Eli POV

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When we were back out in the mud with the late morning sun filtering in over the treetops, I turned around towards Salamede.

"I'll start on the backside of the camp and set everything on fire. You start burning stuff on your way back to the entrance and keep an eye out for anyone coming to visit the camp." I said. She gave a nod and started walking back towards the exit. After we dropped a few throwing axes and darts from some dead orcs I had gathered in a bag of holding, we stuck a few of the black barbed arrows in the bodies. Then I headed back towards the house in the middle of the camp.

I started up my fame thrower and ran it over the run-down thing. As the flames washed over the woodwork, the bits of tar slapped in between the boards to provide meager weather protection bubbled slightly as the whole building gradually caught alight in flame. I walked over to the campsite and went through the tents, burning the leather and cloth pyramids as well as any of the injured survivors to ash.

Then I walked over to the wall and did a walk around the perimeter, bathing the woodwork in fire at certain ramps to preserve the ambient mana. I walked out of the entrance, the sign with the gaping jaw to my left being the only item preserved from the flames. Salamede dropped down from the tree and landed in front of me.

At least she getting more confident in her equipment.

"What now?" She asked as she crawled up onto my back. I used my wooden arms to lock her in place before taking off. The ambient heat on my backside was getting pretty intense and we needed to get going.

"According to the map, the main base of the Vipers is next to a lake a few miles from here. But we have a much bigger problem now," I said as I moved upwards through the treetops. I managed to get high enough that I wouldn't have to worry about smaller branches so I let my bigger jumps rip.

"What do you mean? Why go after them?" Salamede asked through a spirit connection as she gripped my shoulders in the turbulent movements of my jumps.

"He said all western activity has to be agreed upon by the other gang bosses. Including kidnappings." I replied.

She chewed on the information while I stopped and looked down at the road. I took out the map from my pocket and looked it over more carefully in the rising sun. The headquarters was well past a lake that went beyond a sharp bend in the road, but it didn't come close to the river. It was on top of what looked like a singular mountain that may be man-made if mages were involved with the Vipers as well.

"They were all involved in your attempted kidnapping? But that seems a bit expensive to get all the gangs involved. Just using their own knights would probably be a far more reliable option." She said, clearly as mystified as I was.

"Probably, but that's not the only factor here. I had taken out the troglodytes by that time so they may not have had a lot of confidence in the ability of non-magical minions to take me out. In that case, it would probably be better to use some third party help.

What puzzles me is why bother using the bigger gangs at all? Surely it would have been far cheaper to use some of the nameless backwoods nobodies if they wanted to just throw minions at me till one of them gets lucky" I said as I mused on all of the possibilities. None of them good and getting worse all the time.

"It's hard to tell what a noble would do to satisfy their wounded pride. Maybe several of them got together to split the costs of the needed bribes just for their expertise." She suggested as I stuffed the map back into my side pocket in the underlying leather armor.

"Perhaps, but that also leaves a bigger paper trail for them to be found out. If the Viper gang has the information I need then I'd prefer to go after them. You didn't see the castle the Maw gang has to its name. That thing is a massive work of stone surrounded by an empty field and an army of goons and mages.

I was originally going to use the raid as a misleading question to see who made the kidnap order. But helping in the raid seems very out of character for this Maw fellow and I need to know more about what goes on when making these decisions if I want a better picture of who my actual enemy here is. Besides, the people in the Maw gang out here don't have the info I need but the Viper commander probably does," I said as I took off, following the road below me as I zipped through the treetops.

'And maybe find out more about the odd phrase 'dying for the betterment of the Coalition' the mage said to me during the raid. Going over the whole incident, I thought he was talking about all the suffering in the raid in some kind of crazy conceited mania about purging the weak that no sane person could understand, but it appears there is more going on with the raid than some mad mans ravings.' I thought to myself as I tried to filter this haze of questions and mysteries into something more cogent and understandable.

