Hide and Seek

The faint, steady dripping sound was the only thing that kept Brianna from losing track of time in the complete darkness that surrounded her. There was no light, no movement, no other sound that might have helped her to remain focused. Her only companion was the abhorrent smell that was present all throughout the cave system, her only reminder of her task the edges of the rocks she was wedged between, digging into her skin.

When she had first taken her place amidst the boulders, she had noticed the sound of the water droplets coming from somewhere above her in the cave system, just barely audible. The count was twenty-six from one dripping sound to the next. She'd done it thrice, to be sure that the time between drops remained constant. Then she had settled in to wait.

One hundred and thirty-six drops of water had fallen since.

Though she tried her best to fight it, unease was growing in her mind. She couldn't help wondering whether her companions had managed to screw up any part of the instructions she had given them. They had been simple enough – in theory, anyway – but even the smallest mistake could be costly when one was busy sneaking around in the middle of an orc lair.

Drip.

One hundred and thirty-seven.

Her plan had not been met with general approval by the greycloaks. Khelgar had grumbled into his beard, but in the end, he had had to admit that it wouldn't have been possible for them to take on a clan of orcs in open combat. Neeshka preferred sneaking in the shadows anyway, and Qara didn't usually give a damn one way or the other, but Elis, Sandrik and Willem had voiced their unhappiness with the dishonorable tactics Brianna had suggested.

She would have laughed at them if she hadn't been so bloody annoyed by their stupidity. Especially Elis and Sandrik had shouted honor and integrity without even considering how bloody dangerous it would be to engage a tribe of orcs in their own lair. If it had fallen to those two blind lovebirds to lead them, they probably would have stood in front of the cave entrance shouting challenges until a group of orc archers used them for target practice.

Willem had been the first one to concede that not playing it smart would get them all killed. The pathfinder was used to hiding and watching, and he had almost certainly seen before what happened to soldiers who openly engaged a much stronger enemy. The two barely-grown greycloaks, on the other hand, hadn't yet let go of their streaks of idealism. Brianna had had to pull rank on them both in order to get them to go along with her plan.

Drip.

One hundred and thirty eight.

Elis and Sandrik were the group's weak points for this exact reason. They were reluctant to do what had to be done, and from her current position, Brianna could not influence them. If they changed their minds now that she wasn't around, they were going to get the entire group killed, and Brianna hoped that they were at least smart enough to realize that.

Neeshka will be keeping an eye on them. And she's got Khelgar to back her up. They're fine.

Besides, if the orcs were alarmed, I would know it by now. They aren't exactly subtle.

As though to underline that last thought, the sound of scattering pebbles echoed through the passage.

So here we go, then.

Brianna rested her hand lightly on her sword and watched as light began to dance along the cave walls, reflections of the torch that was being carried her way. It did not take long until the orc came into view.

Brianna felt her pulse accelerate, and she worked hard to keep her breath even. The last thing she needed was for this mountain of an orc to be alerted to her presence because of so simple a thing as breathing. Her hand tightened around the hilt of the sword as she watched him hurry along the passage. She was not an expert at reading orc features, but he did seem more alert than most orcs she had passed in the cave so far. His demeanor was rather urgent.

We've must have been noticed. The others were probably too loud, wouldn't surprise me if Khelgar tripped over something and started cursing. Or maybe this fellow realized that someone's done away with their alarm traps.

The orc passed her hiding spot without noticing her – Brianna would have been very surprised indeed if he had. She was crouching in a corner, completely shrouded in shadows by the surrounding tall boulders, and her pale skin was covered by a layer of ash. Even someone with vision far superior to those of the orcs would have had trouble making her out.

When he paused before the massive door just a few feet away and fumbled with something, Brianna moved. She was careful not to dislodge any pebbles, not to scrape any of her metal buckles against the rocks or indeed to make any noise at all. The orc was focused on the keyring he was holding, probably trying to identify which key would get him through the door. It allowed her to approach him undetected.

Most of the orcs who lived in the Sword Mountains wore a sort of hide armor, and this one in front of her was no exception. It made for a tough second skin, one Brianna couldn't hope to penetrate with her simple dagger. It was why she held her sword ready even though the larger weapon's silver glint was not quite so easily concealed.

Focus. Find the right spot.

She'd likely only get one try at this – if she messed up, the orc would turn and smash her skull with the club dangling from his belt, or maybe he'd just choke her or break her neck with his bare hands. Standing behind him as she was, she would be able to give the sword enough momentum to cut through armor and tough orc skin. If she hit bone after that though, it would almost certainly stop the blade.

