Chapter 11

Ambush at Deep Fork Creek

Leaving Chandler, OK

12 January

~11 am

It was a warm pleasant winter day about 65 degrees. The wind was blowing softly through the grass and the trees. There was a freshness to the day. Perhaps the most shocking was the lack of noise. With nothing electronic or mechanical to make noise, the birds could be heard singing in the trees. The cows would make their occasional calls to each other, but the day was peaceful. Thinking back, it had been a good day so far. The day started uneventfully, guard duty had been peaceful and quiet.

I had heard that cowboys used to sing to the cows at night when they made their rounds. The cows liked to hear the sound of the cowboy singing to know where they were. Supposedly this keeps the cows from being startled and stampeding in the middle of the night. The cowboy routine was bringing out all my old country songs. I started with Garth Brooks and his song “Friends in Low Places”, I think I tried to sing every song on the album before I switched to someone else. Hopefully, nobody heard my version of Denna Carters, “Strawberry Wine”. If so, I suspect they would have thought I had drunk a whole box of it. At that thought, I made myself laugh as I wondered if strawberry wine comes in a box. The cow near me brought up its head and gave me a strange look when I laughed.

Everyone was up at the break of dawn, Granny had somehow managed to bring some eggs on that buggy of hers. I had no idea how she did it. She was a marvel. If she kept feeding me, I was going to put on the pounds.

The first day they had picked the chestnut-colored quarter horse for me to ride. She was a magnificent cutting horse, but today, when we were saddling up horses to ride, I knew that I wanted to ride the brown spotted appaloosa stallion. The stallion had dark chocolate head legs, but its torso was white with about 1000 silver dollar-sized circles on his torso. As the horses were not mine, I asked Leighann, if I could ride him.

Leighann’s eyes gave me a once over, then told me, “Whiskey Chips is nearly 16 hands tall.”

Seeing the vacant look on my face indicating I had no idea what this meant, she continued, “He is a whole lot of horse. Are you sure that you can handle him?”

I moved over and took the bridle in my hands and looked him in the eyes. He didn’t shy away from me and we engaged in a staring contest. Without words, I strained to communicate to him, my appreciation for his beauty, my desire to be his friend, my willingness to care for him, and my desire to keep him from harm. After a few moments, I felt like we had telepathically communicated. Moments later, the systems confirmed my feelings.

You have received a skill. Horse Whisper. This skill is your ability is based upon your ability to commune with horses. Horses can feel your emotions towards them. The continued increase of this skill will unlock additional abilities to communicate with a horse beyond simple emotions. As Horse Whisper is a subskill of Animal Husbandry, you have also learned this skill. Animal Husbandry is an indication of your knowledge and ability to take care of livestock. Taking good care of livestock can increase their strength, stamina, and increase injury recovery time. Failure to properly take care of livestock can result in injury and or death of the animals.

Turning back to Leighann, I told her, “I think that we have come to an understanding.”

Leighann, just looked at me, shook her head as she walked away. Over her shoulder, she called to me as I had already started to comb him down before putting on his saddle, “Your funeral.”

With the horses saddled, we started to prepare the herd for the trail. They said that many hands make the work light, it was true this morning. Combining our herd of 107 White Faced Herefords with their 42 head of Black Angus gave us nearly 150 head of cattle, but with twice the number of skilled riders, if you didn’t count the kids, we got the herd moving out the gate and down the road in no time. Our goal tonight was to get to Hogback Road on I-44.

Initially, I had been concerned about the traffic on the interstate from the previous night and cars clogging the road, and not being able to drive the cattle through. However, after seeing the accident and how few cars were stranded on the interstate, I had decided to modify our route. In the towns, I suspected the dead would be spread out all across town if Shroud was any indication. While a few of the cars on the freeway had the car doors open and bodies falling out, for the most part, it seems that people had left the freeway when they received the ten-minute countdown. Another good thing about the route change was that it is the most direct route and shaved about 5 miles off our journey.

At first, I had tried to discuss these decisions with Beau and Slim, but after the first couple of attempts, they had just waved me off and told me that whatever I thought was best. I had tried with Leighann as well. She listened politely and would ask a few meaningful questions, but in the end, it always came back to what I thought was best. I knew that everyone was adapting to the changes in this strange new world, but I felt like things had changed between how they viewed me as a leader. Because we didn’t know each other very well, it was difficult to define the exact point that things had changed.

