Post by Malri 'Taffeta' Thistletop on Apr 18, 2018 14:34:37 GMT
21 Tarsakh
On the edge of Daring Heights is a little copse. On the edge of the copse a tree that’s particularly good for small folk to climb. On a wide branch of that tree, lying on her back in a patchwork of sunshine and shade, is Aila Shortcrust; and straddling another branch is her mother, Taffeta Thistletop.
‘Ma?’ says Aila.
‘Yes, love?’
‘... Will I have a birthday party this year?’
Taffeta swings a leg over her branch to sit sideways on it and look at Aila. ‘Of course, love. If you want one.’
‘Okay.’
‘Something on your mind, love?’
Aila continues looking up into the canopy of the tree, fiddling with a twig. ‘Some people in town were talking about the orcs.’
‘Ah, love. Listen, I don’t know what’s going to happen exactly, or when it’s going to happen. But you know most people here come from Faerûn. They aren’t going to let anything stop them celebrating Greengrass! And we won’t let anything stop us celebrating your birthday too, my little spring flower.’
‘Maaaaa,’ groans the girl.
‘You used to like it when I called you that.’
‘Well, things change, Ma.’
Taffeta smiles an odd, slightly sad smile. ‘They surely do.’
Aila sits up on her branch and throws the twig down to the grass below.
‘I’m nearly eighteen, Ma. You don’t need to protect me.’
‘I’ll protect you until you’re two hundred if I can, whether you need it or not.’
‘Ma, don’t just… You keep saying it will be all right but you don’t tell me anything! They’re saying there are thousands of orcs and they could attack any day! You can’t just tell me not to worry!’
Taffeta sighs and climbs down to sit next to her daughter in the dappled sunlight. A breeze tickles her neck. ‘All right, love. Let me tell you what I saw at the camp.’
‘The truth?’
‘The truth. Here.’ She pats her leg and after a moment Aila lies back again, resting her head on Taffeta’s thigh.
‘In the mountains, about two days’ walk from town, there’s a sort of small valley. That’s where the orc camp is. It’s… big. It’s about the size of the town here.’ She glances at Aila’s face, but Aila has closed her eyes and seems to be trying not to show any reaction. ‘It looked like there were six orc tribes there already and space for another three.’
‘How many orcs?’
‘We reckoned there’d be about two and a half thousand once they all turn up.’
They two sit in silence for a little while. Aila twists onto her side, facing away from Taffeta, who looking down now can only see the side and back of the head that’s resting on her lap. ‘Did you go inside?’
‘We went inside. Me, Dvärgar, Lachlan, and Leocanto. You’ve seen them around town, haven’t you? Dvärgar’s the dwarf who walks with a wolf. And the others are bards, we’ve heard them perform a few times. Garth stayed outside: he’s a scout from Daring’s Hope. We waited for dark and found a way into the camp. It has bits of wall around it but there are big gaps in it.’
‘Did no one notice you?’
‘Leocanto made us invisible! It was very strange, love, I tell you. Couldn’t see my own hand when I waved it in front of me. And he did some magic to make himself look like an orc. We’d also run into a little orc patrol earlier in the day and we used some of their clothes and things to make ourselves smell orcish, because they have worgs.’
Taffeta feels Aila stiffen and knows she’s thinking about the goblin raids of ten years past. A small party of goblins had once come very close to their house, and they’d had one of the huge saw-toothed animals with them. They hadn’t seen the house, but Aila had seen them through the window. She’d had nightmares for weeks after that.
‘Yes, we were very careful. Leocanto even learnt how to say a couple of things in orcish from Lachlan, in case anyone challenged him. We got into the camp but we stuck to one of the empty areas and just had a look around.’
‘What did you see?’