A key scraped against metal as the orc clumsily tried to find the keyhole. She could not let him get through the door.

She exhaled, slowly and soundlessly. Then her right arm led her sword low, before driving it up and through two tough layers of resistance into the orc's body.

She was scared, and it was her fear that lent her the strength to push the blade into him to the hilt. When he begun to thrash and turn, she let go. She stumbled back several feet, trying to stay out of his view, because it had just occurred to her that even with a blade going all the way through him, there was no guarantee the orc would die right away, or even fast enough to prevent him from getting to her first.

So she shrank back into the shadows and watched as he turned helplessly and flailed his arms and reached out at random to find his invisible enemy.

The torch had dropped to the floor and was illuminating the orc's ghastly face from below. It exaggerated his features, turned his grimace of pain into a grotesque mask. She didn't turn her eyes away.

There was not a sound apart from the slight crackling of flames from the torch and the belabored breathing of the dying orc.

Drip.

The noise was so faint her ears only barely picked it up. She wondered how many she had missed, how high her count should have been by now. A hundred and forty-one, maybe. Forty-two? No, it had not been that long.

She watched as the beastly creature sank to his knees and coughed blood. The dark droplets stained his tusks and the floor. They looked black in the low light.

Life took its time leaving the huge body. Brianna waited in the darkness for what felt far too long, before the orc finally keeled over and was still.

Neeshka, Brianna realized as she stepped into the main cavern, had a sense for the dramatic and a hidden flair for interior decorating. Under the tiefling's guidance, Elis, Willem and Sandrik had done a lot of work on the orcish common room.

The formerly messy cave was now a field of destruction. Broken chairs and upturned tables littered the blood-splattered floor. Torches, more or less evenly spaced on the rock walls, illuminated the scene eerily. Bodies had been carefully arranged for maximum effect. Many of them were sprawled on the floor, but with several of them, Neeshka had gotten creative. Brianna spotted one orc corpse hanging from the tip of a stalagmite, another stuffed headfirst into the cauldron that was still simmering on the fire pit.

All of the corpses, however, had one thing in common: Neeshka and the greycloaks had carefully hidden the way they had really died.

The way the room looked now, it was easy to believe that an army had waltzed through it and brutally killed everything in its way. The orcs displayed wounds from a multitude of different weapons, and blood was splattered high on the walls. It didn't look like most of them had been killed on their patrols, stabbed in the back or executed after they had stumbled into one of Neeshka's tangle traps. In addition to that, Willem and Sandrik were busy stomping back and forth to make it look like more than just a few people had come trampling through the dirt. It was exactly what they needed.

"Brilliant work," Brianna said once she had reached the middle of the room. Neeshka, who was busy putting the finishing touches on yet another large bloodstain on the apron of an orc matron, accepted the compliment with a nod.

"Elis didn't like this too much," the tiefling reported, her tone one of warning. "I was able to sort of talk her down a little, but I don't think we'll have heard the end of it yet."

"Right. That figures." Brianna briefly closed her eyes when a surge of nervousness hit her. "I don't really care if she wails and lectures me after we're done with the orcs. All I need is for you to make sure she keeps it together until we're out of here."

"Sure. Done." Neeshka tugged the apron back into place and stepped back two paces from the orc matron's corpse, eying her work critically. "I'd like to stay alive too, you know."

It would have been much easier if Brianna could have trusted everyone else in the group to have the same sense of self-preservation. Unfortunately, this wasn't the case. Especially Elis was not that clever, and Brianna wouldn't have put it past the girl to act without considering the fact that there were a number of angry, battle-hardened orcs still in the lair.

If this plan doesn't work, we're dead. Simple as that.

She reached down to the pouch dangling from her belt then, to calm the fluttering fear inside her. Her fingers widened the drawstring and she slipped then inside and wrapped them around the two cool pieces of metal resting inside. Their magic traveled up her skin in a tingle that was so familiar to her by now that it did feel calming.

She'd had plenty of time to be bitter lately, but she hadn't really used the opportunity. The long days on the lookout back at the Old Owl Well camp, and the recent trek through the mountains should have had her cursing Daeghun all over again for putting her in yet another unbearable situation, but the truth was that she'd barely wasted a thought on her foster father recently.

She supposed that the distance which being in the mountains brought to everything was responsible for that. Things looked subtly different up here. Everything appeared as far removed in her thoughts as it was physically, and she found herself unwilling to waste energy on hating people and circumstances that had so little bearing on her current situation.