We were moving through the trees for a good hour or two, sometimes moving over the small clouds of lingering fog and sometimes through them. It was near midday when all the fog had been banished by the sun that the road took a sharp rightward turn. We went on further until we came upon a decent sized lake. It was no puddle but I could make out the far side even if I was on the mucky shore.

As we zipped along the treeline surrounding the lake towards the Viper HQ, the place in question came into view. The giant structure of grey bricks a good three feet wide and two feet tall had one entrance, a large door with iron bands around it. The whole set up was a good-sized fort for a couple of hundred plus soldiers on a large hill. The thick grey stones were laden with moss here and there but the wall was nearly 5 times the height of a man with a moat of spikes surrounding it, a retractable bridge being the only way up to the entrance. Apparently the architects respected the orcs marksmanship because no building went higher than the wall aside from a single stone tower to the left side riddled with murder holes and flat stone roof.

I saw a line of carriages loaded down with meats, cheeses, and chests of other basic supplies moving up to the building. The large gate gradually opened for the visitors and the dar bridge was brought up after the last carriage crossed onto solid land. I watched on as the doors closed once the carriages made their way inside.

"All right. Let's find a place to rest" I said in a spirit connection before turning away.

We made our way back towards the mountains further north. I took note of several large rocks and unique twists in the river to keep track of the trail I was taking. There was a larger hill with rocks jutting out of the sides and some particularly tall trees on the peak as the ground behind them gradually slopped off at a slight angle.

After a late lunch of bread, water, and dried nuts, we headed closer towards the swamps to try and get a better layout of the surrounding area. The area was far mustier and despite being more open with only the occasional hill, it still had a tight, claustrophobic air brought about it from the dead and decaying bodies that would be occasionally spotted along roads or left to rot among the trees.

As we headed towards a muddy marsh we saw several wooden spikes along the swampy water. Atop them were human heads, all with their jaws torn off and eyes gouged out. Several were displayed more proudly than the others. These were on spikes much larger than the others and had their bodies, disemboweled and burned, laying against the spikes as opposed to the others who were left in grip of loneliness with nothing else to accompany them.

The taller ones were also almost entirely female while the smaller spikes were almost entirely male and it didn't take a genius to guess which ones were mages mostly mages.

This pattern continued for several hours. We would stalk through the fresher air of the high treetops observing when we were in orc territory with more heads on spikes and sometimes even witness when the orcs were getting both the tree and human parts to make them.

The orcs in the more northern region stuck to using only night-time raids. But the orcs here felt confident enough to do their work in broad daylight. We watched several battles where the orcs ambushed the gang members. That typically went great or poorly based on whether the mages were there. Sometimes the men would suffer a hail of axes, darts, and arrows, as the frontlines of the orcs rushed in to slaughter the survivors.

Other times it went like the battle we were observing below.

The orcs had unleashed a volley of arrows from a steep hill behind the trees into a group of about 15 men patrolling the road, leaving only 10 or so to actually fight back as several were curled up in the dirt from various wounds. But as the front line of orcs with small shields and axes charged forward out of the bushes, the whole front line got lit up with balls of flame and stone. Several of the grey leather armored mages with hoods hiding on the branches of the trees used wind magic to get on top of the orcs archers and lay into them with daggers or arrows. I saw at least two orcs go down before they even knew where the attack was coming from.

Their movement wasn't nearly as effective or graceful as my own ability but it was still far faster than what the orcs could manage on foot. Now that the tide had turned, the orcs retreated. A few got hit in the back with arrows and I saw one red-haired orc even have their compatriots try to stop and save her but she waved them off as she and the rest of the injured were killed with large stones crushing their heads or burned alive with balls of flame.

I quietly moved over the orc position to get a better look at how they intended to escape as their path was blocked by a wide churning river.

Once the 7 odd remaining orcs got towards the channel of water, giant frogs the size of a man came up out of the water. They looked like regular frogs scaled up to 5 or 6 feet tall with webbed hands that had opposable thumbs. While their dress was robes and loose-fitting shirts, the only weapons they carried were wooden clubs and staffs. The spectacle of bright and dark greens, teals, and even some reds rushed past their orc allies to lay down walls of water and usher the survivors into the water.