‘There was a deep trench full of cages. The cages had… those beasts in them. A few hundred of them. And there were a couple of other odd creatures down there too, big blue spiky things I’ve never seen before. The camp also has tall wooden towers with giant bats in them, though we didn’t see those up close. Then we had a peek inside a big marquee. There were three of those in the camp. Don’t know what was in the other two, but in this one they were building machines. Some kind of battering ram, and a catapult. And that was pretty much all the scouting we did.’
‘So you came back?’
‘Well… not exactly, no.’
Aila looks up, and in her face Taffeta sees something different from the fear she expected. There’s fear there, but also excitement. This orc camp, so vivid in the mother’s memory, is for Aila something between a terrible prophecy and a camp-fire story. So Taffeta tells the story.
‘Now, we’d come prepared. Dvärgar had – Love, you mustn’t go around telling people this, because I’m not sure we were rightly allowed to have this, but he had a small cask of poison, and he snuck over to the barrels of drinking-water in the big tent and poured it into them. Next thing, we went a little further into the camp to have a look at the fort in the middle. It was a big, cobbled-together thing, about four floors high, made of wood and metal. There were the nine tribal banners around it, and one strange one that was just plain blue. And then, as we stand there, Leocanto says: “Bombs, now!”’
Aila’s eyes widen. ‘Bombs!’
‘Yes, you remember that gnome we met last week – what was her name now, Bosie? Posey? Well she sells some… interesting things! So we had three little barrels of explosive powder. And when Leocanto said that, I made a run for the fort. I couldn’t see what the others were doing – invisible, remember – but I assume they picked their targets and did the same. I found a place…’
Taffeta’s enthusiasm suddenly drains away as the moment flashes back into her mind. Dodging and swerving among the tall humanoid shapes moving slowly in the darkness. Passing between tall banners, scanning the irregular walls of the fort for a weight-bearing point. Finding a perfect place to do a lot of damage, stooping down to set the explosives. High-pitched voices behind the wall, dozens of them. Children’s voices. Orc children laughing and shouting. Shit. Shit. No. Not here. Somewhere else. Scrambling to find another weak point, starting to panic, not knowing when the others’ bombs would go off and everything would turn to chaos. Here. Good enough. No voices behind this wall. Did she listen carefully enough? No. Yes. What if they were asleep? No, they wouldn’t have children in two parts of the fort. Would they? They wouldn’t be asleep when the others are awake. Would they? No time to find anywhere better. Set it and run. Set it and run. Run.
A deep breath. ‘I found a place. And I lit the fuse and ran right back towards the place where we came in. I looked for Leocanto but couldn’t see him anywhere. Then off on the other side of the fort there was an explosion. I could hear Lachlan shouting in orcish. I don’t know what he said but it seemed to make someone up in the fort very angry. Orcs were running around and shouting. I saw a pit with a cage in it and something moving inside. Somewhere off to my right a big cloud of smoke went up – must have been Leocanto, he’d brought a sort of smoke-bomb. There was an explosion inside the marquee. In the cage I saw something big and dark chained up, a little bit like the dao I told you about last week, but with jagged horns and spikes. Later they told me it must have been a tanarukk, a sort of orc demon. It was roaring and battering on its cage, and then my bomb went off behind me. I kept running. A big rock or something burst through the roof of the marquee and flew up into the air, then fell into the trench where the worgs were. Orcs were running everywhere, some of them seemed to be arguing with each other. I heard Leocanto calling out to the rest of us – he still looked like an orc but a different one this time, he must have changed his disguise. He led us out of the camp and we found Garth. And that was it!’
‘Whoa. Did you have it all planned?’
‘... Sort of.’
‘Were you scared?’
‘Honestly, love, yes, I was scared,’ she says, stroking Aila’s hair. ‘But you know what? I’m less scared now I’ve seen what’s up there in the mountains. There’s a lot of nasty things up there, but at least I know what they are. And that’s why I told you about it. You’re right, you’re old enough to know. Do you feel less scared now?’
‘A little.’
‘That’s my girl. And listen: we will have your birthday party on Greengrass day. No orcs, no worgs, not even a tanarukk is going to stop us having that party.’
