Let’s be honest. If the remainder of the company made it back before us, we would be in trouble. Not just a little trouble, either. We’re talking monumental trouble. Although I could change my appearance, Aleyda and Bowen couldn’t. The worst case scenario is that they would try to sell us out to save their own hides. If that happened, the guards in town would be on high alert. Sneaking everyone in and getting away with it would be very difficult, if not impossible. Even if they didn’t sell us out, though, I was certain that Tikter and the rest wouldn’t have any reluctance to leave us all behind on the island. It’s not like the people on the ship would know whether we were alive or dead. They would likely take the others’ word for it. We had to make it down to the ship before the other group returned or else our lives were about to take a major turn for the worse.
At least we were moving in daylight. That would be a lot safer than trying to stave off whatever nocturnal predators that hunted the night. Safer, of course, did not mean safe. We had been in enough battles during the day that nothing could be taken for granted.
“Does everyone agree this is the south side of the island?” I asked the others.
“Well, unless someone changed the direction the sun rises in, I think that’s fairly settled,” Yam said with a little laugh.
“Sorry,” I replied. “I’m making this up as we go along and I just wanted to make certain we are all in agreement.” When I was assigning directions when I first made it to this world, I decided to stick with the familiar. I elected to call the direction the sun rose in east. For all I knew, the sun actually rose in the north. “Then, we head towards the rising sun and should eventually find port.”
Although we were laden with gold, the others would be as well. Frankly, the orcs that had decided to join with us were some of the better conditioned among the company, so at least we had that going for us. They had a known trail to follow, though, and we didn’t. Things were going to be tight. I still wasn’t certain if I was inclined to wait for the others before we departed on the ship. Doing so would be the right thing to do, but their attitude had really started to piss me off. I would have to think long and hard about what we would do on the way back to town.
We departed the cave and turned towards the rising sun. Our primary problem was that no game trails led directly up to the cave, so we would have to move through the forest. Even though the growth was sparse in places, it would still be slow going. I hoped we would intersect a trail soon so we could make better time. We didn’t hike in single file. We spread out a little so we had a greater chance of spotting a trail if there was one.
Our first hour of travel was uneventful, right up to the point that we found ourselves on the top of a craggy cliff that descended at least forty feet to the forest below. We had plenty of rope to descend, but if we used the rope now then we wouldn’t have it later when we might need it again.
“What do we do?” I asked. “Do we try to bypass the cliff and find a better way down, or do we use our rope now hoping we don’t need it again later.”
“I don’t think we have enough time to go poking around exploring,” Aleyda said. “We should descend here and hope that we don’t need to do so again in the future. If we do, we can explore then. We have to keep moving.”
“I agree,” Dregu said. “Why spend the time now when we might be fine later?”
We started pulling rope out of our packs. It turned out that we had more than enough, probably sixty or seventy feet of it. One of our pieces was just about long enough to reach the bottom of the cliff. Tying it to a thick tree and tossing it over the side, I saw that it ended six or seven feet above the floor of the forest below. Surely, we could all survive such a short drop unscathed, especially if we hung from the end of the rope. Then, we would be virtually touching the ground.
“Do you want to carry the gold down with us or toss it over and pick it up after we get down?” I asked.
“Carry it with us, I think,” Bowen said. “If the sacks break open and it scatters, picking it up again would take a lot of time.”
That’s what we did. Since it was my plan, I went first. Forty feet doesn’t seem like an extreme distance, but by the time I finished making my way down the rope my arms were shaking from the weight of my body, my gear and the gold. The last ten feet or so proved to be fairly tricky as I wasn’t absolutely certain my grip was going to hold. Soon enough, though, I was on the ground, trying to get my arms to stop quaking.
Everyone else made it down without incident, although not without a ton of complaining. Aleyda and the orcs made it look easy but Bowen was in even worse shape than I was before he finally let go of the rope and fell the last eight or nine feet to the ground. His breath was driven out of him by the impact and we had to wait for him to recover. I hoped we wouldn’t have to do anything similar again. When he finally made it to his feet, he was still shaky and he spent some time rubbing the side he had landed on.
“Are you injured?” I asked.
“Maybe I cracked a rib or two,” he said. “I’m good to go, though. It’s not like we have much choice.”
The topography below the cliff was much flatter and more gentle. We had only wandered for a few minutes when we intersected a small game trail that appeared to head in the appropriate direction. Aleyda pointed out an obvious boot print that had dried in the mud in one spot.
“We obviously weren’t the first to use this trail,” she said. “That could be a good sign for us.”
“Or it could mean that others were as lost as we are,” I replied.
While we were on the trail, we encountered some hostile wildlife. The first was a pair of large ape-like creatures that very closely resembled the descriptions of sasquatch on earth. They towered over the tallest of us, at least eight or nine feet in height and were covered with a reddish-brown fur. Their prominent canine teeth, which jutted out over their lower lips did not lead me to believe that they were a species of gentle herbivores. After we had drawn our weapons and moved forward to engage them, they must have decided that the seven of us were a few too many to handle, especially since we weren’t acting like prey. They fled, charging quickly into the forest, and soon even the sound of their passage had faded away. I was very happy the orcs were with us. If it had been just the three of us, I doubt things would have turned out the same.
The second incident involved a troop of about a dozen small humanoids that seemed to be formed out of substance of the forest -- trees and vines. We didn’t even know we were among them until a few stepped out of the forest in front of us. By the time we realized that they were there, we had blundered so deeply into their midst that we were surrounded. They grasped primitive weapons and although I couldn’t read expressions on their faces their body language didn’t appear to be all that friendly. We were outnumbered, and I had to idea what sort of tricks that they might be able to bring to battle. I assumed poison would be among them as some of their spears seemed to be dripping a viscous greenish liquid from their tips.
