Chapter 23

Rocs

All the warriors woke up the next morning fully healed and very hungry. They ate the last of the breads and dried fruits they brought from Parker, and it would take weeks before the fruits and vegetables that were planted would be ready to eat. But Torger wasn’t concerned with that. He wanted to get in, get all the easy silver they could, and leave quickly. He sent twelve dwarves to begin the mining process, with Antic making sure they weren’t sneaking silver for themselves. Three dwarves left with Jex and Arden to go hunting, and five dwarves walked to Lake Tahoe to go fishing.

Torger, Graul, Brun, and Rome went to scout the area to find bears and rocs, while the remaining ten adult and fifteen children dwarves continued to build the village. The first place they went was to where all one hundred dead cottols were on the ground. At the mayor’s council Torger saw some merchants selling cottol furs, and he thought they might need them for the winter. When they got there twenty-two rocs were eating the dead cottols!

Antic and the twelve dwarves had waited for Torger and the others to show up. The rocs were very full and sluggish, but primal feeding instincts drove them to keep eating. The group of seventeen warriors asked each other what to do. The dwarves had each brought an axe, and also picks and shovels and even two wheelbarrows, but they didn’t bring shields or iron armor. Most had thin shirts on and leather pants. None of them brought bows because it was just supposed to be a scouting mission.

Part of Torger wanted to go back to the village and gather all the bows they could, but part of him didn’t want to pass up on the easy opportunity to kill many level 15 monsters. His greed won out. He said “Men, we have a wonderful chance here to gain a lot of experience. These fat birds can’t do much fighting back. Hopefully they’re too stuffed and tired to fly away. We need to rush them and cause as much damage as possible in the first thirty seconds.”

No one really liked the idea, but the experience seemed to be just sitting there waiting for them. Torger told them to follow his lead. He crept to the edge of the tree line and looked at the meadow. He held his hand up in the air for a second, then pointed forward as he ran out of the concealment and straight at the nearest bird. It never saw him coming as he thrust his sword through its wing and into its heart. It screeched and tried to flap away, but one wing was pinned to its side by the sword. Four fireballs shot out and hit four birds in the chest.

Brun had bought another five mana with his last ability point before the fight. That brought him to 50 and he was able to cast Lighting 1 seven times. Rome watched the other fourteen fighters attack the remaining twenty-one birds. He saw Graul easily slice with his sword and block with his shield, and Antic used all his high strength and stamina to thrust his spear then back off over and over again. He was burning a lot of energy keeping two birds focused on himself, staying just close enough for them to fear his spear but not back away.

But as Rome had expected, several birds did try to fly away. He was ready for it. The ones that looked like they were about to fly off, he cast Shield 1 above their heads. They would jump into the air and flap their wings, only to hit their head on the magic shield and get shocked, falling back down. He was able to cast it four times, then drank a low mana potion, and cast it once more.

The dwarves’ short reaches gave them troubles. They tried swinging at the bird’s necks, but couldn’t reach that high. The birds would counter with a bite from a very sharp beak. Then the dwarf would have to block with his axe. It would have been a stalemate except the birds outnumbered the dwarves. Rome and Brun stayed hidden in the trees and watched as a dwarf got too careless and his hand was bit off. They felt helpless watching the surprise attack lose its momentum and the birds began to become aggressive. Rome shouted “Watch out!” but it was too late. A bird raked its claws on the top of the head of a dwarf and he collapsed.

Rome ran out with a high health potion in each hand. He called for Graul to cover him, and Graul cut off the neck of the bird he was attacking, then looked to see where Rome’s voice had come from. He saw the dead dwarf and saw Rome running towards him and called for Rome to back away, but he wouldn’t. Graul ran over and engaged that bird in combat.

Rome made it to the dead dwarf and it took him several seconds to realize he was dead. But the dwarf missing a hand ran over to Rome and yelled to get a potion. The yelling voice shook Rome out of his daze at seeing the dead dwarf and handed the injured dwarf a high health potion. He drank it and the bleeding stopped, but his hand did not reform. Rome had the unfortunate experience of watching another roc lift into the air several feet, and use its talons to crush another dwarf’s head before flying away. Then he saw another dwarf overextend his swing and that bird bit off the dwarf’s arm. Rome ran to that one and gave him a high health potion. He also drank it and the bleeding stopped, but there was no further healing.

As that dwarf was drinking, Rome saw a dark fog roll over his head and hit another bird. The bird threw up and collapsed. Then another dark fog hit a bird, then another fog. Rome looked back and saw Brun casting a spell causing these dark fogs to hit three targets. Brun cast a total of six Poison 1 spells, which damaged six of the eighteen remaining rocs. That changed the tide of the battle. The birds were sick but still fought with vigor. However the swords and axes did a lot more damage with each swing. Once some the birds had been infected with the flu from the Poison 1 spells, they were killed quickly and after that the battle was over four minutes later.

