The Game of Fates (41 page)

“One
of you at a time!” he stated firmly.

“Sire,
Morigar sent us to tell Lord Krall that he’s off to hire a dragon,” Gormanor
blurted out.

In
all his long life, Krebbekar had never heard anything quite like what Gormanor
just said.  And for however much longer his life would be, Krebbekar would
always remember this moment.  In fact, once the events of the coming days were
safely ensconced in the past, it would become one of his favorite stories to tell,
and it would be repeated hundreds of times.  Later on, when money became common
in the Krall Gen, and fermented Wallaya root broth was being sold at the Hall
of Trade, that story would often serve to get him a free drink.

It
did, however, take a while, and it took repeating it twice for Krebbekar to
actually begin to fully grasp the whole scope of what Gormanor’s statement
entailed.  Finally, after chewing on the implications of the entire situation
for a while, Krebbekar decided what to do.

“Both
of you go and give warning to Lord Krall about the orc horde, where the ants
are located, and what Morigar plans to do, how he plans to do it, and who he
plans to do it with.”

“What
are you going to do, sire?” Gormanor asked meekly.

Krebbekar
patted the neck of his riding dog and scratched behind its ears.  “Whether or
not he’s doing something terribly stupid, he’s still my charge.  I will go
after him.”

“Yes,
sire,” they both said, looking guiltily at the ground.

“He
didn’t actually send you, did he?  You refused to go do something so stupid,
isn’t that right?” Krebbekar guessed it.

Slowly,
the pair of scouts nodded.

“You
know we were charged with protecting the fool.  Surely by now you knew the
greatest danger to Morigar is Morigar.”

Again,
the pair of scouts nodded slowly.

Krebbekar
just sighed and shook his head.  He should never have trusted the young fool,
not even for a day, not even until dawn.  Slowly, for his aching joints’ sake,
Krebbekar started back up the mountain.

“So,
what is your name anyway?” Morigar asked the leader of the kobold mercenaries
as he rode along perched on the back of his riding dog.  Behind the pair the
packdog Minotaur walked along without anyone to hold his reins.

Trudging
along beside Lord Krall’s son, the mercenary leader was certainly dustier and
dirtier, and less in the mood for conversation.  But he would oblige his
employer for now.

“I
call me Kijik Gen Lider Nipnip,” the northerner said proudly.

Morigar
suppressed a laugh at what he considered a rather silly name.

“Well,
Nipnip,” Morigar said in a tone that was less than complementary, “How loyal do
you feel your warriors are, and how capable do you feel they are?  Are they up
to the challenge of facing a dragon?”

Nipnip
looked back at the straggly line of kobolds, each small group in the line
composed of a mercenary or two and a few slaves.  The brisk walk down the Wall
(the mountain that Morigar called the Chop) and along the main north-south road
through the valley had done much to shake the effects of the orc brew and had
beat the slaves with their heavy burdens down a bit, making them more docile
and easier to herd.  His warriors, all twenty of them since the Kale Gen
warriors had killed two of them and taken Mahtu captive, hadn’t been allowed by
the two Krall Gen scouts to take their chew weed with them and they were in a
rather bad mood because of it.

“They
follow me for all time,” he said.  “…and they follow you,” he said, deferring
to his employer in his habitual style.  “They good warriors.”  He was proud of
his warriors and knew they would follow him… as long as they weren’t asked to
do anything stupid.  He felt comfortable in his leadership and knew that
Morigar was no challenge to his authority. 

He’d
lied to his warriors about why they were going to the Hall of the Mountain
King, of course.  He wasn’t about to tell them it was to talk to the dragons. 
Instead, he told them that the dragons were away (he hoped that was true) and
that Morigar wanted to go get some artifact or another from there.

He
also told them that, if things went wrong, they should be ready to kill the
fool.

In
fact, he was planning on killing him.  After all, the dragons had enough
treasure without this Krall gen fool giving them more.  He was certain that he
and his warriors could put it to better use.

“What’s
this road called that we’re on?” Morigar asked.  He had been surprised to see
the ancient cobblestones of the road poking through the dirt for the last
several hundred paces.

“Is
Guard’s Path.  Is dwarf road this piece.  Very old,” Nipnip explained.  Not far
to their front and off to the left side of the road was a massive boulder in
the shape of a bird’s head. 

“And
big rock is name Birdstone.  At Birdstone we rest.”

Morigar
looked back over his shoulder.  He could see no one coming down the Chop after
them yet.

