Into the Heart of Evil (13 page)

Durik, looking down at the three groups of kobolds,
was very happy at how it had gone so far.  He’d seen the group of four orcs
heading up the hill, and had seen Gorgon’s group fell two of them.  He’d also
seen Manebrow’s group take advantage of the confusion to gain a bit of ground
on the two fleeing orcs.  Durik figured that Manebrow’s group must not have
seen the two orcs running away from them.  Jumping onto Firepaw’s back, Durik
grabbed his spear and headed down toward Manebrow’s team to help guide them
toward the orcs.

As Durik reached the ridgeline, a large orc,
easily two heads taller than Durik, ran out from behind the cover of a
boulder.  With his orc cleaver in both hands, he swung at Durik, who barely had
time to bring his shield around in front to deflect the blow.  The cleaver bit
deep into the side of the shield, breaking the metal rim and sending splinters
in all directions.  Durik dropped his upright spear and reached for his sword,
drawing it from its wooden scabbard.  As the orc pulled the cleaver back to
strike again, Durik thrust his sword into the orc’s exposed side.  He was
amazed at how easily he was able to puncture the orc’s thick hide armor,
driving his sword easily into the orc’s belly. 

With a scream of pain, the orc staggered back. 
Feeling more confident on the ground than on wolfback, Durik leapt off Firepaw
and came at the orc, his sword and shield at the ready.  But Durik’s strike had
taken the fight out of the orc and, clutching his bleeding side with one hand,
he took off at a slow run, glancing behind him with a desperate look in his
eyes.

Durik sheathed his sword and grabbed his spear. 
Hopping onto Firepaw’s back, he urged his mount forward at a run.  As Durik
raised his spear to the side and aimed it, the orc turned to face him at
exactly the wrong time and received Durik’s spear in the chest for his
efforts.  Thrusting with all his newfound strength, Durik stuck the spear
straight through the orc’s sternum and out his back, stopping only when his
hand struck the orc’s chest, still wrapped around the haft of his spear.  With
all the adrenalin and strength he found himself possessed of, Durik dragged the
orc backpedalling with him for a pace or two before Firepaw could hold the
added weight no longer and Durik had to drop the orc or end up taking Firepaw
to the ground.

As he reined in Firepaw and dismounted to go back
for his spear, Durik stopped to look at the blood that covered his right hand. 
It was dark and foul, and smelled repulsive to him, yet he stared in wonder at
it as it dripped down his arm.  Lifting his gaze, he looked at the orc lying
dead on the ground in front of him, its face contorted with the surprise and
pain of its last few moments of life.  Durik began to feel revulsion.  As he
stood there, the adrenaline began to wear off and the realization that he had
taken another’s life began to set in.

His oaths as a warrior, to hunt and kill enemies
of the gen, and his own deeply held value of life, which had fought within him
for some time, resurfaced.  It had been easier to deal with this conflict of
values during training where ‘killing’ had meant taking someone out of a
tournament.  Now death was a permanent thing, and the conflict between Durik’s
deeply held beliefs and the course of action he was committed to caused great
amounts of turmoil inside him.  Turning to lean against a boulder, out of sight
of the rest of the company, Durik vomited.

After a few moments, he recovered and, trying to
put the incident behind him, he looked down toward where the rest of his
company had been a few moments before.  Most of the company was now on the
ridge below him.  Among them, he saw Jerrig pulling back his bow.  As he
watched, Jerrig fired at some target far off in the trees below.  Almost as if
the arrow had a will of its own, or as if Jerrig were guiding it with the hand
motions he was making, the arrow flew unnaturally far, straightening out its
arc as it approached its target.  Shortly, the cheering of the other warriors
announced the hit.  As long as Ardan’s report was accurate, the last of the
orcs had been dealt with.

A
rbelk
had found very little of interest among the equipment of the four orcs that
they had killed.  Almost all of it was dirty, poorly maintained, and reeked of
orc.  As he stood there looking at the equipment he had just finished sorting,
he got the distinct feeling that he’d just wasted his time.  Their weapons were
pretty much useless; rusty swords and weak bows that had lost much of their
spring from having been left strung, with arrows that were entirely too long
for the kobolds to use.  Their armor was foul, as was their other personal
gear.  The only item of interest that Arbelk found in the entire mess was a
leather tube.  Grabbing it by its shoulder strap, he pulled it out of the pile
of gear it lay in and undid the latch that kept the top on.  Inside the leather
tube was a sheaf of parchment, probably six or seven sheets.  He pulled the
parchments carefully out of the tube and thumbed through them.  Putting them
back in and capping the tube again, he walked over to Gorgon. 

“Gorgon,” Arbelk called, “I think I might have
found something.”

Gorgon looked up from where he, Troka, Trallik,
Jerrig and Keryak were digging the shallow grave for the orcs.  “Huh?  What’s
that?”

