Siege State

The group left immediately after their fight. None of them were injured. No one wanted to wait around and see if the even bigger battle, or perhaps slaughter, more accurately, would attract any further attention. They needed to be gone. They were needed at Wayrest.

They made good time. None of them had any movement abilities, but Scriber had stamina replenishing enchantments. Each day, from first light until after dusk, they ran.

Tom’s thoughts were filled with images of an unending orcish army surrounding Wayrest. He was worried about Rosa, and he was worried about his mother. The mood of the rest of the group was no lighter.

It had been centuries now, since Wayrest had last dealt with a siege. Longer, even. Not since the height of the great orcish infestation.

Then, as now, the threat had not been taken seriously until it had spiralled out of control. The severity of the situation hadn’t been apparent until most major cities in the world were being put under siege.

Breaking the sieges had cost humanity enough, but hunting down the scattered orcs, ensuring every single one had been found and killed, had cost them almost everything they had to give.

It had to be done, though. Just two orcs were enough to restart an infection. There had been flare ups for another century after the Great Purge, until eventually, the world had been declared free of the orc menace.

Until now.

That raised another question though, one that Tom had so far been unable to answer: why now? Orcs were animalistic. They could present a crude facsimile of strategy, a type of bestial intelligence, but at their core, they were savage, destructive. If they had been around, why had they been waiting? And if they had only just come back, how had they managed it?

It was impossible to think that any amount of orcs had been lying in wait for centuries. There would be millions upon millions of them, by now. It was equally impossible, though, that they had simply materialised from thin air.

No one knew where they had first come from originally. It was one of the great mysteries of the ages. Some pointed fingers at elven alchemists, some at dwarven enchanters. Others thought them a freak aberration, some mutation in one of the fairer races genes taken a one-in-a-billion genetic branching. Most chalked it up to an act of Goddess, punishment sent for some inscrutable transgression. It was as good a reason as any.

It nagged at Tom. He liked to understand things. It was moot though, to an extent. The orcs were here now, and knowing how wouldn’t stop the infestation. He just hoped they weren’t too late.

His anxiety built as they came closer and closer to Corin’s Grove. They saw another three orc raiding parties. One was at the far extreme of Sere’s range, north of them, and heading straight west. They couldn’t go out of their way to stop them.

One of the others was to the east of them, heading west, and would pass close enough to them that they had to deal with them. They had plenty of time to prepare, and the ambush they laid was clinical. It lasted less than a minute. Not a single orc survived.

The last group they saw was already west of them. After a hurried conversation, they decided to follow them. That night, when the orcs stopped to make camp, they waited. Under the cover of darkness, when all but a pair of sentries were asleep, they attacked. They didn’t fare much better than the previous orcs.

Scriber being able to use powerful enchantments as if they were completely disposable made a world of difference. Tom wondered what it would be like to have so much power. The only weakness for enchanters was time. If they were caught unprepared, they were weak. Scriber had been wandering the Deep in circles for years, with nothing to do between each visit to a hunter but enchant, and an army of mice to help him. Preparation was not an issue for him.

After their night ambush on the third orc party they stopped sleeping, relying completely on stamina refreshing enchantments to keep going. They’d seen too many packs of orcs, too close to Wayrest. They were mere days out now. Anxiety drew them forwards as surely as it spurred their steps. They all feared what they would find.

They reached Corin’s Grove late one afternoon. The sun was low in the sky, tinging it as peach as the ripe fruit hanging from the orchards to either side. Blossoms fluttered in the breeze. Smoke hung in the air.

They sprinted onto the path to the village, and Tom’s heart leapt in his chest. There were tracks in mud. Long, four toed tracks, each digit ending in a claw.

Orcs had been here.

They tore through the picturesque orchards that the quiet village was named after. Tom saw the body of an orc sprawled up against a tree. Its chest was laid wide open from a cut. Flies buzzed in the wound. He saw a clothed bundle lying in a tangled heap further down the row. A villager. He didn’t stop.

They burst into the village, and stopped. It was silent. The smoke was so thick it made his throat itch. Two of every three houses were smouldering husks. Tom could feel the heat radiating from them: no longer on fire, but not far past it.

It was eerie. The village was usually a bustle with sounds, even if it was a rather sleepy orchard village. Now, there was nothing. It felt solemn.

