James Ward: Pools of Darkness

A little more than four weeks earlier, Ren had petitioned the council of Glister to settle a nearby valley. Like most rangers, Ren didn't believe in the ownership of land. A person could settle the land, care for it, even drive out unwanted creatures. But the land would outlast anyone who might claim to own it. Ren merely asked for the right to live there undisturbed.

After several long hours of verbal parrying and thrusting with Glister's council, he had come away with an agreement. If Ren eliminated the bands of marauding orcs that terrorized the region, he would be awarded a charter to live in the valley in peace. The council had offered the ranger the use of Glister's own troops, but Ren preferred to work alone. Now he trotted through the forest on his war-horse, quite alone and quite wet.

Ren sighed as he thought of the Glister council. He had done his best to make a good impression. The ranger had walked into the chambers that morning in a suit of gleaming chain mail of fine elven craftsmanship. His magical daggers, called Left and Right, were visibly sticking out of his dragonskin boots. A two-handed long sword hung in its sheath across his back, and a shimmering elven cloak of displacing was draped over one arm. His gauntlets, equipment belt, and bracers, also made of dragon hide, were shining and well oiled. Standing six-foot-six, the ranger's impressive equipment and his gray-peppered beard spoke volumes about his skills and experience. But if Ren was a man of action, he had always been a simple speaker. Looking back, the ranger wondered if his mission might have been easier if he had appeared slightly less capable.

"Like the way I look now," Ren muttered. His hair and beard were shaggy and plastered to his head by the rain. His elven chain mail was caked with mud, as were his dragonskin boots and gauntlets. Grass and pine needles clung to the mud and stuck to his wet leggings. Even the huge war-horse looked bedraggled. "Well, maybe the enemy will underestimate my fighting abilities," he said half-heartedly. Stolen trotted through the trees.

Ren had been pushing the war-horse as hard as he dared in the darkness. He had scouted the land carefully earlier that day and knew where the orcs were gathering. Leaving Stolen in a circle of trees, the ranger crawled to a rise high above the encampment.

Slowly the ranger peered over the hillock. A ring of watchfires illuminated the valley. What had been a small brook flowing into the lowland was enlarged by the rain into a wide stream, but the marshy conditions didn't seem to bother the orcs. They were beginning to arise from soggy tents, gathering about a central bonfire.

"Ren, you sorry thief, what have you gotten yourself into now?" He groaned as he tried to hold his grip in the mud and keep his face out of the water. He tried to console himself by thinking that the mud covering him would serve as a useful camouflage.

As he watched, more and more orcs joined the circle around the fire. As the surveillance wore on, Ren's mind wandered to his recurrent nightmare. The ranger hadn't thought about Shal and Tarl for months. The three of them were good friends, but their paths had diverged after they'd killed the evilly charmed bronze dragon controlling an army of orcs and ogres that were menacing Phlan. When Shal and Tarl became lovers, Ren felt out of place. They had parted friends and sent messages back and forth, but ten years had passed in the meantime. Ren hadn't seen his friends in three years.

The images from the nightmare lingered. He could see Shal and Tarl looking a little older than the last time he'd seen them. The two were in Denlor's Tower, in their bed. An enormous, gut-wrenching earth tremor and a crash of thunder was shaking the place. Shal leaped out of bed, naked, and ran to a grab a purple cloak filled with pouches. Tarl followed, pulled on his clothes, and reached for his shield and warhammer. The nightmare shifted to reveal Shal casting streams of violet energy at an unseen enemy and Tarl fighting something dark and horrible. Ren's own screams always awakened him before he could learn what terrors his friends faced.

The first time he had dreamed about Shal and Tarl the ranger was disturbed, but this third nightmare left him truly shaken. Ren wasn't one to have visions of any kind, so he was terribly afraid for his two friends.

Now he cursed the charter to which he had agreed. Ren was forced to devote all his energy to clearing out the orcs until the job was done. If he hadn't given his sworn and signed word to terms made clear on the vellum he carried, he would have dumped the responsibility, forsaken his quest to settle the valley, and sought his friends to make sure they were safe.

After the second dream, Ren had begun taking risks he normally wouldn't have taken. Any skilled ranger could battle five or ten orcs without fear. An average warrior orc stood about five feet tall and was usually armored in anything it could steal from its victims. Orcs liked using arrows and slings rather than getting close to the enemy to battle with swords or axes, so at close range most of them were lousy fighters.

But the ranger knew from experience that orcs liked to travel in packs, and the larger the pack, the bolder the orcs. Because Ren was worried about his friends, he'd started attacking packs of ten to thirty orcs. The ranger's tactics were particularly reckless, but the size of the orc bands made such attacks especially dangerous. A few orcs always managed to escape and warn other bands, so that eventually the hunter had become the hunted.

In the weeks that followed, Ren had discovered many traps set by the orcs, although his keen eyes and sharp tracking skills helped him avoid the cruder snares. Ren had spent the last two decades in the woods, and only the elves and the native woodland creatures were more skilled at moving stealthily through the forests.

Ren had considered returning to Glister to lead its troops into battle against the orcs, but he would have suffered an unbearable delay. By the time he arrived in Glister, organized the militia, and led them back to the hills, he would have lost more than five days. All his scouting would have been for nothing-the orcs would have moved away and set new traps. Besides, Ren trusted his instincts and disliked worrying about the welfare of companions.

Forcing his mind back to the task at hand, Ren peered over the hill. He caught sight of seven different totems, each representing a different orc warband. Ren was well aware of this custom, because he had captured sixteen such orc totems and hidden them back on the trail. Later on they would be proof to the council that the ranger had done his job.

Squinting through the rain and darkness, the ranger saw captured dwarves in slave pens at one end of the camp. The dwarven warriors had obviously been tortured; their long beards and hair had been hacked off. Something would have to be done to save them, and quickly. He would have to devise a plan to free the dwarves or, as a last resort, put them out of their misery before the orcs subjected them to painful deaths.

Three of the larger orc totems concerned Ren. These were different from the others he had encountered. They were centered in the middle of heavily guarded tents. Half-orcs roamed around them.

"Now there's a completely different breed," the ranger muttered to himself. "I hope the next time I want to sign a charter a lightning bolt comes down and-"

Crash! A lightning bolt split the sky, and the rest of Ren's sentence was lost in the thunder. The rain poured more heavily, drumming on Ren's armor. He clamped his mouth shut and thought better of saying anything more. He was in no position to push his luck.

Ren sighed. Half-orcs. These crossbreeds were taller, smarter, and fiercer than their cousins. The totems told Ren there were at least three powerful bands of half-orcs in the valley, heavily armed and well organized. The ranger looked around for any nearby guards. Half-orcs were usually smart enough to post perimeter guards.