Chapter 15

“Are you hungry?”

I turned on the wooden seat to see Pel peering out from the wagon’s canvas cover, holding out a piece of dried meat. “Thank you,” I said with a wan smile. I shifted the reins to my left hand, and reached for the food with my right.

“Does it ever stop raining here?” She scowled and looked up at the gray clouds scuttling overhead on a brisk wind.

“Only when it snows,” Vall said from the other seat. She, as opposed to the rest of us, was clad in a warm woolen cloak, which also repelled the rain that had been pelting us all morning.

“At least you’re back there,” I growled. “I have to sit out here in it.”

“Hush and make the oxen move faster. They’re being lazy, again.” Vall grinned, showing her upper fangs at me.

“Yes, Mistress.” I took the dried meat in my teeth, and used both hands to snap the reins against the oxen team’s backs. They walked a bit faster, and I started to eat my food.

We had left Pel’s grandfather’s house a tenday earlier, and traveled to the nearest town to buy what we needed. Vall had styled herself as an orcish shaman; her clothing was a mixture of fur and leather, with feathers, skulls, and beads adorning it. The rest of us were dressed in what we styled to look like servant’s rags by carefully rending the clothes without actually ruining them.

We found a large wagon and a team of four oxen to pull it, and we had a wood and canvas top built onto it. Vall had well-appointed quarters in the rear of the wagon, as benefited her esteemed status, while Pel and Ket made do with more servant-like bedding further forward.

A caravan was leaving the city about the time we finished, so we joined it and headed north along the trade road. We left the caravan after thirty leagues or so, and took another road north into the orc nations.

Once there, Vall warned us to play our parts as servants well, since the orcs would be suspicious of strangers, even a traveling shaman. She carried a small whip, and she would strike us at opportune moments if there were orcs around. We would scuttle around at her command, confirming her status as a person of some importance.

The road here was in poor condition from the constant rain, and the lack of maintenance. I steered the wagon and team around the worst of the mudholes, but I had to cross more of them as we continued north. The oxen struggled to pull us out of the latest one, and I glanced at Vall as the wagon reached somewhat solid ground. “The team is getting tired because of the mud. We may need to stop soon.”

Vall extracted one of the objects the servant had given us and consulted it for a moment. “It is the fourteenth hour and thirty minutes,” she said. “We will stop at the sixteenth hour.”

I had been given a similar talisman, which I had forgotten about. Besides being able to know the time of day, we would actually be able to talk to each other through them, as long as we were within a league or so of each other. I thought about the length of time, and then I nodded. “I think we can all make it that long.”

We had climbed a long grade, and rounded a corner in the saddle of a hill, when another guard post came into view. I sat up straighter in my seat, for, off in the distance, I spotted a pair of mountain peaks that rose like a deer’s horns – and that was where the depot was!

“Look!” I called back to the halflings. “There’s the mountain we’re looking for!”

The pair pulled the canvas cover open and peered out, while Vall took out her handwritten notes. “You are right,” she said after a moment. “The description in the book matches that mountain. How far is it?”

I peered ahead, noting that another rain shower was moving in from my left, which would hide the mountain from us. “Maybe thirty leagues? It’s hard to tell, I do not have close landmarks to judge by.”

“We have to get by these guards first,” Vall observed.

I looked at the group more closely. The guard post was a rudely made hut; little more than a roof supported by rickety poles, but it served to keep the guards mostly out of the rain. Four orcish warriors stood up and stepped out as we approached. They were typical orcs, which is to say much larger than me. They wore leather armor, with metal studs arrayed in patterns across the material. They all carried broad bladed spears and two of them wore sheathed swords. Three of them wore leather helmets, while the fourth was bareheaded.

“Who is that?” Vall raised her hand to point, and then thought better of it. “Behind the hut.”

I looked, and saw three more orcs surrounding a fourth figure. That person stepped further into view, and we quickly saw that it was a female orc. She was older and taller than Vall, and she carried a long staff with what looked like a human skull atop it. Her robe reached past her knees, and it was fringed with fur and silver chains. She stepped toward the guard post, and the orcs close to her moved forward, as well. “I don’t like this,” I said in a low voice.

“We don’t have a choice,” Vall said worriedly. “We cannot run away, and if we turn around, they will know that we don’t belong here.” I nodded, and we drove onward. “That’s odd,” Vall said as we drew closer. “That woman’s guards are all females, too.”

“There are eight of them.” I sat still, as they were able to clearly see us now. “That’s too many to fight, and if we kill them, we will be found out and hunted.”

“Then, we have to get past them without fighting,” Vall replied tersely.

The team reached the guards, and the lead oxen snorted and started to shy away from the orc as he stepped forward. I tugged on the reins to steady the team, and they stood still, snorting loudly.