The sound of some forlorn timber crashing shattered the quiet. It filled itself back in, but slowly, like a footprint in wet sand.

“Goddess…” Val breathed. “We’re too late.”

“No,” Tom said. “No!” And he found himself sprinting again, straight for the village square.

He pulled up again when he reached it, and dropped to his knees. The barracks were a blackened shell. Through the gap made by burned houses, he could see where his mother’s cottage was. Where it had been. It was little more than ash now, too.

Tom was tired. His emotions were pulled in too many directions. He felt tears roll down his cheeks, but they were a reflexive thing, an overflowing of sorts. There was none of the wretched spasms that usually squeezed tears from him. He felt too numb for that. He heard footsteps behind him.

“...Can’t have been more than a day,” Cub was saying. “The ruins are still hot.”

“No bodies,” said Scriber. “Not many, anyway. Not enough.”

The words span through the miasma in Tom’s head, and he latched onto them. A measure of clarity returned, tinged with painful hope. Scriber was right. There were bodies around, black bones jumbled with burnt wood, but not a village’s worth.

“They’re taking captives,” Tom said slowly. “They’re taking captives! We have to go after them!” He got up, as if to run back into the Deep immediately. Val laid a gentle hand on his shoulder, looking into his face with hard eyes.

“Stop, Tom. We need to think this through. Look,” she said, and he allowed her to turn him towards the other side of the square.

A familiar steel portal arch was rising on the other side, exactly where it had last time. They waited.

The steel stretched and snapped, and a shape hesitated for a single moment before flickering and disappearing. More shapes came through the portal, the metal stretching over them like wet fabric before finally admitting them from far off. Two full units of guards exited, one after the other.

They took only a second to get their bearings, and then wheeled towards them, drawing weapons. Tom saw the telltale signs of skills being readied. He heard a noise behind them.

“Hmmmmn,” came a contemplative note.

Tom whirled, but found nothing but a slight twist of displaced ash. He turned back to the guards again. A small figure, dressed head to toe in black, was talking with them. A Watchman. They must have been the first through the portal.

The Guards put their weapons up, but didn’t put them away. The flickering lights of their skills died out. Ten men, one of the units, swept up towards the barracks. The other unit, and the Watchman, approached them.

“Ho there!” One of them said, an officer by his stripes. “Hunters, is it? I’d ask what brings you out of the Deep, but…” he trailed off weakly, shrugging. The officer gestured, and five of his guards set off past them, towards the path through the grove. The Watchman stepped forward.

“I’m Watchman Cooper,” she said, her voice sweet and high. “And this is Officer Mallet. When did you arrive?”

Val made a round of brief introductions for them. “Only just now. We saw orcs in the Deep, close, and heading towards the city. We got here as fast as we could.”

“I’d believe it,” said Mallet, eyeing their unkempt appearances.

“How long? When did the orcs attack?” Scriber asked.

“This line in the ring is mine,” Cooper explained. “I sensed something was happening, but I didn’t make it in time.”

The Watch generally worked in pairs. Each pair was given a ‘line’ of villages to watch, starting from the inner ring and extending to the outer. Each line had several pairs watching in a rotation.

“Did they take anyone? Did you see anyone? Is anyone alive?” Tom broke in, urgent with need. The Watchman’s face was covered with a loose black wrap, except for their eyes, but he thought he saw them wrinkle with compassion.

“A few villagers ran as soon as they heard the attack. I saw them on my dash in.” Her eyes narrowed in thought. “I never saw the orcs, but what you suggest might make sense. I found no bodies for the Guards stationed here, but there were a few scenes in the orchards where it looks like they fought.”

“The villagers who ran, was there a Marg Cutter among them?”

“The Healer who moved here? No. No, she wasn’t with them. I couldn’t find her either, dead or alive. I looked carefully, too. There were a handful of injured that she could have saved, if she were there.”

Relief came in a cold flood. Rosa and his mother might be alive. They would be orc captives, dragged off to Goddess knows what torment, but alive. They had a chance.

“The other villages?” Scriber asked. The Watchman turned to Mallet.

“Hit all along the northeast rim. This was one of the worst. Only Miller’s Till managed to fight off the raid. Extra guard units are being deployed all around the rim. We could really use some more scouts though. Let me send back for the Lord General, he’ll want to talk.” He gestured again, and one of his guards went running back for the portal.

