A bit over two weeks after they had left Anchorfall, the city of Nothross had finally emerged from behind a turn of a road around a small hill. The journey had been rather uneventful and they had not been troubled by any of the usual hazards, mostly thanks to the fact that number of army troops patrolling Furinian roads had only increased the closer they got their destination.
The sparse city spread across the forested valley, a large number of small cottages under the trees. The sky was cloudy, and sun shone through them, clouds casting dark shadows where the sun wasn't painting the ground with interesting colours.
At the bottom of the valley, with less trees, were the bigger buildings, and a large town square. The major roads split the valley in three. Right past the town square, an old, yet quite well-maintained, stone wall could be seen. According to Aleln's explanation, the wall split the town in two, the older part where the fortress was on the north side and the newer part, which they had conquered back, on the south side. The only gap in the wall was where the old gate once stood, in the northern side of the town square, and a barricade was set up there. A group of Mighty Lancers stood at guard there, and some could be seen patrolling on the battlements; the soldiers wore plate mails, deep blue coats, carrying a shield on their back and being armed with their famous lances, as well as short bows and swords. The old town was razed to the ground and devoid of any trees, giving the defenders of the town an advantage in seeing where the enemy was coming, though at the same time giving the denizens of the town a rather worrying sight: The desolate half of the town not only looked awful, but also was a reminder of the constant dangers of living in the far north, especially the constant dangers of having a mad wizard in their neighbourhood.
Right across the valley, behind the small hill, rose an ominous-looking fortress. Gnedrnygr regarded that sight with some worries that could easily be read from his face. “That is the castle we're going to? Now, friends, heed my words—” Gnedrnygr said, the theatrical expression seemingly only half humorous – “I usually don't say this lightly, but that place really does look scary.” He let the idea sink in to the heads of the adventurers, then said, in a lighter tone, “...in a purely academic sense of the word, of course. You could call that,” Gnedrnygr pointed at the castle, “A schoolbook example of scariness.”
“Well,” Faira said, grinning, “It probably used to have twittering birds and flowers all around and sun shone constantly when you got near it, and now it's all evil and there's always dark clouds above it and trees have withered?” She was only half serious – the latter part of the description might have been fairly accurate. The woods around the fortress were indeed gnarled; all around them, rose torn and destroyed shelters, rude huts, crude dwellings built out of logs and some stones, crudely painted signs; undoubtedly former lodgings of quite a few orclings, now deserted. The goblins, goborcs and orcs who had not been destroyed by the Lancers as they swept across the valley were undoubtedly hiding in the castle – and making their last stand with a good show of defiance.
Realn grinned. “Well, it's not quite that, Faira. The gnarled trees were there originally – the woods around it are quite old. And the castle merely was a... normal castle. I have no idea why Jaxtomsyn's like wants to bring dark clouds above their castles by magic means.”
Gnedrnygr regarded the storm clouds gathered around the castle region. “I wonder how they do that. Weather magic is fairly well understood, though, so apparently, this wizard just likes to show off what he knows. It is just... unbelievable how the nasty people just move in and it starts raining all the time all of sudden. If the wizard won't try to kill us immediately, I have to try to ask.”
As they rode toward the city, it began to rain. The rain was still somewhat warm, the last warmth they could possibly expect this night of danger and despair.
The biggest inn in Nothross was colourfully crowded. The Bolt and Tower had been rebuilt and redecorated after the city was taken back. It had opened for business only a month earlier. The owner had apparently found the castle overlooking the town an inspiring motif, even when the name had drawn some complaints in regards to how eerie it seemed. The three-storey inn was built of big logs, and inside, the adventurers were surprised how it differed from log houses built by humans: While human log houses tended to be cosy and cottage-like, the common room of the inn, which took most of the first floor, was airy and also full of light, thanks to big windows and intricately constructed braziers. You couldn't smell smoke, saw dust and pine sap here, nor could you exactly imagine hunting trophies to decorate the walls. But, knowing many humans were often lodged in there, the inn owner had helpfully hung a couple of elk heads on the wall nevertheless, just to give a little bit of familiar atmosphere. Facyr was particularly pleased when he saw the dart board.
Most of the tables in the common room were occupied by all sorts of travellers. Aleln and Realn found the inn, under the circumstances, a rather good place to get information from – though for the adventurers, an inn anywhere would always be a good place to get the latest news from. Facyr took the news from the inn rather gladly; Faira, however, gave them just a little less credence, especially when the town didn't have a fish market where the unfounded rumours could be segregated. This didn't mean the news were uninteresting.
