Patrick’s arm was not in good shape, and taking care of it was our first priority. Ugor was a deft hand with a needle and thread and it was obvious that this wasn’t the first time she had stitched someone up. Farming was dangerous work, and injuries happened. After thoroughly cleaning the wound, she took her time closing it. Her meticulous approach was not particularly appreciated by Patrick, attested to by his low growls of pain. After the job was done, I reached into my pack and presented Patrick with a handful of antibiotics. Being from Earth, my Earth, he knew what they were and gratefully accepted them. He really didn’t want to lose an arm to infection.
Xeng’s wounds didn’t have the dire quality of Patrick’s arm, but he made up for it with quantity. He had been pierced, bludgeoned, and sliced. In fact, he had several injuries of each type. Now that his adrenaline had worn off, he was feeling them. A couple of the deeper wounds required sutures, but the majority would heal after being cleaned and bandaged. He got some antibiotics as well. My supply was running out and I had no idea where to get more. Werner thought he could culture penicillin, but Werner thought he could do just about anything. Lacking in confidence the man was not. Still, I believed it was worth a try. I didn’t know what medicines or magical healing supplies existed in this world, and my ignorance was something I would need to quickly remedy.
Of course, I started to heal very quickly. Before long, I was back out in the yard managing the looting and cleanup. Searching the bandits, I found a handful of pocket change that didn’t amount to much, some nasty looking preserved rations, and a bunch of weapons and armor. Each man had a dagger of some sort, four of the five spears remained functional, and there were two swords. The orc leader’s sword closely resembled a traditional broadsword, while the other orc’s weapon was a nasty brutish thing with a heavy, end-weighted blade that was designed exclusively for chopping. The armor didn’t fit anyone, except maybe Goulug, but he didn’t want it. We took it anyway, though. I am sure somebody could use the materials for something.
Finally, there was the issue of what to do with the bodies. It was the dead of winter and the ground was frozen and hard. While the idea of burying them in an unmarked grave up in the hills had some appeal, there was no way to efficiently dig that grave. I had just about settled on dragging them up into the hills one by one and leaving them for the scavengers when Goulug told me that he knew of a cave a couple of hours away. It took several trips, bodies being heavy and all, but we eventually got them tucked away deep underground. The cave wasn’t very large, you had to crawl through a narrow passage to reach it, but it was large enough. It was also plenty creepy, now even more so since there were seven bodies stacked up inside it.
After returning to the house, I assessed our forces. We would need to leave some people here for defense, Patrick and Xeng were too injured to be of much use, and I didn’t want to send poorly trained people up against a larger group of hardened warriors. That severely limited who I could take along. Leaving Bowen, Urbul and Lapina to lead any necessary defense of our home and the precious lives of our noncombatants, I set out towards Greynard with Aleyda and Goulug.
I was pretty stressed about taking Aleyda along, but she was the best fighter among us. I worried that trouble would rain down on us since I had armed a slave, but Goulug’s greater knowledge of the world provided me with some solace. He explained that while it was not common, it was not unheard of for rich folks to purchase a slave and train them up to be a bodyguard. That was my story, then, and I was sticking to it. I hoped nobody gave Aleyda shit because of her short stature and diminutive frame. I was certain that if anyone did, their tune would change when they saw her fight.
It was early afternoon when we left the house and the sun was setting when we finally slogged our way into the village. The paths and roads were treacherous. There was some snow remaining and there were many icy spots where things had melted and refrozen. I only fell a couple of times. Honestly, just once or twice.
We were headed to Tranquil Meadows, my favorite of the two inns in the village, when I saw a group of soldiers dressed in the colors of the barony camped in the main square. There were only eleven of them, ten soldiers and a squad leader. Who the hell sends a single squad to deal with twice their number of bandits? Either the majority of the baron’s forces were off on some foreign adventure or they weren’t taking this threat seriously enough. I walked over to their camp. I clenched my jaw so tightly that my teeth almost cracked. The soldiers were relaxed, even jovial. Some of them chatted up a few of the women from the village, regaling them with stories of their heroism. Yeah, these are certainly a bunch of heroes, I thought, sitting on their asses in the middle of town while people are out there being robbed, or fighting and dying.
Identifying the one older orc with a different rank insignia, I walked over to him. Discipline was so lax that nobody questioned me or moved to stop me. As I strolled right on up to him, he, too, was entertaining a younger orc woman, dandling her on his knee. At my approach, he looked up.
