Return of the Dragon (The Dragon's Champion Book 6) (8 page)

“Except this dwarf didn’t spend his life in the dark,”
Al reminded him. “I ran a blacksmith shop, in Buktah. That’s all I wanted out
of life, and I lived it well.” His eyes lost their focus and his face grew long
and sad. “I guess there isn’t any use thinking about going back there now.”

“I suppose not,” Lepkin said.

“My apprentice died defending us,” Al put in. “The
Blacktongues found me and the boy, back when he was stuck in your body.”

Lepkin nodded. Al had already mentioned that shortly
after Lepkin had woken from his coma, but Lepkin didn’t stop the dwarf from
talking about it now.

“He was a good lad,” Al said. A half smile flashed
across his face. “A good man, I mean,” he corrected. He slapped a hand to his
face and leaned back into the sofa. “It’s the quiet ones who surprise us the
most, I think. No one would have called him a warrior by any means. He was a
blacksmith. He had never known anything other than that his whole life. He was
good at it too. He could have made a great smith. Still, never would have
dreamed he would be the one to come out fighting against the Blacktongues.”
Water welled up in his eyes and he turned away from Lepkin.

“I’m sorry,” Lepkin said.

Al nodded and wiped the tears from his face. “Me too,”
he said. “War is an ugly game, isn’t it? It wasn’t bad enough that we were
fighting off warlocks who wanted to make us slaves, but now we have orcs trying
to kick in our doors and take everything from us.”

“They see it as their home,” Lepkin said. “At least,
that is what I choose to believe. Otherwise they are just monsters, blinded by
their lust for blood and conquest.”

Al shook a finger at Lepkin. “That is all they are!
They didn’t live here first, the dwarves did. They came and ruined everything.
They stole what they could and killed whatever crossed their path. They aren’t
retaking their homeland, which is thousands of miles away on a continent
covered in darkness. They should all go out to the sea and jump in, do us all a
favor.”

Lepkin nodded. “Well, I don’t think we are going to be
so lucky.”

Al slapped his left hand to his knee and then pointed
at the map. “And that is why I have taken a look at the map. I plan on sending
those dogs down to Hammenfein as soon as they arrive here. They want to rule in
Hell, and I am happy to send them there.”

Lepkin rose and moved to the map. “I assume you saw
the positions I had marked already?”

Al nodded, but he didn’t get up. He didn’t need to. He
had memorized the map in its entirety. “I am sure your messenger told you, but
I have a number of spears we can put at a few locations. There is a narrow spot
in the chasm if you look about two miles east of the axis due south from
Stonebrook. We could assign some there.”

“I have a catapult there, so they can help defend it,”
Lepkin said.

“Yes, I noted. But why only ten?” Al asked.

“I wasn’t sure when, or if, we would have support.”

Al grumbled something about tall-folk that Lepkin
couldn’t quite hear before jumping
off
the sofa and
coming over to the map. “We can divert some of the recruits we brought. I
assume you have assigned dwarves to mine the stone?”

Lepkin nodded.

“And then what, have you tasked them with building
carts to carry the stone for the catapults?”

Again, Lepkin nodded.

Al grumbled.
“Thought you would.”
He jabbed a finger in Lepkin’s side and then seized the pencil from the table.
“Don’t waste dwarves driving carts that any fool with two hands could do.
Reassign the dwarves to create more catapults. I’ll mark the best locations
here, here, and here. Place two more in each of those three spots. Then, place
one catapult here, here, and another here and here.” Al stepped back and
smiled. “There, I just doubled our fire power, and they are placed at the most
advantageous positions. I’d like to see the orcs bring their bows within range
to cover any of their footmen. It will be a slaughterhouse filled with orcish
brutes!”

Lepkin smiled and held up a finger. “For the first
skirmish, we want to bring them in close,” he said.

Al screwed up his face and shook his head. “No we
don’t. We want to send them running as fast as possible.”