After the news of the town's recapture had reached Grycia and northern Varmhjelm, some traders were already passing through, at least through the eastern roads – the wizard and monsters clearly still held the northern road. Only a few traders yet used the roads, though, in fears that monsters might ambush them on the way. The protection from the Mighty Lancers was invaluable, but monsters still claimed their prey at times. Still, having the direct road open from northern Varmhjelm was invaluable in getting things to Furinia's market and onward to the southern elven towns – paying some extra for a few mercenaries as caravan guards was cheaper and faster than shipping everything to Anchorfall via the twisty, badly maintained, treacherous western routes, and to the port towns by sea.
Faira turned and looked at something that had vaguely been bothering her. In the corner table, a bald man dressed in black was sitting quietly, leaning on the table, tired eyes observing every movement in the room. Faira looked at the man, quite surprised. The fellow clearly seemed familiar; it took some time for her to place a name on him. “Do I know you?” she asked, knowing his reply, whatever it was, would tell her for sure.
The man slowly raised his hand, then slowly wiped the side of his nose with his thumb. The gesture spoke volumes to Faira: it was a gesture that showed determination and diligence, utter dedication and training. It was as if he had dedicated every moment of his existence to train for that single act of nose-wiping. “No, you don't know me”, he said.
Faira smiled knowingly. “Actually, I do know you – I mean, in the circles I've been in, who wouldn't know you. I just wonder what a high-paid assassin is doing in this place. Let me guess – shifting loyalties?”
The man sighed. “Very disappointing ones at that.”
“You do everything for money, right?”
“Always.”
“And if I guess correctly, you're annoyed because you got paid to not to do something?”
The man thought. “The situations is quite more complicated than that.”
Faira thought for a while. “Now, what I've heard is that you've always succeeded in doing what the contract says. Would you reconsider fulfilling the original contract if you failed with this one?”
The man thought again, a little bit longer. Faira hoped he thought harder as well – one could not tell from outside. Finally he said, slowly, “Like I said, it is all very complicated, but I suppose that is correct.”
“I've got no idea who the heck you're after here”, Faira said, “or who you were originally after, and I assure you, I don't know for sure. I can only guess. And you don't kill nosy people who just guess, am I right?”
“No, I won't”, the man said with a bit more resolve.
“Good.” Faira smiled coldly to the man, and departed.
She went upstairs to join the others, was happy to escape that situation alive, and also know that this fellow could, indeed, be useful at times. She was just a bit worried on whether or not the thing would develop – he was not the kind of person who liked discussing his private enterprises. She knew the man was a famed assassin from Anchorfall, and not a person to be trifled with.
Faira climbed up the stairs. It was a narrow spiral staircase, with a ridiculous number of small-game trophies hanging on the walls - she hoped that some other human travellers had as good sense of humour as she had, as she saw some heads of particularly big rats - and walked down the narrow corridor with a bit rickety floorboards to what now passed as the ducal palace of Nothross. Half of the second floor was reserved for the court officials, and Aleln and Realn had the royal suite – if it could be called that – for his own use.
As Faira stepped in, Aleln was already formulating a plan, and the adventurers discussed various ways of attack until well after nightfall.
“Faira, wake up!”
Faira sat up the moment Facyr called her name, waking from light slumber.
Rain was pelting the window of her inn room, and the midnight gloom was often lit by bolts of thunder. She yawned a bit, but got back to track at an admirable pace. “Uh, let me guess, the monsters are coming?” she said, with only a hint of tiredness in her voice.
“Hah, you just can't guess wrong, can you!” Facyr shouted with a chuckle as he ran down the narrow corridor. “Looks like the evil wizard is being really, really predictable.” He shook his head. “Let's teach him a lesson or two. Come along as fast as you can! Meet me at the barricades on the other side of the marketplace. Gnedrnygr, you too – wake up!”, he said as he ran down the stairs, taking two steps at a time. The magician was already stirring in his room in the floor below.
Facyr emerged from the door to the heavy rain. As he got out of the door to the marketplace, he saw Faira already gone halfway to the barricade, and wished weakly that he had the guts to jump out of second-floor windows routinely, knowing that a rogue's life wasn't really made for him. He ran after her, glad that the monsters had not yet reached the place – he didn't want to miss the fun. Gnedrnygr followed them a moment later, and Aleln and Realn were already waiting them.
