Death Or Fortune (53 page)

     "Tell
me son, what is it that bothers you?"

     “Those men
were trained soldiers. They killed ten of my brothers, even more hurt.
 All of them were dressed the same." Stone Tongue spit on the ground
near the elf.

     "They
were from the nation of Arcadia.  Do not worry about it, they are nothing
compared to you.  It was expected.  If mistakes were made, learn from
them do not dwell on it.  That will only cause you to doubt yourself
later.  This will make you and your brothers stronger.  Now, return
to your men." Stone Tongue thought of his words the entire trip back to
the camp.  While at first it gave him some comfort, something about it
bothered him.  Something he could not put his finger on at first.  Later
that night while trying to get some sleep, it hit him like a tree falling in
the forest.  Argon knew there were skilled warriors coming with the elf
and yet did not tell anyone.  While it was true that he told Stone Tongue
to expect an escort, he didn't say anything about trained fighters.  For
the next week, Stone Tongue thought of nothing else besides that one
revelation.

     As time
went by, Stone Tongue forgot about the humans from over the sea.  He was
more worried about escaping slaves and wondering why none of his men were
selected to go out on the hunt for the humans who were still free.  When
he and his men were not at the farm, they trained and trained hard.  Stone
Tongue pushed his men to be the best, wanting nothing more than another chance
to prove his self.  He was starting to fear that he was never going to get
that chance.  He watched as patrols were assigned to head south, to
continue the hunt for the humans who seemed to have all disappeared.
 Argon, their leader in all of this had not been seen by Stone Tongue
since the elf was delivered to him.  Months had passed and Stone Tongue
had started to wonder if they were ever going to leave the island.  The
store house near the ship yards was filled with food from the farms.  They
had well over a hundred ships ready between the ones they had built and the
ones they had captured on the open sea.  On the final night of his life,
he slammed his fist down on his pallet and screamed "What are we waiting
for?"

     While
Stone Tongue was a strong Orc, he was ashamed that his stomach often betrayed
him. While he did not mind the taste of human flesh, he had in fact started to
like it but it did not always agree with him.  He also did not care for
the rations they were given.  He was an Orc, he wanted bloody meat, eating
fruit and other things grown in the earth did not settle well with him.
 Feeling his dinner betray his body once again with a rumble in his gut,
Stone Tongue went in search of one of the human out houses.  On his way
out of the tent he saw one of his men, having his way with one of the slave
women.  Groak was a good Orc but when Stone Tongue saw the woman he was
with; it started to anger him.  He had seen Groak with this woman before,
many times.  He would tie her down and have his way.  Which was just
fine with Stone Tongue, yet why the same woman every time?  Every Orc was
oblivious to the screams of the human as it was almost a nightly ritual now.
 The longer he saw Groak with that woman, the more irritated he became.

    
"Groak!" he roared, "Put that whore away, we leave at first
light." Groak looked up at his commander, bared his teeth and growled at
Stone Tongue like a dog with a bone.

    
"Woman, mine. You go." Stone Tongue felt calmness come over him, one
that he did not understand.  His enraged bowels would wait for this.
 Stone Tongue took three steps towards Groak and his human play thing.
 After the first step, his massive arm reached up and removed the sword
from his back.  With the second step, he turned just slightly to the side,
letting the weapon hang low, its point towards the ground.  With the third
step, every Orc in the tent could hear the weapon cutting a path up through the
air.  Stone Tongue was silent as his blade passed through the neck of
Groak.  The slave woman who had stared on in silent horror of the
advancing Orc with a weapon in its hand had started to scream again.  By
the time Groak's head rolled off the human woman and on to the floor, Stone
Tongue had returned his weapon to its place.

    
"This!" Stone Tongue roared at the rest of the men in the massive
tent. "This is why we are never chosen for anything anymore.  You are
all weak, you are not worthy of the glory that comes to those who hunt.
 This is why we are stuck on this farm. You are soft and good for nothing
more than watching these human dogs tend to the garden. You use your human play
things and drink your human wine.  This ends now! I will break you all or
you will remember that we are Orcs.  We are not worthy of the glory the
master shares with others.  Pray that you die before the sun comes up
because if you do not, I may kill you all myself."  Stone Tongue
stood and waited for the challenge to come.  Wanted someone to challenge
him, wanted someone to prove him wrong.  When one did not come he roared
for someone to clean up the mess he had just made and stormed out of the tent.
 This ritual was repeated twice more in the other tents where his men were
sleeping.  Each time, Stone Tongue was angered even more that a challenge
did not come.

