Chapter Fifty-three

I was in two minds about this plan.

On one hand, I was worried about Krissy. Being imminently thrust into the midst of who knows how many orks and their slaves, some of them probably spiritualists, wasn’t exactly the kind of thing you’d put down on a life-insurance application. I wasn’t even sure if it was safe for me either. Just what was she thinking, coming up with such an idea and then volunteering to do it?

On the other hand, the anticipation was killing me; a ship full of people was going to be the kind of feast I couldn’t help but look forward to. I mean, when was I going to get another opportunity like this? My Tentacle Horror instinct was singing with joy, and I was singing along.

Well, it was what it was. In a moment of weakness, I had agreed to this, and even if I hadn’t, I was going with Krissy anyway.

‘Looking good there, boss,’ Kitala Iwani commented, grinning ear to ear, looking down on my favourite host as she was lying on the rocky ground, one of the dead ork’s legs placed across her waist, making it look like as if the green bozo had fallen on her in its moment of glorious death. The dress was already covered in ork blood and beach-dirt, so on top of dealing with the pirates, we also needed to find a suitable replacement at some point, to avoid Deni’s wrath. I wasn’t sure which was the more pressing issue.

‘Please don’t call me that,’ Krissy groaned at Kiwa, squirming and fidgeting under the heavy leg pinning her to the ground.

Kitala Iwani — and of course Tilry — stood over Krissy, along with the entire trainee team, as well as Dimal, Sini and Havan.

‘All set? Can we leave? The barbarian could come out again any moment,’ Sini urged the gang.

‘Your disguise. You need to put it on,’ Tilry reminded me, Kiwa and I the only ones able to hear her.

‘Yep, I got it,’ I replied, and I brought the old costume out of the Spirit-Room.

I coiled up my tenties the best I could so they would fit into the arms, the head and the torso of the costume, and voila, I was once again the ugly, acne-riddled familiar spirit that had managed to fool Sivera’s spiritualist, just barely. It would have to do.

‘Be careful,’ Arde said to Krissy. ‘Keep talking to us, alright?

‘Get our people back! No mercy,’ Hisa added, and the expression on her face made me think she might have been wishing she was the one going.

‘I will,’ Krissy assured her, and I could tell she was serious about this.

Timo just nodded to her without saying a word, but coming from him it looked like the highest order of approval. Krissy tried to nod back, but laying on the ground under a ton of ork, she didn’t quite succeed.

‘We will be watching,’ Dimal said, twirling the large spyglass around in his hand, and it was finally time for everyone to leave us to be ork-bait.

***

‘Are you okay? Try not to squirm so much,’ I said to her.

The bastard’s heavy. The reply came from the trapped, writhing human civilian Krissy had become. And it stinks!

I had not felt or smelled anything for the past three years or more, so it was somewhat difficult for me to sympathize with her plight. If the rangers were right in their speculations, the barbarian elf should be coming out again soon to check if their ship was here or not. I hoped it would happen soon; it was only early afternoon, and Krissy didn’t seem to enjoy being stuck under a dead ork’s leg.

The rangers were watching us, laying low and hiding on top of the cliffs. Form their vantage point, they would see immediately if there was movement on the beach, in front of the cave. Krissy and I were some fifty metres from there, far enough that even if there had been a fight, those hiding in the cave wouldn’t have heard it, but close enough for an elf — even of the barbarian variety — to notice the bunch of bodies that had not been there before.

He’s out of the cave. Dimal announced through the voice chat, after about half an hour of waiting. And … he’s looking … and looking … and he noticed the dead orks.

Is he coming this way? Krissy inquired, suddenly done with her squirming and wriggling.

No, not yet. He’s going back to the cave. Probably to tell his green friends about it. Dimal conveyed the ongoings as he saw it. They’ll be back, so try not to fuck this up!

Doing my best, sir. Krissy replied, rolling her eyes at the scout master.

I sincerely hoped his great, elven eyesight wasn’t good enough to see it from the cliff-top.

But he was right: we couldn’t afford to fuck this up. So we waited for the elf to come back and bring company.

Said company manifested about ten minutes later, taking the shape of two extra large orks. Dimal warned us as they stomped out of the cave, following the elf, beelining to us. Krissy stiffened, then relaxed, then went stiff again, and finally, with a few deep breaths, she managed to calm down and look like the semi-conscious victim she was supposed to be. And just in time.

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The barbarians kicked up a small cloud of sand and tiny rocks as they slid to a halt next to us.

Krissy kept her eyes closed and tried to breathe evenly, not moving a muscle. I, on the other hand, was ready for anything. My invisible tentacles hovered in the air, poised to strike the elf and two orks, in case they decided to kill the human instead of taking her with them.

Well, nothing of the sort happened.

One of the orks kicked into the corpse of its fellow marauder, just to check if it really was dead. They couldn’t have seen it, but I could tell Krissy nearly let out a yelp as the dead body slid almost completely off her. Then they proceeded to check the other bodies, looting them for their weapons and some knick-knacks they had been wearing. Then a short, orkish conversation followed, one that sounded like two bears growling and huffing at each other. That language — if it was a language at all — was thoroughly incomprehensible to me, yet their pet elf seemed to have understood them. Somehow. I supposed the guy had grown up hearing it, so maybe it wasn’t that surprising.

To my relief, the baddies decided that a human slave was better than no slave at all, and they barked some orders at the elf. He immediately produced a weird-looking shackle from his bag, made of wood and thin rope, and fiddled it onto Krissy’s wrists.