The barrage of arrows and stone got caught in the floating walls while the fires just splashed against them and dissipated in a cloud of steam. Once the orcs had slipped into the water the Frojan joined them, pulling back slowly before slipping away in a wide disturbance in the water surface that quickly moved out of eyesight.

One of the archers shot into the water with a howl of frustration followed by a barrage of stones from some of the other troops.

"All right, All right. I get your anger, but we killed a lot of them without any casualties" A tall dark-haired woman in grey leather armor said. She had smooth skin with a sharp chin and green eyes.

"We did good today, let's head back." She said but she stopped when she saw one of the mages leaning against a tree. The blond was clutching at her side with an arrow sticking out of it.

"Damn", She said as she ran forward, looking over the wound she whistled over to another woman with brown hair and grey eyes. This new woman produced a healing construct that stopped the bleeding. After a few minutes of care, the arrow was removed and the injury was patched up.

"All right, lets get back to camp and get you on extended rest," The commander said. But the blond was still crying. The commander helped her up to her feet and helped her lean on her shoulder to help her move along.

"But...it was my turn tonight. Come on, I can still try for a child tonight if I-," She half pleaded.

Instead of outrage or bewilderment, the commander looked at the younger girl with a hint of sadness as she put a finger to her lips.

"Sorry kid. I'll make sure you get pushed to the front of the line once your fit for the task," She said in a light-hearted manner.

"If she's fit? If the men could reliably deliver we would probably have enough mages to finish this war." One of the women called as they headed back towards the site of the attack. This got a round of agreement from the other women.

"Now, now girls. It's never been proven that men are at fault for our struggle to conceive." The commander chided.

"If anyone's to blame it might as well be the men," Another mage called from the back to the whooping cheer of the rest of the women. They all moved back and disappeared between the trees.

I thought about it for a few moments.

"Salamede, is that true? Do mages conceive at slower rates?" I asked in a spirit connection.

"No idea." She replied.

Well, it would explain how Andrew and Ryan hadn't impregnated every woman in the academy by now.

I shook my head and moved on to the more important task of scouting out the area. The land here didn't have the constant rolling hills the north had aside from or two steep hills that may not be entirely natural. It was also slightly warmer with a more heavy set musk of decay.

Fortunately, the mages never came up into my zone of the treetops. This allowed me to gather a lot of information about this new landscape with telative speed and ease. I couldn't tell who was winning the overall war aside from the local fauna and animals who feasted on the remains of the battles.

Oddly enough, I came upon one set of spikes during my travels more inside the swamps towards the more eastern region. As we nestled against a tree and looked a good distance past the row of spiked heads, I could see what looked like a human village that had a dozen decent wooden houses and could make out several human girls playing.

It was odd but I didn't see anything that suggested they were in danger or being held against their will as they played happily amongst the woods. I looked back towards the row of heads on spikes in clear view of everyone.

Nothing that suggested they were in immediate danger.

"They seem well-fed and happy. Not what I would imagine human prisoners would look like" Salamede told me through a spirit connection. A boy came out from behind a house and started talking to one of the girls. The scrawny brown-haired boy looked mighty nervous as he talked to the redhead who was also blushing faintly. In spite of the location and decor, it looked like any other scene in any other village of the Coalition. I moved off and continued my scouting of the area.

The day drew to a close and we headed back towards our preferred trees on a hill. We sashed ourselves high up in the trees like two hammocks swaying in the nights' gentle breeze as our sleep passed without incident. I woke up to the good smell of something hot.

Turning in my grass hammock I saw Salamede on a large branch several feet below me working an iron bowl as she used the flame thrower to heat the oats and water within for a nice hot breakfast. I ate the meal of oats and fresh berries on a large branch with my helmet off. It passed by quickly as the faint red and orange glimmer of the pre-morning sun shined on my left side as it did its daily climb into the sky. I fashioned an enchanted piece of bark to act as a shower head with quickly disappearing water.

