora reflected that. Trees sparsely dotted the mountains around me, giving more room for a proliferation of dense, scrubby underbrush. The topography itself was more jagged, and from the glimpses I caught of the valley floor, it seemed like this valley was cut quite a bit deeper, covered irregularly in a series of canyons.
The road itself, while still passable, showed signs of deterioration due to infrequent maintenance. Weeds grew up in the cracks of the road. I had to be careful to keep my eyes out for missing stones, unless I wanted to step in a hole and turn an ankle. A broken ankle here might well be a death sentence. Wildlife was more abundant as well, little critters scurrying to and fro, going about their lives in a way that suggested they were not habituated to people. Where so many prey animals existed, there had to be predators lurking out of sight.
What I had envisioned as easy travel up the road to the capital was anything but easy. I cursed myself once again for allowing my ordinary first world Earth sensibilities to color my perception of this world. I think somewhere in the back of my mind, when I envisioned this journey I thought I would find a highway exit with a Waffle House every couple of dozen miles. Instead, I got wilderness. Lots of wilderness.
About midday, I had reached the floor of the valley and decided to take a break. Collapsing to the stony ground, I relaxed for a few minutes, drinking some water and eating some dried rations. Then, I started stretching my tired and sore muscles, trying to get them to loosen up enough to cover more miles before I had to make camp for the night.
As I sat down and stretched, I studied the road that I had descended, proud that I had made it down without an accident. I couldn’t see all the way to the top, but I could spy some of the higher switchbacks. After a particularly deep hamstring stretch, I glanced upwards just in time to catch a flash of light, which I assumed was from some sort of polished metal or glass. I didn’t recall passing anything that would reflect like that on the way down into the valley. Crap. There was probably someone on the trail above me.
I listened as hard as I could, trying to catch the sound of voices or the noise of movement, but there was nothing. Craning my neck back, I continued to stare upwards. Finally my persistence was rewarded when I saw several bulky figures riding horses or mules high above me, making good time as they descended.
Jumping to my feet, I hoisted my pack and started quickly moving along the road across the floor of the valley. Within a mile or so, I had entered the canyons, their walls rising high above my head. Great, I had basically trapped myself, removing my ability to move anywhere the canyons didn’t lead. Even though the sides of the canyon walls were rough with many handholds, I didn’t trust my climbing skills enough to try to scale them. There were many diversions, dozens of smaller side canyons, but I stuck to the main road where things were the widest and the travel the least difficult.
I kept chugging ahead for a couple of hours, hoping to break out to the other side. My hopes were dashed, however, when I heard voices echoing up the canyon from behind me.
Up ahead, I could see a small crevice, maybe six or seven feet wide, that meandered off at an oblique angle from the main roadway. Sprinting over to it, I began to make my into it, only to hear voices again and the sound of hooves. They were closer. They were much, much closer. And if they were after me, I didn’t feel great about my odds.
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About twenty feet into the crevice, I was forced to mantle my way over a low boulder that had fallen from above. Not certain that I would find a more defensible position, I reached into my fanny pack and lined up two spare magazines on the top of it within easy reach. I made certain that my pistol was ready to fire. Then, I sighted it over the boulder and I waited.
From where I was holed up, I could see a narrow portion of the road. The voices grew louder and my view of the road was soon darkened by several orcs on horses. I started to relax as the first few rode past the opening, but then tensed again as I heard a pleasant female voice.
“Wait, he left the trail here.”
The troop soon came to a stop. Then one of the orcs poked his head into the canyon. I recognized him as the sergeant that I had bought a drink for the first night in the village, the ungrateful bastard. I tried to duck down but he must have caught the movement.
“You may as well surrender and come out,” he said. “If we have to come in after you, it will hurt much more.”
“Why are you chasing me?” I responded. “I didn’t do anything.”
Did I just say I didn’t do anything? How cliché. I am certain that he had never heard that one before.
“If you didn’t do anything, then why are you running?”
Yep, that’s cop logic for you.
“I’m not running,” I said. “I’m headed back to the capital. I heard you all behind me and thought you might be bandits or something.”
“Don’t suppose you know a man named Levan and his two sons?” he asked.
“I have no idea what you are talking about.”
“Then come on out and you can have a nice chat with the magistrate and we can clear this all up.”
That really wasn’t an option for me. I had seen how these people treated humans with missing digits. Maybe I would get exonerated for the killings only to spend the rest of my life in indentured servitude.
“Do you promise that I will make it back to the village unharmed?” I asked, trying to buy some time.
“Sure, if that’s what it takes to get you to cooperate. I can promise that.”