     On his way
to the outhouse, Stone Tongue stopped at the slave pens and looked at the
guards on the towers.  None of them dared say a word to their commander as
they could hear everything that was shouted from the tents. "If one more
Orc comes to fetch himself a slave for the night, you shoot at him until your
quiver is empty, do you understand me!" The only answer he got was a rough
grunt.  The Orcs under the command of Stone Tongue had seen him act like
this before. They knew that they were in for a long day the next day.  They
watched as he stomped off, wondering if they could get away with filling his
back with arrows and not draw the wrath of the dark one.  Had they watched
him longer, they might have seen their own doom approaching under the cover of
darkness.  Instead they just turned away, watching the slaves sleep off
the previous day’s labor.

     Stone
Tongue hated using the human’s waste houses.  They were all too small for
his massive frame to fit into with any comfort.  The pain in Stone Tongues
gut was slow to ease and when he thought he saw something pass in front of the
outhouse he froze.  Holding his breath he closed his eyes and listened.
 He thought for sure he could hear a small human laughing.  Stone
Tongue shook his head and started to listen again.  Thinking it must have
been his imagination, he went back to trying to ease his discomfort.  It
was a long time coming.  Putting his hands out and over his head, pressing
on the walls Stone Tongue thought about having his men building a new waste
house, one an Orc could take pride in.  As he started to stand he thought
that if they were back at the farm the following week, he would make the men do
just that.  It wasn't until Stone Tongue tried to open the door to the
small waste house that he started to think something was very wrong.  It
would not open.

     Early
after the Orcs had started using the slaves to work the farm they sometimes had
to deal with disobedient humans.  Stone Tongue figured if they killed all
the humans that caused them problems, there wouldn't be any left to work the
fields.  He had braces put on the front of the outhouses so he could bar a
human inside should they cause problems that did not warrant a quick death.
 He found that between the toxic smell and the heat during the day, once a
human went in there, it wasn't something they had to do again.  Looking
through the small spaces between the wood in the door told him that he was now
barred inside.  Looking past the hard wood plank now keeping him inside he
looked out to see if he could tell who had done such a thing.  Pressing
his face all the way against the door he looked out, as he felt his jagged
teeth scraping against the door, his frustration continued to mount.  It
was clear in his mind that one of his men had done this to him.  It was
clear to him as he started to pound on the door that whoever had done it was
going to die.

     "Let
me out of here coward!!" he shouted at the door as he continued to pound
on it.  The space was so confined that he could not even get a good swing
at the door to break it open.  As dust and other matter filtered down from
the roof above his head, he became even more enraged. When Stone Tongue looked
up, he thought he might have a better way. Reaching up, he pushed on the planks
that were overhead.  As he felt it give way, a grim smile broke out on his
face. Until the Orcs came along, the out houses were not built to keep people
inside.  With a pair of quick strikes, the wooden plank over his head
broke in half.  The sound of snapping wood did more than give him a chance
at freedom.  It also prolonged the life of his archers around the slave
pen.  The sound of breaking wood filled the air as Stone Tongue continued
to rip apart the roof.   When most of the cover was gone, he pulled
himself out of the waste house and jumped down to the ground below.
 Pulling his sword from his back, the orc had murder on his mind.
 His first stop was the guard towers at the slave pens.

     "You
up there!" he shouted from the ground below while starting to make his way
up the ladder.  When Stone Tongue saw the face look down at him he asked
"Who did that to me, who dare lock me in?"

     "I, I
don't know sir." the scared Orc stammered at his commander.

    
"LIES!" he shouted. As he pulled himself up level with the guard on
the tower he asked again. "Who was it, tell me now." The guard on the
tower continued to stutter and stammer. "You are worthless!" It was
then that Stone Tongue killed the second of his men that night.  Ramming
the tip of his two handed sword into the gut of the clueless Orc. "Your
loyalty to a coward cost you your worthless life." As Stone Tongue ripped
the blade from the body it went tumbling down on the platform.  Orc blood
began to run down in waves, falling between the spaces in the wood.
 Raining down on a very, very disgusted halfling.  The very same one
who, not long before, could not control his laughing.