The five men took much longer than expected skinning the cottols. All the dwarves had carried their two dead companions back to the village for a funeral service. Torger felt like a complete failure. He was newly a mayor of this village, and on his first day he nearly got twelve dwarves dead from cottols, and on his second day his recklessness nearly killed the same twelve, but this time two did die and two lost a hand. He didn’t know what to say when he got back to the village, so he sat on the ground skinning cottols thinking about it.

He thought about everyone in the group gaining one ability point from the battle, and the price was way too steep. Two dwarves dead, two injured, and two high health potions were drank and a high mana potion that Brun had drank to be able to cast Poison 1 six times. If the dwarves had bows and armor the battle would have been very different. It would have been easy to pluck off several birds from a safe distance. They wouldn’t have killed twenty-one of the twenty-two, but no one would be dead.

Torger placed the seventy-three good cottol furs into his duffle bag, and they all walked back to camp. When they got there they heard dwarves singing in dirge in baritone, and the bodies were lowered into a pit. Torger and his friends saw Jex and Arden sitting on a three foot stone wall of what would become the kitchen. They went to join them away from the dwarves, but close enough to hear. When the song was over, the wives of the deceased dwarves faced the villagers and spoke of the honesty and bravery of their husbands. The words were kind as they also spoke of their compassion and family values. When the benediction was completed, Torger walked towards the dwarves. He stood between the two widows and with everyone watching he spoke from the heart.

“I have been mayor of this village for less than a month, but in that time I endangered the lives of dwarves in the goblin caves at the Salton Sea, then again clearing out the cottols, then again today fighting the rocs. I pushed our luck too far, and your husbands paid the price. I could never replace them, nobody could, but I offer you what little I can.”

He reached into his duffle bag and gave each widow fifteen furs. Next he gave each of the two injured dwarves fifteen furs. Then he gave all of them six roc feathers each. “I have no words to express my grief. I will never again bring disaster to your people.”

He turned to rejoin his friends but Stone Fist stepped forward in front of him. He addressed all the dwarves behind Torger. “This human has enriched my village. We have roads for commerce and water in a desolate desert and crops are being grown. He negotiated a temporary peace with the elves, freed dwarf slaves, inspired us to overthrow a tyrant, and has found two silver mines and an iron mine. He has done more good for dwarves than any other since Red Beard the Just over thirty years ago.

“When Torger first came to Baybil, the mayor turned him away into the unforgiving desert. When Baybil brought Torger to Small Foot, that mayor took him as a prisoner. Torger spent time in the goblin caves as a slave, but he fought his way out and became a mayor of dwarves. He is the first human to ever have that distinction. He is a fighter, and he always bounces back. He is a master city planner, and not too bad with a sword either. I ask that you accept his leadership and dig for all the silver we can get before the tyters come and kill him. I say we help the Liberator of Dwarves.”

There were mixed reactions, but after much quiet murmuring and discussion, the majority of the dwarves decided to give him another chance. Dinner was subdued that night, and everyone wanted the awful day to be done and hope for a better tomorrow. As Torger lay in his tent that night, he couldn’t sleep. He had too many options to consider and too many “what if” scenarios ran through his mind.

Chapter 24

Cleaning House

Torger gathered up the Regulators before breakfast. “I did a lot of thinking last night. I think our main goal has to be getting better weapons and armor. We can’t let the dwarves do our fighting for us anymore. The cost is too great.”

Arden interrupted. “Finally! We’re going to get the last icon from Yosemite! That’s great!”

“Not yet Arden. Sorry. We need dwarven steel infused with elf magic. That’s going to cost us a lot of money. A whole lot. This silver mine isn’t going to be enough. We’re going to need a lot of gold. Here’s my plan. We forget about building up this village. We get all able bodied dwarves to extract as much silver here as quickly as possible, then go to the American River. I don’t know exactly where the California Gold Rush took place, but we’ll find some fierce monsters that are guarding it. Then we’ll be able to set up a permanent village and dig for it. Once we have enough gold, we can go buy weapons upgrades from the elves. And yes Arden, we’ll go find the last icon in Yosemite that looks like a grenade.

“I already had this idea half formed before we freed the dwarf prisoners. I sent a letter to Strong Arm, and if he agrees to it we’ll meet the village of Calico in the sequoia forest in the middle of summer. But today I have to convince the dwarves to stop building and just focus on getting silver.”

The Regulators discussed the finer details for a while then joined the dwarves for breakfast. Once breakfast was almost over Torger stood up to speak. All the dwarves politely stopped talking and looked to him.