While Salamede took her shower, I made more of the stone blade grenades I had used on Maw's men. As I was putting down the triangle to expel the stone, I felt another dull ache similar to the one I had in the workshop. It was more intense this time but went away as quickly as it had come. I used healing magic on myself then got back to work when I felt fine again.

In addition to the stone grenades, I also made a crude water shield from a wooden hand cover for my left arm. I didn't have a prayer of replicating the tools I used as a student in this time frame or in these conditions, but that might be for the better anyway. Wouldn't want to make anything that might make a knowledgable observer wonder where they've seen similar crafts before.

After a quick restroom break, it was time to get back to work. We zoomed through the trees for a while, stalking and eavesdropping on the various conversations from the bandit and mage groups. None of it was useful or provided any insight into any of the gang activities or their organization and none of them were far enough away from the others to do a snatch and grab. It was when we were traveling a fair bit north from the lake near the Viper HQ when I heard a faint noise coming from my left as we were about to move past the nominally swampy area entirely.

"Want to check it out?" I asked Salamede through a spirit connection.

"Sure." She said.

After a good jump, we started making out the sounds of screams and clothes tearing. The distinct femininity of the terrified voices became clear. I gave another good jump to get closer but when I got at a tree right above the noises I saw directly below me was a grove playing out a scene straight from a bandit raid on innocent families, but the women this time were orcs. On the men's shoulders, I saw a snake with checkered black and green scales curling around a sword.

There were four piles of bodies with two or even three men thrusting their manhoods in and out of an orc's holes, which exact one seemed to make no difference. Off to the side were a few men with an orc to themselves as they roughly took their crying victims from behind over a log. A few of the dead orcs nearby told me they were the ambushee's this time.

"Yuck. Let's get out of here," Salamede said, her voice betraying disgust and a hint of sadness.

I hesitated for a few moments but then one of the men came out behind one of the trees. He had long black hair and lines along his face. He had a long black coat and pants with a white undershirt. But his green eyes merely took in the scene with indifference as he pulled out his sword from his hip holster and stuck his blade in the throat of one of the orcs splayed out over the log.

The man who was riding her, a rather ugly, pudgy man with no hair aside from his oak colored eyebrows and brown eyes pulled back and looked at the man in fury. He pulled up his pants over his erection and pulled out his mace from his belt.

"I wasn't fucking finished." He bellowed as walked up to the black-haired man.

"We don't have time for this. Cut their throats and stop wasting my time." He said evenly.

The pudgy man laughed in his face.

"I'm sick of you acting like you're better than us and can't seem to realize the situation you're in. You and Kane fucked up that raid so badly, he's got a date with the executioners' blade and you. AINT. NO. OFFICER. ANY-FUCKING-MORE!" He screamed red-faced at the end.

The black-haired man went livid, with red slowly making its way up his face as he pulled his sword out and held it out menacingly.

"Listen you scum. I will be back on top soon, I worked my way up the ladder once and I'll do it again. But you pathetic lot of orc fuckers will always be the cattle sent out to take arrows for the real men among the Vipers." He spat with pure venom in his voice.

"You? Getting back into the officers' ranks?" The pudgy man laughed. The other men were finishing up now. The occasional cry of 'Please' and 'No!' rang out as the orcs throats were cut but their bodies were eventually tossed about the forest floor or put in a pile past the logs.

"You lot had one job! One. And you got your asses handed to you by the man you were sent to kidnap. You'll never even smell the officers' dining hall ever again. What a delusional fool you lot are." He laughed in the apparently ex-officers face again.

A stone dropped in my stomach. The town and government denied my involvement in the raid but the bandits knew the truth of how I turned the tide. My hands squeezed the tree branch I was grasping like a steel vise as sweat accumulated on my face.

The man in the black coat got a shocked expression, his green eyes going wide.

"How... how did you?" He stammered out.

