After we made it away from the prying ears back at camp, the three of us had a discussion about what our plan would be. All of us thought that we needed to get the tools, lamp oil and other supplies up to Segerick, Bethany, Sawwar and the rest of the gang. Living in the dark was no fun, but even so they would have to carefully ration the oil to make it last. As I told you before, I am bad with names. I had been introduced to several other people back at camp but if their names ever gained the tiniest bit of purchase in my short term memory then they never went any further. Also, while we were there we would need to ask where they had found the gold. There actually might be gold in them there hills, and if there was that would alleviate many of our concerns about how we were going to pay to get the rest of their group back to the continent. If we had enough wealth saved up, I wouldn’t even have to try to locate the redoubt again. Instead, maybe I could pay Captain Clemenzio to refit and make another, hopefully less eventful, trip back to the island. Also, we needed to plan an ambush of at least one expedition to get some supplies and armaments for our people.
We passed the normal array of returning groups on the way up the trail, but they didn’t pay us much attention other than exuding the general air of unfriendliness that seemed to pervade the island. That was true until we finally ran into a group that deigned to talk to us.
A ragtag bunch of orcs, six in number, were walking down the trail towards us. The had obviously been in a scrap or two as every single one of them appeared to be both disheveled and injured. One poor fellow was being half carried, half dragged down the trail by two of his compatriots because he didn’t seem to be able to walk on his own. The poor orcs doing the dragging were struggling, their chests heaving like bellows. I assume that they had been chosen for the task because they were the most hale and hearty of the bunch. As they approached, we moved off to the side of the trail to give them room to pass. Their leader, who was walking in front must have decided that his people were in need of rest because when he drew abreast of us he called for a break. Then he turned, regarding us for a moment.
“You all out to do a bit of prospecting?” he asked.
“That’s the plan,” I answered. “I know that some people have reported pulling gold out of the streams farther up the mountain so there has to be a seam somewhere. Of course, I doubt we will be the lucky ones to find it.”
“Have you been up the mountain before? It is rough up there. When we left, there were ten of us. I had to leave some good friends up there for the monsters.”
“We’ve been up one time previously,” I said. “We got into a couple of scrapes but didn’t find much of value. You know, the way people talk about five-fingers back at Shroud Hallow, you would think this place is overrun with them. We haven’t seen a single one, though. Not alive, anyway.”
“Tell me about it,” he said. “We spotted one but he ran off and we couldn’t catch him.”
“What tore you guys up so badly?” I inquired.
“We ran into a group of six or seven huge lizards. They weren’t real fast but once they got a hold on you, it was all you could do to survive. We won in the end but that’s how we lost our people. Then, we were limping our way down the mountain and got robbed by another company. I can’t believe they would do that.”
“The companies are robbing each other?” I asked incredulously.
“When they get the chance,” he said. “They took everything of value that we had, even our weapons. They left us with our lives, though. I wish I had never heard of this damn place. It was foolish to come out here but everyone I talked to made it sound like it was so easy to get rich here. I have never been rich before. I was kind of looking forward to it. Now, though, we’ll be lucky to get enough to eat until we go home with our tails between our legs.”
I felt sorry for the group. They were at least friendly enough to have a conversation with. I know they were a dirty, rotten batch of slavers just like everyone else on the island and they had admitted to chasing and trying to capture one of my people. Something about their story resonated with me, though. I had been down on my luck in the past and had to scramble to survive. It is not a great place to be, I can tell you that. For some inexplicable reason I felt like helping them.
“How long until your ship leaves?” I asked.
“Two more weeks,” their leader replied.
“I have been where you are right now, fighting to survive,” I said. “I was lucky enough to run into some good people who helped pull me out of that and put me on a better path. So, today I am going to be that good person.”
Reaching into my pouch, I grabbed four or five gold pieces. I handed them to the orc who reached out his hand with a confused look on his face to receive them. After looking down at them he started to hand them back but I nimbly skipped backwards out of his reach.
“We don’t need your charity,” he said.
“Honestly, you do,” I responded. “I won’t see you starve if I can help it. I don’t know what that will buy in town. Maybe just enough line, hooks and bait to do a little fishing. But you can eat fish and rest up and get stronger. There is one thing, however, that I will ask you to do. Sometime in the future, you are going to meet someone who needs a hand up. When that time comes, you remember today and do everything you can to give them that hand. There still has to be some goodness in this world or its not worth living in.”
Orcs tend to be a stoic people. For one of the few times that I could remember, I could see genuine emotion on one of their faces. To be fair, the leader was fighting from showing it, and he was fighting hard. But the quiver in his lips, the tightening around the corners of his eyes, that gave him away.
“It will be as you say,” he said. “Thank you for helping us.”
This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.
“Remember your promise, even if it is inconvenient at the time,” I said. “There’s one other thing I think we can help you out with.” I pointed at the orc who was being carried down the trail. “All that dragging and jostling is not good for him. It would be a pity if you carried him all the way down the mountain only to have him die because of the rigors of the trip. We have a saw. We need to cut down some saplings and make a litter for him. It will be easier to move him and he will be more likely to survive.”
Our new saw made short work of some of the smaller trees around the path. We lashed them together by sacrificing a little of our cordage and wove them securely to make a litter sturdy enough to get the orc the rest of the way down the mountain. After all, the litter would only have to last for a couple of hours.
