Chapter 5: Journey
I set into an easy jog, trying to put as much space between myself and Freeport as possible. I had Mattias to thank for my ease in this, as his training had also involved the most agonizing endurance training I felt I could live through. I soon saw heaps of bones and jagged fence posts of wrought iron rising out of the ground around a large cluster of mausoleums. This, Turmoil Cemetery, one of the two major burial grounds around Freeport back before The Age of Turmoil, was a place ripe with undead and necromancers out practicing their skills at controlling the dead bodies and tormented souls roaming around the area. I took a wide circuit around the place on the south side of it, not being in the mood to slay the acolytes practicing their arts.
I made my way without incident around the place, careful to also stay far enough north to keep from encountering the orc parties that made regular forays into the area south of the graveyard from a sizable encampment near Bloodskull valley far to the southwest. When the graveyard was barely a speck on the horizon behind me to the east, I angled my run in a more northwesterly direction, heading for a good-sized body of water I knew of named Dog Pond nearly directly west of Freeport.
Careful to keep my eyes out for any Militia that may have patrolled out into this area in the hopes of catching me unawares, and constantly probing out with my life-sensing web extended out as far as I could without draining myself, I managed to circumvent the few adventurers out and about, sure if any recognized me, they would be trying to collect on the bounty on me head. From what I remembered, the last notice I saw posted listed me as worth nearly fifty pieces of gold dead, and closer to one hundred alive. Not a small amount, I would have been hard pressed not to collect on it myself had I been the hunter and not the hunted.
The hours passed, the sun rose nearly directly overhead, and the few clouds left over from the short rain the night before fled before the heat of high noon. Not long after midday, I saw the pool of water I had been heading for appear on the horizon, easily recognizable due to the large wandering packs of wild dogs much like the ones in The Sprawl, only a great deal nastier. They nearly always attacked any lone travelers on sight, and seeing groups did not deter them too terribly much for that matter. I knew I would probably have to slay a few of them before the rest got the message and left me alone, but I wasn't overly worried about it. After all, the worst that could happen is I would get some dog blood on me, which I could wash off in the lake named after the ranging hounds.
As I approached within a few hundred paces of the lake, the first few wild dogs noticed my presence, and let out a howl at the thought of fresh meat, then launched themselves into the pursuit of their supposed prey. I don't know if the beasts were used to adventurers and travelers running from them on sight or not, but I do know the fact that I let out a loud howl of my own and picked up my pace, nearly sprinting now to meet the beasts, seemed to confuse a few of the beasts in the pack of around fifteen of the beasts. These few, most likely wiser, dogs turned off the path and headed off to the side to observe the ensuing fight. As I closed within ten paces of the lead dog, I pulled the staff sections strapped to my back free and triggered the mechanisms controlling their blades. At five paces, I drew up to a near stop and threw one of the two pieces like a small javelin, and the perfectly balanced staff section speared unerringly into the throat of the lead hound. At this, two more of the dogs seemed to decide they were better off not joining the fray and wheeled off the same way their compatriots had earlier, to watch from the sidelines.
I reached the body of the large lead hound moments before three more of the pack reached me. As I ran past the corpse, I never slowed my run, simply reached out and jerked the staff section out of the beast's throat and met the charge of the three dogs as they attacked in concert. As they closed to within a few long running steps of me, I set my feet and launched myself as high as I could into the air, spinning in the air to tumble over them, stabbing down twice as I passed and severing two of the dogs' spines at the base of their necks. The one survivor tucked its tail between its legs and never stopped running after it looked over its shoulder and saw what had happened to its pack mates. Like the earlier dogs, this one seemed to realize it was in the midst of a much greater predator than itself, and ran a good distance away before finally stopping to watch the remaining members spread out to try circling me. Eight of the beasts remained.
I ran straight through the circle they were trying to form, my blades flashing out, and then there were six. Now maddened to bloodlust, the remaining members didn't try to run; rather, they wanted, in some primordial part of their brains, to kill this creature that had so hurt their pack. So the pack turned back toward me as I passed through their ranks, the final six dogs howling and barking at me as they came at me at a full sprint. I stopped and turned, waiting for them to reach me, and as they did, I fell back on some of the more advanced techniques Mattias had taught me, knowing that with that many claws and teeth assailing me from every side I couldn't let any of them knock me off balance or even I might fall.
