Teiken watched from behind an exceptionally large and gnarled tree as the camp of orcs began to grow quiet for the night. He crouched with the familiar weight of his warhammer ready in his hand and the uncomfortableness of his plate armor growing as he spent more time keeping still. As he looked upon the half dozen orcs in the camp, he thought about what poor fools they really were. He knew they, like so many of their brethren, didn't choose the life of a forest raider, but instead had it thrust upon them. Ever since the mountain tribes sent "spiritual leaders" to the weaker forest tribes, the local orcs had been pressed into service to the great God Gruumsh. Their service would either be as a slave in the mountain mines, or as a raider in their home, the forests of Allrenyve.
Teiken surely knew better than most the struggle forced upon these orcs, as his orcish father taught him their ways and their culture, although he grew up mostly surrounded by the humans of his mother's lineage. He knew the forest orcs were not the same as their mountain cousins, that even though the forest orcs still prided themselves on their fighting abilities and defined themselves by such, the orcs of the forest simply did not have a bloodlust against humans. But so many humans just couldn't understand that. So many humans saw an orc as a vile beast, which made Teiken's life growing up one he would never have described as peaceful. Of course he never really felt at peace in the presence of others anyway, at least until he was recruited by the Order of Thellain, and learned that there were others like him, who felt at home in the forest.
His vow to that very Order was what brought him to this encampment tonight. These poor bastards had been raiding food caravans travelling through the forest, and had killed three priests of Thellain just a few days ago. Teiken's superiors knew they couldn't recover much of the food, but the spiritual medallions of the priests could not be allowed to remain in the hands of those who would not properly understand and honor such items. Of course, Teiken knew there was a little more to it, since the medallions were probably imbued with magical properties that could be studied and reworked to suit the evil designs of whatever mountain orc shaman was sent to rule over these forest raiders' tribe. Teiken knew the Order of Thellain had in recent decades began to shift its views and actions to remain totally neutral to the wars and battles of others, and Forest-Master Rigdar would never have allowed a desire to intervene in the coming war between the humans and the massing orcs to guide a mission given to Teiken by the elder clerics of his temple. Regardless of the motivation, Teiken's mission was simple - track the orcs, recover the medallions, and make sure a message is sent that the clover of Thellain is to be given a wide berth by orcish raiders.
Finally, all four of the orcs laying on bedrolls had fallen into slumber, and only the two sentries remained awake. Teiken stood, keeping behind the tree, his armor having been fit with custom leather-padded joints to prevent squeaks and metallic clangs. He gripped his warhammer's long wooden shaft in both hands and closed his eyes as he mouthed silent words to his deity. As Teiken finished his silent chant, he felt an ever-so-subtle heat emanate from the clover carved into the shaft of his warhammer beneath his hand, and he knew it would be glowing a deep gold were it not covered. Thellain responded a few breaths later by loudly rustling the trees on the far side of the encampment's clearing. While the two sentries stood peering warily into the empty forest at the sound, Teiken had already set his warhammer against the trunk of the tree he now stood next to, and he leveled his bow and arrow at the far sentry's back. He released the drawstring with a dull thwong and set into action before the arrow ever hit home.
Truskkar was always good at being a sentry. He never slept much anyway, and was happy to be able to help his brothers without needing to do too much killing. He never liked killing. As his brethren began falling into slumber, he wished – as he often did these days – that the damn mountain tribes had never unified, and had never sent their shamans to the forests to "educate" his people about Gruumsh and the Great Orc Uprising. Of course, the rather stupid orcs who voiced such thoughts rarely woke the next morning. Truskkar was not a stupid orc. So, Truskkar had kept his mouth shut, and had 'volunteered' for service as a warrior in the forests. He looked over at Fulkko, who also drew sentry duty, and their eyes met in rather uneven stare. Truskkar was only looking upon Fulkko with a brethren's respect and possibly boredom, but Fulkko, like the other warriors, only ever looked at Truskkar with something close to disgust. Truskkar knew they never liked how reluctant he always was to fight, even in the ritualized fighting matches all males participated in. They also seemed more than a little resentful of how he was just plain smarter than the average orc. The mounting tension was broken as they both looked off as the forest began to rustle. As Truskkar scanned the darkness past Fulkko, he felt a rush of air beside him, and could only blink a few times when he saw a large wooden shaft sticking out of the back of Fulkko's neck. He tried to say something to Fulkko, but his voice caught in his throat as he watched the body of his fellow sentry fall first to its knees, and then topple over entirely. As he turned to see where the deadly shaft came from, everything seemed to work in slow motion.