"Everyone knows, fuckwad. You can't keep that kind of failure a secret forever. With those lack of wits I'm not surprised you screwed it up so badly. Besides, it's not like those other two idiots under Kane are still around. Bob took an arrow to the throat yesterday and George... well we all know what happened to him." The pudgy man said with sneering contempt. A few of the other men now came near to stand by him as they all crowded around the black-haired man.

"Stay back scum." He put up his sword as the men got closer but one skinny man near the back threw a rock from among the crowd. The sharp rock struck him and the man clutched at his bleeding left temple but the second of disorientation was all they needed. The small mob rushed forwards brandishing daggers, maces, and swords.

"FUCK Y-" That was as far as he got before the pudgy man bashed him upside the skull and kicked him further away from the group.

"Salamede, keep an eye out," I said in a spirit connection.

I disengaged the wooden arms and she balanced on the tree branch before I moved off to the right along the treetops as she awkwardly hopped from tree to tree to look over the few ways someone could come up to the area. Not that there were many people who would come out this far away from the other patrols or outposts.

How very considerate of these men to provide me such a solitary avenue for our discussion.

I moved over a few trees and got directly above the black-haired man who was getting his ribs worked on with the pudgy man's mace about 4 feet from the base of the tree I was hanging onto.

"All right." The pudgy man said after getting in 3 good blows. He pulled back as he began working his belt.

"You'll have to finish what the orc bitch started," He said with malicious glee.

To spare my self the image, I magically summoned and sent out a wave of razor-sharp stone knives into the crowd of men. Throats were slashed, eyes were punctured, and cries of pain resounded. One man managed to get away unscathed, but as he turned to run in a panic, a bullet hole sprouted from the back of his throat as the sharp crack of something breaking the sound barrier rang out.

The two men below looked at the bodies and the dying man laying on the ground clutching at his throat for a split second before I slammed into the ground 2 feet in front of them.

"Evening gentlemen, while I hate to interrupt such a romantic rendevous, I have some questions for you," I said in a calm voice.

The pudgy man backed off, taking his hands off his rope belt and instead tried to make a run for it. I used earth magic to have the ground below the black-coated man launch him against a tree to the left while I zoomed forward. The wooden hands tucked against my rib cage extended the two feet of serrated blades inside them and cut clean through the upper side of the fat man's right leg, severing the tendons and nerves.

He screamed in agony, but I put an air bubble around him that would deaden the noise but still let him breathe. The man I threw against the tree was still too disoriented to move and made no resistance as I turned him over. His face was covered with dirt, rich and dark from being fed with the blood and bodies of decades of war. But his expression told me he wasn't ready to join his fellows in the mulch just yet as his green eyes went wide with terror.

"So. About that raid. Tell me who you were trying to kidnap, and why." I said in a calm measured tone. The man looked behind me briefly to see the pudgy man noiselessly thrashing on the ground as blood gushed out of the wound in his brown cloth pants.

"I, ah, don't know the name, just that he had silver hair and purple eyes. We were to go around the part of town where he typically stayed while the guards were distracted." He said, pulling back in fear as he cowered against the tree.

Shit.

"Why? Why would you go out of your way to kidnap that one person during a raid?" I asked in as calm a tone as I could manage.

"It wasn't supposed to be a raid. We were just supposed to clog up the guards with distractions while we made our move. The kidnapping was the whole point of going there. But something went wrong. Only the old commander was given the reason why we went through all this trouble for one person and he's scheduled to be executed." He said, his eyes going up and down my frame. My mind was spinning as fast as it could to absorb all this, but I needed to squeeze him for as much information as I could get out of him. I could see his mind struggling to put down if or where he's seen me before. But my deer skull and thick vine/grass suit made that a hopeless cause. Even my arms were covered with leather.

"Where is he?" I lifted my foot to press my boot into his side. He paled as he only saw the mass of grass move forward beneath the vines. Moving my wooden set of arms and extending their blades to inch closer to his face also added to the effect.