I let out a raging battle cry and spun in a technique that had me spinning in complete circles, blades flashing out both high and low, preventing the dogs from reaching me. As some fell back from my assault, I would suddenly stop my spin and rush in to stab out or slash with my bladed staff ends, and a dog would fall. As I fell back into my training it nearly seemed that my enemies started moving slower, but I knew this was merely the fact that while concentrating my abilities in the way Mattias had taught me, I was moving much faster than I normally would, though never in this lifetime would I come close to the perfection of movement that had been Mattias while in battle.
Moments later, as the dust kicked up by my movements and the dogs death-throes settled, all six dogs were lying dead in a circle centered on my position. I looked around for a moment to see if any of the remaining pack members that had watched from a safe distance had any intentions of making any moves, but they all slunk away at my glances, tails between their legs, excepting the largest remaining dog, who padded up to me with his head down and his legs between his legs. Most likely this one was now the pack leader, as all the larger hounds were laying dead at my feet. The large male dog came up to me and lay down at my feet, in supplication. I looked down at him a moment, then reached down, rubbed my hand roughly across the scruff of his neck and walked on to the pond.
The dog rose behind me and padded softly along behind me, most likely an honor guard of sorts, acknowledging my dominance. I looked around as I walked through the many packs lazing in the shade of the trees around the pond, and became aware the thunderous steps of a large herd of elephants which I just saw cresting a hill to the west. The dogs made no attempts to attack this group of elephants, as the half-dozen males in the front of the herd had tusks longer than the length of my body protruding from the sides of their mouths. That and the obvious fact that the elephants could simply stomp around randomly and devastate the dogs without ever making an overt attempt to attack if the dogs were stupid enough to engage them.
I stayed on the side of the pond that the dogs were clustered around, knowing that, at least temporarily, I had been accepted into quite a large pack. I started stripping as soon as I stepped into the cool shade underneath the surprisingly lush trees around the pond. Soon thereafter, I was standing waist-deep in the cool clear water of the pond, scrubbing at my garments to remove the grime and filth of the last day and a half's adventures. Once I was finished thoroughly cleaning my thin leather armor and undergarments, I commenced to cleaning myself, using one of the large cattail weeds near the bank as an improvised back scrubber. I kept my leather gear in the water with me, knowing that if they dried in the sun they would shrink to an uncomfortable size.
Once I was clean, I checked my body for any wounds taken since I left my room the day before, and found that the only wounds I had sustained were a few deep gouges on my forearms and one hand which were already well on the way to healing. Deciding I had no need to bind any of the already scabbed over cuts or punctures, I put my clothes back on before I left the water. I wore my leather garments while wet to make sure they simply shrank back to their normal snug fitting size, as well as for the added coolness they would provide for a while as the water evaporated out of them in the sun.
Finally finished in the water, I gathered the gear I had left lying near the leader of the pack I had subdued, and continued my journey. I headed back toward the west, on the lookout for the tower in the middle of these rolling hills that would mark The Crossroads, a major trading area a good ways west of Freeport. Not an hour after I left the pond, I saw the top of the tower in the haze on the horizon and skirted the area well to the south, making my way down one of the little used roads that crossed through hostile orc territory.
I was nearly directly south of The Crossroads when I heard the roar of the Enlightenment River. I had passed by this area on a few jobs in the past, mainly contracts to bring back certain undead parts off some of the tougher specimens around the Enlightenment Graveyard. So I knew of a little-used bridge near here, a good ways south of The Crossroads, where hopefully I wouldn't have to kill any guards to make my crossing. About thirty minutes of steady walking later, I stood at the east end of the bridge, glad no one was near, and prepared to cross over to the other side, when I heard an agonized scream from a little ways to the south over a hill. Knowing I shouldn't get involved, but having nothing better to do, I sprinted off in that direction.
I topped the hill just in time to see a nomad woman take a spear in the back as she tried to protect a young child. Not ten paces from where she died a man lay there dead, a nasty cut splitting his belly and spilling his guts on the ground beside him. The group of maybe five orcs that had killed the pair were moving in the presumably kill the child, when I howled a war cry from the top of the hill. I had a flash of memory of being a small child, defenseless much as the one that cowered under its mother's body.