It’s working. They’re taking you prisoner. Dimal commented in a matter-of-fact tone, probably watching us through the looted spyglass from a distance as safe as possible.

Really? I haven’t noticed. Kevin? Krissy thought-yelped, sounding more than just worried, but staying in character and emitting only a weak groan befitting of a half-awake person being shackled.

‘I can cut you free any time, don’t worry.’ I assured her as the elf finished putting the restraint on.

Then I nearly plunged a tentacle into the pointy-eared fucker to suck his soul out — he slapped Krissy, and not gently at all, like a normal person would, trying to wake someone up. He slapped her real hard.

Krissy let out a combination of a yell and a cough. Her eyes sprung open, her cheek reddened, and she glared at the elf. But he just stood there above her, looking at her impassively. Then one of the orks barked something at him again. It was an order. The elf grabbed Krissy by the shackles and pulled her to her feet.

Fuuuuck! Krissy swore without a word leaving her mouth.

This actually surprised me. Krissy rarely swore, and when she did, it was always something mild, like “hell” or “bastard”. She was a lady, or so she had claimed on a number of occasions, and she considered foul language something that was beneath her. Even during the harshest training sessions Toven and Fenar had put her through, I had only ever heard her utter anything resembling a curse once or twice, and never something like “fuuuuuck”.

‘You okay?’ I asked.

Pins and needles. Krissy said, her legs nearly buckling under her.

The barbarian elf caught her, preventing her from falling back to the ground. Oh, pins and needles. I remembered those with not a small amount of sudden nostalgia.

Before Krissy’s legs had a chance to restore normal blood circulation, the orks decided their business here was done, turned around to leave, and ordered their slave-elf to drag us with them.

***

Are they alive? Sini’s thoughts came to us as our second minute inside the darkness of the cave began.

Of course they’re alive. They’re taking them to be slaves, they won’t kill them. Dimal answered the question for her, but from the tone of his thoughts I got the feeling he was voicing his hopes, rather than confidently stating it.

We passed through the mouth of the cave, then a narrow tunnel, and finally we arrived to a wider space, almost like a rugged, stone room, where the rest of the occupants waited.

Dimal was right.

Three civilian women, and a man who wore ranger gear, minus the weapons. Alive. The women had their hands in the same type of shackles as Krissy, but the greenskinned lowlifes had decided to not give the man even the slightest of chances, and had tied him up with at least a mile’s worth of rope. The poor sod couldn’t move a toe. The captured elves were laid out on the hard, wet, uneven cave floor, like pieces of meat in an unplugged, melting fridge. They dumped Krissy right into a puddle of water next to one of the women. She landed with a thud, and a barrage of of her curses echoed in my mind. I supposed being a lady didn’t count for much in a situation like this.

The orks were standing or sitting around, eating and making noises — presumably chatting — leaving the guarding of their prisoners to their own elves. By the look of it, neither the orks nor the elves had trouble seeing in the almost complete darkness, because none of them seemed to have thought it necessary to light a torch or a lantern, or something to provide some light.

I could see relatively well in the dark, probably better than either orks or elves, but at the little light that managed to seep in, I couldn’t determine the colour of the captive ranger’s cape, and therefore which ranger regiment he belonged to. Krissy probably couldn’t see anything at all, having inferior human eyesight, so it fell to me to inform Dimal and Sini about the contents of the cave.

‘So … they’re alive,’ I began. ‘They are either sleeping or unconscious, or just dead tired, but they’re all breathing. Six of the green fucks, and two elven slaves. That’s about it.’

Listen, Spirit-man, can you kill them? All of them? And get our people back? Sini asked, or pleaded, I wasn’t sure.

Dimal chided her immediately.

Not the plan, Sini, not the plan. The ship. That’s the plan. He said to her through the voice-chat, but I imagined he said it to us as well, as the two of them were probably right next to each other up on the cliff-top.

It’s not too late, Dimal. Do we have to risk losing those people for something that might not work at all? Let’s save the people we can right now. Let the Navy deal with the ship. It’s their job. Sini argued, using the voice-chat intentionally, so we could hear her, too. Probably.

Without modern communication equipment like radios, ranger teams had a lot of autonomy, and I liked their ability to make important decisions on the spot without much oversight from the higher-ups. Teams were given overall objectives, and it was up to the team leaders to decide how to best achieve those objectives. But right now, one of the team leaders were having second thoughts, and since both of them were scout-master second rank, I wasn’t sure whose word would be final. I was a hundred percent certain runners were on the way to inform that aide of what was going on, but the fact was that it was Krissy and I who were in a position to actually make a decision and do anything.

‘Krissy, what do you think?’ I asked Krissy, knowing everyone on the voice-chat could hear us.

I think the ship is the better choice. She said, the disdain for the marauders evident in her tone.

Well, whatever hell you’re going to give them, you’ll be giving it very soon. Arde chimed in all of a sudden. I can see a ship.

They gave you the spyglass? Krissy asked, amused.

They did. Arde said, sounding proud of himself.

As if on cue, one of the orks grunted something to one of the slave-elves, and the guy stood up and left the cave for a regular scanning of the horizon. Arde was right. It was now or never.

That kind of settles it, doesn’t it? I said.

Ship? Dimal asked.

Ship. Krissy and I replied together.

Damn! You’d better make this work. Sini grumbled through the voice-chat, her thoughts filled to the brim with trepidation, and just a pinch of hope.

‘You can count on it,’ I said with all the confidence in the world.