“State your business,” he said. “Can’t you see I’m busy?” The female he was entertaining giggled at his words.
“My name is James,” I replied. “I own a farm out at the foot of the southern hills. This is my neighbor Goulug.” I gestured in Goulug’s direction. “We were attacked this morning by a group of seven bandits.”
“If you were attacked by bandits, how is it that you are standing here talking to me?” he responded. “Shouldn’t you be back at your home repairing the damage or trying to secure enough supplies to see you through the winter?”
“I said we were attacked by bandits. I didn’t say we lost.”
He started laughing. “You mean to tell me that you lot managed to kill seven of them, and you’re still alive to tell the tale?”
“That’s exactly what happened,” Goulug growled from beside me. “We knew they were likely coming and we were well prepared. Why hasn’t your squad ridden out and driven the bastards off?”
“Our orders were to protect Greynard,” the squad leader replied. “And you can see that it is protected very well. The village hasn’t been attacked once since we got here. We are, what do you call it? We are a deterrent.”
“The village hadn’t been attacked before you got here either,” Goulug replied. “Yet, the farmers and herdsmen around the valley are suffering. You need to remember where your supplies come from. If there is nobody left to grow anything, there will be nobody around to pay the baron’s share. If the baron doesn’t get his share of the crops, then we can all be hungry together.”
“No, if worst comes to worst the baron will just raise his share. You will be hungry. We won’t.”
I could see where this was headed and it was nowhere good. Neither Goulug nor the other orc had bothered to reign in their tempers and they were staring daggers at each other. It was time to intercede.
“I had hoped for some cooperation,” I interjected. “The bandits’ numbers took a major hit today. I was hoping to round up some help and finish the job.”
“You go right ahead,” he replied. “Our orders are to protect the village, so we will be right here, protecting the village. If there is nothing further, I bid all of you a good day.” He turned away from us back to his companion.
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Grabbing Goulug’s arm, I pulled him away. “Let’s go,” I said. “We’ll find no help here.”
Somehow, I doubted the squad of soldiers were meant to interpret their orders that literally. I could be wrong, but I didn’t see anyone in charge giving orders that limited protection to the village limits. But, when the cat’s away, the mice will play. These orcs were having themselves a nice little holiday. And through their poor example, they had just made my job a lot harder.
We continued our trip to the inn. The streets were busy, busier than I had ever seen them before. I recognized a couple of farmers and herdsmen that I had met previously walking around with their families. People must have pulled back into the village for protection, I thought.
When we got to the inn, it was packed. I kid you not, forcing our way through the crowd up to the bar took several minutes. Every few steps, one of us had to stop to exchange a greeting without someone we knew. When I say one of us, I mean Goulug. I didn’t know very many people, but having lived here his whole life, he knew just about everybody. Finally, we made it to the bar and stood there for several more minutes while the harried service staff dashed to and fro. Finally, a bartender approached, an orc.
“What can I get you,” he asked.
“We need a room for the night,” I replied.
“Sorry, there’s no room,” he replied. “We’ve been full for days. If you want to find a piece of floor in the common room after it closes, though, I am sure we can work something out.”
After exchanging looks with my companions, I replied. “That will work. How much?”
“You buying drinks and meals?” he asked.
“Yes, sir, we will be,” I said.
“You can have space on the floor for free then.”
We ordered dinner and some ale, and I paid the orc.
“I suppose we could go visit my sister and see if she has room,” Goulug offered. “Her house is small, though, and since her husband died, she took in a lot of cats and she isn’t always the best at cleaning up after them.”
“No need to bother her,” I replied, shuddering at the idea of spending the night in a house that smelled like cat urine.
When dinner arrived, we ate on a narrow section of the bar, almost needing to take turns to reach our food. After becoming accustomed to the clean air of the countryside, the interior of the inn was stifling. It was too warm due to the heat of so many bodies, and not everyone in the room was fastidious about their personal hygiene. After I was done eating, I stood sipping my ale, my eyes sweeping around the room. One table in particular stood out. It was a large table occupied by several orcs, a few humans, and one female dwarven blacksmith. The people around the table were universally a little more mature than average. What drew my attention to it, however, wasn’t the occupants. It was the fact that everyone else was giving those occupants room, like there was an invisible force field that had sprung up three feet around the table.
Catching Goulug’s eye, I gestured to the table. “Who are they?” I asked.
