“Enough! Whiska, come on.” She motioned to the wizard before turning to look at me. “If you slow us down, you turn back. Understood?”
I nodded. “Let’s go.”
Rummy and Borg (belatedly) waved as we parted company, and Nadi, Whiska, and I plunged into the underbrush. Frankly, I’m not sure what Nadi was worried about; I can say for a fact that half-elves are much stealthier than Ratarians, and that’s just in the general case—in the specific case of me versus Whiska, it was an even more lopsided contest. I glided through the underbrush, skimming across the tops of leaves and twigs without making a sound or leaving a trace of my passage, though I wasn’t quite as stealthy as Nadi, who might as well have been a ghost.
Whiska, on the other hand…I think she went out of her way to crunch every stick, acorn, and crackbug she could find (crackbugs are small, but when you step on one, it sounds like thunder splitting a thick log; they also glow pink in the dark, so they’re not particularly hard to avoid stepping on).
Nadi shushed her several times before giving up and settling for shooting her looks that would have turned a raw chunk of lamb into a fully cooked shish roundabob. Whiska either didn’t notice or didn’t care (my money was on the latter), though I think she might have regretted her nonchalance at least a little when, a moment later, an orc arrow thunked into a tree trunk two inches away from her snout.
“‘Ware the archers!” shouted Nadi.
“‘Ware the archers?’” I echoed, incredulous. “Seriously? That’s how you talk in the middle of a fight? You revert to high-middle Folarian? Why not, oh I don’t know, ‘look out!’ or something, you know, less ridiculous?”
“Just fight!” said Nadi.
“See? Was that so hard?”
We scattered, and Whiska immediately began chanting. A few seconds later, she flung a barrage of green energy toward our attackers. Someone yelped, and more arrows whizzed past us (one distressingly close to my nose; thank goodness it’s already small (and so cute and button-like), or it would have become (painfully) smaller.)
Nadi had her sword out and was spinning wildly, looking for someone to strike. I took my long knife from its sheathe and did the same, but looked considerably more graceful while doing so.
A moment passed in silence. We looked around; Nadi and I closed in and stood back to back. Whiska moved toward us. “Orcs!” she snarled. “Not only do they smell disgusting and taste terrible, but they’re cowards! If I could see one of them right now, I swear I’d rip its intestines out and—”
Whatever creative (and, knowing her, ultimately culinary) fate Whiska had in mind for our opponents was forever lost in a scream of “Aaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhh!” as she was flung up into the air, trapped in a net that had been cleverly concealed along the forest floor.
“That’s not good,” I observed sagely.
Nadi lowered her sword. “Point your knife down,” she whispered. “If they wanted us dead, they’d have taken us with arrows. They’ve got us covered from an elevated position, and we can’t see them. Our only hope is to let them get up close. Draw them in.” She dropped her sword on the ground and raised her hands. “Be ready.”
I raised an eyebrow, but did as she asked.
“I hear something,” she whispered as she took a step forward, “get ready to—”
For the second time, one of my companion’s comments was cut short by a scream. That made two of us hanging helplessly in nets. And, as the famously rotund and campy bard Beef Roast once sang, two out of three ain’t great.
The moon, which had been hiding behind the clouds, suddenly broke through, shining through the forest canopy and enabling me to see a group of at least 10 orcs closing in. The first to arrive hefted a spear, pointed it up at Whiska, and said gleefully, “We have lattice roped ourselves some interlopers!” Then he made a choking, hacking sound that I eventually realized was laughter. It was the first time I’d heard an orc laugh. I didn’t enjoy the experience.
The other orcs approached. One, apparently the oldest of the group, shook his head. “No, you mean that we have ‘netted ourselves some interlopers.’ Not ‘lattice roped.’ That is not a thing people say.” He looked at me and shrugged apologetically. “We are very bad at jokes. Especially the kind with words.”
“But very good at making lattice ropes!” said the first orc, grinning.
“I see that,” I said. “Am I going to get pulled up into one if I step in the wrong spot?”
“Yes,” said the old orc.
“Could you, I don’t know, tell me where to step so that doesn’t happen?”
“No.”
“Right, then.” I looked up at Nadi, who was furiously trying to saw through her ropes with a dagger (ineffectively, I might add). Whiska was neither moving nor hurling epithets, which worried me. The only thing I could think of that would silence her was unconsciousness, and she was so stubborn that I’m not even sure that would stop her from cursing someone.
“Get them down,” said the old orc. “Carefully.”
I decided to stay put, waiting for the orcs to come get me. I watched as they lowered Nadi and Whiska, moving quickly to bind their mouths and hands—not, however, before a possum-playing Whiska was able to utter a few syllables and twitch her fingers. Flames erupted from her hands, causing the closest orcs to fall back, shrieking, though others jumped in to gag and bind her before she could do anything else. The orcs she’d hit slapped frantically at themselves in an effort to put out the flames, looking more than a little pained. They growled and gave Whiska dirty looks, but, much to my surprise, didn’t move to strike her.
I was next in line for binding and gagging, and while there’s an easy joke to make here about them not being nearly as good at it as most dwarves I’ve known, I’m going to refrain from making it. It wasn’t the most comfortable arrangement I’d ever experienced, but neither was it unduly painful, which, again, surprised me. I could only assume that the orcs had plans to eat us or something equally horrible that required our flesh to remain tender and unbruised.
We were marched single file through the woods, stopping to rest after about an hour. Rather than removing our gags, the orcs wet them with water so we could suck the moisture from them—not exactly thirst-quenching, but better than nothing, and, I had to concede, a reasonable approach given what Whiska had attempted when they’d cut her down from the net.
We continued on, reaching the orc encampment just as dawn broke. Turns out that “encampment” didn’t do it justice—it warranted “settlement” at the very least. Maybe even “town.” I mean, there were fences—not barbed-wire, skewer-the-intruder fences…like, white picket fences. There were little old orc ladies sitting on porches crocheting doilies. I had no idea little old orc ladies were a thing—I assumed that most of them either died in battle or were killed (and maybe eaten) by their mates long before reaching their dotage. I even saw an ice cream shop, though I naturally assumed that the flavor of the month would soon be Neapolitan (elf/half-elf/Ratarian). I shook my head. Something strange was going on.
Our escorts took us to a building that resembled a courthouse—primarily, it turns out, because it was a courthouse (I couldn’t decide which was more shocking—the doilies or the fact that the orcs had a courthouse). They hustled us inside and we came to a stop in front of a desk where sat a wizened, but still huge and scary-looking, orc wearing dark robes. White hair flowed down to his shoulders, and he grunted when he saw us. He picked up a knife and pointed it at Nadi. I feared he would throw it, and frantically (yet somehow still coolly and heroically, because “frantic” just isn’t a good look for me) looked around for a way to stop him, but instead of hurling it, he used it to pick his nails. “Well, what are you waiting for?” he growled to our captors. “Ungag them.”