FLATLAND: The Village Gar’tor

By St. Cuthbert’s beard, I signed up for the military to kill Orcs!

Kobolds and half-orcs and the ignorant humans willing to deal with them were not what I’d expected. Never mind the undead! If I wasn’t disappointed when they split Leoroar and I into different units, I certainly was when I fell beneath the claws of that damned skeleton.

Two days after we’d arrived at Fort Greene, T’ohthin, grumpy old troll that he is, sent me and two others into the Blood Forest to deal with a “marauder” that was waylaying caravans leaving the Village Gar’tor, a small settlement in the northeastern part of the Forest. Valg the Ugly, as he called himself, a rough-around-the-edges dwarf constantly in search of women; and Tyelka Gurth, an aloof female tracker with a curious affinity for dead half-orcs. They proved themselves to be very capable fighters, despite an intense dislike for each other, and are the only reason I’m able to make this report.

The road to Gar’tor was relatively uneventful, until we saw our first sign of the marauder deep into the Forest, about two hours from the Village. Two severely damaged and looted merchants carts, four dead bodies, and a child-sized creature that Valg quickly dispatched with one blow of his warhammer. “Decaying baby,” he explained.

Undead.

Entering the Village, we found a small unfortified settlement resting in a clearing, the road we’d traveled in on cutting through east-to-west, one to the north, and a smaller path to the south. We met with Bartholomew, the middle-aged man charged with addressing the “security” of the Village who’d sent for us. He explained their situation, how roughly one-in-four caravans had been waylaid in the past month and how the Village had never been attacked. He also mentioned a lone traveler a couple of days previous that had headed south, an unusual occurence. All very curious in my mind.

We hatched a plan to pose as traveling merchants ourselves to lure the marauder out of hiding, but Tyelka and I had to travel back to the Fort for a horse while Valg and Christopher, the Village carpenter, cobbled together a working cart from the wrecks the marauder had left behind.

I walked the Village after sundown, examining their fortifications and manpower in search of something that might help us the next day and, after several conversations, decided that Darrin Bayani was what I was looking for. An apparent prodigy with the bow at 16 years old, he was eager for adventure outside the Village. Unfortunately, his father, having already lost one son to the militia was understandably reluctant to let Darrin go. We talked for a while and I was able to appeal to his sense of duty and honor, along with a bribe of 10 gold pieces/day to cover Darrin’s lost time at work.

A steep price, yes, but how does one barter for the life of another’s offspring?

We set off after lunch the following day, Valg in the cart hidden under furs and hay, Tyelka driving, and Darrin and I at the rear. It was shortly past midnight when we spied a fire in the road up in the distance. Valg slipped out of the cart into the treeline and we pulled up to the fringes of the firelight, able to make out a lone figure standing next to a flaming barrel.

An arrogant half-orc, determined to take us on alone, Tyelka and Darrin quickly dropped him with a volley of arrows. Some strangeness followed between Tyelka and Valg as she insisted on taking the body into the treeline for some sort of personal ritual. They actually came to blows over it! Nevertheless, we found a map hidden in his glove that suggested some sort of base located to the south of the Village, so we backtracked for an hour before camping out for the night.

The following day, I returned Darrin to his father’s care, after crediting him for the previous day’s kill, and we three set out again under the cover of night.

The path was dark and narrow and Valg led the way. Shortly before sunrise, we stumbled across Warren, the stranger that had headed south a few days before, sprawled in the middle of the path, legs shattered, barely alive. He’d been betrayed by a half-orc named Holg, ambushed by his kobold henchmen. After he gave the little information he held, I cut his throat, saying a prayer to St. Cuthbert on his behalf.

Even the ignorant merit retribution.

Shortly after sunrise, we came across a fork, the smaller branch of which led us to the mouth of a manmade cave set into a natural hill. We head in to find a dark room at the end of the tunnel which Valg enters, declaring “Dead things.” Skeletons and zombies attack and I manage to take on what seems to be the toughest one as we go blow for blow four or five times before his final blow causes everything to fade to black…

I awaken in the corner of the room, weak and shaking, Tyelka administering life-saving first aid. Skeletons and zombies have been joined by two dead kobolds and the sounds coming from the other side of the door suggest there’s more coming. We go through and there’s a trio waiting for us. They go down easy and I get my first kill.

Three crates give up nearly 50 gold pieces and one has some sort of trap that fills the room with an ineffectual smelly gas.

The next room reveals the source of our little mystery, standing haughtily on the other side of a five-foot fissure: Holg, a half-orc cleric with the usual plans of…honestly, I’m not sure what he was out for as we took him down so fast, he only had time to cast one spell that had no apparent effect.

That Tyelka is something else with a bow!

A shocker lizard hiding in the rocks was an extra bonus which I speared and took back to Darrin as a souveneir. I fully expect that one to be fighting for Ilag in the near future.

All in all, lack of Orcs and nearly dying aside, it was a successful first mission and I’m heartened to have fought alongside such able warriors. I have the fullest confidence that Leoroar and I will once again see Port Raleigh in this lifetime, sooner rather later.

Written by Guy LeCharles Gonzalez

Guy LeCharles Gonzalez is the Chief Content Officer for LibraryPass, and former publisher & marketing director for Writer’s Digest. Previously, he was also project lead for the Panorama Project; director, content strategy & audience development for Library Journal & School Library Journal; and founding director of programming & business development for the original Digital Book World.