Siege State

The group set back out into the Deep straight away. They had no time to lose.

Tom felt urgency burning in him like never before. They were on a clock. They had no idea how long the orcs would keep their captives. They also didn’t know where they’d been taken.

If the orcs had started moving en masse, as the raiding parties suggested they had, then it made sense that the orcs would have moved the captives along with the army. Sending new Idealist orcs to the army from the original camp, almost a month’s travel away through the Deep, wouldn’t make sense. They would need as many Idealist orcs as they could make for their siege on Wayrest.

It followed, then, that the captives would be brought to the siege so that they could keep producing new Idealist orcs. If that was the case, then there were two possibilities.

The raiding party that had sacked Corin’s Grove would either be waiting somewhere nearby for the main army to arrive, or they would be going to meet the main army as it travelled.

The four of them discussed the options in-depth, and concluded that either presented an opportunity. If the orcs were still nearby, they might be able to ambush them and free the captives. If they had taken them to meet back up with the main army, then there might be a chance to free the captives while the army travelled.

They all agreed that orcish discipline, shoddy as it was at the best of times, would likely be slacker when they were on the move, and with a siege on the horizon. They would be distracted, and hopefully that would provide them with the opportunity they needed.

Either way, they would need to pick up the trail of the raiding party and follow it. That was how Tom found himself scouring the ground outside Corin’s Grove with Val.

Scriber was low on his miracle mice, and was creating more for them while they searched. He had given him and Val a new one each, but he guessed they would need as many as possible in the coming days. If they managed to get to the captives, they would need as many able to fight or run as they could. Scriber only had so much appropriate mana stored to fuel the mice, but was churning out new wooden mice at a prodigious rate even so.

There were plenty of tracks around, and they made a confused muddle in the generally clear ground near the village. With both Tom and Val, and the help of their familiars, it was a relatively quick exercise to sort out the tangle of prints. After a short interval, they found definitive signs of the raiding party’s direction. They were heading north east, back towards the direction of the orc encampment.

They followed immediately.

Tom kept Sesame nearby, and his owls too. While they could function during the day, they were not happy about it. He had decided to name them Susurrus and Soliloquy, or Sus and Sol, for short. Sus, the larger and grumpier of the two, seemed to like perching on his shoulder. Sol, the smaller and sleepier, had chosen to nap on Sesame’s back.

He sent Sere out as far as she could go and still send him coherent information. By their best guess, the orcs had about a day’s lead on them. With the buffer provided by Sere’s scouting, they could move as fast as they could push themselves without worrying about running headlong into another orc raiding party.

So they ran.

A day went by, and then another. They saw no orcs. Tom was about to explode from frustration. He knew from personal experience how fast they could move, but trained Idealists should be able to make ground on them, burdened as they were with captives.

The third day of tracking was when they ran into trouble.

It was midday, the sun high above the Deep, shading the canopy in bright greens and dark shadows, when Sere sent them warning of orcs approaching.

The images she sent were of an orc raiding party. A different one to the one that had attacked Corin’s; these had no captives, and were heading the wrong way. Towards them.

This raiding party was bigger than any yet, some forty orcs, all pelting through the woods at top speed. Yet more confirmation that the army was on the move, that it was approaching, just as they were likely approaching it.

Scriber prepared another ambush site for them, and Tom waited impatiently for them to arrive. Given the success of the last ones, and the amount of warning Sere had been able to provide this time, he didn’t anticipate any problems. He just desperately needed to be moving, to be getting closer to getting Rosa and his mother back. The delay chafed at him.

The orcs came howling from the Deep and, as Tom predicted, they were taken care of in short order. Scriber’s enchantments ensured that forty orcs quickly became pieces of forty orcs. He didn’t even get a chance to engage any of them in melee.

They moved on, hounding the trail once more. That was when the true issue became apparent. Within half an hour, Sere had sighted three more packs, all bearing down towards their ambush site.

The group moved to avoid them, changing their bearing, and hoping to swing around them and pick up the trail again further on. After another half hour, it became clear they’d never get the chance. Several more orcs packs were all spreading out towards them.

The sheer amount of them within such close proximity could only mean one thing: the army had arrived. And it must be close.

All of a sudden, their headlong rush to save the captives seemed foolhardy. The group turned, and over the next hour, they had to change their course yet again to avoid even more oncoming orcs. Then they had to change once more.

By the time the individual orc raiding parties were no longer distinct units, blending into one, huge, boiling, voracious horde, they were fleeing wholeheartedly.

The army was not heading directly towards them, and yet it contained so many orcs that they were struggling to get out of its path.

Soon, it became clear they couldn’t avoid them. When Tom stopped them briefly, yet again, to update them on the size of the oncoming army, it was obvious not a one of them wasn’t afraid for their lives.

“Shit!” Val cursed. “We can’t just wait here! They’ll slaughter us! Much as I’d like to go down fighting, we’ve got people to save first. We need to get around them. Scriber, do you have any movement enchantments?”

He shook his head. “None that would get us moving fast enough. The horde’s too big. We need to hide.”

“How?” said Cub. “Wardpoles will deflect their attention, but with the sheer number of orcs, they’re bound to simply run right across us anyway.”

“I have a way,” Scriber said, pulling an object from a spatial storage. “I’d hoped not to use this enchantment, but we have no other choice. Sub your familiars, please. Tom, leave Sere summoned. We’ll need her eyes.”

He began to fiddle with the object he’d retrieved, a small disk of plain looking steel. Tom shuffled closer for a look. The surface had the most densely inscribed enchantments he had ever seen.

Tom was growing ever more nervous. There were thousands of orcs bearing down on them. With the sheer amount of them, there was absolutely no way they would miss four humans, even cloaked in one of Scriber’s enchanted shields and snug behind wardpoles. They would bump into them, one way or another.

