T Lain - The Bloody Eye

The three scouts climbed onto a large rock outcropping. Peering over the rock, Alhandra looked down on a pathetic sight. A fast-flowing stream raced down the side of the mountain. About a long bow shot from the stream was a dark opening in the side of the hill. To the right of the opening was forest. Beyond that was a clearing that had been deforested to build a low wooden barracks building or dormitory.

The pathetic sight was a group of bedraggled women and children on their hands and knees on both sides of the fast-moving stream. Though their hands were free to perform tasks in the stream, their legs were chained together. Their hair and clothes were filthy. Their left eye sockets were empty, an unholy mockery that testified to the ruthless devotion of Gruumsh’s servants. Many of the women and some of the children had the backs of their clothes torn open where they had obviously been whipped. Congealed blood and infected wounds were widespread, and the odor was noticeable, even where Alhandra crouched.

As the three watched, men who were chained together would exit the dark opening in the hillside carrying large sacks of loose gravel. They dumped the sacks beside the stream and shuffled back to the mine, but rarely departed before one or more were abused by the orcs guarding the women and children. The women and children then dug bowls into the debris extracted by the male slaves and returned to the stream. Kneeling beside the water, they dipped the bowls into the stream and swished them around with careful, practiced motions, all the while picking out larger chunks of rock and earth. Eventually, when the process was through, nothing but specks of gold remained in the bottoms of the bowls. The captives would then stand up and migrate to a table where at least three guards were always on watch. There they dumped their bowls into a larger one and repeated the process. If they failed to work fast enough, they were lashed on their way back to the stream.

Alhandra was barely aware of Krusk slipping back to the others and returning with Yddith. The paladin immediately observed Yddith placing her hand over her mouth in reaction to the horrors that the women and children were facing. The paladin realized that Yddith’s reaction must be all the more poignant once the barmaid realized that this was where she and the rest of her village had been headed after their capture by the slavers. Turning back to the clearing, Alhandra studied both the worn, flea-ridden hide tents of the slaves and the long, wooden barracks building from which she saw humans and orcs regularly emerge.

She didn’t like the place and breathed slightly easier as Qorrg, Krusk, and Yddith began making their way back to where Jozan waited impatiently. They compared observations and estimates, concluding that there were at least a dozen guards on the women and children, possibly twice that many, judging from the traffic going in and out of the barracks.

“I’d like to spring a surprise attack on them,” suggested Alhandra, “but there’s one big problem.” She looked meaningfully at Jozan. “I’ve been beside Jozan when he tried to be stealthy, and there is no possible way for him to succeed.”

She saw the cleric redden for a moment before he responded in protest. “I’ve actually thought about that,” Jozan admitted. “I think I can move part of the way up the hill and invoke silence before we clamber up the steepest part of that slope.”

Everyone nodded, realizing the wisdom in Jozan’s plan to create an area of silence around the five of them. They would watch from the outcropping and continue to reconnoiter the camp until they saw enough of a disruption in routine to allow for a full-scale ambush.

This time, the plan worked as the group anticipated. Alhandra watched Jozan mime the compass points of the sun and breathe the Celestial word, “ Pacis .”

The sky shimmered and a translucent membrane was visible for a moment, descending around the group like a semi-visible dome. The silence spell covered their advance up the hill and they could see the camp and hillside clearly with very little chance of being seen themselves.

They watched three orc guards address the beefy orc in the center of the action, though they couldn’t hear anything that was said because of Jozan’s spell. They saw events unfolding in a bizarre pantomime. The orc in command sent the guards into the dark mineshaft. They returned shortly with a human prisoner and forced him to lie prone in front of their leader. The orc directed the guards to grab a human woman from beside the stream. They removed her from the chain of enslaved women and children and brought her to the leader, shoving her to her knees beside the prone human from from the cave. The orc stepped between the two, pushing them apart with his knees, then kicked the male on the side of the head. The blow forced the man’s face into the ground. The woman opened her mouth wide, though no sound could reach the heroes, and she crawled toward the orc in useless supplication.

In agonizing silence, the heroes watched the orc interrogate the woman, but they could only see her shake her head in the negative. Each denial from her caused a blow against the man. The orc kicked him, punched him, cut him, whipped him, and even struck him with a stout stick.

The sadistic sideshow was so infuriating that the five were tempted to rush in without agreeing on a plan. Alhandra sensed Krusk nearing the point of rage, but couldn’t speak with any of the others to coordinate the plan because of the silence invoked by Jozan. She spoke the words, but no one could hear them. Nor did they notice an object moving toward them that might have been a snake except for its rocklike skin. They failed to sense a writhing appendage approaching them, an ugly column of filth and flesh that resembled an elephant’s trunk with unnatural, hornlike protrusions thrusting out of the wiggling flesh.

The silence worked so well that when a second appendage joined its mate and wriggled around Qorrg’s legs and the triangular ends of the mysterious limbs punctured his ankles with their prickly spines of sharp cartilage, no one heard Qorrg’s cry of agony. Qorrg mouthed inaudible cries as the thorny, bonelike protuberances dug into his skin wherever they touched, and the tentacles began to drag the orc down the hill toward the semi-obscured entrance to a cave.

Alhandra had just decided to draw a battle plan in the dirt when Krusk lost all patience.

When the sadistic orc pulled the woman up by the hair and ripped away what was left of her torn clothing, the barbarian passed his limit. Krusk had already hurdled the rock and was racing toward the center of the camp when he saw the kneeling man try to stand and grapple the commander. One of the smaller orcs kicked the human below the belt, causing the man to double over and vomit. Then, while the man was still helpless, the running, charging, screaming Krusk watched the other guard smash the handle of his longspear over the man’s head. The spear cracked at the same time as the man’s skull. Both the broken shaft and the unconscious human dropped to the ground.

The orc commander didn’t even notice Krusk. He was holding the helpless woman in front of him and trying to kiss her. The terrified woman spat on her tormentor and tried to break free, filling Krusk’s mind with images of his mother being ravaged by the orc warlord who sired him. His eyes glowed with red rage. His greataxe danced through the bodies of the guards, spraying blood in wide arcs and leaving crumpled, howling victims in his wake.

The screams of his guards immediately drew the commander’s attention. The orc threw the woman aside without a thought. He grasped his urgrosh by the center handle and moved to intercept the barbarian.

Krusk heard Yddith yell a warning to watch out for the orcs approaching from each side, but he refused to pay attention to the stirgelike threats on his flanks. Instead, he stopped and ducked as the big orc thrust his double-headed axe at him with massive forehand and backhand moves. As soon as the second thrust passed over his head, Krusk rose to his full height and buried his own greataxe in the large orc’s midrift, yanking away flesh and entrails as he danced away from the expected counterattack. Instead of an attack, however, the large orc howled and dropped his prized weapon. With both hands trying to stuff his organs back into the wound, the powerful orc yelled for his subordinates to kill the intruder.