"The Crypt. The raid screw up took a long time to sort out and decide on his punishment but now he's kept at the Crypt to await a beheading a few days from now for his failure." He said in a shrill voice.

Salamede dropped down to my left, causing the man to scramble back in fear and put up his hands in a defensive posture.

"People are coming, we got a minute before some mages stroll in." She said quickly in a spirit connection.

"Where is this Crypt?" I asked calmly.

"Between the castle and the swamps. It's along the only actual road here as a resting point." He said carefully. He was sitting to the left of the tree I threw him against, and a quick and crude slash from my left wooden arms blade made sure he would stay there.

The headless body tumbled backward as I shot a stone block at the head of the pudgy man. I released the air bubble after his bald head had been crushed. I did a quick nod to Salamede who got on my back and then used my vine suits extending vines and grass to zigzag up the tree.

"What the fuck happened here?" I heard some woman scream below.

When I got high enough in the trees to know I wouldn't be spotted, I looked back down and sure enough there was a group of about 5 of those grey armored mages coming out from behind the trees near the log where the men had bent over the orcs.

"So, what did he say?" Salamede asked as I zipped through the treetops.

"Apparently that raid on the town wasn't supposed to be a raid. The whole thing was a set up to kidnap me." I said as I used my vines to stretch around a tree and pushed off for long jump. The air, typically better than the fetid rotting stench below, was feeling fouler than it usually did

"What?! That... that seems like a bit much for a mere grudge, even for a noble." She said with a sense of dread.

"Yeah, it does." I said with a sense of unease, "But we also have a lead. The commander for the raid knew more about the decision to kidnap me and he's in a place called the Crypt."

I followed the instructions the dead man gave me. Heading towards the castle and going down the wide brown dirt road that moved past it I followed the trail for a while as I moved through the tree tops. Eventually, I came up to the 'Crypt'. It was on the right side of the road and looking down from the treetops I could see several large stone slabs laid on a wide hillside amidst wild, unkempt grass.

In the middle on a more even field was a tree, several halls of plain wood on the side opposite of the main entrance with thick beams and red-tiled roofs, and a box looking house. It wasn't dilapidated like the Maw gangs house, but the one-story structure was still a squat ugly thing, having only one door and a shuttered window. It was at the end of the dirt path and was the first building you walked up to when coming into the larger gathering of halls. Its architect had no appreciation beyond keeping the elements out of its occupants' way, with the same taste being used by the halls that surrounded it.

There was one entrance into the hillside cave several dozen yards from the main entrance on the right side of the camp on with what looked like a hole wide enough for two people to pass through at the same time. It rested between two large two-story bunker houses that were both leaning against the hill. Milling about the place were men tending to pots over cook fires, chopping logs for the fires, putting up tents in a space in front of the bunkers, and other needed tasks for civilization. But none of the inhabitants seemed worried for their safety. Especially the occasional mage who wandered the camp, of whom I would venture to say numbered 2 or even 3 dozen.

This would all barely peek out beyond a sizeable wall of smooth grey stone surrounding the whole place. All the surrounding trees had been cut down so there was no way in unless you either scaled it with a large ladder, dug underneath it quickly, or flew in. The troops patrolling the top of the wall made the first no concern while the second and third would require magic that the orcs did not possess.

Even so, this was a place that had been sieged many, many times. From the scattered arrows sticking out of the ground in the field both towards and from the walls, to the orc corpses that dotted the field in varying states of decay and their blood that faintly stained the stone structure, it was clear this was a hotspot in the ongoing war out here.

It was all too much for me to take on. Maybe, if I was feeling daring, I could take on the people in the inner field with several of my stone crafts, but there were clearly a lot more people in the caves and the other buildings, and I didn't like my chances of taking out a dozen-plus mages in what would be an even fight at that point.

I sat there, looking over the place for a while before I left to scout out the woods. There was one more day that I could be here before I had to be back at the academy. I could almost tangibly feel some large piece of the puzzle slipping from my grasp. A sense of desperation came over me as I scrounged the woods for a stray patrol to see if anyone could provide the ex-commanders location inside the fort.