Arbelk walked up to him as everyone stopped
digging and looked on.  “I found this leather case in their equipment.  It has
parchments inside, and some of them appear to be drawings or depictions of
routes.  Maps, you might say.”

Gorgon looked into Arbelk’s eyes then took the
tube.  He popped the top and pulled the rolled up parchments out, unrolling
them in one swift motion.  After a few moments of examining them, he looked
around him.  Seeing no one else was working, he put his hands on his hips, his
tail beating the air behind him.  “Ok, now.  This is no excuse to get lazy. 
Put shovel to dirt, warriors.  Jerrig, go tell Durik and Manebrow we found
something that looks useful.  Here,” he said, giving the tube to him, “pass it
to him.”

Manebrow stood looking at the orc Durik had
skewered, his tail flipping pensively behind him.  He was a rather large orc as
orcs go, being about twice as tall as an average kobold.  His hide armor was
thick, even where Durik had punctured it with his sword.  He looked at the hole
the spear had made… straight through the sternum, breaking through not only
that bone, but the joint where a pair of ribs connected to the backbone on the
other side.  It was clear to Manebrow that something was different.  This was
not the Durik he’d just trained for the past year.  Even now, at the height of
his physical strength, he doubted that he himself would be able to duplicate
that strike.  To get the spear into the orc, sure, that would have been easily
doable, but to skewer the orc like he had, then ride a couple of paces with him
on his spear?  He knew that no kobold, not even Gorgon or Khazak Mail Fist, had
that kind of strength.

Then there was the matter of Jerrig and the
arrow.  He’d never seen an arrow from a kobold war bow fired so far.  He’d seen
orcish crossbows that fired that far, or even farther, but not a bow.  On top
of that, he was sure he’d seen the arc of the arrow flatten at the end, instead
of increase as it came to ground.  Then, at the very end, just before it missed
the orc, it had turned slightly, striking the orc straight in the back!

Manebrow didn’t know what magic this was, but he
was determined to get to the bottom of it, starting with his leader.  Walking
from where Gorgon and his team were finishing the shallow grave for the orcs to
the ridgeline, then over the hill, he walked up to Durik, who was squatting
next to the small stream in the dell. 

As he approached, he saw Durik scrubbing furiously
at the blood that covered most of the scales on his right arm, up to the
elbow.  “Sire, we need to talk.”

Durik looked up at him.  In his eyes was a look of
deep sorrow, like that of someone who has left behind all that they had once
loved.  “What’s the matter, Manebrow?”

Seeing that look in Durik’s eyes, Manebrow’s
memory was pricked.  He looked around and made sure that everyone else was
about their duties.  Gorgon and his team were preparing to gather the dead orcs
and their equipment, to put them in a shallow grave they’d begun to dig outside
the dell.  Ardan and the other three in Manebrow’s team were out in pairs
sweeping the area, ensuring that there were no other orcs about.  Terrim,
Kabbak, and Kiria were over with the packdogs.

“Sire, are you all right?” Manebrow asked, putting
his hand on Durik’s shoulder.  As if from the deepest recesses of his mind, the
memory of how he’d felt the first time he’d ever killed an orc came flooding
back.

“The orc… its blood… it just doesn’t seem to want
to come off,” Durik mumbled, then bowing his head, he began to shake his head
slowly.  “Manebrow, all this time I’ve trained for this day.  My entire life
I’ve wanted to be a warrior.  Now I am a leader of warriors… But when it’s all
said and done, I just feel like a killer.”

Manebrow sat down next to Durik, his arm over his
shoulder. “Come now, sire.  You’re being too hard on yourself.”  Manebrow
paused, looking at the bowed head of his trainee… no, his leader.  “Look, sire,
all of us veterans have felt what you’re going through right now.  It’s a
credit to your upbringing that taking even the life of an orc troubles you.” 
Manebrow paused again for a minute to let his words sink in.  “In fact, if you
weren’t going through this turmoil, I’d be concerned about you.  The fact of
the matter is that killing like this is not a natural thing.  This isn’t like
hunting.  There’s not the excuse of food here.  But if you hadn’t killed that
orc, he would have gone on to take the life of one of your friends.”

“We didn’t even try to talk to them,” Durik
muttered.  “Perhaps we could have persuaded them to move on after they saw how
many of us there are.”  Durik bowed his head even lower.  “I don’t know, I
guess you’re right.  They probably would have just tried to kill us anyway.”

Manebrow nodded. “Or run away, just to try and
track us down later and ambush us when we least expect it.”  He patted Durik on
the back again, as if to shake him out of his doldrums.  “Be at peace, Durik. 
You did the right thing.  Out here in the wild lands, things are different than
back in the safety of the caves.  Out here, we don’t have the Wolf Riders and
Patrol Guard keeping us safe.  We have to keep ourselves safe, and sometimes
that means killing.”