“Hear me out,” Lepkin implored. “We are in the process
of designing camouflage for the catapults. We don’t have the time to completely
disguise them, but enough that we can lure the orcs in just close enough that
running away will be difficult. The last thing I want them to do is spot our
catapults from afar and skirt around the brook and come at us from behind.”

Al shook his head again. “No, the worst thing would be
if they bypassed us altogether.”

“They need food,” Lepkin said. “Winter is coming on
soon and they will want to raid what they can in order to dig in. They will not
want to fall back.”

“Unless they dig in at Ten Forts,” Al said.

“It’s possible, but if they do that, then we can dig
in here as well. The more time we have, the better off we will be.”

Al growled. “And they know that too,” he put in. “So
they will come soon.”

Lepkin gestured to the forest marked on the map. “I
would wager that as soon as the forest is calm again, they will come north.”

“Well then, I suppose it is time for me to find a
pickaxe,” Al said. “I should help my kin.”

Lepkin placed a strong hand on Al’s shoulder. “Do we
have good men with us?” he asked.

Al nodded. “Commander Nials appears to understand what
is going on here. He was reluctant at first, but he agreed to come here even
though it disobeyed orders. He sent a messenger to Drakei Glazei of course, but
he could still lose his job over this.”

Lepkin shook his head. “King Mathias will see the
wisdom in it. You can’t ignore an invasion by the orcs. To do so is to commit
suicide.”

“The officers appear solid as well,” Al put in. “I
made an effort to study them on the march down here. I think we have as good of
men as we could hope for.” He smiled again and then pulled away. “I will rejoin
with my kin and get the new catapults underway. You should go back to sleep.
I’ll tell Commander Nials to wait until tomorrow to call upon you.”

Lepkin shook his head. “That wouldn’t be right. Send
him in at his earliest convenience. He has brought reinforcements, after all.”

Al smiled the sly grin of his. “I know, I just thought
it would be funny to see the look on his face, that’s all. I’ll send him in.”

*****

Lady Arkyn sat in the tall, yellow grasses fifty yards
north of the scorched earth and the burnt skeletons of the once mighty forest.
The wind flew toward the northeast, bringing with it the smell of ash, and the
unyielding heat from the stubborn embers and fires that still burned. In the
last day, the smoke had thinned. Where before it was a black, dense wall of
billowing heat and death, now there was only a gray haze along the ground
highlighted by red and orange undertones. Ash and bits of burning wood flew up
into the air only to fall several yards away from the forest. Every now and
again a small fire would ignite in the grasses nearby. She didn’t let it bother
her, though. She had enough magic to cool the area around her and keep her spot
unharmed.

Her eyes scoured the smoke and heat waves, looking for
any sign of forward scouts. Most of the animals had already fled from the
forest long ago when the blaze first began, but occasionally she still saw the
odd hare or deer making its way out of the forest, or crossing from east to
west in front of her. She marveled that even when they did come straight from
the forest, they had no significant wounds upon their bodies.
Singed fur and small blights, to be sure, but nothing severe.
It was as if the animals had found places of refuge inside the blaze
instinctively. Or, perhaps they had a magic all of their own. She liked to
think that they did. It seemed to balance the laws of nature in her mind if she
thought of animals that way, instead of simply as creatures of instinct and
habit.

A long stem bent low in the wind and tickled her face.
She pushed it away gently and then
raised
a bit of
bread to her mouth and took a bite. She chewed the dry, stale morsel and then
put the rest back into a small satchel that hung from her belt.

She sat there until well after sunset. Darkness fell
over the land like a blanket, but it could not smother the lights from the
fires. The orange and red spots played out their dance as the haze and smoke
above blotted out the stars. Still she watched.

Nothing happened until shortly before dawn. It was
faint at first, a movement that could have been nothing more than the shifting
wind blowing a wisp of smoke between the burnt trunks in the forest. Her gut
twisted with that primal fear and anger that only comes before a fight. She
stroked a left hand over her bow. She was far south of the chasm and the brook,
so waiting a bit would not endanger anyone else. So she let the stranger come
closer.