Then as I landed on a tree, I saw far below me a large gathering of orcs in a pile of boulders. It looked like one orc with long black hair, small tusks, and plain leather armor that held a large ax sheathed on her back was in charge as she stood on the biggest boulder high above the rest. She was in an argument with another orc but it died down when I got close enough to hear.

"Enough! Get going you lot." She shouted as she spat at her opponent who... ah. I recognized her. She was the orc I had met before, the one who comforted the little girl. The bowl cut with a line of hair near the right eye, a scar across the left eye, and vertical cut across the nose. The black leather armor complimented with a black neck choker was distinctive as well.

They all broke up the assembly and moved through the woods. I noticed the direction they were taking and followed them. The orcs kept along the same direction as the afternoon sun made towards its journey's end. As the night was just beginning to bring its hold on the woods, the orcs moved in near-total silence as they moved with practiced athletics around trees and boulders. The main body of orcs marched, picking up a pack of a dozen-plus Frojan along the way until they came up to the Crypt. They hadn't been spotted so they crept along the left side of the tree line around the camp. I stayed a good several dozen yards between them and the orc I knew who stayed in the treeline closer to the only entrance to the Crypt. The larger group moved forward until they came upon another smaller group of orcs on the side opposite of the main, roadside entrance, all wielding ladders.

Their purpose clear, I came back towards the orc closer to the entrance to stay over her. One of the Frojan, a large specimen with a dark green hide and light green underbelly showing under his tattered blue robe, said something to her. She put her hands up to her face with a sad nod. I looked back at other group for a while before turning back down towards the black leather orc. She took a crossbow from one of the giant frogs. After priming the weapon, she waited for the opportune moment.

When a laborer was moving some buckets filled with what I assumed was sewage out of the now opened gate, she shot the guard working the winch on the wall to open the gate. He was above the wall and the distance from the tree line where she was and the winch open to the air was far greater than what the smaller bows of the orcs could usually cover.

He took it in the throat, but his fellows quickly took out and blew their horns. It was already too late to stop her though. The gate didn't automatically lower with no one working the winch, and as the laborer dropped his buckets and ran back into the encampment. . The frojan and the orc rushed in, cutting men with her blade and the frojan using various weapons to cut and stab.After a few minutes, horns started blowing on the back left side as well

But this charge was a lost cause. The other party charging the wall was getting rocks, arrows, and fireballs thrown at them. As the charge broke down, the mages started coming out in full force as well. Then a saving grace for the orcs came in the form of a wagon filled with oils for torches and grease. It was on top of the hill and caught a fireball from a mage who took an orc arrow in the shoulder.

The men who were pushing it had been replacing torches along the walls and were now trying to gently maneuver it down the side of the hill that was closer to the wall where the orcs with ladders were and put it back in the underground cave. They panicked and abandoned the wagon as it careened down the hill and its barrels rolled everywhere engulfing everything in a cloud of smoke as the flaming oils spread to various tents, wooden structures and crushed the men in its path, leaving the only visible side the one near the forts main entrance.

I chewed on my lower lip for a bit, thinking over everything.

'It's crazy I'm even considering this' I said to my self. I had to decide how badly I wanted to get to that commander before he felt the tender mercy of the executioner's blade.

And letting the only source of information about the nobles after me that didn't reside in a huge ass castle die was no decision at all.

"Ok Salamede. We need to get ... involved. Stay here and snipe any bandits you can." I said as I let her down, but Salamede's unbelieving voice came through a spirit connection.

"Just the bandi... Orcs, Eli? We're helping Orcs?" She demanded in a scandalized tone.

"No, we are performing an operation that incidentally means a moment of mutually working towards an equally desirable goal," I said using the language that would most obfuscate the truth while not lying. Once she was down and secure on the tree branch, I landed on the ground and launched my self towards the wall.