‘Thanks, Ma.’
On the edge of Daring Heights is a little copse. On the edge of the copse a tree that’s particularly good for small folk to climb. On a wide branch of that tree, lying on her back in a patchwork of sunshine and shade, is Aila Shortcrust; and straddling another branch is her mother, Taffeta Thistletop.
‘Ma?’ says Aila.
‘Yes, love?’
‘... Will I have a birthday party this year?’
Taffeta swings a leg over her branch to sit sideways on it and look at Aila. ‘Of course, love. If you want one.’
‘Okay.’
‘Something on your mind, love?’
Aila continues looking up into the canopy of the tree, fiddling with a twig. ‘Some people in town were talking about the orcs.’
‘Ah, love. Listen, I don’t know what’s going to happen exactly, or when it’s going to happen. But you know most people here come from Faerûn. They aren’t going to let anything stop them celebrating Greengrass! And we won’t let anything stop us celebrating your birthday too, my little spring flower.’
‘Maaaaa,’ groans the girl.
‘You used to like it when I called you that.’
‘Well, things change, Ma.’
Taffeta smiles an odd, slightly sad smile. ‘They surely do.’
Aila sits up on her branch and throws the twig down to the grass below.
‘I’m nearly eighteen, Ma. You don’t need to protect me.’
‘I’ll protect you until you’re two hundred if I can, whether you need it or not.’
‘Ma, don’t just… You keep saying it will be all right but you don’t tell me anything! They’re saying there are thousands of orcs and they could attack any day! You can’t just tell me not to worry!’
Taffeta sighs and climbs down to sit next to her daughter in the dappled sunlight. A breeze tickles her neck. ‘All right, love. Let me tell you what I saw at the camp.’
‘The truth?’
‘The truth. Here.’ She pats her leg and after a moment Aila lies back again, resting her head on Taffeta’s thigh.
‘In the mountains, about two days’ walk from town, there’s a sort of small valley. That’s where the orc camp is. It’s… big. It’s about the size of the town here.’ She glances at Aila’s face, but Aila has closed her eyes and seems to be trying not to show any reaction. ‘It looked like there were six orc tribes there already and space for another three.’
‘How many orcs?’
‘We reckoned there’d be about two and a half thousand once they all turn up.’
They two sit in silence for a little while. Aila twists onto her side, facing away from Taffeta, who looking down now can only see the side and back of the head that’s resting on her lap. ‘Did you go inside?’
‘We went inside. Me, Dvärgar, Lachlan, and Leocanto. You’ve seen them around town, haven’t you? Dvärgar’s the dwarf who walks with a wolf. And the others are bards, we’ve heard them perform a few times. Garth stayed outside: he’s a scout from Daring’s Hope. We waited for dark and found a way into the camp. It has bits of wall around it but there are big gaps in it.’
‘Did no one notice you?’
‘Leocanto made us invisible! It was very strange, love, I tell you. Couldn’t see my own hand when I waved it in front of me. And he did some magic to make himself look like an orc. We’d also run into a little orc patrol earlier in the day and we used some of their clothes and things to make ourselves smell orcish, because they have worgs.’
Taffeta feels Aila stiffen and knows she’s thinking about the goblin raids of ten years past. A small party of goblins had once come very close to their house, and they’d had one of the huge saw-toothed animals with them. They hadn’t seen the house, but Aila had seen them through the window. She’d had nightmares for weeks after that.
‘Yes, we were very careful. Leocanto even learnt how to say a couple of things in orcish from Lachlan, in case anyone challenged him. We got into the camp but we stuck to one of the empty areas and just had a look around.’
‘What did you see?’
‘There was a deep trench full of cages. The cages had… those beasts in them. A few hundred of them. And there were a couple of other odd creatures down there too, big blue spiky things I’ve never seen before. The camp also has tall wooden towers with giant bats in them, though we didn’t see those up close. Then we had a peek inside a big marquee. There were three of those in the camp. Don’t know what was in the other two, but in this one they were building machines. Some kind of battering ram, and a catapult. And that was pretty much all the scouting we did.’