“They are what pass for village elders here. If you are serious about your plan, you need to be talking to them.”
Squaring my shoulders, I headed towards the table sidling my way through the crowd. When I reached the table, I wasn’t met with welcoming expressions. Instead, I received a series of hard looks that continued until Sathebeena happened to glance my direction. She did a quick double take seeing me standing there, and then a broad smile split her face. She was the only female at the table.
“Hi, James,” she exclaimed. “I didn’t expect to see you here tonight.” Turning to the rest of the table, she continued. “James here is the new farmer I have been telling you about. The one who made my fall quite profitable. What are you doing in town?”
I had no doubt she had been talking about me and I doubted that it had been in glowing terms.
“I came to town to recruit some help to try to make the plateau a safe place again. We were attacked this morning by seven bandits. Goulug had come to stay until the trouble passed. We survived but the bandits didn’t.”
One of the older humans at the table peered at me from beneath eyebrows that looked like a briar patch. His face was weathered, his eyes set deeply in their sockets. “You managed to kill seven of those vermin?” he asked.
“We did, but unfortunately some of my slaves took some wounds so I am here with my bodyguard Aleyda and Goulug. We were hoping to recruit some help and to take the fight to those assholes. I was told there were twenty five or thirty of them originally. Down seven, that leaves eighteen to twenty three. Surely we can round up two or three times their number and oust them from the area.”
“The estimate you heard was correct because I was the one who made it. Name’s Anxo. I’m a hunter by trade.”
“I don’t think we are going to get any help from the barony and we can’t afford to sit around isolated and lose everything we have all worked for,” I responded.
Anxo spat on the floor. “Those soldiers out there are a bunch of cowards. I like your plan, son. Maybe we can chew them up piecemeal. Ambushes and the like.” Looking around the table, he met the eyes of several of the other men seated around it. One by one, they nodded at him. Then, one of the orcs, a grizzled looking heavily muscled older fellow, stood up and bellowed loudly into the room.
“Quiet!”
Strangely enough, the room quieted. It didn’t happen instantly, but soon enough all I could here were subdued murmurs. Anxo stood.
“This is James. James is one of our new neighbors. Some of you know him. Some of you don’t. That doesn’t matter. What matters is that he has news to share and a proposal to make.” Then he sat back down and I stood.
Before coming to this world, I had never been much of a public speaker. To be honest, I still wasn’t. It’s not like I was shy, and talking to friends or family had never been a problem. But put me in front of a room full of people, their eyes boring into me, and I got pretty damn nervous. This time was no exception. After unnecessarily clearing my throat a couple of times, I began to talk.
“I think many of you know Goulug, my neighbor,” I said, gesturing in Goulug’s direction. Goulug waved at the crowd. “We banded together when we learned about the bandit threat, and holed up on my property. We did it because we are more powerful together than we are separately. We made a lot of plans to defend what’s ours in case the bandits came calling. Today, they did. Seven of them showed up. Our plans worked and they are all dead.”
“For the last several weeks, we have been hoping for some help from the barony,” I continued. “I talked to the baron’s soldiers on my way into town. I have concluded that my hope was empty. If we are going to be safe, if we aren’t going to be seen as an easy place to rob and plunder, we need to help ourselves. To do that, we need to continue to be good neighbors. We need to help each other. We need to end this threat. There are many more of us than there are of them. Hopefully, nobody here is feeding information to the bandits but I am not that naive. As I said before, hope is empty, and maybe one or two of you are informing in exchange for some degree of protection. But there are a lot more of us than there are of them. And there are fewer of them than there were this morning. I am willing to put my life on the line to end this threat. People will get injured. Some of us might die. If we don’t want to be revisited by this scourge year after year, though, we need to do something about it. I say the time to act is now.”
I stopped talking. I don’t know what I expected. A rousing cheer, maybe? Someone trying to talk me out of my half-baked plan, possibly. But instead, I was met with silence.
Anxo stood again and began to speak. “James is right. If we don’t do something about this now, this won’t be the only lean winter we will face. The word will get out, and we will be seen as an easy mark for anyone who wants what’s ours.” One by one the rest of the table stood, Sathebeena included. “We intend to fight.”
That lit the fuse. Voices were raised throughout the room. First a trickle, and then a flood of men and women approached the table, promising to fight alongside us or to help in whatever other way that they could.
I wondered what in the hell I had just gotten myself into.