Manebrow waited several moments, his hand on
Durik’s shoulder, lending his strength to his new leader.  After a while he
could sense that Durik was steeling himself and getting his emotions under
control.  To reinforce this, he spoke again.  “These vagabonds were up to no
good, and they’d sure not have thought twice about slitting your throat just
for your meat sack.  Besides, they came at us, not us at them.”

Durik looked up, the sorrow fading from his eyes,
having been slowly replaced by a hardened look of determination.  “If this is
the end of my innocence, then so be it.  I imagine that several more orcs will
fall to my spear before our work is done.”

“There you go.  Spoken like a true veteran, sire,”
Manebrow said.  “Now, sire, I do have one more thing to discuss with you.”

“Well, Manebrow, you’ve lifted my spirits and
helped me through this.  What else could you be wanting to fix?”

“Sire,” Manebrow started, looking a little
uncomfortable after talking of such deeply emotional things.  He paused for a
moment then steeled himself again to speak as a warrior should to another
warrior.  “No kobold I know, not even Khazak Mail Fist, could have drug an orc
on his spear like you did today.  Not from wolf back, not on foot.  Minotaurs
hit like that, not kobolds.  And that blow you landed on him with your sword;
you cut through the thickest piece of his hide armor… with an undercut!”

Manebrow’s look was one of concern, not rebuke. 
“Sire, if I’m going to be able to do my job effectively as your second, you
can’t go hiding things from me.  I can’t afford to have ‘surprises’ in my unit,
even if you’re in charge of it.  ‘Surprises’ get one killed.”

Durik looked down.  It had been a long day already. 
This encounter had taught him much, mostly through the pain he had felt.  He
hoped that this trend of learning things in the most painful way wouldn’t
continue for too much longer.  Manebrow was right, and he knew it.  After a
moment of struggling inside himself, he told Manebrow about his visit to the
house of Torgal of the Sundered Skull.  Slowly, and deliberately, he mentioned
the Bracers of Kale.

“Uh-huh,” Manebrow said flatly.  “After all these
years of hearing rumors of magic here and magic there, finally I’m brought face
to face with some of it.”  He paused, looking thoughtfully at the bracers for a
second.  Then, he shook his head.  “Getting too old for surprises like this.  I
much preferred my simpler world, where magic was a myth.”  It was obvious that
Manebrow was upset about the whole thing.  He stood and turned to walk away. 
“Well, I guess I knew there was too much mention of it in our gen’s history for
it not to exist.  I just didn’t know I would come face to face with it some
day.  This changes a lot of things.”

Durik felt that this was not enough.  “Manebrow, I’ve
had visions.  I keep seeing this bridge… and a stone building.  I’m not sure
what they mean, but I figured you should know.” 

Manebrow just stared at Durik, dumbfounded. 
“Well, the revelations just keep coming.  Ay!  Magic… and visions too?”

Just then Jerrig came walking up with the leather
case in his hands to report their findings.  Manebrow just glared at him,
cutting him off as he opened his mouth to speak.

“And I suppose next you’re going to be telling me
that you’re a sorcerer or some such,” Manebrow snapped at Jerrig.

Jerrig was left standing with his mouth wide open
as Manebrow walked away in frustration.

Kiria was perhaps the most interested in the
parchments found in the leather scroll case.  As Durik and Manebrow watched,
she poured over each page in turn.  One of them was clearly a map; in fact
Kiria thought for sure she recognized the ridge known as the Chop on it.  It
seemed to be a map of how to get to their gen’s caves, from somewhere under the
Chop.  Taking out the map that Raoros Fang had given to Durik and comparing it
with this rudimentary one, she began to see the similarities.  She got excited.

“Look here, Durik,” she said, pointing at a spot
on the orc map.  Durik came closer and looked at a smudge on the map.  “Orc
drawings typically don’t use arrows to indicate directions, rather they use
stick figures.  The feet point in the direction they’re supposed to go, and the
head points to where they’re coming from.  Now look,” she paused as Manebrow
also came closer, “this large charcoal smudge… I believe that’s the Chop.  If
you compare it with the Wolf Riders’ map, you’ll see that they both mention a
bridge… Demon’s Bridge to be exact.”

As Kiria mentioned Demon’s Bridge, Durik’s heart
burned within him.  It was such a sudden sensation that it caused him to pause
and look up into the distance toward the mountain known as the Chop where
Demon’s Bridge was located.  After a moment or two, Durik felt a nudge that brought
him back to reality.  Kiria was looking at him strangely.

“This orc map,” she continued after a moment of
trying to read Durik’s face, “if you notice, has a stick figure with horns but
no tail next to this line on the mountains.  I think that means the bridge.  If
you look at the line on the orc map, there seems to be a little smudge with
some sort of line or X drawn on it just next to the bridge.  The Wolf Riders’
map shows the trail going down the other side of the chop.  On the orc map,
however, the trail stops at the smudge.”

Durik, following the line she was tracing on the
other side of the Chop from them, took the next leap.  “So, what do you think
that smudge is at the end of the trail?” he asked, pointing to the orc map.