It was late or perhaps early when I heard the noise… a
crunch of a heavy, hobnailed boot on gravel and the jangle of a weapon harness…
something completely alien to the normal night time sounds of the farmyard. The fire had burned down to a dull red glow, not really giving us anything to see by but I could hear them speaking in hushed tones… Orcs! I said softly. Rising stealthily I moved
and woke Brother James and Bohun whispering to them of what I had heard. Brother James entered the hall from the
sitting room where we were sleeping the anger boiling off him in waves and saw a figure
coming in through the back door… He charged the door and slammed it shut
knocking the Orc from his feet… Another ran from the front door opposite trying to flank
Brother James swinging his huge axe at his head and thakfully missing.
Realising
that we needed some light I hurriedly lit a lamp and sent my wolf down the hallway to attack the
intruder that had run past the door towards Brother James. Bohun moved up to the front door and was soon
attacked by another Orc… all the while they were shouting in their guttural
tongue ‘We die for the Watcher!’ The fighting was seemed to last a lifetime but soon the Orcs lay dead. Four Orc’s in total had attacked Gaeren’s farm
and we had managed to deal with them all, though again Brother James, Bohun and
my wolf had all been injured. Poor Byron was crying histerically and took a long time for us to calm... An understandable thing given that Orcs had murdered her family only a few short days before. I found myself wondering how she felt about Brother James... His Orcish parentage would be difficult for him to hide even with a bag over his head although he is perhaps the cleanest man I have ever known...
We
dragged the bodies outside and I searched them to see what I could find. I
turned up some coins, silver and gold and a crudely drawn map on a scrap of parchment. They were
particularly ripe… even before they had been despatched! The map Gaeren was
able to tell us showed the villages surrounding the Troll Fens so we assumed
that these Orc’s must have been a scouting party sent by this mysterious leader of theirs The
Watcher! all very melodramtic if you ask me.
We
decided to settle back down and Gaeren set up watch for the rest of the night which thankfully passed without any further interuptions.
As usual I was up before the dawn and said my prayers to the Green Sister and
then broke my fast with bacon and honeyed oatcakes, very tasty indeed and all washed
down with fresh milk from Gaeren’s cows. Given that Bohun and Brother James
still suffered from the injuries inflicted by the Orcs and the fact that
Gaeren’s horses were dead we decided to rest another day before heading into
Tristor. I managed to spend some time walking around Gaeren’s farm... It looks
as though he used to be a very good crop farmer but age has taken its toll
and now all he has to keep the wolf from the door is his few cattle, now sadly
depleted. I took solace in my pipe, more ale and the same hearty beef stew as the night before sent us, full of belly, to our beds.
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