An orc, or at least what seemed to be an orc, was running from the trees right at Truskkar. The orc – but it really didn't look quite like an orc – was holding a giant warhammer in both hands before himself as he ran, and Truskkar could see some golden design emblazoned on the front of the charging orc's plate armor. Was that armor green or black? Truskkar realized with an impossibly small reaction that this was his death. He was watching his death run at him in dark plate armor with a hammer held ready in slow motion. As the charging orc neared and raised his hammer above his head, Truskkar felt the world grow distant and decided he was glad he at least got to see his own death in slow motion.
As Teiken neared the now-lone sentry, he raised his warhammer to eternally silence this orc raider, but before he could bring his hammer down to flatten skull, the raider folded as if knocked out. Teiken realized with total shock that the raider had feinted. An orc warrior had actually feinted. Teiken had never heard of such a thing, and as he stood dumbfounded for a moment, he realized that one of the sleeping orcs was rousing. Before he could get next to him, the now-woken orc gave a bellow that seemed far too out of place in the silence of the night. As the alarm-crier began to actually rise, his brethren all started in their bedrolls and began thrashing around for their weapons. The orc who raised the alarm may have helped his brethren wake up, but his raised forearm did nothing to help himself from the warhammer coming for his head. It was crushed with a wet crunch.
Teiken looked back at the other orcs now as they stood and gathered themselves for a fight. Two had immediately crouched and looked to be playing it defensively, but the third – the youngest by the look of him – charged in with a shortsword in each hand. Teiken saw how the young orc carried the two swords out wide, and swung his warhammer a fraction of a second earlier than he would have to try to connect with his opponent. The young orc charged into Teiken's guard in the wake of the apparently off-target two-handed swing, but failed to realize he had been baited. With the two shortswords still wide, Teiken used the momentum of his swing to shoot his boot straight into the chest of the advancing orc. The momentum of both Teiken's swing and the charge of the young orc coupled together made the force of the blow so great that Teiken heard cracking bone inside the orc's chest. As the young orc fell to one knee and tried to wheeze in a breath, Teiken completed a quick circle without fully stopping the momentum of his swing and brought his hammer against the side of the kneeling orc's head in a powerful arc.
He faced the two orcs who were in defensive stances and let a low growl rise in his throat. Apparently, seeing their younger comrade dispatched invoked more fury than sense in one of the orcs, because he charged at Teiken by himself. The second orc, who stood his ground, looked at his rapidly advancing companion in fear and confusion as his chances of defeating his unknown attacker fell drastically without the benefit of an advantage in numbers. The attacking orc apparently failed to realize that he would have been much safer as one half of a pair waiting for an attack by the lone stranger with a warhammer. It made little difference once he began his charge though, for Teiken let the orc swing the sword he carried clumsily into the ironwood haft of his warhammer, and sidestepped with a twist to allow the orc's momentum to carry him a step past Teiken. Now facing the side of his opponent, Teiken brought his warhammer's head into the back of the orc's knee, causing him to fall face down onto the ground. The orc tried to push himself up quickly, but when his face was only a few inches off the ground it was crushed back into the dirt by a very heavy warhammer head.
Teiken jerked his hammer around in a half-circle to again face the remaining orc, who was now picking up an oval shield with three jagged spikes across its center to compliment the Morningstar he carried. As Teiken advanced, the orc stood his ground. Suddenly, Teiken stopped, his warhammer clenched in both hands, and began to mouth words with a strange and oddly smooth sound. The orc looked at Teiken with apprehension, thinking he was being spoken to in a foreign language - his attacker certainly looked foreign, like an orc from some far-off land. He didn't realize the attacker wasn't speaking to him until the roots had firm hold of his feet and legs. As soon as he realized what had happened he began to frantically swipe at the roots with his Morningstar, but they were too thick and too numerous. He raised his shield to block the warhammer as it came in, but the force proved great enough to render his arm numb and limp. He wildly swung at his attacker with his Morningstar, but his reach only allowed the tips of his Morningstar to scrape harmlessly across the golden shamrock emblazoned upon the breastplate of his attacker. The second arc of the warhammer put an end to his exasperation, and the roots began to loosen their hold on the now limp lower limbs of the orc sprawled across the ground.