The shards were her link to those circumstances, the original task that had brought her so very far from West Harbor. They reminded her of why she was here.

She wasn't sure why this calmed her. It shouldn't have, but the strong prickle of magic traveling up her hand did not seem to be one for reason.

It was the ranger Albrecht who had explained the layout of most orc lairs to her one particularly boring morning up on the lookout back at Old Owl Well. From him she knew about the orcs' tendency to quarter the chieftain and the stronger warriors furthest back in the mountain. This was done to protect them from surprise attacks, and to make sure that when anyone in the front of the cave raised an alarm, the fighters and their leader had time to ready themselves for battle.

This simple fact, along with Callum's advice concerning the orc chieftain Yaisog Bonegnasher, had formed the basis for the Brianna's plan. They had, thus far, managed to avoid alerting the stronger members of the Bonegnasher tribe, the ones who were furthest back in the cave. With any luck, they wouldn't have to fight them at all.

They had also taken a single prisoner. A young orc, barely into adulthood, had been sent through the door Brianna had previously guarded, to relay a message to the chieftain.

And Yaisog, true to Callum's word, had taken the bait.

Now the chieftain of the Bonegnasher clan was entering the carefully prepared hall, flanked by his guards.

Brianna was ready for him.

She was standing tall, feet shoulders' width apart, in the middle of the carnage. Her blood-splattered blade was lowered, but plainly visible in her right hand. Her hair was open, in a tangled cloud around her face. It was the best way to try and hide how young she was. To the same effect, she had also streaked some orc blood across her cheeks.

Her sword and dagger were not the only weapons she relied on. It would have been reckless, face to face with a battle-hardened orc, not to take every possible precaution. To that end, she had some of Neeshka's choking powder in a pouch dangling from her side, a bottle of acid tucked into her belt and the last of the blastglobes hidden in the palm of her left hand.

The orc chieftain halted in the far doorway and took his time regarding the apparent battlefield. He wore a surprisingly neutral expression, considering the circumstances. His eyes traveled quickly around the room, over the corpses of orc matrons and children and weaker males.

Brianna decided to act before Yaisog recognized his favorite son or best friend or something of the sort and got too upset for anything but battle. She wanted to get out of this place alive, after all. Taking a deep breath, she focused on keeping her voice steady. She couldn't afford the smallest stutter, the tiniest sign of fear.

"Yaisog of the Bonegnasher Clan." The words echoed through the cave.

The orc chieftain gave an unimpressed grunt.

"I take it that it was you who slaughtered my clan, human," he called out to her.

She refused to let him dictate the terms of the conversation.

"I come representing the army of the city of Neverwinter and the mages of the Cloaktower," she said. She held her fingers crossed, hoping he would not be politically savvy enough to realize how ridiculous this claim was. "We come seeking information."

Yaisog gave another grunt and stepped marginally closer. Torchlight flickered across his face. He was not exactly pleasant to look at, but even from across the room Brianna could see the intelligence in his eyes. The fact that he did not refer to himself in third person, like so many orcs tended to do, hinted at the same. His grasp of Common was also excellent. She would have to watch herself.

"And you believe that slaughtering my kin will soften me to your demands?" Yaisog challenged.

"No," she replied. "Our battle mages blasted a path through the rock slide which blocks the approach to your clanhold this morning. It was an act of goodwill to demonstrate our intent. Our soldiers were attacked on sight upon approaching, however, which forced them to retaliate."

She tilted her head lightly, and very deliberately.

"As you may have noticed, most of our forces have retreated once more, when they could have been standing opposite you with their weapons drawn and spells ready."

Yaisog seemed to consider this for a moment. Then he focused on her face again, his eyes glinting with something she wished fervently she could have identified.

"Why were our alarms not triggered?" he asked then. "Why is it we did not hear the attack as it happened?"

Brianna forced a rough laugh out of her throat. It sounded strange, barking, to her own ears

"You do not expect me to reveal all of our tactics and battle plans out of common courtesy, do you, Yaisog? Suffice to say that our soldiers are efficient, and our mages know their silencing spells."

She was not even sure that a spell with this sort of effect existed, but unless she had made the most enormous misjudgment of her entire life, Yaisog was no student of the arcane.

It's time to get to the point. Don't babble until you tangle yourself in your words. It's bound to happen sooner or later with your heart racing like it is.

