The Game of Fates (32 page)

“My
Lord Krulak, Servant of the First Son,” Jominai stalled an extra moment by
using the longer title as he desperately struggled to gather his thoughts. 
“Knowing that Krulak, your son and heir, will be leading our gen’s levy of one
hundred from the warrior groups, I ask only for four elite warriors to provide
guidance to the leaders of the other four gens’ contingents, a small staff team
of five warriors, and six messengers to provide communications between us.” 
Jominai paused for a moment.  “I would additionally ask, however, that my
contingent be equipped with riding wolves for all and packdogs as necessary, to
facilitate communications and ensure we can remain independent of the
degenerate gens’ larders.”

Beside
the young leader Marbo nodded his approval.  The young one had not buckled
under the pressure of meeting with the Lord of the Gen.  There might be hope
for this young one yet.

Lord
Krulak, considering the pair for a moment, nodded his agreement.  “Very well. 
Chamberlain, see to their needs as stated,” he directed an old, wizened-looking
kobold who sat on his right hand.  Lord Krulak thought for a moment, then added
a bit more.  “My son is taking a handful of oracles with him, and covenant
magic users as well.  I think it only good for our relations with our sister
gens to send an oracle, and a covenant mage with Jominai’s Company as well.”

Jominai
had felt the burden of leadership rather heavily already, but adding an oracle
of the ancients—one gifted by the ancestors with power to heal and protect—as
well as a covenant magic user—one who had mastered the draconic incantations
that summoned the minor powers The Sorcerer had gifted to their
gen—significantly increased the level of stress Jominai was feeling.  His
natural meekness threatened to cave in the bravado he was trying to affect.

Turning
his attention back to the pair, Lord Krulak continued, “I expect frequent
reports, and I expect you to follow my son’s lead.  Remember that, as leader of
the Kobold Gen’s contingent, my son Krulak is overall leader of the levy from
the gens.  You will maneuver as he sees fit to direct.  Your troops are
auxiliaries to his own.  I would expect that most of your challenges will be in
keeping the actions of your disparate group of levies coordinated, and in
ensuring they follow the lead of my son.”

“Aye,
Lord,” Marbo nodded.  “I understand well the challenges we’ll have with this
lot.  We’ll handle them well, together.”

Accepting
Marbo’s words at face value, Lord Krulak nodded his approval and dismissed the
pair with his blessing.

Though
the task was daunting, after all it was his first real leadership experience,
and despite the fact that he was to lead levies from the degenerate gens, a
task that many in the Kobold Gen would consider with disdain, Jominai’s heart
leapt at the adventure that awaited him.  He’d always felt the desire to lead
warriors in combat, to have the opportunity to write his own chapter in the
annuls of the gen; and now here he was, about to embark on his first grand
adventure.  Despite the excitement he felt, which filled him almost to
overflowing, the young adventurer class was barely able to hold his tongue as
the pair walked away from their meeting with the lord of their gen.

Beside
the young warrior leader Marbo did feel some semblance of excitement, but his
was much more tempered by the realities of what lay ahead for them: the blood,
the death, the arguments with leaders from the other gens, the headaches of
feeding and supplying such a disparate force, and probably the worst of all was
the fact that they were going to be working for orcs. 

Why
the leaders of the gens didn’t stand up to this small orc army Marbo just
didn’t know.  After all, if they actually mustered all the warriors here in the
valley they could raise a levy of many thousands.  Add to that the minor battle
magic that still remained among the covenant mages of his gen, and they likely
stood a good chance. 

Marbo
shook his head.  It was a naïve thought, he knew.  After all, though they had a
number of sorcerers among them, a couple of which were more powerful even than
his gen’s several mages, the degenerate gens didn’t have the steel weapons and
expert training, nor the discipline that the Kobold Gen had.  They would be
routed with the first ogre charge, if not the first orc charge.  It was a sad state
of affairs the gens of the Valley of the Mountain King found themselves in,
that was certain, but Marbo had hope that someday, somehow, it would change.

Arren
e-Arnor sat looking pensively out over the valley from his vantage point just
above the lip of the canyon where the passage to the southern valley lay.  He
had carefully exited the passage under the mountain, having heard ogres there
not long before, but there were no signs of anything untoward lingering in the
area.

Now,
as the elf warrior sat contemplating the scene before him from his crack in the
rocks, he remembered the description given to him of the Hall of the Mountain
King.

It
is a short, flat mountain that is hollow inside and open to the sky.  It has a
small gateway on the east side, which leads to an open courtyard that is split
by a deep chasm.  On the far side of the chasm, the external part of the Hall
of the Mountain King lies.  The outer constructions, all of which lie inside
the hollow mountain which acts as a rather high wall for the place, are of
stone construction, consisting mostly of towers with arrow-slits in them, and
other such defensible structures.  The central passage down into the halls
themselves is directly accessed through the gatehouse whose drawbridge spans
the chasm.