“Let me think about it for a minute.”
He turned and whispered orders to a couple of his men. Although I couldn’t hear what he told them to do, I caught a glimpse of one of them removing his armor. Now, why would he choose to do that? Then the unarmored orc stepped out of my sight. Soon, I heard the distinctive sound of metal hammering on metal. The sound stopped for a few moments, and then began again from a little farther above me.
Oh, hell no. These jerks had climbing gear and they were trying to get a couple of guards up on the walls above me. If they got up to the top, forty feet above me, they could drop rocks on my head or shoot missile weapons at me and I would be defenseless.
Quickly, I made up my mind. If it was a fight they wanted it was a fight they would get. Strangely, I was much calmer than before some of my earlier fights. I don’t know whether it was the benefit of experience or an intense sense of fatalism, but it was a welcome change.
“Hey sergeant,” I yelled back to him.
Once again he stepped forward into the mouth of the tunnel.
“Did you decide?” he asked.
“Eat lead!” I bellowed. Then I began firing at him, once again grimacing as the explosive sound of gunshots erupted through the canyon.
Having the benefit of a prepared firing position to steady my aim helped my accuracy. I was aiming for center mass and quickly fired five times. He was hit at least three times, twice in the chest and once in the right leg. He instinctively stepped forward, his hand reaching for the sword hanging from a baldric over his shoulder. After just a couple of steps, though, he slumped to the ground. One of the shots must have hit something vital to incapacitate him so quickly.
There was screaming and yelling from the main canyon, but the sound was weak as it barely penetrated the ringing in my ears. I took the time to reload my pistol, tucking the partially empty magazine back into my fanny pack. Then, I aimed back down the chasm.
He must have been a good leader, inspiring loyalty in his guards, because a couple of the other orcs tried to be heroes. Moving in a crouch, they entered the crevice trying to grab his legs and pull him to safety. They were below my arc of fire, so I was forced to abandon my shooter’s rest and stand. Shifting my aim, I pulled the trigger over and over again, leaving two more downed orcs bleeding out on the dirt as my slide locked back. I reached down to grab my second spare magazine but that’s when things took a turn for the worse.
Another orc stepped into the mouth of the crevice, a crossbow aimed and ready. He fired just as I finished inserting the new magazine into my pistol. The quarrel flew true, burying itself with the force of a mule kick in my right shoulder, spinning me around to my right. My hand spasmed and I dropped the empty magazine. Turning back around to the left, I noticed that he was charging at me, rapidly closing the distance between us. I released the slide and began shooting at him one handed. This time, I wasn’t nearly as accurate but after several errant shots he caught one in the head just as he reached the boulder in front of me. He was clearly mortally wounded but his momentum caused him to tumble over the boulder and crash into me.
I kept my feet, staggering backwards, but I knew my situation was dire. With one hand incapacitated, my accuracy was shit and I wasn’t sure how many opponents remained. Soon, I would likely have orcs above me, pelting me with God knows what. It was time to run. I turned and bounded down the crevice, which narrowed significantly the deeper I made my way into it. Soon, I almost had to turn myself sideways to make any progress. From time to time, the think sunlight that filtered in from above was occluded by the bodies of the orcs running above me.
Up ahead, the crevice terminated in a stone wall. At the base, the wall was cracked. The crack ran vertically a few feet and was maybe two and a half feet wide. I didn’t know where it led, but I figured anything was better than my imminent death from above, so I slung my backpack off of my back and jammed it into the crevice, pushing inward. One strap caught on the quarrel protruding from my right shoulder, which caused me to cry out in pain. Then, turning to my side, I started using small movements of my left elbow and knee to wriggle into the crack.
Quickly, I made it in far enough to be safe from the orcs above me. A couple of times, I feared that I was stuck, but with some contortions and loss of skin I was able to make my way through the narrow spots. It was completely dark, and I couldn’t see anything. As I made it in a bit farther, the crack opened up a little and I was able to move easier. The whole crevice felt like it sloped downward.
Eventually, I was able to crawl on my hands and knees. I reholstered my pistol and wrapped one of the straps from the backpack around my left arm. I crawled forward a foot at a time. The gradient of the tunnel kept increasing, and soon I was sliding downward as much as crawling, using the friction of my feet on the walls to try to arrest my momentum.
Suddenly, there was no more tunnel below me. Soaring out into open air, my arms flailing at my sides as I spun uncontrollably, I had just enough time to regret my recent life decisions when I smacked into rocky ground with a solid crunch, driving the air from my body and knocking me unconscious.