Wing Me the Horizon 25/05 Sorrel the Orc
Jun 5, 2022 10:28:25 GMT
Velania Kalugina and Andy D like this
Post by stephena on Jun 5, 2022 10:28:25 GMT
“I have a theory about war, if you’re interested,” Sorrel leaned against the bar in Granny Gunks and tried to engage the barmaid in conversation. “I think it’s just fear of being domesticated. King this or queen that or a bunch of space pirates are standing at a party looking at their other half who they don’t understand now the sex has died away and they are discussing the best route to the new thing, and they think – fuck. Let’s invade somewhere. So, they put the word out and a million others show up to fight in distant lands and do terrible things to people because anything is preferable to staying at home with their families.”
The barmaid looked at her, a little puzzled.
Sorrel watched the seething mass of organic matter roil away, trying to work out exactly which bits were food, which were drink and which were customers, then settled on Pipper, Tayz, Velania and Kelne with some relief. She left the others to do most of the talking, picking up that they were heading out to Granny’s old combat unit to pick up some wings, or something.
What she definitely heard was Granny’s instructions to avoid the orc warlord who owned the castle, dodge all the orc warriors, find only the leader Beatride and deliver the message to her.
This suited Sorrel. She really didn’t want to start slaying orc warriors just for being in a corridor they wanted to go down. The battle to survive Hell had either given her a new-found respect for life or bad indigestion. Either way, she wasn’t feeling the slaughter like she used to.
“What’s Beatride look like?” Sorrel leaned in.
“Big orc lass with very big wings,” Gunk sniffed and wiped her nose.
“Wings…?” Sorrel was about to say more when she caught sight of two large, stitched scars on Gunk’s shoulders. We all have scars, Sorrel thought. Some in the heart, some in the head, but never just on our skin.
Granny gave Kelne a letter for Beatride, and before Sorrel could say “could I just have maybe a week without a pan-dimensional portal?” they were standing in the snow half a mile from a vast fortress, black and ominous against the mountains around it.
She waited for the party to start moving then realised they were all looking at her.
“… what?”
“How do we get there safely in this climate?”
“How would I know?”
“Sorrel, you’re a ranger,”
“I’m more the urban bounty hunter type,” Sorrel shivered. “Snow can go fuck itself.”
At which point the tramp, tramp, tramp of metal clad feet sounded from around a jagged rock.
An orc patrol.
She was alarmed to see her companions vanish one by one – turning invisible, morphing into a worm, the usual schtick. She looked around, slightly nervous about facing a squad of heavily armed orc warriors and thinking if a friendly clout from Varga was bad enough…
Varga…
She focussed on her old friend and felt her fey blood shiver as it transformed, dressing her very skin as Varga until you would have to look very closely indeed with the sharp mind of a mage to tell the difference.
As the patrol swung into view, she felt reasonably safe. This looked like a conscript force or prison recruits. Mages, not so much.
“Wot you doin’ ere?” the officer at the front barked.
Sorrel swallowed and hoped the magic had worked all the way through.
“Am ya in charge 'ere?” Sorrel felt her shoulders ease as Granny’s accent lifted her vowels. “I 'av come up from the city wi' bostin speed wi' a message in me bag for Beatride and om almost out o’fittle.”
The orcs looked at each other. “Beatride?” the officer’s voice showed signs of nervousness. “Am ya alone? It takes a lot o' 'elp n’ many donnies ta get the job done on t’ frozen ‘ighway.”
“Arr, ar came alone,” Sorrel nodded. “Every word n' phrase ar spakes is true.”
"Ya 'ad better goo raand the back o' the castle n' in the back door,” the officer seemed satisfied. “We am in an 'urry. Ger' aat th' oss road!”
The troop stomped forward, and Sorrel hurried through the snow and around the winding road at the base of the immense stone walls until she reached a tiny wooden door.
“Is everybody here?” she whispered, receiving muffled assents on the wind.
She banged on the door.
Nothing happened.
She banged again.
“Wha do ya think ya're doing?” the harsh voice rasped behind her.
She turned to find a second patrol staring at her.
“I 'av come up from the city wi' bostin speed wi' a message in me bag for Beatride and om almost out o’fittle,” she tried to deliver the words with a suitably Varga-meets-Granny swagger.
“Well ya can't goo in through the front door, ya need to goo in the back,” a heavy set NCO said thoughtfully.