Such
was the description given to Arren by the head of his chapter of the Council of
Watchers before departing on this quest, which Arren had committed to memory as
was the custom with mission details among those of his order.

There,
on the far side of this northern valley, was a mountain that could easily fit
the external portion of that description, sitting squarely below a much larger
ridge of mountains.  As Arren studied the terrain, he could see an ancient
north-south road which seemed to still be in use by the inhabitants of this
valley, and which led directly to the Chop off to the east.  Much less visible,
but still obvious by the marks it left on the land, was a smaller road that
broke off from the main north-south road, heading east and eventually ending up
at the small, flat mountain. 

Unfortunately,
by the scorch marks and scarred earth, Arren could clearly see that the area
was the hunting grounds of a fire-breathing dragon, most likely a red dragon. 
This too matched what he had read in the journal of a hired man-at-arms who had
accompanied a paladin of his order on a quest to this area perhaps a decade now
in the past. 

Of
course, it took dragons decades to establish a proper lair, only rarely being
present at the beginning, until they moved their treasure there of course, at
which point it was very rare to not find them at home, squatting on their
hoard.  Some of the local kobolds he’d met elsewhere had told him much more,
that in fact there were two dragons now present, an ancient female and her much
younger, much smaller male consort.

Arren
grimaced.  Cursing his luck that the very place he was trying to get to was the
very place these dragons had chosen as their lair, he stood up and began to
make his way down the slope into the northern valley.

Marbo’s
assessment of the levies that the degenerate gens had sent to meet his gen’s
forces had put him in a foul mood, like always.  As the dark-scaled ‘warriors’
stood in their ragged ranks in front of the chief elite warrior, scratching their
bottoms, picking their noses, slapping each other, and in every other way
acting in a manner unbecoming warriors, Marbo was tempted to immediately lay
into them with his intricately carved cedar stick, the mark of his office.

“Alright
you lazy piles of dung!  Attention!” he called out in his best parade-ground
voice.  Hearing the inherent authority in his voice, and for some seeing the
promise of pain from the cedar stick, the rabble that would soon be known as
Jominai’s Company began looking around at each other, wondering what to do. 
Some of the older ones, who had served under Kobold Gen warriors in the past,
snapped to attention with their weapons at the ready, their stiff poses being
mimicked, more or less successfully, by the plethora of young kobolds around
them.

Marbo
almost smiled to himself.  “I am Chief Elite Warrior Marbo,” he called out,
“and you will do whatever I say.”  Many of the younger warriors from the other
four gens looked surprised at this.  One in particular, a rather large whelp
from the Kijik Gen, seemed to have something to prove.

“Yoo
no Kijik!  I do what Kipja say.  He lider from Kijik, no yoo!”  Several other
young ones around the large kobold voiced their support of his statement. 

Standing
in front of them, Kipja, the kobold who had led his fellow Kijik warriors here,
shook his head.  It was a sad truth that the Kobold Gen warriors were the best,
hands down, and that whenever his brother gens tried to lead themselves, it
always seemed to end in disaster.  For their own benefit, the Kobold Gen’s four
sister gens’ warrior leaders had long ago learned to follow the lead of the
Kobold Gen.  Besides… they had magic, and that counted for a lot.

Marbo
was waiting for this outburst.  He walked briskly up to the young bruiser, who
almost seemed to shrink within himself at the grizzled veteran’s approach. 
Upon arriving he thrust his snout directly into the face of the much taller,
much larger kobold.

“What
did you say, fat one?” he spat vehemently, poking the whelp in his soft chest with
a finger from one of his muscular, rock-solid arms for emphasis.  The young
kobold was trembling and almost at the point of tears.

“I
didn’t think so!” Marbo said as he turned and began to storm down the line,
looking for any other hints of the slightest dissent.  After a few moments,
without any support from their individual gen’s leaders, all overt challenges
to Marbo’s authority seemed to melt away like frost before a particularly
fierce sun.  Yes, he would have a few that would get surly later on, once he
started to turn up the heat on them, but a few quick strikes of the stick would
keep those in line.

Stopping
at one end of the front rank, Marbo nodded to himself as he pounded his cedar
stick rhythmically on his palm. 
This gets easier every time.

As
the midday sun began to edge toward the mountains that bordered the northern
valley on the west, the contingent from the Kobold Gen arrived at Jominai’s
small training ground at the northern edge of the Border Hills.  They were an
impressive sight to see.  Resplendent in freshly oiled chain mail armor, with
helmets and spear tips shining in the late afternoon sun, they sat proudly and
with looks of utter confidence on the backs of their wolves.  Though the
handful of covenant mages had no such armor or weapons, their mere presence was
as daunting as the presence of the handful of the oracles of the ancients
riding with them was heartening.