T Lain - The Bloody Eye

“I might,” he answered thoughtfully, “Pelor willing. Right now, we seek a certain one-eyed priest.”

Suddenly, Krusk touched the handle of his axe and spoke once more in the accentuated inflection common to the orcs within these environs.

“Gruumsh priest. Krusk kill!” grunted the barbarian.

“Oh you will, will you?” countered Alhandra. “If you do, you’ll have to travel with us. If you travel with us, you’ll need to speak naturally. Are we together on this?”

“Don’t you ever tire of being punctilious?” replied Krusk. “Count me in. After all, you saved my life, once. Maybe I can return the favor.”

Jozan responded carefully, not knowing how solid this rapidly forming alliance might be.

“I hope you do kill the priest, but we have to find him first. Do you have any clue where he might be?”

To his amazement, the half-orc responded by explaining about Calmet’s gold mine.

“Ah,” returned the cleric, “that explains the use of slaves, doesn’t it? Where is this gold mine? I’m sure there are plenty in these mountains.”

“I believe it’s near Scaun,” suggested the barbarian.

“I see,” stated Jozan. “Excuse my ignorance, but I think we need to be a little more precise. Where is the mine compared to Scaun?”

Krusk shrugged and sat down in disgust.

Jozan’s frustration was rising. He was certain that Krusk knew more about the situation than he was revealing, but he couldn’t figure out how to dredge any more information out of the barbarian. He decided to give him the classic clerical stare. Sometimes, Jozan knew, if a man of god looked at you as though he knew your thoughts, people would open up and confess nearly anything.

Just as the cleric readied to give Krusk “the stare,” Alhandra stood beside the half-orc, put her hand on his shoulder, and said, “Don’t lose patience, Jozan. Krusk is merely a little shy when he meets new people. He’ll open up a little later and you’ll see that he can be quite a help.”

“You mean you trust this…this… barbarian ?” All of Jozan’s cache of eloquence disintegrated in an explosion of pure jealousy.

Alhandra didn’t seem to understand Jozan’s agitated demeanor, but she answered quickly and quietly, “I know Krusk as a very brave man who fights against evil at every opportunity. I’ve fought beside him and I even sought Heironeous’s guidance a moment ago to guarantee that this is the Krusk I know. There is no way I couldn’t trust him.”

At that moment, Jozan had the eerie experience of watching a past sermon come true. On several occasions, he had preached about the providential protection of Pelor and how evil has a tendency to overplay its hand.

Even before he could apologize to Krusk and Alhandra for his almost hostile behavior, a cloaked merchant crashed through the door shouting, “Orcs! Wolves! Boars!”

As one, the tavern regulars pulled knives, swords, and axes that seemed more recently scavenged than used. They certainly weren’t the well-honed weapons of even an active militia. As they started walking shakily but resolutely toward the door, Jozan saw the empty eye sockets within their hooded visages. He observed their resolve born of desperation and humiliation as they moved unenthusiastically toward the pending battle.

All these observations took only a moment and they were punctuated by an almost involuntary reaction. Krusk crashed out the front door and, with mace in hand, Jozan followed. Alhandra, he was not surprised to discover, was beside him. They heard the mob, Pergue’s makeshift militia, moving behind them, yet the main attraction was clearly before them.

A one-eyed orc priest adorned with bone necklaces and antlers in his hair was driving a two-wheeled cart pulled by the largest one-eyed dire wolf Jozan had ever seen. The cart’s wheels were augmented by radiating spikes oozing a sticky substance, and the druid was joined by a large eagle, two large, one-eyed orc warriors atop similarly deformed war boars, and six smaller orc soldiers. One of the orc soldiers pounded a crude cadence on a drum adorned with human skulls and stretched, Jozan suspiciously assumed, with human skin, as well.

Seeing the motley assemblage moving to meet him, the orc wrapped his reins around one arm and moved his other hand in small spirals descending from head and face to below the sides of the cart. Then, as the cart drew nearer, the orc’s gray skin began to glow with an eerie, green tinge followed by a brown crust that seemed to crawl from forehead downward. In only a few seconds, it seemed as if the orc had changed his skin to the texture of tree bark.

Jozan realized he faced a potent rival—a druid.

Yddith heard the drumming and the shouts. Even with tears forming a crystalline stream below her one good eye, she recognized the danger.

“Not again,” she said to herself and shuddered.

Even as the makeshift militia decided it was better to go down fighting than to be captured again, Yddith re-entered the common room and moved swiftly to the shuttered window where she could observe the action through its narrow slit.

“I am Hassq!” intoned the priest, speaking in the preferred mono-syllabics of the orcs but without the harsh accentuation and awkward grammar exhibited by most of the northern orcs. “Come, slaves! Come now or lose more eyes!”

“Not on your life!” shouted a blacksmith as he charged forward. This precipitated similar shouts from other townsfolk and a few angry syllables from Krusk. It also sparked considerable action.

Yddith saw Hassq’s eagle take to the air and launch itself against Dyffid, the wine merchant, as he charged the druid. She saw the bird rake a claw across the man’s face and peck frighteningly close to the merchant’s remaining good eye. She was encouraged to see Dyffid stab the bird with a rusty dagger stripped from a dead slaver’s body and she almost cheered as she watched him withdraw the blade with a new adornment of feathers and blood. Then the eagle squawked and flew upward to circle around for another attack.

Yddith was frightened. She couldn’t keep track of all the separate battles in the rapidly darkening street. She watched the dire wolf charge, pulling the cart directly toward the ragtag defenders. She saw Krusk and Alhandra closing on the two mounted orcs and even saw the town’s blacksmith join with Alhandra against the orc. All the while, the drum pounded. The orc soldiers continued advancing to the sound of the drum and Yddith knew that she needed to stop them before they entered the fray.

Yddith reached for the curtain nearest her and started slicing off some of the cloth with a greasy kitchen knife when she saw Jozan lift his mace and point its head at the drummer. She heard him summon the power of Pelor and watched the mace glow with the sun god’s blessing.

“Run!” commanded the cleric in a mellifluous tone that engulfed the orc percussionist with sound and tiny sparkles of sunlight that danced around his head.

The drummer missed a beat. Then, with panic in his yellow eyes, he turned to run. Jozan thanked Pelor aloud for intervening and smiled in grim satisfaction. As the drummer ran, the remaining orcs looked at each other in confusion.

Yddith intuitively grasped the young cleric’s intent. She took a portion of the woolen curtain she’d just chopped off and rolled it into a ball. Then, quietly summoning the power within her that had saved her life once before, Yddith breathed the power word. This time, as she invoked the grace of Pelor, Yddith concentrated on creating the sound of armor clanking behind the closest orc. The soldier spun around to face the non-existent threat behind him and received a meat cleaver wedged in his back as his reward. Yddith hadn’t realized that Imel the butcher was about to throw his cleaver just as she’d seen him do in every spring festival for five years running, but she was thankful for Imel’s prowess. The orc stumbled and his remaining compatriots looked even more confused.