My first thought had been when I had created the quest to go to OKC, perhaps, they felt like the system had put me in charge. On the other hand, perhaps it was the culmination of several things, the ambush in the middle of the night, defeating the goblin contender with no major injuries, Lonk, and her pledge, and the creation of the quest was just the icing on the cake.

Regardless of the reason, I knew that everyone on our team was now looking to me for answers. I had accepted responsibility for their lives and offered them a quest to join me. However, I was not using to being in charge and making the decisions. I was used to being told what to do and doing it. The memory of all the bodies lining the streets of Stroud opened my eyes to the responsibility that I was taking. The world was no longer safe. This is what happens when there is no government to provide law and order. The country and probably the world had returned to the days of the old west except instead of the battles between cowboys and Indians, the battle was between magical races and humans.

To protect the people putting their trust in me, I knew that I needed to get stronger. Additionally, I needed to increase the strength and numbers of those around me. Third, the value of forming alliances with the other races was not lost on me. During the attack on Stroud, I heard how the dwarves, gnomes, and elves had helped to fight the De’Rashka, Orcs, and the Goblins. Without their help, all the people in Stroud may be dead. Lastly, it was important to get my people to a defensible position. During one of our recent fantasy gaming sessions, we had turned the Brickyard of OKC into a defensible position, by transforming the parking garage right next to the baseball field into a castle with a courtyard.

The canal system on the south and west side of the stadium had been converted into a moat with only a few bridges as access to the castle yard. The water for the moat was supplied by the Oklahoma River. There was also, some grassland to graze the herd of cattle that we are bringing. I knew that when I had mentioned this area to Jake, he would have remembered our gaming session. While I hadn’t known exactly what would occur, the memory of this area as a nearby defensible position was at the forefront of my memory when trying to determine a safe place to go.

Coming back to the present, I looked around to see what had brought me out of my reflection. Had my stomach rumbled or what had happened? Suddenly, I realized that I wasn’t hearing the chirping of birds. While everything before had been peaceful, now it seemed eerily quiet. My concern was confirmed when I received a system prompt.

Your Detect Ambush skill has leveled up. The skill is now level 2.

Now, I looked quickly around to try and figure out where the ambush was coming from. Glancing back, I looked at the herd trailing behind me. The herd was traveling Westbound on the Eastbound lane of I-44. The cattle were evenly dispersed on both sides of the road with few cows walking down the road. Most of the cows preferred to walk in the sloping grass on each side of the Interstate. There were about 50 yards between the westbound and eastbound lanes of traffic with grass and between the two. The trees were cleared at least 100 feet on either side of the road. Several hundred feet ahead, I could see that the Interstate highway had an underpass followed by a bridge. The sign next to the bridge indicated the river was called Deep Fork Creek. This underpass and bridge were going to force the cattle to cross on the bridge and would bunch the herd up together.

Was this a troll under the bridge kind of a situation? Looking again at the team and herd coming up behind me, I motioned for some of the riders to join me. When Leighann, PJ, Beau, and Slim joined me, I created a party and then explained the prompt and my concern about the upcoming crossing. Granny Ann, was in the wagon with the kids. Lonk, Austin, and Colton stayed with the herd and were bringing them up slowly. I issued the rear guard team a quest to guard the kids and the herd in case of an ambush.

Beau and PJ each dismounted about fifty yards back on each flank of the bridge and took out their bow and nocked an arrow readding for a target to present itself. Slim stayed in the saddle slightly behind us, but Leighann and I dismounted and walked up the road towards the bridge.

When we were aligned with Beau and PJ, Beau, who was on the left flank, let out a startled cry before he yelled “Orcs”, as a large humanoid appeared from under the left side of the bridge. It was like someone kicked an anthill with all the movement behind him as he slowly walked up to the road with the group of orcs streaming around him. I was not expecting this many. I was thinking we may face five or six, maybe even eight enemies, but to see about 20 orcs streaming towards us shocked me for a moment. Fortunately, the veteran archers on the flanks didn’t hesitate. I could see the flying missiles lodging themselves in the chest of the orcs. The leader continued to approach, as he kept walking towards me.

Stopping, he pointed his glowing sword directly at me and bellowed in a guttural language, “Kharn e eski gahr din eh”. I wondered if that was a spell cast. While it took a moment for the universal translator to kick in, it didn’t take a moment for the group of orcs to rush towards me. Then we all heard the translation in our head. “Get the contender”.