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Rather than fight, I decided to go for broke. If they were sentient tool users then they probably had some sort of language they used to communicate. And I had the gift of tongues after all.
“Hello,” I said, trying to sound calm even though my adrenaline had spiked and my heart was trying to beat its way out of my chest. “It’s a nice day, isn’t it?”
It’s a nice day? I cursed myself for being a moron. I was meeting some sort of strange plant creature and I started out talking about the weather? Was I purposefully trying to get us slaughtered?
The creatures ahead of us glanced at each other in apparent confusion, then one stepped forward and spoke.
“It is a nice day,” he/she/it said. “But the weather does not explain why you have invaded our home.”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” I replied. “I didn’t realize that you people were living here. I didn’t see you at all until you stepped out of the forest. Honestly, we are just passing through. We want to go back to our ship and leave this place behind forever.”
“So you are not here to kill us and take what is ours?” the creature said.
“Like I said, I didn’t even know you lived here,” I answered. “And no, we don’t want to take what’s yours. Why would we? You seem nice enough. I really don’t want to fight you, although I suppose we will if you are dead set on it. But that would ruin this nice day. You would probably prevail but even if you did you would likely take losses. Nobody has to die today. None of my people do and none of your people need to either. We can just be on our way and you will never see us again.”
“To travel through our territory, you must pay tribute,” the creature replied.
“I would be glad to pay for the inconvenience our presence has cause you,” I said. “I would pay even more if one of you could lead us to a path back to our town. We are in a hurry. We want to go home.”
“What do you have for tribute?” the creature demanded.
“Well, we have quite a bit of gold we can share,” I said.
“Why do your people place so much value on soft, shiny metal,” the creature replied. “It is good for nothing except ornamentation. You can’t even make decent tools out of it. It is too soft and too heavy.”
“That’s a good question,” I said. “If I knew how this obsession started, I would tell you but I honestly don’t know. Maybe it is because it is fairly rare. If you are not interested in gold, what sort of tribute are you interested in?”
“We need hard metal. We need tools. We need weapons to defend ourselves.”
By the time our discussion was over, we had traded away my rapier, the extra belt knife I had gotten from the blacksmith back at port, the folding knife I kept in my boot, and several other knives that the others had with them.
“This is fine tribute,” the creature said. “This will strengthen the grove. I will guide you to a path leading back to your town.”
“Thank you,” I responded. “That will save us quite a bit of time.”
“Know now if you return here, you will be killed,” the creature said.
“I have no intention of ever coming back here,” I said.
“Follow me,” the creature said. “And if we get into a fight, you must all defend me.”
“Absolutely,” I replied.
The creature led us further down the trail. Soon, we were on the east side of the island. When the trail ended in a large copse of trees, the humanoid plant led us briefly through the forest until we intersected another trail that headed north.
“Follow this trail,” it said. “It will lead you back to your town.”
“Thank you,” I replied. “It was a pleasure to meet your people without having to kill each other.”
“Remember, do not return,” it said.
“We will not,” I said in reply.
Then, it turned and melted back into the forest.
We started trudging north on the trail. At this point, morning had turned into afternoon and I had no idea how far we had to travel before we would reach the port. After we had made our way well out of earshot of the creature, Dumbuk spoke.
“How did you know that the creature would understand Orcish?” he asked. “And how did you understand its speech?”
“I have a gift with language,” I said. “I wasn’t certain it would understand me but it was worth a shot. I’m not surprised you couldn’t understand its replies. Where I come from, there are many communities of similar creatures. We had to learn their language to trade with them.”
“Where do you come from?” he asked.
“Far north, across the inner sea,” I said.
“I guess that makes some sense,” he said somewhat dubiously.
“Anyway, that wasted quite a bit of time. We need to pick things up if we are going to beat the others.”
And pick up the pace we did, to something that more closely resembled a slow jog than a fast walk. Soon, we were all huffing and puffing our way down the trail and there was no breath left for further conversation. I was glad of that. I didn’t know how far my lies would take me.
We must have alternated jogging with brief stints of walking for recovery for hours. Thankfully, we didn’t run into anything else that was intent on doing us harm. Finally, as the sun was starting to creep down beyond the other side of the mountain, we crested a rise. Below us, we saw the port. There were fewer ships in the harbor than on any of my previous visits. The majority of ships that were left, though, clearly belonged to the military. Troop transports and their sleek escort ships occupied the majority of the berths.
My gaze swept back and forth across the landscape. We probably had another hour of walking before we would reach our destination. Unfortunately, we would need to pass very near the military base on our way into town. That did not make me very happy.
“How do we want to play this?” I asked. “If we go down when it’s still light out, our approach will be pretty obvious. If we wait until after night has fallen, then we will have a little more cover from the darkness. Honestly, since we have to pass the military base on the way in, unless you want to try to find our way to the main path, I think I would prefer to do this when we are less obtrusive. Of course, that exposes us to whatever hunts the night around here.”
“I think we get closer while we can still see,” Aleyda said. “Then, we wait in the forest until it is dark out and try to creep our way to the ship.”
“Did anyone recognize the ship?” I asked. “Is it still here?”
Nobody spoke up, so I assumed they hadn’t.
“Since there are so few ships, I assume that it will berthed on a dock. How do we find the right one?”
“Trial and error,” Bowen said. “Trial and error.”
We walked down the trail for about half an hour. Any more than that and we would have been visible from the town below. Then, we moved into the forest until we were well concealed and waited for nightfall. We didn’t talk much. I assume we were all fervently hoping that the ship hadn’t departed without us.