Valkyrie's Shadow

Winter's Crown: Act 5, Chapter 10

Winter's Crown: Act 5, Chapter 10

Chapter 10

Several hours later, the attacks stopped. As they made their way into the valley towards the great river, Qrs realized that they had ceased with the coming of the dawn. In the apparent reprieve, he searched the column for his family, spotting them making the trek with a group of fellow villagers.

He looked over his daughters: they looked tired but otherwise healthy. After placing one to ride on his shoulders, Qrs picked up his two other girls, falling in to walk beside Rholh.

“Is everyone okay?” He asked.

“We’re alright,” Rholh answered. “These Fiends have stopped attacking us – do they only move at night?”

“I don’t know,” Qrs said. “Our gaolers in the hills did not seem to care either way, but they were a lot more powerful than the ones attacking us tonight. Your sister thinks that our pursuers’ capability to send attacks against us is limited somehow – perhaps by mana or some innate ability. I think they might be focusing their efforts to take advantage of the night.”

Though Darkvision improved their ability to see at night, there were limits to its range. As such, the hours of darkness were still preferable for ambushes and sudden assaults like those that Jaldabaoth’s forces had been conducting.

“I saw some of the fighting when it got close to us,” Rholh nodded. “After being slain, they vanish in much the same way as summons do, so what she says does seem to be in line with what’s happening now.”

“It would be better if the bodies stuck around,” Qrs snorted. “Keeping everyone fed is going to be a big problem unless we find other tribes to raid.”

“That shouldn’t be an issue once we cross the river.”

Qrs suppressed a grimace. It was true that The Neck was full of Goblins, but the problem was that Goblins tasted horrible no matter how one prepared them. He supposed he shouldn’t be picky with their current situation and thankful instead. The Neck was full of other problems that would affect their journey, however.

While the numbers of Bugbears and their minions in the lands across the river were plentiful and thus there were plenty of targets to raid, the problem was that they were too plentiful. Bugbears were the largest and most savage of the Goblinoid races, and essentially bullied whatever they could into subservience. Goblins were most common, used for everything from expendable fodder in combat to literal fodder. With the teeming population of Goblinoids also came Barghests and Greater Barghests.

There were so many of them that Qrs’ tribe had settled on using the river as a natural barrier rather than attempt expanding in that direction. Fortunately, the Bugbear tribes warred with one another as often as their neighbours. He led raids on their lands infrequently to get a rough feel for the overall strength of the nearest tribes, but they always ended the same way: no matter how many were killed, there always seemed to be more. Even wiping out a whole tribe just meant others would come to fill the vacant territory.

His gaze followed the densely-forested valley up its shadowed slopes on the far side, wondering how he could lead so many safely through. The Gnolls he had parted ways with probably had the right idea: while a single champion could carve through thousands of opponents, one could not be everywhere at once. They needed the numbers with suitable strength to defend their own effectively.

“If it was a raiding warband, I’d agree with you,” he told Rholh. “But there are thousands of us now. We need to fight, gather supplies and push forward all at the same time. The more tribes we ‘convince’ to join with us along the way, the easier it will be to cross the wilderness, but the more mouths we’ll have to feed.”

“I can’t say I enjoy the taste of Goblin,” Rholh replied, “but I don’t think we’d ever run out of those out there.”

“Hmph,” Qrs grunted, “we’ll see who starts complaining about it first. How is our village doing for supplies?”

“Food is a problem,” Rholh told him. “Our village has maybe a week if we depend entirely on the stores we’ve brought with us. Everything else is fine for now. All of the villages are probably in the same situation. If these Fiends keep attacking us, we won’t be able to spread out enough to forage and raid.”

“Once we reach the ford,” Qrs said, “we’ll see if we can dig in and spend a few days collecting provisions. That would depend entirely on whatever’s been harrying us with these waves of Fiends, but, if they stop attacking at dawn as they have now, it should be manageable.”

They walked on in silence, and Qrs kept trying to think of ways to tackle their looming issues. Without knowing from when and where they would be attacked, it was hard to come up with any sort of plan to address their food problems. The immediate areas wherever they stopped would be stripped bare; risk of capture increasing the further one ventured. This would be doubly so once they crossed the river, as they would need to contend with native tribes in addition to attacks by Fiends.