Sorrel pointed at the back door. “Om at the back door, ay I?”
“Yes y'm,” the NCO scratched her chin and nodded, then turned to an even thicker set soldier beside her. “Let a' in.”
The orc leaned forward and charge the door with its head, bouncing backwards into the snow but shattering the wooden frame. For a few seconds the door hung unsupported then slowly toppled forwards, narrowly missing the prostrate infantryorc.
Sorrel beamed gratefully and fished her travelling brandy case from her backpack with a shot glass and a small flask of 40-year-old Gadenthor Heaven.
“Bostin work,” she poured a glass and handed it to the orc as it struggled to its feet. “Ya should a drink for tha.”
The orc took the glass and happily crunched down on it, brandy and all, grinding its jaws thoughtfully as it fell back into line and the unit moved on.
As the orcs disappeared, Pipper, Tayz, Velania and Kelne shimmered back into view.
“Bostin’?” Tayz looked confused.
Sorrel shrugged. “I have served with two orc armies, so I have enough to get me through a battlefield, a bar and a bedroom.”
The party regarded the doorway in front of them carefully. There were no guards in sight, just a long torch lit corridor.
There is a particular stance an adventurer has when they have no idea what to do next. They refuse to meet each other’s eyes and either check weapons, flick through spell books or gaze at the heavens with a studied casualness that tries to say, “I am on top of this situation and have so much confidence that I thought I’d just rearrange my daggers/spells/misc.” The party was so effortlessly certain that they spent a good ten minutes carefully moving tiny items over small and irrelevant distances.
Finally, Tayz slapped his forehead and cried “divine intervention!”
The three clerics nodded wisely and started muttering away to their gods, with Tayz the first to have his eyes roll back in his head and his mouth hang open. The other two watched him enviously.
Suddenly he was back. “I have the route,” he smiled triumphantly, and strode into the castle.
At first it seemed like Tayz must have been mistaken. He lead them in the most unlikely directions, through strange dusty rooms where none had passed in many years, but gradually they noticed that every time they came to a junction or a sentry post they arrived just as a patrol was marching away or the shifts were changing and the guards had their heads bowed, earnestly swapping notes. They sauntered through the heart of an orc castle as if they were searching for a picnic spot and the finely tuned orc military machine just looked the other way.
Finally they arrived at the top of a flight of stairs with a thick wooden door blocking their path. They could hear clashing steel, cries of rage and pain and orders barked in stern voices.
“It sounds like they’re killing someone,” Pipper said.
“It sounds a bit like they’re training,” Sorrel said dubiously. “Perhaps we resort to subterfuge?”
“What if someone is dying?” Velania turned to look at her.
“I mean…”
But the party was already buffing up with weapons and spells. Sorrel sighed and strung her bow then kicked the door open.
Three tall statuesque orc warriors with mighty wingspans turned to face them.
“Y'royt noble warriors, is Beatride 'ere?” Sorrel began.
The orcs laughed and drew their swords. The officer, Sorrel noticed with a rising feeling of panic, was blindfolding herself. There are two reasons your enemy will blindfold themselves before combat. They know they face certain death and would prefer not to see their doom befall.
This pretty much never happens.
Or they are instantly certain that they are so vastly superior to you in every sense that the only way they can enjoy the challenge of the fight is to enter it blind giving you such an unfeasible advantage that they feel a little stretched.
Sorrel strongly suspected the latter.
And so it proved.
Pipper did charm one, but arrows flew at Velania from an airborne orc. Kelne threw up the chaff of fake imagery and the swirling radiance of warrior spirits, Tayz summoned a celestial warrior, great spiritual weapons were called from the hands of the gods and lightning crackled along Sorrel’s bow.
Then the orcs started beating the crap out of them.
No matter how many arrows Sorrel sank into the chest of her enemies, no matter how much magic banished or struck the orcs, they merely smiled and kept coming.
The party was healing as much as it was fighting and still they came.
And still the leaders blindfold remained.
Eventually, battered and weary, the party had knocked the flying orc from the sky and persuaded the lesser warrior to quit. They all stood around the leader and poured their fire and fury down on her with everything they had.
Finally, the captain held up her hands.
“Ok, tha was fun. Ya win. I surrender,” she said, laughing. As they stepped back she undid her blindfold.
“To mek it more fun?” Sorrel asked.
