Anderson, Kevin J - Gamearth 01 (5 page)

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Attack on the Stronghold

"Gamearth has been built around a precise set of Rules. Though we may find them restrictive at times, these Rules can never be broken, lest we invite chaos and anarchy into the world."

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Preface,
The Book of Rules

Making good time, while carrying Bryl, Delrael and Vailret crossed nine hexagons of terrain. They reached the Stronghold by the evening of the third day.

Vailret wished he had remembered to bring map paper with him to mark the terrain and keep his bearings. Delrael claimed to have memorized the colorful mosaic master map inlaid into one wall back at the Stronghold.

The trees were thick and full, the undergrowth colorful and lush.

Clear-cut paths wound through thick stands of oak, maple, and pine, leading off to various adventures. But all the terrain had been explored and mapped, all the dungeons uncovered, all the adventures played out and exhausted in days long past.

A clear stream followed the boundary between two hexes of forest terrain. One willow dangled over the bank, like a Medusa washing her hair in the water.

During the bloody Scouring, well-organized human armies and magic-using Sentinels had removed most of the enemy monsters from the map. The Outsiders had not seen fit to create any major new threats for more than a century. The forests had once been inhabited by ogres, sasquatches, packs of intelligent wolves, marauding bands of reptilian Slac
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all descendants of monsters that the old Sorcerers had created to fight in their wars. Vailret's father had been killed by one of the surviving ogres.

Vailret imagined Cayon, a great fighter but hopelessly outclassed by the ogre in the early morning mists. Drodanis, his uncle, had told of awakening to the sounds of battle, seeing the camp fire cold and his brother's blankets neatly folded. In a clearing he had found Cayon and the ogre
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two of Cayon's arrows protruded from the ogre's back.

Vailret tried to remember, but somehow he could not picture his father's face. He recalled only a few rare occasions when Cayon had focused attention on him; how frightening and godlike the great warrior had seemed.

The memory of his father eluded him, but the ogre seemed real, vivid to the last wrinkle in his leathery skin.

Drodanis said he had drawn his bow to join in the fight. He thought Cayon had looked impish, as if trying to show off with his sword.
Why
?

Vailret kept wanting to ask him.
It was so stupid! Because of that, you were killed! Who were you trying to impress? I was proud of you anyway
.

The ogre had swept his club sideways, breaking Cayon's wrist and knocking the sword from his hand. Drodanis sank an arrow into the ogre's chest, but the monster still drove at his first victim. Cayon stood ashen gray and tried to stumble backward, out of the way. The ogre smashed the twisted club across Cayon's chest, spraying blood into the forest. Drodanis roared in rage, sank three more arrows into the monster's back and neck, and then launched himself upon the wounded ogre, slashing with his sword from behind

Vailret had heard the story many times from others in the gaming hall.

Drodanis had completed his pogrom against the ogres, and then became a recluse behind the walls of the Stronghold. He had never spoken of Cayon's death after the first time, not once in all the hours he had spent staring at manuscripts with young Vailret....

About an hour after Vailret and Delrael had left the ogre's cesspool behind, Bryl came back to full consciousness. The half-Sorcerer walked by himself now. He moved a little slowly, but they made better time than when Delrael carried him. Bryl sulked, ashamed and grumbling to himself. "Wish we didn't have to leave the Air Stone there."

"It's at the bottom of the cesspool," Delrael said, turning around on the path. Vailret had watched Delrael's impatience with Bryl grow, watched him tense every time the half-Sorcerer said anything, but until now he had been able to stifle his urge to speak out. "Do you want us to take you back so you can dive for it? Or maybe you'd like to ask Gairoth for help?"

Bryl moaned quietly. "I just wanted to have more magic. I don't know much
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it could have helped us all." Delrael made a rude noise, and the half-Sorcerer turned to him, looking defensive. "Well,
you
imagine being trapped inside a giant jellyfish, just waiting to be digested
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and your only hope of survival is a dim-witted ogre who might not remember to come back before it's too late." Bryl sounded indignant. "I was just trying to find the Air Stone. Gairoth tortured me! He made me teach him how to use the Stone!"

Vailret spoke softly but with enough seriousness to make Bryl pay attention. "By showing Gairoth how to unlock the magic, you've given an ogre one of the most powerful weapons left on Gamearth. A weapon that was specifically given to
humans
." He saw Delrael ball his fists.

Bryl looked broken and upset. "He shouldn't have been able to use the magic anyway. How was I supposed to know an ogre could have Sorcerer blood?"

Vailret scowled at him, beginning to lose patience himself. "You should have known something was wrong when an ogre could speak."

"You know I don't study things like that."

"Maybe you should consider it." Vailret sighed, letting his anger drain away. He squinted through the trees to see the boundary of the forest. The light had grown dim in the late afternoon, but he sensed they were near the Stronghold.

Bryl sounded close to despair. "What are we going to do?"

Delrael kept walking, plainly upset. "Good thing the Stronghold can keep Gairoth out if worse comes to worst." They came upon a cross path and Delrael paused, looking both ways to take his bearings. He turned left and set off. Vailret and Bryl followed.

The sun had set behind them as they crossed from the last hex of forest terrain to the flat agricultural areas. Narrow roads separated the hexagonal fields from the unclaimed areas, but the fields had expanded outward as more and more characters settled around the Stronghold. All the cropland had been reclaimed since the Scouring, and the human foothold had grown stronger as characters worked the land, tending to their own existence rather than questing for treasure or adventure.

Vailret could see the Stronghold perched on the crown of Steep Hill, overlooking the village and surrounding lands like a sleeping watchdog. The double-walled stockade appeared imposing even to Vailret. Just the sight of the structure evoked thoughts of epic adventures in his mind.