“Guys…” Tom said, apprehension in his voice. It was clear what he meant.

Scriber wasted no more time. He set the disk at the foot of a big oak tree, on the opposite side to the approaching orcs, right near the trunk. Then he tapped it right in the middle.

A white-grey portal sprang up, suspended a foot above the disc. It was about seven feet high, and three feet across. Whatever was on the other side was obscured.

Scriber grabbed double handfuls of dirt and packed them down on top of the disc. The portal hung in the air above him. A single mouse ran out of his sleeve. He murmured a few words to it, and rubbed its head with one thumb. He placed it gently on top of the dirt, and then stood up.

He pulled four more objects from his storage, and passed one to each of them, keeping one for himself. Tom recognised them, they were enchanted lanterns. He also pulled a crate of something from his storage as well.

“Come,” he told them, and stepped through.

Cub gave them an anxious glance, but followed Scriber through the portal. Like the enchanter, as soon as his body touched the softly glowing frame of light, he vanished.

Val looked at Tom and beckoned him to enter first. He approached, hesitated for a brief second, and plunged in.

His vision went blurry. A faint tingling passed over his skin, not unpleasant, and then his vision snapped back into focus.

Scriber and Cub stood in front of him, Scriber wringing his hands. Tom felt a presence behind him, and turned to find Val. Behind her was a mirror of the portal they’d come through. As Tom watched, it winked shut, like a sleepy eye.

Light blossomed in the dark as Scriber activated his lantern. Tom remembered his own in his hand, and channelled mana into it too. Cub and Val were moments behind with their own.

All around them was …nothingness. The space was utterly featureless. The floor below their feet was nondescript grey. Their nearby surroundings bled away into darkness. Tom held his lantern high, but couldn’t make out anything beyond its light. He shivered.

“What is this place?” Val asked.

“A spatial storage,” Scriber responded.

“I thought they couldn’t hold sentient beings?”

“It’s a very special kind. I met a merchant, many years ago, coming down the trade road from Horizon. He had the Ideals of Trade and Livestock. One of his skills let him store animals for transport.” Scriber shook his head. “The man didn’t even realise how absurdly rare that is. Just used it to take horses to Wayrest, and goats and sheep back.

“It took me years to figure out the enchantments for it, and I’ve still never figured out how to make them portable. I did manage to make this one enchantment that can hold living, sentient beings. It was horrendously expensive, in materials, mana, and especially time. It’s one of a kind.”

Tom was in awe. It was absolutely mind boggling, the scope of what a dedicated enchanter could achieve. He was beginning to appreciate why Scriber wandered the Deep, instead of staying in Wayrest.

Scriber settled himself down on the ground, opening the crate he’d brought through, and passing out food and water.

“Spatial storage won’t work in here, unfortunately,” he explained. “And we have a while to wait, by my reckoning. May as well make yourselves at home. Keep us posted, Tom.”

Tom was unsure what he meant, then realised his bond with Sere was still active. The images were slightly distorted, as if being sent from her utmost extreme range, but they were intelligible even so. He took some of the proffered food and water, and sat. As he ate, he watched the goings on outside through Sere’s eyes.

Thousands upon thousands of orcs poured past. The group looked like a river in flood, so many of them were running through the woods. Tom was reminded of locusts, those horrible insects that had plagued Wayrest’s farms one summer. The volume of the orcs, the incessant howling and braying and barking, all bleeding into one thrumming noise, was just like them.

He kept a couple of Sere’s bodies in the oak above where the disc was buried, but sent the rest out, flitting through the trees to watch the orc army advance.

He saw orcs tumble and be trampled underfoot. He saw Idealists, flickering through the masses with skills, or running in a small eddy of their own. Several moved through the branches of the trees, some with skills, others with clearly skill-heightened agility.

He caught the orc leaders, those enormous specimens, jogging along in the centre of the massive swarm. Every orc nearby them looked like an Idealist too. There were thousands of them alone.

The horde began to thin but even that took several hours; those weaker, younger, or infirm orcs trailing along behind.

It was nearing dusk, the shadows growing long and merging under the canopy, when his heart lurched.

A group of Idealist orcs, massive and savage, were bringing along the captives. A long string of filthy humans, bound hand to foot, and to the humans ahead and behind them in the line, were being marched mercilessly behind the horde.

Tom counted at least a hundred, and twice as many Idealist orcs marching them, guarding them. Many looked as though they were a breath away from death. As Tom watched, though, he saw that was not universally the case.

He saw a pair of Idealists who looked well fed, and though dirty, it appeared to be new, not the hard worn, filthy appearance of some of the other captives. The two had injuries, an arm hanging limp at a side, a great purple mass of bruises on one’s face, but they were not the half starved skeletons the rest were.

Guards, Tom concluded. From one of the other village raids. I’d bet my life on it.

Then he saw them. Right near the back of the line, he saw them. Rosa, his mother, Officer Dale, and the other guards from Corin’s.

Relief surged in him. His legs felt weak, and his breath came in gasps. They were alive!

He quickly relayed what he’d seen to the group, to much acclaim. They began to plan, but Tom hurriedly shushed them. He had something to do.

He steered a couple of Sere’s bodies closer to the line. Rosa was in front of his mother, and behind Officer Dale. Her head was down, her long hair a tangled mess, and she had a fat lip and a black eye.

Tom nudged Sere, and one of the sparrows swooped right in front of her. She started, just slightly, and he set the sparrow wheeling about in front of her, over the heads of the captives, and then had it settle on a low branch they were walking under.

As Rosa approached, she glanced up at the sparrow where it sat. Tom saw her eyes widen, then she dropped her head again.

But before she did, he saw the look in her eyes.

Recognition. Hope.

And a deep, burning fire.