“I know I am new at being a mayor, but I have some plans I want to let you in on. This place was always going to be temporary to get silver. I knew where the silver was at, or approximately at, and my goal was for us to get in, get all the easy silver, then move again.”

There were moans and muttered protests.

“I know you’re tired of moving. Your whole lives get turned upside down every few years, but I hope for something better this summer. I hope to create something more lasting, before the tyters come to kill me and my friends. I hope to go down in your history as an above average mayor for what I accomplish, for what we accomplish, rather than me just being remembered as Torger the Human Mayor. I want more than that. I have plans to do something great, but I will need all of you to participate. Can I count on your cooperation?”

There were nods of agreement, but also looks of distrust.

“I want to stop building here. Instead, all able bodied dwarves I want you to get as much silver out of the mine as you can during the next three months. I know that’s not a lot of time, but you should be able to get half of it in that time if you all work together. We will need water carriers and hunters too. And these mountains are dangerous. I want all villagers to stay close to the mines. My friends and I will hunt all the bears and rocs in the area to keep you as safe as possible. Please move all of your belongings to the mine today.”

At the promise of the humans doing the dangerous hunting, Torger’s respect points rose. The dwarves seemed to admire a leader who put himself in danger first. That day they moved all the camp equipment a mile and a half to the large meadow in front of the cave. Fifteen men and four women worked the mine, while the other women and children cleared away the dead and rotting cottols and rocs.

The next day the regulators went hunting for the large birds and bears. Graul stuck with his sword name of Inferno, Antic changed his spear name from Colonoscopy to Power Cord, and Torger named his sword Red Fury. Jex looked at her dwarven long bow that dealt Ice 1 damage with every arrow and said “I will call it I.B. for Incoming Blizzard.”

After an hour of walking Arden spotted a nest on a hillside. It looked similar to what they had seen near Lake Silverwood, but the baby rocs were much bigger. Jex shot an ice arrow at a parent, and all four birds flew at them. Torger used the Bow of the Owl, although it was daylight and the night vision didn’t help him, and Arden used the regular recurve bow. Torger and Jex hit their target-the closest adult flying at them, and Arden missed. But the Regulators had battled these birds before and knew what to do.

The three archers continued to shoot arrows at the four birds, and Brun cast Poison 1. After the black fog surrounded one of the four birds, Rome cast Analyze 2. Before he could read the message he and Brun had to run behind a tree, leaving the fighting to the others. Brun began casting Lightning 1 as fast as he could, and Graul and Antic both cast Shield 1 above their heads. The two adults hit the shields while coming in hard, and put deep cracks in them, then fell to the ground in shock. Antic and Graul ran at them and stabbed them repeatedly until they died.

The babies began flying away, and Torger was able to get in two more arrows, but Jex was able to get in four more. That baby roc fell out of the sky, dead. Rome looked at what Analyze 2 revealed to him.

Young Roc. Level 6 Health 0/150 Mana0/0 Strength 0/6 Endurance 0/35 Elemental weakness: Dark

They walked over to collect the feathers and meat. They knew the dwarves loved the tough potent flesh, but the humans didn’t care for it at all. As they were plucking feathers Torger announced “As far as our quest is concerned, that’s twenty-four down, only six to go. And of course thirty bears.”

Rome was still marveling at the bird’s growth. He asked “Is it safe to assume these birds hatched at level one?”

Graul said “Yeah. Duh.”

“This one has gained five levels since then, so we could assume it was born about five months ago. That means its parents were level ten when it hatched, meaning these so called babies will begin mating soon.”

Everyone stopped at the implication. Brun asked “Does that mean in a year we’ll have a whole new batch of rocs?”

“I think it does mean that. If they’re left unchecked, by the time the tyters get here there could be hundreds of level ten rocs flying all over. And if the same holds true for all the tyter prey, imagine several hundred razorlings, billiks, bears, and cottols running around, all around level ten, plus the parents at level thirty.”

Torger held back a primal yell, and choked, but he said “All we can do is prepare to meet the tyters. Let’s go find some extinct bears to hunt.”

It turned out the bears were easy to hunt. They were starving, having just come out of hibernation, and they were easily found. The adult males were alone and the mamas had two cubs, always in groups of three. They were found drinking from stagnant ponds made by snow melt, or eating wild berries. The humans killed nine bears before returning to camp. Brun’s Poison 1 spell was a real game changer, cutting the max health of the bears in half, and making them sick, before the fighting began.

The hunting resulted in everyone gaining an ability point, plus almost a hundred experience points. That brought Arden to 4 ability points, and he bought Analyze 1. Torger reached 5 ability points, and he bought Poison 1. Everyone but Jex had two unused ability points, she had one.

When they made it to camp, they saw more than a dozen tents set up outside the mouth of the tunnel, with children playing and some women cooking and others washing laundry. The sun was going down, and before Torger had the chance to greet each dwarf, the mining men and women came out of the tunnel.

