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A Skirmish in the Midor Mountains
Posted: 06 Jul 2007 11:31 AM |
Vrodo slipped irregularly shaped ingots of metal into a satchel and pulled a drawstring cord tightly to shut it. A knot to bind it closed was made by his hands automatically, with big loops to accommodate his warty black fingers. He snorted as though stricken with hay-fever. All the time he spent in the Halls of Bregodim he was snorting back mucus. The stench of decay filled his sinuses and deadened his senses, and he trailed the smell of death after himself for a mile down the trail after leaving the place.
A duegar's corpse lay close to him, flat within its rags. Nobody was burning these bodies, the way he and Saana and the elven druid Amon had burned the bodies and consecrated the ground at the place called Haven. Vrodo remembered this each time he stepped over one of these dwarven corpses, drying grey flesh and lidless, sunken eyes. Yet he touched none of the dead, not even piling them out of the way. Instead he stole in and out of the Halls of Bregodim. Perhaps he needed the spiritual guidance of Saana and Amon, or for that matter friends like Gwyneira Frost, the White Rabbit of Ferein's druid grove. They would tell him what to do. Or perhaps without knowing it he had lost his way.
Unlike Haven, the Dwarven halls were now a tomb. The Dwarves didn't want them anymore. Vrodo was violating this tomb each time he came here.
He shouldered the load and the rest of his gear and took up his war bow, leaving a mess of slag and ashes piled at the dwarven smelter. As he approached the exit from the halls, where once the way had been closed to all who were not Bregodim Dwarves, a movement caught his eye. It was strange, how these corpses seemed sometimes to threaten him. He imagined their reanimation as the mightiest of undead, fearsome opponents trapping him in the halls and pulling him down, a horde to devour him. It was to ward off this very possibility that he and the others had burned the corpses at Haven. Alone in the place he felt himself surrounded by the enemy. Even dead these opponents were terrifying. But this was different.
Real movement caught his eye, not ten yards away. It was Atalan. A lone Atalan with short blades in each of his hands. The dark elf was moving away, back turned to Vrodo, and then as the elf approached the cavern wall he vanished into the shadows.
He had been moving slowly, stalking across the shadowed entrance chamber to the Halls of Bregodim. As soon as Vrodo saw him, he lowered his body silently to the ground and lay flat on the slick stone floor. Eye level with the corpses. A whiff of acid reached his nostrils over the overwhelming stench of death.
How many were here in the darkness? For months Vrodo had studied this enemy, training with surface Elves who allowed him to stalk them. He trained to hear their footfalls, sense the movement of their hair and garments, and above everything else the smell of them. He trained in forests and he trained in caverns. He trained until he could follow the faintest scent trail, almost see it crossing the terrain in front of him like the dotted line on a treasure map.
Was this Atalan stalking him, and had his trained senses discovered this stalker and foiled an ambush? Or was the Atalan unaware of Vrodo's presence?
How many were here in the darkness?
Vrodo moved his body forward, weight resting on his toes and his knuckles, war bow still gripped in his left hand. There was no way to measure this threat, and so the ranger fled in concealment until he emerged from the tomb.
As he crept into the rainy mountain air and stood upright, a blade slipped beneath his stiff leather cuirass where it opened under his armpit. The point missed his heart, but his insides were bathed with acid. The Atalan withdrew the blade and quickly drew its length under Vrodo's jaw severing a part of his ear. In the same instant a second blade was pulled upwards along the inside of his thigh down close to his knee, running underneath and alongside his leg armor. He collapsed and his blood started to jet, war bow clattering onto the rain-wet stone.
The Atalan had been stalking him. After moving outside of his perception the stalker had exited the Halls of Bregodim, anticipating Vrodo's flight. He ambushed him outside, in the rain, and left him to bleed out and die there.
* * * * *
Little did he know, the same fate was befalling Tristian Vike and Macha Sparrowsong in another part of the mountains.
Was this the work of one Atalan assassin? If so, they had all underestimated the threat of these dark elves, even as the war on the surface appeared to be won.
But Vrodo had a guardian angel. This angel drew closer as his body cooled, and his heart slowed, and the blood now came out in a thin stream instead of a fountain. A frost broke out on his black skin and crept across his face, reaching the long clean slash underneath his jaw and staunching the flow of blood.
Ice running through his veins. His body grew numb and his stomach cramped. His great black staring eyes turned on the winged thing called Grotto, a servant of Helkris and her Avatar to Vrodo.
Vrodo stood and moved slowly forwards. Grotto whispered that his friends were dead and covered with flies. Later he saw this was true. After packing the wound under his arm with mud Vrodo moved quietly into the Midor Mountains with the ice mephit, and together they found his brother Vike and his companion Macha slain near the forges of those orcs who dwell in Mount Gru'gashk.
Grotto raised them in the same manner that he had raised Vrodo, saying that they would pay tribute to Helkris or be returned to death. Helkris' ranger was instructed to receive this tribute, and bring it to her temple in Fengduin Forest. Then the thing departed.
The three of them, Vrodo, Tristian and Macha, descended from the mountains as hastily as they could in safety. |
"What are you talking about?"
"I'm talking about dying."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"It means lying in the ground with dirt on your face and holding your breath forever."
-Burt Reynolds, "The End" |
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