The morning passed with no sign of further attacks from their pursuers, and they entered the bottom of the valley. By late afternoon, they approached the river ford. Qrs stirred his daughters from their slumber so he could set them down before heading to the head of the column. There, he found the tribal elders consulting with several of the chiefs.

“We’re almost there,” he said. “Anything out of sorts going on?”

“Not really,” Rhag replied. “A few of the chiefs want to send out foraging parties before we reach the ford.”

“That’s not a bad idea,” Qrs said. “These Fiends haven’t attacked all day, and I’m beginning to regret that we didn’t do that earlier.”

“You and everyone else. Not that we knew what would happen.”

“Then I take it that everyone else is in the same supply situation?”

“About one week of real food,” Rhag reached into her satchel, “but we do have a reprieve…such as it is.”

The mystic pulled out a roll of black bread, and Qrs couldn’t help but recoil at the sight.

“Ancestors, spare us,” he grimaced. “I’d rather be eating Goblin.”

“I sent word to the entire tribe,” Rhag told him. “Every mystic is conjuring food whenever their mana reserves fill. It can’t be preserved like real provisions, but we can stretch out actual supplies by taking this first.”

Qrs reached out and grasped the hard, black lump. He had the misfortune of tasting conjured food before, and he wondered if it was any different from eating sawdust. Taking a bite out of the bread, it seemed that his memories hadn’t betrayed him when it came to the vile stuff. He choked down the bread with a draught of water.

“Bleah,” he stuck out his tongue and nearly gagged anyways.

“You don’t say,” Rhag smirked from the side.

“How long can we last on this?”

“It depends,” Rhag said. “If we have long stretches like today where we can recover mana without interruption, three weeks. More, if we can gather during the day as well. If we’re attacked, all of that stops.”

“Do you have any idea why they stopped attacking us at dawn?”

“I don’t know enough about Fiends to say for sure,” Rhag replied. “It shouldn’t matter at all to summons, but it could be that the summoners themselves are averse to daylight. Or maybe they’re just waiting for their abilities to become available again, or enough mana to summon more waves like last night. Or it could be they realize that what they’re doing isn’t working, and they’re just letting us go to focus on some other part of the area.”

“Or they’re waiting for more forces to attack us with.”

“You really love looking for the darkest clouds on the horizon, you know that?”

“It keeps us alive,” Qrs snorted. “Send word down the column to start foraging. We need to set up advance sentries to warn us when these Fiends start coming again. There should be a few others waiting at the ford – I’m going ahead to make sure nothing stupid happens.”

After he broke away to walk ahead, Qrs found Rhag at his elbow.

“Not tired?” Qrs asked.

“Not as tired as the others,” Rhag answered. “The two of us should be able to deal with any large ambush out of the Fiends we’ve seen so far if it happens. I’m also curious how you came to meet these other people.”

They paced in silence over the sandy soil, following a game trail that led to the riverbank. Qrs kept scanning their surroundings, waiting for any sign of an attack out of the thick brush.

“We were kept at the same place,” he told Rhag after some time, “where they performed all sorts of twisted experiments on the prisoners. One day, we managed to break out. Not everyone stayed together, but the people that did all agreed that the best option was to escape, far away from Jaldabaoth.”

“What sort of ‘twisted experiments’?”

“You probably don’t want to hear it.”

“If it provides some insight into the character of this Demon God, I’ll willingly do so.”

“Then,” he licked his lips, “you know how some races out there think that eating strong enemies will make them stronger?”

“I’m familiar with practices like that,” Rhag nodded.

“Well, that was one of the experiments they conducted,” Qrs clenched a fist over the handle of his war club. “They brought in a Human that specialized in preparing food in an attempt to ‘improve’ the meals somehow.”

“I hardly know of anyone stronger than you are,” Rhag frowned. “Who would they feed…oh.”

“Uh-huh. That Human would carve out pieces of me and cook them up to feed to everyone else, just to see if they would get stronger. It wasn’t as simple as that, either: they had groups fed differently – some of them had slits opened into their stomachs just so they could stuff the food straight in. Oh yeah, they exchanged organs between races as well, to see if that had any effect. A couple of poor sods got Armat stomachs and were forced to eat ore to see if they would grow armoured hides.”