‘So you came back?’
‘Well… not exactly, no.’
Aila looks up, and in her face Taffeta sees something different from the fear she expected. There’s fear there, but also excitement. This orc camp, so vivid in the mother’s memory, is for Aila something between a terrible prophecy and a camp-fire story. So Taffeta tells the story.
‘Now, we’d come prepared. Dvärgar had – Love, you mustn’t go around telling people this, because I’m not sure we were rightly allowed to have this, but he had a small cask of poison, and he snuck over to the barrels of drinking-water in the big tent and poured it into them. Next thing, we went a little further into the camp to have a look at the fort in the middle. It was a big, cobbled-together thing, about four floors high, made of wood and metal. There were the nine tribal banners around it, and one strange one that was just plain blue. And then, as we stand there, Leocanto says: “Bombs, now!”’
Aila’s eyes widen. ‘Bombs!’
‘Yes, you remember that gnome we met last week – what was her name now, Bosie? Posey? Well she sells some… interesting things! So we had three little barrels of explosive powder. And when Leocanto said that, I made a run for the fort. I couldn’t see what the others were doing – invisible, remember – but I assume they picked their targets and did the same. I found a place…’
Taffeta’s enthusiasm suddenly drains away as the moment flashes back into her mind. Dodging and swerving among the tall humanoid shapes moving slowly in the darkness. Passing between tall banners, scanning the irregular walls of the fort for a weight-bearing point. Finding a perfect place to do a lot of damage, stooping down to set the explosives. High-pitched voices behind the wall, dozens of them. Children’s voices. Orc children laughing and shouting. Shit. Shit. No. Not here. Somewhere else. Scrambling to find another weak point, starting to panic, not knowing when the others’ bombs would go off and everything would turn to chaos. Here. Good enough. No voices behind this wall. Did she listen carefully enough? No. Yes. What if they were asleep? No, they wouldn’t have children in two parts of the fort. Would they? They wouldn’t be asleep when the others are awake. Would they? No time to find anywhere better. Set it and run. Set it and run. Run.
A deep breath. ‘I found a place. And I lit the fuse and ran right back towards the place where we came in. I looked for Leocanto but couldn’t see him anywhere. Then off on the other side of the fort there was an explosion. I could hear Lachlan shouting in orcish. I don’t know what he said but it seemed to make someone up in the fort very angry. Orcs were running around and shouting. I saw a pit with a cage in it and something moving inside. Somewhere off to my right a big cloud of smoke went up – must have been Leocanto, he’d brought a sort of smoke-bomb. There was an explosion inside the marquee. In the cage I saw something big and dark chained up, a little bit like the dao I told you about last week, but with jagged horns and spikes. Later they told me it must have been a tanarukk, a sort of orc demon. It was roaring and battering on its cage, and then my bomb went off behind me. I kept running. A big rock or something burst through the roof of the marquee and flew up into the air, then fell into the trench where the worgs were. Orcs were running everywhere, some of them seemed to be arguing with each other. I heard Leocanto calling out to the rest of us – he still looked like an orc but a different one this time, he must have changed his disguise. He led us out of the camp and we found Garth. And that was it!’
‘Whoa. Did you have it all planned?’
‘... Sort of.’
‘Were you scared?’
‘Honestly, love, yes, I was scared,’ she says, stroking Aila’s hair. ‘But you know what? I’m less scared now I’ve seen what’s up there in the mountains. There’s a lot of nasty things up there, but at least I know what they are. And that’s why I told you about it. You’re right, you’re old enough to know. Do you feel less scared now?’
‘A little.’
‘That’s my girl. And listen: we will have your birthday party on Greengrass day. No orcs, no worgs, not even a tanarukk is going to stop us having that party.’
‘Thanks, Ma.’