When we were done and the injured orc was lying securely on the litter, the leader approached me again. “Thank you,” he said. “Can I get your name so when I tell this tale my family will know who to give thanks to?”
“My name is Dakota Brown,” I lied. “And don’t bother telling me yours because I am bad with names and won’t remember it by tomorrow. I wish you and the rest of your group well.”
“I will not forget,” he said.
Then, we turned and headed back up the trail.
“Why did you give that orc money?” Bowen asked me a few minutes later.
“Because it was the right thing to do,” I said. “And if you only do the right thing when it is easy, then you are doing it for the wrong reasons.”
He didn’t say anything else about the issue and neither did Aleyda. I imagine that I had given him something to think about. In the world he grew up in, what I had done would have been seen as a weakness instead of a strength. There would certainly be times in the future when we wouldn’t do the right thing. Hell, we were planning on wiping out another group soon just to take what they had. That was flat out wrong. But if I slipped too far down that path without providing some sort of balance, I wasn’t certain that I would like the person that I had become.
The orcs were the last people we saw that day. Soon, we had reached our turnoff and were making our way up the mountain on a familiar but poorly trafficked game trail. Once we left the main trail, our level of alertness ratcheted up a couple of dozen notches. There were things on the mountain that just viewed us as another easy to obtain food source. There was a lot more meat on our bones than the small woodland creatures that were scampering about all over the place.
Hours passed without incident as we made our way towards the cave system. It is amazing how much better time you can make when you actually know where you are going. A couple of times, we reached intersecting trails and had to debate which direction was the correct one. It is not like we had marked them on our way down and we also hadn’t made a map. It soon became apparent that Aleyda was more proficient at orienteering than either Bowen or I were. She had firm opinions about which direction was the correct one. On our own, Bowen and I would likely have resorted to guessing. Soon, trusting her judgment began to bear fruit as we encountered familiar sights, things that we all recognized. Once again, I was so glad that I managed to find her.
We were perhaps half an hour of hard travel from the entrance to the caves carefully moving along a treeless slope with a lot of loose scree when Bowen spoke again.
“What’s that?” he asked, pointing to the sky.
I had to squint my eyes because the object that we was pointing out was in the same direction as the setting sun but finally I saw it, little more than a speck with large wings as it glided on the updrafts produced by the mountain’s slopes. What little I could see filled me with trepidation. It wasn’t a bird, that’s for certain. The wings were not feathered and looked fibrous. Trailing behind the creature was a long tail that looked bifurcated at the end. Although I couldn’t see the thing’s head very well, it looked like it was mounted on the end of a long and flexible neck. To be able to see it at all at this distance, I knew that it had to be quite large. Honestly, it looked like a big flying lizard of some sort.
Flying lizard? Holy shit! Was I looking at a dragon?
“Is that a dragon?” I asked.
“A dragon?” Bowen managed to gasp out. “Dragons are real in this world, too?”
Aleyda stood and studied the creature for a few seconds. Finally, she offered her opinion.
“I don’t think that’s a dragon,” she said. “It looks too small, not bulky enough. The dragons on my world are much larger. It’s probably just a wyvern.”
“Wait,” I asked. “You have dragons on your world?”
“Don’t you?” she replied.
“No, we don’t,” I said. “They are mythological creatures there. Maybe we know of them because of interdimensional leakage or something.”
“Sorry to interrupt your discussion,” Bowen said. “But is that thing getting closer?”
I glanced up into the sky and my very nearly crapped myself when I noticed that Bowen was correct. It had gotten close enough that I could see that it was not a little black dot. Instead, I started getting hints of a shimmering reddish brown color from its wings. If we could see it, it was very likely that it could see us. And we were in an incredibly exposed position. The footing was loose and the slope was steep and if it caught us out on this part of the mountain we were as good as dead. I started opening my mouth to talk when Aleyda beat me to it.
“We need to get off this slope,” she said. “We can’t make a stand here.”
That put some pep in all our steps, let me tell you. We scurried as fast as we could over to one side where the ground was more level and the footing was stable. What I wouldn’t give for a copse of trees to lose ourselves in, but there was none to be seen. Honestly, we started moving quite recklessly. I think we had all decided that falling to our deaths beat being snatched off the mountainside and being taken somewhere to be slowly devoured. Although we each slipped a couple of times, none of us ended up plummeting to our doom. In a remarkably short time, we had all made our way to the flatter area with better footing, each of us out of breath from our mad scramble and shaking with adrenaline.
I was just about to laugh and say that we had risked ourselves for nothing but those words died in my throat when the creature arrived. It flared its wings and landed in the clearing ahead of us. It was only about ten feet long from the tip of its triangular head to the end of its tail, and in other circumstances I would have found it to be a quite comely beast. Its many scales were a mixture of a metallic deep copper color and a darker, matte burnt umber. They were mounted on a long and sinuous body. Possessing a wingspan approximately twice the length of its body, its wings folded to its side as it alighted on the ground. Each of its hind legs terminated in large feet that were tipped with sharp looking claws. It opened its mouth and loosed an incredibly loud and raucous scream. Its mouth possessed a row of long, dangerous teeth. A herbivore this was not.
“Be careful,” Aleyda cried out although I could barely hear her because my ears had been blown out by the after effects of the scream. “It is a wyvern and they are often poisonous.”
That’s just great, I thought, as we spread out to engage from multiple angles.