A few minutes later she spied a second scout. She smiled.
Orcs always worked in pairs when scouting, she knew. Now that she had found the
second, she would be able to engage at will. An arrow flew and the second orc
caught it in the eye. His body fell instantly, throwing ash and embers out
around him. The first orc turned to run, but an arrow through the back of his
left knee dropped him to the ground.

Lady Arkyn was up in a moment and sprinting across the
blackened ground. She leapt atop the first orc and slammed her right elbow into
the back of the orc’s neck. A second blow with the handle of her dagger put the
orc out cold. She seized the orc’s sword and tossed it aside. She undid the
orc’s leather belt and then looped it around his elbows behind his back as
tightly as possible. The orc’s greenish skin stretched and turned white against
the belt.

The she-elf moved along to the second orc. Her arrow
was too far embedded into the orc’s skull to be successfully removed. She
reached under the corpse’s armpits and dragged it to a pile of lumber that was
still burning and then threw him into it. Any who found him would be left to
assume he tripped into a fire. Unsatisfied with how the body looked haphazardly
cast into the fire, she went to the nearest burnt tree and pushed it over on
top. Now it looked like a burning tree had fallen onto him. That was better.

She went back to the first orc and slapped his cheeks.

The orc groaned.

She rolled him over with a push of her foot.

“How many orcs are with you?” Lady Arkyn asked.

The orc glared at her with burning eyes. “Foggd be!”
the orc shouted.

Lady Arkyn reached down and ripped the arrow from the
orc’s knee. The orc grunted, but he did not overtly show his pain nor cry out.
“How many orcs are there?” she pressed.

“Foggd be!”

Lady Arkyn sighed impatiently and pulled her dagger.
She knelt down and placed the blade against the orc’s neck. “Last chance,” she
said.

“Csinalja!” the orc shouted.

It was useless. Either the orc couldn’t speak Common
Tongue, or he was far too proud to fear for his life. Lady Arkyn ended the
interrogation and then dragged his body to a ditch some three hundred yards
away. She dropped the orc’s body down atop seven other orc corpses.

“Stubborn pigs,” she spat as she looked down upon all
her other failed attempts to interrogate the forward scouts. She knew that soon
the orcs would cease sending scouts. Soon they would march north in force.
Until then, she was going to go back and sit in her spot in the grass.

*****

“Why don’t they fight back?” Maernok asked as he
swirled the ale inside his pewter mug.

Salarion pulled her left boot free of her foot and
dumped the pesky pebble that had been bothering her onto the wooden floor.
“They are afraid,” she explained.

“Afraid?” Maernok echoed sarcastically. “I count seven
men in the street right now and only two of the governor’s soldiers. They
should fight and keep their children safe rather than let them be taken to be
sacrificed.”

Maernok watched as yet another teenage daughter was
loaded into a cart. Her hands were bound with leather strips. One guard moved
to the front of the horse-drawn cart while the second secured the newest
prisoner to the cart via a chain. “An orc would never be paralyzed by fear.”

“Pinkt’Hu has been losing people for weeks now,”
Salarion stated dryly. “It was quiet at first. Then the governor moved on to
accusing people of false crimes. Soon the ruse was abandoned altogether. Now,
anyone who fights back is killed in the streets, their body either left to rot
or hung from the nearest balcony for all to see.”

“If they cannot fight, they should leave,” Maernok
said simply.

Salarion laughed and slid her boot back onto her foot.
“Some have. Most can’t. The Middle Kingdom was at war before the orcs came to
Ten Forts. There aren’t any cities that are unaffected by it. The lone traveler
is doomed to certain death. Those who had money purchased their way out with
merchant ships, but the rest are here, trying to keep their heads low and their
children hidden.”