At the beginning of the Scouring, the great general Doril had built the Stronghold. He wanted to help protect the poor farmers and miners trying to make a life for themselves against the back-and-forth tides of the wars. Doril had chosen Steep Hill, which stood rugged and unscalable from the rear, cut off to the north by a swift stream, and open to assault only on the south and west sides. An attacking army would break most of its momentum charging up the abominably steep path.

A double wall of pointed logs surrounded the Stronghold proper. The villagers had packed the gaps between the outer and inner walls with dirt, more than doubling the strength of the barricade and making it almost fire proof at the same time. A steep trench encircled the Stronghold walls, as deep as a man stood tall. The trench was filled with pointed rocks and sharp sticks.

The Stronghold had withstood serious attacks during the long Scouring wars. Monstrous Slac armies had besieged it several times, but the Stronghold had never fallen. Now, few of the Slac still existed on Gamearth, and they hid themselves in the mountains to the east, letting humans live in peace. The Stronghold had not seen an enemy in years, and Vailret suspected that many of its defenses were obsolete.

The days of empty questing had faded away, leaving the characters to attend to problems of day-to-day survival. No one bothered to remember the old adventures.

Seven years before, more than half a decade after the death of Cayon, the peaceful times had lulled Drodanis out of his gloomy seclusion. Vailret liked to think that if an enemy had indeed threatened, Delrael's father would never have left the Stronghold in the hands of his eighteen-year-old son and a couple of old veterans from his early campaigns. Vailret had been only fourteen then, and he had wanted to accompany Drodanis on his self-indulgent quest to find the Rulewoman Melanie. But Drodanis had chosen someone else, leaving Vailret behind.

In the seven years since, Delrael had done little more than train the villagers and miners over and over again, killing time until something adventurous happened. It seemed that the Outsiders took little interest in Gamearth, tired of throwing threats at their hapless characters. This pleased Vailret, though
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the characters could worry about their
lives
, instead of tedious adventures. He could go about writing down the history of the Game....

Dusk had set in as they started along the pathway up Steep Hill.

Already Vailret could see Jorte getting his gaming hall ready for the evening, where the villagers would gather for dicing and other amusements. Characters in the village below had seen them return and they'd all want to hear the story of Bryl's rescue and the adventure with Gairoth. It would be their first quest-telling in a long time.

But Vailret didn't much like the loud gaming and conversation. He hoped he could talk Delrael into describing the adventure by himself
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he only wanted to get back to his work on the old manuscripts. Documenting the quest on paper was as important as telling it. More important, in fact, because his original words could remain unexaggerated in telling after telling.

At the top of the hill they crossed the split-log walkway spanning the trench and passed through the only gate in the Stronghold walls. Heavy wooden mallets hung on ropes next to the walkway, ready to knock out the pegs and sever the walkway in case of an invasion. Directly on the other side of the heavy gate was another hidden pit covered by a second walkway.

Vailret's mother, Siya, stood outside the main building. Her hair was dusted with early gray, and she wore it pulled back in a tight braid, which stretched her wrinkles tight but left her scowl firmly in place.

"It's about time," Siya said, but Vailret thought he saw genuine relief in her eyes.

"This time we beat the ogre, Mother," Vailret said.

Alarm flashed in her eyes. Delrael cut off any scolding as he offered to help her cook something. "I'm hungry. And I'm going to start heavy training again tomorrow with some of the best fighters."

Delrael turned to Vailret with a glint in his eyes. "After all, we know where the Air Stone is. We know where a surviving ogre is
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at last, we've got some questing to do again! Doesn't it make you feel alive? To have a purpose in life?" He patted his leather armor, the silver belt, the knife and sword at his side. "This is what we were made for."

Sounds from the gaming hall rang distant but clear in the damp night.

At the edge of the trees, the veteran Tarne stood, preferring the silence and the dark. He kept watch in the muffled shadows, looking at the aurora overhead. To him, visions filled the night. He wondered if he would catch another glimpse of the future.

Tarne was one of the surviving warriors from the campaigns with Drodanis and Cayon. In his adventures, he had found more treasure, slain more monsters, explored more trails than any other character save Drodanis and Cayon. Tarne had accompanied Drodanis on his vendetta against the ogres, slaying half a dozen of them himself for the murder of Cayon.

But none of that mattered to him anymore.

Since those bygone days, Tarne had given time to reflecting on his life. Sometimes he reveled in the companionship of others, in the gatherings for the winter tales, telling story after story about the old campaigns. But other times he spent weeks alone in the forests. He had shaved his head to let the thoughts flow unimpeded, exposing all the scars from battle injuries. An ogre's blow had knocked him unconscious many years before ... and had opened up his ability to see visions.

After ending his active service as a fighter, Tarne had become the village shearer and weaver. He was big enough to wrestle the sheep for shearing, and he also knew enough woodcraft to find the proper flowers and berries for dyeing the cloth he wove. It was a different life for him, but Gamearth itself had changed. He kept an old set of leather armor hidden in his dwelling along with his most precious possession, an ancient sword from the Sorcerer wars. Sometimes he took the old things out from under his table just to look at them.

Another round of laughter came from the gaming hall. He could discern the clatter of dice on tabletops, the tallying of points. Delrael and Vailret would likely come down to tell of their adventures, but the others had begun their amusements without them.

Tarne considered young Delrael for a moment, admiring him. Seven years before, he would not have guessed the young man could run the Stronghold so well in the absence of his father
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but Drodanis had been a recluse for his last few years anyway, before he'd gone off in search of the legendary Rulewoman Melanie.