“You’ll need those reinforcements fast. We saw plenty more orcs in the Deep. They’ll hit us again soon, and it won’t all be in the northeast, this time.”

Mallet, to his credit, merely nodded solemnly. Tom’s attention began to wander. His eyes traced the lines where buildings once stood. There, the bakery where he would buy lunch with Rosa. Home to the baker who loved feeding Sesame honey. Across the way, the town hall where he sold off his haul of drake parts. Both gone.

The runner Mallet sent returned with news that the Lord General would be with them shortly. Mallet left to see to his guards, but bid them wait for the General. Scriber wandered over to the ruins of the town hall. Val moved to wait for the General by the portal. Cub laid a massive hand gently upon Tom’s shoulder.

“Family here?” he asked. His mouth quirked in commiseration at the look on Tom’s face. “They’ll be okay, brother. We’ll get them back. Come on, come sit down a minute.” Tom let himself be drawn away to the middle of the square, where there was a space relatively free from debris.

“You know what always takes my mind off things?” Cub said quietly, once they had sat down. “Good, hard work. None of that for us now, but we’ll have plenty soon.” Tom nodded numbly.

“And you know what always cheers me up? A well-forged weapon. I’m a fuckin’ weirdo, I know.” He gave Tom a small grin. “But this is my best work yet, if I do say so myself.”

He proffered his hand, as if for a coin, and a spear dropped into it. It definitely caught Tom’s attention, which was saying something, in the state he was in.

It was matte black, like his axe, with a silvery-red head. Two long strips of the silvery-red metal, bright and clean, ran from the head down the shaft, where they met in a thin reddish capping. Tidy lines of reddish runes adorned the length of the shaft too. It was a simple looking weapon, but elegant in the extreme.

“Scriber and I made it at the forge. He was …worried that your last spear wasn’t good enough. He kept going on about how it was a ‘rush job’ and ‘barely better than a stick’. He insisted we make this. Donated all the materials himself. He seems to have taken quite a liking to you. Here.”

He handed the spear to Tom, who accepted it wordlessly. It was ever so slightly longer than his other spear, and slightly lighter, too. It still had a decent heft to it. He shuffled his hands up and down the shaft, weighed it in them. It was perfectly balanced.

“It has a drakebone core for strength, while still allowing a tiny bit of flex. The plating is soulsteel, for conductivity. The metal on the head, and for the runes, we call bloodsteel. It’s the first of its kind. It’s an alloy of soulsteel and the enchanting iron from the Nails. We’ve been working on it for years, every time Scriber stops at the forge we test it again. Even better strength and conductivity than soulsteel.”

Tom admired the weapon for a while longer. The orcs had taken from him. With this spear, he would save his loved ones, and take from them in return. It was the perfect weapon for what he needed to do.

“Thank you,” he said. He looked Cub in the eyes, trying to pour every ounce of his gratefulness into them. Cub nodded.

“We’ll get them back, Tom. You’ll see.”

Footsteps approached, and they looked up to see Scriber walking across the square, dragging something behind him. Tom noticed Val talking with the Lord General across the square. More guards had come through the portal.

“Thank you, Scriber. This might be the most beautiful weapon I’ve ever seen.”

Scriber absently waved a hand at him. “It’s nothing. A matter of professional pride. It irritated me to know you were using that other patchjob spear. I’m glad you like it.”

Tom reflexively bristled at hearing his old spear described as such, but he supposed to Scriber that an excellently made spear of normal steel that he’d had his mice whack some runes onto over the course of a few hours probably did seem pretty shoddy.

“Look what my mice found in the rubble,” he said, and dumped the bundle he’d been dragging in front of them. Tom couldn’t identify it. Maybe a very thick cloth?

“Drake leather!” Scriber explained, seeing their confused expressions. “You sold most of your take here, didn’t you, Tom? Looks like they were going to use it for something.”

Tom shrugged. They wouldn’t be using it for anything now. He was sure Scriber would use it in one or another of his projects.

“Found this, too.” And he held a tiny, opaque grey stone out to Tom.

Tom’s eyes went wide, and for a moment, he even forgot all that had happened.

It was a silence essence.