“Did you hurt yourself falling, Faira?” Facyr looked at Faira's face, which had a slight scratch, even when there was no sign of monsters yet.
“Oh, just ran into some unpleasant characters in the hallway. I think they were mistaken about the room.”
“What? Assassins? Here?” Facyr said, disbelief clearly in his face.
“Yep, though I convinced him to not mess with us – I knew him, and he's good, but not good enough to be of trouble to us.”
Facyr grinned. “All right then, let's not worry about that now - there's monsters heading this way! So what's really coming up?” Facyr asked Aleln.
“It looks like a rather typical raiding party of a couple of dozen glartaror.”
Facyr sighed. “Well, I hope you dared to be a bit more specific, but an orcling is an orcling and when we start killing them, it doesn't matter what kind.”
“We could handle this, sir”, the sergeant in command of the squad of Lancers on the barricade said to Aleln. “It is nothing really out of ordinary, sir.”
“Don't you worry about us”, Facyr said to the sergeant. “Just be prepared to stop any of these that might slip past us.”
The goborcs emerged from the bend of the road, heading directly toward the barricade. Facyr worried a little bit about whatever cunning strategy the creatures were planning right now; the fact that the creatures were advancing carrying quite a few torches and making loud noises made him worry that the wizard had given the creatures some helpful advice on how to attack the place. But then again, this was a typical goblinoid strategy in general: either they attacked head on, or attacked head on with some cunning twist to the pattern. Facyr hoped this was purely a case of the former possibility.
“All right then, there they come – get ready, folks”, Facyr shouted as the enemy got closer. “Praise to Gapus!” he screamed, and went on to unceremoniously start the battle by leaping down from the barricade and running through the goborc on point.
Rather quickly, it became apparent to Facyr that his fears on any cunning strategy from the part of the enemy had been completely unfounded. The goborcs had often hoped that the defenders were afraid to see them coming, as the sight of an advancing goborc horde generally tended to worry people with no fighting skills at all and even the normal men at arms.
But over the past few weeks, they had been facing something more fearsome than that. Furinel's Mighty Lancers were no strangers to dealing with goblinoids. And now, they also faced Facyr – he, likewise, had fought the goblinoids most of his life, and knew that a few of them couldn't possibly stop him.
As he and his friends charged into the fray and slashed creatures down left and right, he still kept wondering what Jaxtomsyn hoped to accomplish with this hopeless raid: Surely, by now, he was aware that he no longer had any chance of taking the village? Maybe he did have some cunning strategy, or maybe this was just an act of desperation. Maybe the reason for this courageous goborc attack was just that the goborcs were not blessed with much intellect and only knew Jaxtomsyn didn't want them back if the assault was a failure. Not that it mattered much, in the adventurers' hands, the creatures were dead soon. He idly pondered the motives as he easily slashed through two goborcs.
Aleln descended from the wall, joining the fray, fighting the things with much more style and taking more time, but clearly not letting the weapons of the vile creatures closer than an inch to himself.
The rain poured on them as they fought the things, without much worries in their hearts on how the fight was looking. Facyr and Aleln kept hacking at the monsters in the glow of the torches on the barricade – the goborc torch-bearers had been quickly slain, and some of their torches were still sputtering on the ground. A dim yellow-green glow was lit upon the battlefield. It was Realn's spell, hopefully dim enough to not help the creatures much but bright enough for her adventurous friends to see by.
At first, Faira had shot the advancing monsters with her crossbow. She shot one, then quickly reloaded, and shot another. Meanwhile, Gnedrnygr was done incanting a spell. Faira showed some disappointment as Gnedrnygr shot a fireball to the rear end of the advancing orcling horde – after all, he knew a lot more flashier spells than this, but on the other hand, it didn't matter much how interesting the spells were academically, as long as they killed stuff. She was actually more disappointed to see only three goblinoids fry to crisp.
The bulk of the goborcs had moved close enough. Faira dropped her crossbow on top of the barricade and leapt down to join Facyr the fray, and Gnedrnygr followed her, brandishing his staff.
Below, Aleln was turning more lethal; he was fighting what he perceived to be the leader of the creatures; a rather ugly orc with many scars and attire made of bits of bone and patched leather. The creature was also the only one with some real armour; under the leather coat, Aleln spied what seemed to be a chain shirt. The creature was also quite competent with the weapons. The creature shouted curses in orcish language, which Aleln didn't really know much about, and occasional broken fragment of threats in Elvish or Varmian.