Teiken looked over the camp, now in disarray, and felt the odd feeling he always felt when surrounded by corpses. The forest never seemed as comfortable when it was the scene of unnatural death. He put those feelings aside, and began searching for manacles, or at least some rope to bind the feinted orc – who was still out cold. After he had bound the lone orc with heavy rope, he stoked the campfire and dragged the bodies of those he slew into a pile next to it. He knew orcs cremated their dead, and as a follower of Thellain, he felt the forests should be a peaceful place. Not a place full of corpses or graves. Certainly, in the natural course of life there was death and there was killing. It wasn't difficult to understand, however, that the deaths of this night were not part of any natural cycle. They were born of an evil seed of hate planted by the great orc god Gruumsh. He mentally asked Thellain to guide the orcs' spirits to the afterlife, and asked forgiveness for their participation in the evil designs of the Gruumsh-following shamans. He knew the orcs of the forest worshipped Thellain in the distant past, but had largely fell to honoring no actual deity, preferring a worship of the various spirits they believed existed in every living thing, and in the elements themselves. As he had been told of this practice by his father years before, he thought it both odd and almost disgustingly primal. As he matured and became a cleric of Thellain though, he realized the two religions were still very similar. His father had taken up the worship of Thellain as a young orc for one reason or another, and that was what originally led his father to meet Teiken's mother and the other humans who would tolerate the presence of an orc. When his request on behalf of the fallen orcs was complete, Teiken again began mouthing words in a strange and flowing language, this time along with gestures between the campfire and the pile of bodies. The winds answered his call and the fire leapt to the bodies. The fire itself seemed to answer his call, and the bodies began to burn far quicker than they should have. Teiken opened his eyes and ceased his chanting, knowing the bodies would be nothing but a pile of ashes by early morning. He then turned his attention to the bound orc, and thought about the message he would send to the orc tribes as he began to rifle through their packs to find the medallions he was sent to retrieve.
Truskkar awoke with a start to find that he was, in fact, not dead. This was a total surprise, as he distinctly remembered seeing his death running toward him. He tried to rise, but found he was securely tied up. He looked around in the pre-dawn light, and saw the odd-looking orc in dark plate armor sitting next to the campfire, no, next to the campfire which was next to a bonfire. Where did that bonfire come from? From the looks of it, it wasn't burning wood, but whatever was being burned was too blackened to identify from sight. As Truskkar breathed in, he smelled a very distinct smell and realization dawned on him as to the fuel of the bonfire. He looked at the back of the orc in dark armor and realized with some confusion that he was entirely too calm. How could he be calm? The warriors had all been killed...
Truskkar realized that even though he was in service as a warrior to the mountain shamans and their Gruumsh just like all the others, he never had thought of himself as a warrior. He was a much simpler orc than that. He never wanted the thrill of battle like the Gruumsh shamans talked about. He didn't want to dominate his enemies, or to drink the blood of innocents. He just wanted to live in peace in the forest he had known all his life with Allekka. Ah, Allekka. If one orc made him feel home, it was her. Truskkar now felt for the first time a fear – a fear that he wouldn't get to go home to Allekka. This fear made him a bit bolder and he decided to speak to the weird looking orc in dark armor.
"Who are you?" he asked in his native Orcish. The dark armor clad orc gave no response, so Truskkar tried again in Common "I said, who are you?"
"I speak Orcish just fine," Teiken returned in the orc's native tongue, and after turning to face the bound orc, he added, "and I am Teiken, Forest-Cleric of Thellain."
Truskkar's eyes widened and then lowered, "I see." Truskkar knew why this follower of Thellain was here. They had recently attacked a food caravan that was traveling in the forest with a group of Thellain's priests, and instead of leaving the unarmed humans like they usually did, Jarkkon had gone into a rage and killed them. Jarkkon had been so easily pressed into service to the shamans and their Gruumsh. Truskkar knew Jarkkon and many of the young orcs around his own age felt the bloodlust they talked about, and knew that every moon more and more forest orcs were beginning to feel its power. So that explained why this stranger was here, but Truskkar had more questions. After a pause he asked, "Why am I bound?"
"I assume you mean to ask why you're not dead, and that answer is simple," Teiken was now walking toward Truskkar carrying a metal poker that had been in the fire; one which had what looked like a red-hot four leaf clover on its end. "You have a message to deliver."