Stone Fist said they found no silver, but that’s to be expected on the first day of a virgin mine. He said all they can do on a first day is to remove as much loose dirt as possible and bring in wood beams to support the cave ceiling, but the next day should start producing a small result, then they would really pick up the pace extracting the ore on the third day. With so many hands in the process, they would be able to branch off into six different tunnels on the third day.

Torger’s face glowed with pride. Calico had twenty-one dwarves extracting about eleven pounds of ore per day. Paying the miners ninety percent of what they took, then the villagers ninety percent of what was left, still resulted in about an ounce and a half per day for Torger, although that now went to Strong Arm. He had made the same deal with these dwarves of Lake’s End, although they would have to get a new name soon.

Once Torger and the Regulators completed the quest, the village would be promoted to level 3 and they could rename it under his menu icon Cities. The problem was, they needed one building to be considered a village.

The next day, the other humans went out to go hunt bears, since they didn’t seem to be in groups like they were before winter started, while Graul and Torger used all their strength and stamina trying to build a medium sized cube building. It took them two days to complete. It had stone walls and a timber roof, covered with sod. The building looked awful, it was poorly constructed, and leaned a little to one side. But that wasn’t the point. This new thirty by thirty foot building was now the kitchen and dining hall, and qualified as one building.

When the last of the sod was placed on the roof, an hour after dark of the second day, Torger received the expected prompt asking him if he wanted to claim this building for himself and start a village. He selected yes and received the title of mayor, of the village Home, level 1. He activated the weak shield, and it had the expected two hundred foot radius, covering half of the dwarf tents.

His friends thought it was a waste of his time, after all they each received another ability point and four hundred experience points from killing ten more bears over the past two days. As far as they knew, Torger and Graul missed out on the easy experience. But Torger saw village morale rise to 25/100, and respect from these dwarves rose to 31/100. But as he was checking out how each city felt about him that he’d encountered, he saw Salton Sea (Goblin) Loved 0/100, Hated 80/100, Respected 0/100, Feared 28/100. That city was in red, all the others were in blue. There was a note at the bottom that read

Probability of Goblins attacking your village,

Hated-(Loved+Respected+Feared)= 52/100

That was bad. They shouldn’t find him this far north, but they would easily find the prisoners in Indio. He hoped Kirsk was up to the challenge, because there was nothing Torger could do about it.

All the dwarves ate roc meat that night, and the humans ate a deer Jex had killed and black berries Arden had found. They got a good night’s rest and headed out to complete the quest the next morning.

Since the Regulators had been hunting mostly in the mountains north and west, they decided to head into the desert to the southeast. Before noon they found and killed eight more rocs, two more than they needed, but had no signs of bears. They called it an early day and walked back to camp.

When they came to the top of a hill, they saw all forty-five villagers sitting down and resting and talking. Some looked worn out, and they all looked scared. Before Torger made it another ten feet he saw two huge trolls laying dead in the middle of the village. The shield had been destroyed and the kitchen door was in splinters, busted inward.

Torger ran to the dwarves and asked to no one in particular “What happened?”

One of the dwarves, covered in sweat and dirt (obviously a miner thought Torger), looked at him and said “What does it looked like happened? These monsters were looking for an easy meal and saw our wives and kids nearly unprotected.”

Torger looked at them all in horror. “I’m so sorry. I had no idea there were trolls in the area.”

Another miner interrupted him “You didn’t think there would be mountain trolls in the mountains? This is elves country. Let the elves deal with the mountain prey, we’ll deal with the deserts, plains, and hills, and the physical monsters found there. But, good for us, you did build a building to raise a shield. That slowed them down enough for our families to go take shelter. Without the shield up and stone building, we miners would be hunting you humans right now.”

Torger looked around and saw heads nod. He wanted to make it up to them, but didn’t want to make a rash decision. “I gained enough experience today to just barely gain one ability point. I will use it to expand the shield.”

Torger looked at Cities, found Home, and found Shield. He selected it and the prompt came up asking him if he wanted to add to the shield strength He selected yes, but the shield strength didn’t go to 150 and add Fire 1, as it had with the original log cabin called Home. Instead a message popped up.

You may not add 1 ability point to shield strength until:

City Shield is repaired The city has 1 fully functional building

Would you like to repair the shield for 1 ability point now?

Torger selected yes, and his one ability point was spent, but the shield did not come up. He looked at Graul and said “We have work to do.”

They spent the rest of the day repairing the broken door. It was nothing more than wood planks nailed in a checkered pattern, and left the dining hall a bit drafty, but it was good enough to reactivate the shield. It was past dinner time by the time they finished, and each dwarf family had to cook their own meals over a campfire.