The Game of Fates (70 page)

Durik
himself was covered to the elbows in orc blood, and his spear was awash in the
foul stuff.  His face was a stoic mask, almost sad, yet at the same time
fiercely focused and alert.  “Aye, Manebrow,” he nodded.  “How many did we
lose?”

Manebrow’s
sense of responsibility was pricked.  The exuberance of the moment passed from
his face and he looked down at himself for a moment as if to refocus.  “Aye,
sire.  Let me get to it.  I think we’ve had a hard day of it already,” he said
as he shook blood and bits of flesh from the head of his axe.  “But those orcs
have had a worse morning than us, I’d wager,” he added, a smile creasing his
blood-smeared features.

“Sire!”
a familiar voice called.  Durik turned to look, steeling himself for the news
that this battle would bring.  “Durik,” his uncle Drok was calling.  “Thank the
Fates for that charge!  You were amazing!  Long shall the story of that charge
be told to our young warriors to give them something to live up to!”  Drok
grasped his nephew’s hand and slapped him on the shoulder.

Despite
seeing the dead and wounded of his warrior group lying about him in the tree
line, Durik smiled and accepted the praise with a mere ‘thank you.’

“Uncle,”
he asked calmly, “are you up to leading a scouting party?  We need to know
what’s coming at us.  They caught us before our trap was set this time.  We
need to seize the initiative back from them if we’re going to win our part of
this battle.”

Drok
thumped Durik’s shoulder one more time, beaming at the kobold he had raised as
a son.  “After seeing you ride into battle like that, and turning the tide
back, I could do anything.  Your father would be so proud of you this day!”

Durik
had never been one to bask in glory, and the urgency of the moment had strained
him almost to the breaking point.  “Drok, I need you to gather a scouting party
now!  I don’t want to tell my father about today for a long time, but if the
orcs catch us unaware again, we’ll likely both have the opportunity to tell him
very soon!”

“Alright! 
Alright!” Drok backed up.  “You can’t fault me a moment of pride after such a
glorious morning as this.”

Durik
just looked straight at his uncle as if to hurry his departure.

“Alright. 
I’m off.  I’ll send back a messenger to give news of the orcs’ approach.  Where
shall I send him?” Drok asked.

“Send
him to the waterfall,” Durik said calmly.

Drok’s
brows raised.  “Aha!  Time for the big one, then!”  Turning himself about, Drok
went about gathering his team and a couple of warriors whose elite warrior had
been killed.  Within a few short moments he and his now larger team had mounted
and taken off at a run across the meadow.

Turning
his gaze back down the line, Manebrow caught Durik’s gaze from the other end of
their battle position in the tree line.  The veteran warrior had both hands
raised with nine fingers up.  He made a motion like slitting his throat, giving
Durik an understanding of the full cost of being caught unaware.

Opening
his belt pouch, Durik took the Kale Stone in hand and, reaching out in his
heart to the powers that had seen him this far, he set about taking care of the
many who had fallen to the ground with severe wounds from the axes and swords
of their orc enemies.

“Hold
him still!” Manebrow commanded.

“But
chief, he’s not long for this world,” the elite warrior said as he shook his
head.  “No one survives a wound like that.  Let him thrash out his last few
moments.”

Manebrow
grabbed him by the arm and pulled him down to the wounded warrior’s feet.  “Not
today, Pintor,” Manebrow said emphatically.  “See, here comes Durik with the
Kale Stone.”

“He
has what?” Pintor asked as he held the wounded warrior’s feet while Manebrow
tried to hold the gash in the warrior’s neck closed with both hands.

“Manebrow,”
Durik’s calm voice was almost surreal in the combination of deathly drama and
dawn mists.  “Hold his head, Manebrow.”

Kneeling
next to the grievous wound as it again began to bubble up blood, Durik placed
his hand over the warrior’s wild, fearful eyes, calming the dying warrior as
surely as he would a flighty animal.  Then, with the Kale Stone in his other
hand, Durik placed his hand over the wound.  Instantly a deep calm came over
the little group of warriors who had assembled around their dying companion. 
The calm grew with the light that began to emanate from Durik’s hands.

In
a moment of clear, pure light, the wounded warrior began to breathe again. 
Then, as Durik withdrew his hand, the circle of warriors gasped.  The warrior’s
neck was whole, without so much as a scar or a torn scale to mark the drama of
the morning.

This
was not the only warrior whose wounds were major enough to need immediate
tending.  With the Kale Stone in hand, Durik cared for several others.  Soon,
all the Wolf Riders, save Manebrow, had fallen to their knees.

Standing
up from where he had healed a less gravely injured warrior, Durik looked about
at his fellow Kales; friends, neighbors, and now warriors of his warrior group.

“My
people.  Do not worship me,” he said, his voice calm, yet full of the lingering
power that had channeled through him for the benefit of his fellow warriors. 
“I am but a kobold like yourselves.”

“But
you have the Kale Stone!  You are chosen of the Kale Stone!” one of his
warriors cried out.  “Are you sent to save us in our day of need?”