“O’course… now, where’s the message for Beatride? Is it an invitation to fight? 'll they be tougher than you… um… people?”
“Dragons, possibly hundreds of them, with thousands of heavily armed psionic warriors travelling on a fortified flying city and equipped with scores of mages from another plane,” said Velania.
“You had me at dragons.”
Written with the help of this excellent English to Black Country Translator
The barmaid looked at her, a little puzzled.
Sorrel watched the seething mass of organic matter roil away, trying to work out exactly which bits were food, which were drink and which were customers, then settled on Pipper, Tayz, Velania and Kelne with some relief. She left the others to do most of the talking, picking up that they were heading out to Granny’s old combat unit to pick up some wings, or something.
What she definitely heard was Granny’s instructions to avoid the orc warlord who owned the castle, dodge all the orc warriors, find only the leader Beatride and deliver the message to her.
This suited Sorrel. She really didn’t want to start slaying orc warriors just for being in a corridor they wanted to go down. The battle to survive Hell had either given her a new-found respect for life or bad indigestion. Either way, she wasn’t feeling the slaughter like she used to.
“What’s Beatride look like?” Sorrel leaned in.
“Big orc lass with very big wings,” Gunk sniffed and wiped her nose.
“Wings…?” Sorrel was about to say more when she caught sight of two large, stitched scars on Gunk’s shoulders. We all have scars, Sorrel thought. Some in the heart, some in the head, but never just on our skin.
Granny gave Kelne a letter for Beatride, and before Sorrel could say “could I just have maybe a week without a pan-dimensional portal?” they were standing in the snow half a mile from a vast fortress, black and ominous against the mountains around it.
She waited for the party to start moving then realised they were all looking at her.
“… what?”
“How do we get there safely in this climate?”
“How would I know?”
“Sorrel, you’re a ranger,”
“I’m more the urban bounty hunter type,” Sorrel shivered. “Snow can go fuck itself.”
At which point the tramp, tramp, tramp of metal clad feet sounded from around a jagged rock.
An orc patrol.
She was alarmed to see her companions vanish one by one – turning invisible, morphing into a worm, the usual schtick. She looked around, slightly nervous about facing a squad of heavily armed orc warriors and thinking if a friendly clout from Varga was bad enough…
Varga…
She focussed on her old friend and felt her fey blood shiver as it transformed, dressing her very skin as Varga until you would have to look very closely indeed with the sharp mind of a mage to tell the difference.
As the patrol swung into view, she felt reasonably safe. This looked like a conscript force or prison recruits. Mages, not so much.
“Wot you doin’ ere?” the officer at the front barked.
Sorrel swallowed and hoped the magic had worked all the way through.
“Am ya in charge 'ere?” Sorrel felt her shoulders ease as Granny’s accent lifted her vowels. “I 'av come up from the city wi' bostin speed wi' a message in me bag for Beatride and om almost out o’fittle.”
The orcs looked at each other. “Beatride?” the officer’s voice showed signs of nervousness. “Am ya alone? It takes a lot o' 'elp n’ many donnies ta get the job done on t’ frozen ‘ighway.”
“Arr, ar came alone,” Sorrel nodded. “Every word n' phrase ar spakes is true.”
"Ya 'ad better goo raand the back o' the castle n' in the back door,” the officer seemed satisfied. “We am in an 'urry. Ger' aat th' oss road!”
The troop stomped forward, and Sorrel hurried through the snow and around the winding road at the base of the immense stone walls until she reached a tiny wooden door.
“Is everybody here?” she whispered, receiving muffled assents on the wind.
She banged on the door.
Nothing happened.
She banged again.
“Wha do ya think ya're doing?” the harsh voice rasped behind her.
She turned to find a second patrol staring at her.
“I 'av come up from the city wi' bostin speed wi' a message in me bag for Beatride and om almost out o’fittle,” she tried to deliver the words with a suitably Varga-meets-Granny swagger.
“Well ya can't goo in through the front door, ya need to goo in the back,” a heavy set NCO said thoughtfully.
Sorrel pointed at the back door. “Om at the back door, ay I?”
“Yes y'm,” the NCO scratched her chin and nodded, then turned to an even thicker set soldier beside her. “Let a' in.”
The orc leaned forward and charge the door with its head, bouncing backwards into the snow but shattering the wooden frame. For a few seconds the door hung unsupported then slowly toppled forwards, narrowly missing the prostrate infantryorc.