“Alright,
but not for too long.  The orcs have already passed under the mountain, so we
need to get going.  We’ve a war to win, after all.”

Nipnip
just grunted his acknowledgement.  The sun was about to rise, and they had been
up since around noon the day before, having slept in after a night of revelry. 
He didn’t want to press on right now, but he had to keep up appearances.

Just
then, an idea came to him.

“I
tink slaves need sleep,” he said.

“I
think they are slaves and will do what we tell them to do,” Morigar countered.

“Ah,
is too bad.  Pretty slaves rest with yoo, maybe,” Nipnip seemed almost sorry
that his employer would miss the revelry.

The
pair went along in silence for a while with Morigar looking back every once in
a while with a lecherous eye at the trail of slaves, and once more up the
mountain behind them to ensure he wasn’t being followed.  Almost on cue,
Morigar broke the silence.

“Well,
perhaps we can stop for just a few hours.”

Krebbekar’s
helmet had long since found itself lashed by the chin strap to the saddle of
his riding dog.  The intricately embossed pattern of Lord Krall’s tree symbol
was visible from his leather armor strapped to the back of the poor beast as
well.  Now, as he was almost to the top of the Chop, he stopped to unbuckle his
sword from where its scabbard had been banging against the flank of the dog,
pausing long enough to wring sweat from his flaxen shirt before buckling the
hot leather belt on.

Despite
the fact that it was the third watch on a cool spring night, the exertion of
the past couple of days had just about drained Krebbekar of all his strength. 
Now, on his second trip up the mountain in the past day, it was all he could do
to put one foot in front of the other.

“If
I ever catch that overgrown whelp, I’m gonna kill him,” he muttered to
himself.  His attitude, which was normally rather calm and focused, had grown
fierce with the exhaustion of the effort of both climbing the Chop and prodding
his riding dog along as well.

Finally,
in what was a rather anti-climactic moment, he reached the top and found it
deserted.  His dog immediately went to its haunches and took much prodding to
get it to move.

“Come
on girl, not much further to go,” he said in a level, frustrated voice.

Slowly
the dog came to its feet and reluctantly followed him across the span of
Demon’s Bridge and to the far side of the pass.  There, Krebbekar found a
good-sized rock and, after putting his blanket down to pad his aching bottom,
he sat down and began to scan the northern valley for any sign of his lost
charge.

“You
know, Nipnip, I am a son of the Lord of the Krall Gen,” Morigar was saying as
he lounged around in the knee-high spring grass, watching the mercenaries prod
the slaves to wake them up.  “And if we do this thing right, we could both be
very powerful in my gen.”

Nipnip
had heard things like this before.  He didn’t care much for power.  All he
wanted was plenty of money.  After all, with money one could live…
comfortably.  With lots of money, one could live extravagantly.  That was how
he liked it.

“I
no need power.  I want money… no thing more.”

Morigar
had found his hook.  “You know, Nipnip, I could ask this dragon to kill my
father and my older brother too.  That would make me lord of my gen.” 

He
paused to look at Nipnip to see if his words were having any effect.  It didn’t
appear so.  He leaned closer to Nipnip. 

“And
I could make you my minister.” 

Still
no effect. 

“You
know, the minister is the person in charge of all the money in the gen.”

Nipnip
sat up.  “He do money?”

“
You
do money, my friend,” Morigar corrected.

“Hmm… 
Maybe we hire dragon… to do that,” Nipnip mused.  And maybe they wouldn’t kill
the fool.  After all, fools could be manipulated.

Looking
down into the bowl of the valley from his vantage point in the foothills of the
northern mountains that formed the northern rim of the northern valley, Arren
e-Arnor caught sight again of the small group of what had to be mostly kobolds
that had been camped at the large bird-shaped stone.  It had been hours now
since they had arisen and resumed their forced march.  Now, in the light of
mid-day, as they appeared over yet another rise on the trail between the bird
rock and the Hall of the Mountain King, Arren could see that most of the group
were porters of some sort, bent under the weight of whatever it was they were
carrying.

Far
behind them now, in fact not even to the bottom of the Chop yet, was that lone
kobold and his riding dog that Arren had seen come over the pass with the dawn,
the same one that had seemingly spurred the much larger group into action with
his appearance over the Chop.  Though Arren didn’t know their relationship, he
could see that whoever was in charge of the large group didn’t appear to want
to wait for the lone rider.