Durik
looked about at the earnest gazes of his warriors; tough, wizened old warriors
who just yesterday had had a hard time accepting this young leader, middle-aged
warriors who were the mainstay of his rather skilled warrior group, and even
younger warriors, some of whom had been envious at having one so young put over
them.  Now, all of them were looking at him as though he had just stepped out
of some legend from their childhood.

“My
people,” Durik spoke calmly.  “I have been chosen to be a paladin; one who has
power from The Sorcerer to heal and to harm, with the special charge to restore
the Kale Stone to our gen in this, our time of need.”

Durik
looked about himself into the expectant eyes of his warriors.  “I am not the
chosen Oracle of Kale, and I have not yet been commanded to give the stone to
that oracle.  I hold the stone until I am told otherwise.”

He
could see that several around the circle were struggling to comprehend what he
was telling them.  Honestly, he barely understood it himself.

“Sire,
will the Kale Stone save us from the orcs and from the ants that have come to
destroy us?” the elite warrior Pintor asked the question that all of them had.

Durik
smiled.  “I cannot see the end of this conflict, but this I know; ours is to
fight with all that we have and all that we are.  The Kale Stone is a power,
given by The Sorcerer to our first ancestor Kale.  And it has been returned to
us, His children, in our time of greatest need by a being of great power, who
is called Morgra. 

“I
do not believe that it will do our work for us, but rather that it will help us
do our work.  But I am confident that, with the power of the Kale Stone on our
side, and more importantly with the power of our unity as a people, that we can
overcome the challenges of this day.

“Now,”
Durik raised his hands.  “Let us be up and see this conflict through.”  All
around him the Wolf Riders began to stand, and Durik turned to Firepaw,
preparing to mount up.

“Sire,”
Pintor asked, “will you claim lordship of our gen?”

Durik
stopped and turned slowly around.  All around him the eyes of his warriors
looked at him expectantly.  Among them were a handful whom he had just saved
from certain death by the power the Kale Stone.  Beside him, Manebrow stood
with a blank expression on his face.

“Because
we would support you, sire,” Pintor continued.  All around the circle voices
were raised in agreement.  It seemed as though a greater hope had been lit in
their eyes with the revealing of the Kale Stone, yet now it seemed as if that
hope was being turned to ambition.

Durik
shook his head slowly.  His answer was calm, yet clear and firm.  “My brothers
in arms, I fight not to take power, but to preserve it for he whose right it is
to rule.  Let no one mistake what I say here this day.  I am flattered by your
question, and your support, but I have not been given power for my own
purposes, but to serve our gen.  I will hold true to my charge as a servant of
The Sorcerer.”

“Sire,”
another of the elite warriors spoke up.  “Will you give the Kale Stone to Lord
Karthan?”

Durik
mounted up and turned to the rest of the group, who still stood looking at him
expectantly.  “If that is Morgra’s will, then yes.”

“And
if not?” the warrior asked as the rest of the warrior group began to mount up.

“Then
we shall have a new lord,” Durik answered as he kicked Firepaw in the ribs. 
Soon the entire warrior group had followed him out of the meadow and back along
the trail, their nine dead warriors and the few wolves who had been killed left
behind in hastily covered holes.

The
time would come for the proper burial of these nine; brothers, cousins, fathers
and lifemates all.  But for now, the dead would have to see to themselves.

The
stench of orc lay heavy in the early morning air as Drok lay still in the underbrush. 
In the rocky streambed below his hiding place the orc scouts had already passed
and the main body of the orc horde now marched along at a fast pace, their
column expanding to fill the width of what was clearly the easiest road in this
underbrush-choked part of the valley.  Interspersed among them were a number of
ogres, their bulky frames towering far above the orcs, almost to the level of
the rise where Drok and his team were hiding.

Drok
turned over and looked back across the small meadow to one of his warriors
hiding in the tree line beyond.  Drok gave the signal for ‘enemy scouts,’ then
‘enemy main force’ and the young warrior mounted his wolf and took off at a run
down the deer trail they had used to pace the orcs thus far.  Grabbing the kobold
next to him, he whispered in his ear.  “Get the team ready to move.  I’ll
follow after I get a count.”

The
warrior started to crawl back when Drok grabbed his arm and pointed at his
face.

“Tell
them to keep quiet, and don’t leave without me!” he whispered.

Standing
around the bend in the river, Durik’s tail swished nervously.  It was one thing
to attack an enemy, or be attacked by an enemy.  It was another thing all
together to act as bait for a determined enemy, one they’d already poked and
prodded to a near frenzy!

Around
him in the muddy streambed the five volunteers standing next to their mounts
were having a hard time acting casually.  Firepaw and the other mounts were
feeling it as well.  Their only consolation in acting as bait was the presence of
half of the group with their mounts all lounging about just upstream from them,
in an attempt to look too burdened by wounded and dying companions to keep
moving.  It wasn’t much of a deception, but then orcs weren’t that hard to
deceive.  If he could just get the orcs to attack in strength…