"To get to the matter at hand, Yaisog, I do not enjoy wasting lives," she announced. "I do believe that if you cooperate and answer my questions, we can get through this without further bloodshed."

He narrowed his eyes at her. "And once you get your answers, you will withdraw your troops? With all of that conflict going on at the well? You expect me to trust you?"

Her mind raced to find words to reassure him.

"Your clan is already weakened," she pointed out as tactfully as possible. "You will need time to rebuild and will not be able to take part in the attacks on Old Owl Well in the immediate future. And if you cooperate with us, we are honor-bound to leave you in peace. It is a compromise which satisfies the council of Neverwinter, and we are under their command."

She couldn't help but glance towards the greycloaks as she said those words. They were bound to be upset with her blatant misrepresentation. However, Willem and Sandrik were standing in the shadows, making it impossible for her to read their expressions. Elis, at least, was waiting outside along with Neeshka, so the woman would not be able to take further offense at her words.

Yaisog only grunted once more. Lacking any other signs from the chieftain, she chose to assume that this meant she had convinced him.

Now get your information and get the hells out of here.

"An emissary from the city of Waterdeep traveled through these mountains recently," she told him. "He was waylaid by orcs close to this lair, and taken away."

"Ah," Yaisog said. His lips formed a misshapen grin around his tusks. "And what do soldiers of the city of Neverwinter care for an emissary from Waterdeep?"

So he did know about the emissary. She frowned at him and only barely resisted the temptation to chew her lip.

"He was bound for Neverwinter, and by the laws of hospitality, he should have received safe passage. We are concerned about the effect this may have on our political relations with the city of Waterdeep."

Laws of Hospitality. Brianna thought that this sounded quite official for something she had made up on the fly. She hoped she sounded like she knew what she was talking about.

"What do I care for your politics?" Yaisog grunted, and spat on the ground. "What do I care for your laws?"

"There is a very capable force waiting right outside the entrance to your clanhold," Brianna reminded him in a sharp tone. "If you simply hand over the emissary right now, you will not compel us to use deadly force to retrieve him. We will ask no further questions and withdraw all of our fighters on the spot."

Yaisog seemed to need a few moments to consider this. Brianna remained tense, keeping her eyes trained on him and his guards.

"He is not here," the orc finally admitted, and Brianna's heart sank. If this was a lie, Yaisog Bonegnasher was very good at lying indeed.

"I know where he is, however," the orc continued. "And if you swear that you will withdraw your mages and soldiers…"

She very nearly gave him an amused grin.

"Of course I swear," she said instead, looking as solemn as she could manage. "I swear by the gods…"

Which I don't worship

"…and by my ancestors…"

Who are dead anyway, so what would they care?

"…and by my own life."

Which I am saving by swearing false oaths, I might add. Though I suppose it is technically the truth, since I will withdraw all of the mages and soldiers I came in with.

Yaisog seemed satisfied. "Very well," the chieftain grunted. "Our largest clan, the Eyegougers, hold your emissary captive. Logram Eyegouger is the one who ordered this attack."

"And you are certain that the emissary is still alive?"

"Logram claimed that capturing this man would turn the tide of the battle for us at Old Owl Well. That is all I know."

The words sounded final, and Yaisog looked at her expectantly.

He is waiting for me to make good on my promise and get out of here. Just one more question, one very important one…

"Where can I find the lair of the Eyegouger tribe?"

Yaisog's eyes focused on her again, and the orc nodded once. Brianna felt warm, and she hoped she was not obviously sweating.

Just answer this one, so I can get the hells out of here.

But just as the chieftain opened his mouth for a reply, just as she was about to receive the one, final piece of information, a sound pierced the silence of the cave and threw all of Brianna's effort to the hells.

It was a magical sound, a gentle, supernatural pop, and there was no question where it had come from. Another orc had appeared near Yaisog out of thin air. A very heavily bleeding, battered orc that appeared to be in a lot of pain, and who was carrying a staff.

A shaman. One of the few orcs who do cultivate magic.

Brianna felt like she had been punched in the gut.

The newcomer grunted only a few words in guttural orcish, but Brianna had a sick feeling that she knew exactly what was being said.

She lied. There is no army. Maybe even I watched them stab the women and children from the back.

"Run," she said, very calmly and clearly in the direction of the greycloaks, Khelgar and Qara. Then, just as Yaisog's face changed into a grimace of pure fury and the orc chieftain drew his axe, she swung her left arm and threw the blastglobe clear across the room, turned, and ran like hell.