     "Sir!
I see a light coming from the north road!" shouted one of the other guards
who was very grateful that Stone Tongue did not climb his tower first.
 Stone Tongue whipped his head around to see what the guard was talking
about.  A single beam of pure white light was moving down the road towards
the camp at a quick pace.  By that single light, Stone Tongue saw flashes
of white and what could have only been reflections off of armor.

     "We
are being attacked! You cowards stay here with the slaves.  Make sure none
of them escape, kill them all if you have to."  Stone Tongue jumped
from the tower and hit the ground running.  By the time Stone Tongue
entered the first of his companies’ tents, the remaining three guards around
the slave pen were dead. "Get up you worthless dogs! We are being
attacked!" Stone Tongue was in a rage.  The patrol guards who were on
watch should have sent up a signal before now.  He knew they were dead, of
this he was sure.  If not he would kill them himself when this was all
over he thought.  By the time Stone Tongue got to his tent, the Orcs
inside were already moving.  He had to get his horn of command from his
gear, nothing else mattered to him.  If he could not sound the horn, his
men would be lost.  He spared a moment to look at the slave woman still
under Groak's body.  Her entire face was covered in black blood.  He
was for one small moment captured by the look in her eye.  While her
screams had stopped, there was still terror there.  It was only the sounds
of battle that made him look away from her.

     With his
signal horn in hand, Stone Tongue raced from his tent; only pausing inside long
enough to stab the slave woman under Groak’s body on the way out.  She
would have been worthless after that as it was.  As Stone Tongue looked
out at his men, it was much as he expected.  His troops were scattered, in
a panic and more than half were drunk.  He rushed forward, sounding his
horn, shouting for them to get into formation. "Half diamond! Half
diamond!  On me!" he shouted between sounding the horn.  Stone
Tongue was pleased to see that his months of hard training had some effect on
them.  The ones who were already fighting ran from their human enemy, some
paid for it with their lives but there was still a good twenty Orcs left as
they started to form wedge shaped ranks around him. "Shields ready!"
Stone Tongue started to think they might have a chance as in one movement the
remaining Orcs all lifted their shields together, forming a solid wall down
each side of the formation.

     Before
sounding the order to charge, Stone Tongue looked ahead of him towards the
humans who had attacked him. It was then that he remembered the encounter from
months before.  Once again he saw the same men, in the same uniforms.
 Only two of them were different, one held a gleaming claymore and white
robes.  The other only wore plate armor and a blood red cloak. Stone
Tongue ran up to the point of his formation, pointing to the two humans.
 "There, those are the leaders, divide them, do you understand."
 He had no response from his troops, he did not expect any other than for
them to follow his orders.  As he sounded the horn for the final time, he
told them to advance. "Divide, then attack, push them apart!" Stone
Tongue trotted forward with the last of his company, sure that they would taste
victory.  As they approached the human formation, a blinding light washed
over the ranks.  Stone Tongue tried to shield his eyes but it did no good.
 He was blinded even if only for a moment.  He could hear the crash
of shields on shields but never expected to see what he did when he could see
again.

     Orcs were
being slaughtered all around him.  Not just in front but from behind as
well.  He saw a man in blue armor with a dwarf attacking from the right
flank; to his left he saw what appeared to be a pair of Halflings.  He
shook his head, telling himself that this wasn't the way it was supposed to
happen.  He had failed his company, he had failed his clan and he had
failed the dark one. "Argon!" he said to no one at all.  "I
have to warn him."  Stone Tongue knew they were doomed, he had to
escape.  With a quick look around, he knew he had to run but which way.
 The human forces were ahead of him, he did not like the look of the man
in blue armor to his right.  With a single grunt, Stone Tongue knew which
way he had to run; right towards the Halflings who were fighting a pair of his
men.  Stone Tongue could feel the humans closing on him, he knew it was
time.  He put his head down and started to run.  Stone Tongue felt
bad about leaving his men to die but this was more important.  He had to
warn Argon, he had to warn his father.  As he ran towards the Halflings,
he took his sword in hand, wanting to at least take one of them out.
 Wanting to give his men a fighting chance, give his self a fighting
chance to slow down the humans that were bound to chase after him.  He
focused on this target and the world began to slow.