Sorrel beamed gratefully and fished her travelling brandy case from her backpack with a shot glass and a small flask of 40-year-old Gadenthor Heaven.
“Bostin work,” she poured a glass and handed it to the orc as it struggled to its feet. “Ya should a drink for tha.”
The orc took the glass and happily crunched down on it, brandy and all, grinding its jaws thoughtfully as it fell back into line and the unit moved on.
As the orcs disappeared, Pipper, Tayz, Velania and Kelne shimmered back into view.
“Bostin’?” Tayz looked confused.
Sorrel shrugged. “I have served with two orc armies, so I have enough to get me through a battlefield, a bar and a bedroom.”
The party regarded the doorway in front of them carefully. There were no guards in sight, just a long torch lit corridor.
There is a particular stance an adventurer has when they have no idea what to do next. They refuse to meet each other’s eyes and either check weapons, flick through spell books or gaze at the heavens with a studied casualness that tries to say, “I am on top of this situation and have so much confidence that I thought I’d just rearrange my daggers/spells/misc.” The party was so effortlessly certain that they spent a good ten minutes carefully moving tiny items over small and irrelevant distances.
Finally, Tayz slapped his forehead and cried “divine intervention!”
The three clerics nodded wisely and started muttering away to their gods, with Tayz the first to have his eyes roll back in his head and his mouth hang open. The other two watched him enviously.
Suddenly he was back. “I have the route,” he smiled triumphantly, and strode into the castle.
At first it seemed like Tayz must have been mistaken. He lead them in the most unlikely directions, through strange dusty rooms where none had passed in many years, but gradually they noticed that every time they came to a junction or a sentry post they arrived just as a patrol was marching away or the shifts were changing and the guards had their heads bowed, earnestly swapping notes. They sauntered through the heart of an orc castle as if they were searching for a picnic spot and the finely tuned orc military machine just looked the other way.
Finally they arrived at the top of a flight of stairs with a thick wooden door blocking their path. They could hear clashing steel, cries of rage and pain and orders barked in stern voices.
“It sounds like they’re killing someone,” Pipper said.
“It sounds a bit like they’re training,” Sorrel said dubiously. “Perhaps we resort to subterfuge?”
“What if someone is dying?” Velania turned to look at her.
“I mean…”
But the party was already buffing up with weapons and spells. Sorrel sighed and strung her bow then kicked the door open.
Three tall statuesque orc warriors with mighty wingspans turned to face them.
“Y'royt noble warriors, is Beatride 'ere?” Sorrel began.
The orcs laughed and drew their swords. The officer, Sorrel noticed with a rising feeling of panic, was blindfolding herself. There are two reasons your enemy will blindfold themselves before combat. They know they face certain death and would prefer not to see their doom befall.
This pretty much never happens.
Or they are instantly certain that they are so vastly superior to you in every sense that the only way they can enjoy the challenge of the fight is to enter it blind giving you such an unfeasible advantage that they feel a little stretched.
Sorrel strongly suspected the latter.
And so it proved.
Pipper did charm one, but arrows flew at Velania from an airborne orc. Kelne threw up the chaff of fake imagery and the swirling radiance of warrior spirits, Tayz summoned a celestial warrior, great spiritual weapons were called from the hands of the gods and lightning crackled along Sorrel’s bow.
Then the orcs started beating the crap out of them.
No matter how many arrows Sorrel sank into the chest of her enemies, no matter how much magic banished or struck the orcs, they merely smiled and kept coming.
The party was healing as much as it was fighting and still they came.
And still the leaders blindfold remained.
Eventually, battered and weary, the party had knocked the flying orc from the sky and persuaded the lesser warrior to quit. They all stood around the leader and poured their fire and fury down on her with everything they had.
Finally, the captain held up her hands.
“Ok, tha was fun. Ya win. I surrender,” she said, laughing. As they stepped back she undid her blindfold.
“To mek it more fun?” Sorrel asked.
“O’course… now, where’s the message for Beatride? Is it an invitation to fight? 'll they be tougher than you… um… people?”
“Dragons, possibly hundreds of them, with thousands of heavily armed psionic warriors travelling on a fortified flying city and equipped with scores of mages from another plane,” said Velania.
“You had me at dragons.”
Written with the help of this excellent English to Black Country Translator