I was chained face-down to a blood-stained table in the abode of a Tier'Dal priestess, a priestess I killed a number of years ago in revenge, I might add, and she was using a barbed whip to flail me across the back and legs. I remember then my promise to myself never to become as decadent as the Tier'Dal, and I have managed even to this day to avoid sinking that low. She only stopped beating me when I was nearly dead, then she would heal me with spells that hurt nearly as much as the torture, and commence to beating me more. I don't know how to this day I kept my sanity in that room, and maybe I didn't completely, but I used the pain and anger to fuel my drive to become better than my hateful paternal ancestors.
Falling back into the real world, I drew on that memory and threw myself into the battle with the orcs over the child with reckless abandon. I had also promised myself long ago that no child within my sight or knowledge would ever suffer as I did . . . yeah, I know, not exactly a common sentiment from a Freeporter, but still, the same, I would lay down my life for even a child I had never known until the moment I saw him or her in distress. And this child was in mortal danger. The fury that fueled me at seeing this child, and knowing it would grow up parentless left me with no mercy for my foes. Where normally, even the orcs would only be left in pain or unconscious at my hand, I knew this time I would give no quarter.
I flung both staff sections into the cluster of orcs, taking two separate orcs down with a blade in each one's throat. Then I rushed in barehanded and snapped off brutal hand-to-hand techniques Mattias had drilled me in until they were instinctual. Moments later, two more orcs were down, one with a broken neck, the other having been relieved of his own weapon, a flail I then used to bash in its former owner's head. Leaving the spiked ball stuck in the creature's skull, I rushed the other two as they turned to flee.
The one closest to me I took down simply by jumping into the air as I closed within a few feet of him and brought my knee up to connect with a loud crack just below his shoulder blades on his spine. He fell in a boneless heap, screaming in agony. I reached down and plucked a small knife from his belt, then stabbed him through one eye with it, silencing his screams, then spun and threw the knife nearly ten paces to pierce the last orc through the right kidney. He fell to the ground, bleeding to death, and unlike my normal self, I didn't give him a clean ending, as he was the one I saw pulling back after having thrown the spear into the woman's back. I let him writhe there in agony as his lifeblood poured out onto the dry grass below him, staining the brown stalks a bright red.
By the time I had walked over to the two dead orcs that had received death compliments of my staff sections' blades, removed the sections from the bodies and cleaned them off, the orc had died. I looked around to make sure nothing else was near, and sent out my life-sensing web again, finding no sentient beings other than myself and the small child, a girl of maybe three seasons, from what I had seen in passing close to chase down the last two orcs.
I walked slowly over to the child, my empty hands held out loosely away from my sides, showing her I meant her no harm. The girl finally recovered from her shock enough to start crying just as I reached her, and I gently moved her mother's body off of her and picked her up in my arms and held her until she fell asleep. I laid her gently down close to the river so that the sound of the water rushing by would help her sleep, then commenced to burying the nomads, not having any way to cremate them, as I'm sure they would have preferred. There was nothing but dry grass and weeds as far as I could see, other than a couple of living trees a bit down the bank of the river, and I knew I would never get the green wood to burn well enough to free their bodies to wind, so that they could continue their travels for time unending as most nomads preferred to do.
I found a small leather and cloth contraption lying near where the man had died, and figured out it had been used to strap the small child to the man's back on their travels. I wish I had known what was so important about coming this way rather than through the well-guarded roads leading to The Crossroads, that the two had risked, and given their lives for. Either way, I intended to see that their progeny did not suffer the same fate as they had, and I went over to the small girl and strapped her into the carrier, shouldered the straps after removing my backpack to carry slung on one shoulder, and walked on towards the now setting sun.
(Yes, I know, I'm a machine 
This whole story so far in less than a week. Heh, well you guys should see me grind 
Makes my story writing marathon seem like a vacation lol... well, I doubt there will be another update for the next couple of days, gonna be doing some pre-Thanksgiving traveling for a bit, then I'll have my own rig back and Ill have (woot) spell-check. I'm tired of going to Dictionary.com...though I would recommend the site to anyone needing synonyms to make their reading more enjoyable or correct spellings and such. Later guys, enjoy the read, and the soft side of the main character Happy Hunting!
Final Edit.
Message Edited by Ferunnia on 01-17-2007 11:34 AM