Faira rushed toward the closest goborc, who was surprised to see an unarmed opponent advancing. It grinned, and prepared to slash Faira, but as she was close, she dodged by doing a sudden roll, grabbing her daggers from her belt while doing that, and thrusting both of them into the creature's chest as she finished the roll.
Gnedrnygr, meanwhile, had paced to the battle with considerably slower pace. He muttered formula for a spell, and a bolt of green lightning from the tip of his staff fried the goborc who was thinking the magician would be easy prey. The creature's companion came forth with shriek of rage, hoping Gnedrnygr would be ill prepared after casting a spell, but the mage spun around and mashed the creature on the side of the head with his staff, making it flip over full before hitting the mud.
Mud wasn't bothering Faira much, aside of the general inconvenience - the rain, if a bit chilly, was washing it all off. She drew the daggers from the creature's chest and ran toward another pair of creatures, easily stabbing two other creatures to sides while advancing. She easily dodged the one right in front of her while running crouched, tried to brake and slipped in mud between the creatures, almost running through the monster in front of her as she plunged her dagger to its chest, tackling the creature. As the creature toppled over and cushioned her landing, she, without any need to even look, threw the other dagger behind her – right through the first creature's throat. She noted another creature come from left, and without skipping a beat, pulled the dagger from the chest of the creature in front of her and thrust backward at the advancing creature – a goblin, this time – with it, killing the thing just as easily as the other two.
She rose up, took her dagger, and jumped to the other creature to take her other blade. Then she heard a shriek right behind her; luckily, Facyr had not missed what she had, and picked one of the darts that the goborcs seemed to carry on their belts and thrown it at the goblin that had been trying to kill Faira.
She smiled to Facyr and saw more trouble coming toward him – six goborcs, circling her friend.
Faira leapt to the ring and leaned on Facyr, ready to face the creatures back against each other's back. She guessed this was a situation where Facyr wasn't prone to go blushing and locking up, and was luckily quite correct. They deflected the axe swings of the creatures, and stabbed and slashed them furiously but determinedly.
Soon, nine goborcs in total lay on their feet, and they had time to look at each other. Faira was happy that at least this time, Facyr was smiling rather than blushing, though in the dim light, it was difficult to tell. They didn't have much time for this, so they both leapt up and ran to kill more of the things. Luckily, it seemed most of the creatures were dead already.
Meanwhile, Gnedrnygr had been busy incanting. The battlefield was lit brightly for a while when he did one of his favourite spells that he had taught Faira as among the first things. A giant beam of light seared through three goborcs and two goblins, practically leaving only their smouldering boots behind.
After a few moments, the battle was over. Faira was wet, had sand in her clothes from the muddy ground, but she knew none of the monsters had had no chance to even as much as scratch her. She looked around warily and and saw none of the disgusting monsters alive. “Everyone all right?”
“Phew,” Facyr breathed out, panting. “Not a scratch here, not a scratch”, he continued, wiping whatever little sweat he had on the brow, holding a nice pile of goborc helmets, handing them to one of the Lancers to decorate the wall with. “This was an incompetent lot, if you ask me.”
Aleln eyed his kill with pure hatred in his eyes, and as everyone gathered around him to admire it, he slowly crouched down and pulled his sword from the creature. While Facyr and Faira had been fighting the creatures together, Aleln had finally killed the leader of the raiding party, running his blade through the creature's side. It had taken several moments for it to die, and in his heart, Aleln was happy for each eye blink the creature had shrieked in agony. Without word, he raised his sword, coldly looking at the blood on its blade. He then sheathed it, and turned to his friends. “It seems to me that Jaxtomsyn is slowly losing the best of the fighters he has – this ugly one here”, Aleln said, pointing to the leader's carcass, “was one of the troublemakers I've seen before already, and probably one of our biggest headaches in recent memory. It may be the bands don't have any more capable leaders after this thing is dead. Or”, he eyed at the adventurers, “it could be that he is keeping them at the keep, and has some more capable tacticians in his sleeve.”
“What capable tacticians?” Faira said. “This wasn't exactly a tactical strike.” She grinned widely.
“Yeah, true, I was just thinking the same thing. I don't think we need to worry much about orc tacticians”, Facyr said.
Aleln thought for a moment. “Either way, let us retire to the inn. I suggest we finish our plan of the fortress assault right away.”
“Right away?” Facyr said. “You mean you want to attack the castle tomorrow already?”
“Yes – what better time, really? We'll attack at the first light.”
“Oh dear, this is going to be one busy night”, Faira said.
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