He took a swig from the skin of water at his waist, rinsing out his mouth before spitting it out. The more he spoke about it, the thicker his words felt. The raw memories were recent enough to clearly recall the sounds and smells of that place.

“Some other things were going on as well,” Qrs continued, “and I have no idea what happened with all the other groups of prisoners in the camp. Eventually, the experiment I was involved in was deemed a failure and we were just caged up and kept alive with some meat that they claimed was from somewhere else – that’s how we recovered enough to break free.”

“…how in the world did you survive all that?” Rhag asked.

“They have a lot of healing magic,” Qrs answered. “They’d cast it on me to regrow my lost parts, just to remove them again until everyone was fed. Every day. For weeks. That wasn’t the worst of it either. They…toyed with your head, and…well, that’s enough about that.”

“You can’t be alright.”

Qrs’ gaze flickered towards Rhag, who was looking up at him with eyes full of worry.

“Probably not.” He said, “But that hell is right on our heels now, and I’m trying to keep us out of it.”

They came to the great river – the same river that eventually flowed southwest through the Dale of Defiance. The winter swell had receded greatly, leaving a long stretch of gravelly shore stretching southwards out of sight. In the distance, fires could be seen against the deepening gloom of the valley floor.

“That should be them,” Qrs told Rhag. “It looks like they made good use of their time, as well.”

Racks of meat were being smoked over the fires. They weren’t picky about it – fish, rabbit, venison, rodents…anything they could probably get their hands on could be seen. A single Armat and a single Hobgoblin were keeping watch, in addition to a half-dozen Goblins.

“You sure didn’t waste any time,” Qrs called out as he approached.

“Time’s not for us to waste,” the Hobgoblin replied. “Conveniently enough, we found a Goblin tribe right across the river. Had to kill half of them before the rest got into line, but now we have a bunch of handy little helpers.”

Qrs eyed the line of racks of smoking meat again, spotting a dozen or so gutted Goblins stretched out at the end.

“Where are the others?” He asked.

“Out hunting,” the Hobgoblin replied. “Of the Gnolls: no sign yet. Don’t tell me it’s just the two of you.”

“I came ahead to keep any accidents from happening,” Qrs said. “We’re less than an hour away, eleven villages’ worth coming down from the northwest.”

“A good start,” the Hobgoblin nodded. “If the Gnolls bring just as many, we can probably overrun any single tribe out there before they can even react.”

“Well, we have to keep an eye on our tails as well,” Qrs told him. “We were attacked by Fiends all of last night.”

Both the Armat and the Hobgoblin looked at him sharply.

“How haven’t the whole lot of you been captured?” The Armat asked.

“Jaldabaoth wasn’t there,” Qrs told them, “nor were any of his powerful minions. A few hundred Imps attacked our main village, and more Fiends attacked the rest as they came to join us. We must have killed several thousand Hellhounds and hundreds of weird Fiends with sickles as arms, like some cross between a Blader and six other things.”

The Hobgoblin stroked his chin in thought, looking up the western slope of the valley.

“I wonder why they didn’t send anything stronger,” he said. “One of those horned Devils back in the hills could wipe us all out on its own.”

“I can only guess that Jaldabaoth’s forces are being spread thin,” Qrs replied, “and we’re just lucky to be seeing the weaker stuff. I don’t plan on sticking around longer than we have to, though.”

“Our captain agrees,” the Hobgoblin said.

“Your captain?” Qrs frowned.

“Avod,” the Hobgoblin answered. “The female that spoke for us on the way here. She said that once you’ve arrived, she’s going to take us across the river. Ah – I’m Zrol, her second.”

“You’re not joining with us?” Qrs asked.

“We already have,” Zrol answered, “and we will stay. However, we’re not going to be overshadowed in fighting strength by you guys. While your people prepare for the crossing, we’ll be out recruiting.”

Orcs have hordes; Hobgoblins have armies.

It was an old saying, but it seemed that they were about to see these Hobgoblins live up to their legendary reputation in practice.

“Four Hobgoblins and a dozen Goblins,” Qrs said. “Looks like a rough start.”

“It’ll be fun,” Zrol grinned. “Besides, It’s not every day that you get to build a Goblin army.”