Post by Dead Greyhawk on Oct 25, 2007 21:47:00 GMT -5
The Company greatly regrets Diego's loss. Having underestimated the dangers of Sterich once, the Company will not do so again. More extensive watches are established, so that each guardian has more than one partner. Glowing stones are spread around the campsite, allowing for longer sight lines. Alouicious takes up Diego's shield, wearing it on his back, while the rest of Diego's equipment is dispersed between the others. Each night, Hugh prays over the corpse that was Diego, anointing Diego's body with holy water, and attempting to protect his soul from unlife.
The Company travels northwest through Sterich. Zombies and skeletons roam the land, and they are quickly dealt with by the Company's priests should the venture too close. Otto does find surprising signs of life as he leads the Company. Off the sides of the road are a variety of tracks, most dead or recently dead, but many seem to be the prints of foul humanoids. Many head towards the south, towards the Jotens and the Yeomanry. Fewer head to the north, presumably towards the Hornwood, the Oytwood, and the Stark Mounds. A small number though, they seem to wander about, trodding the same land over and over. Otto suspects that some of the humanoids have deserted their warbands and taken to small-scale plunder or several bands of humanoids have been left behind to perform unknown acts. The land is not without some human and demihuman inhabitants though. Rarely, he finds a trace of halfling and elven track, skulking through the countryside, presumably avoiding the voracious undead.
The Company is faced with a logistical conundrum: should they head through Istivin or avoid the city totally? Raven can not imagine that it has withstood the ravages of the unlife let loose in Sterich, but also posits that it might be the last place where an organized resistance remains. Otto shares Raven's doubts and, with Winthrop's acquiescence, the Company plots a course that avoids not only the city, but the roads that lead towards it.
As the Company pushes on into the heartland of Sterich, the destruction of the countryside becomes more and more obvious. Where the crop was left rotting in the fields nearer to the Javan, here the fields have been razed, burnt during battle, and the herds slaughtered. No building, not even the smallest outhouse, still stands, and even the most minor of animals seems to have risen again in some skeletal form. Hugh and Adrienne dispatch these creatures with impunity, but their presence is unnerving to the druids and Antonus, who have never seen anything of the like. Eats Salmon, identifying the skeletons of dead sheep, bemoans his fate to Jasper, complaining over and over again how he was mislead, first into the horrible boat, then into the land of dead beasts, and now without his sheep. Jasper empathizes, not being too fond of the surroundings himself, and repeatedly feeds Eats Salmon magical berries created by the druids in order to assuage the bear's hunger.
The grayness overhead is thicker and thicker, slowly turning the brightness of noontime into the dreariness of twilight. The Company resorts to using their lightstones even during the day, lighting up an area around them and their horses. This, of course, serves as a beacon to the undead, and they draw closer with ever more frequency. A pack of ghouls provides a certain amount of anxiety as Hugh and Adrienne's piety momentarily fails them. Few of the ghouls succumb to the Company's clerics, and suddenly they are in the midst of a pitched battle. The more novice members of the Company do not shirk from battle. If anything, the Company is distinctly reminded of Winthrop.
Eig and Herbert both use the surrounding dried grasses and dying trees to slow and trap the ghouls, avoiding the members of the Company fighting through the pack. Antonus is less subtle. He pulls forth a wand etched with snowflakes and levels it a the largest concentration of ghouls. With the muttering of words of power, the wand's might is unleashed, a cone of icy cold emanating from it. The ghouls, indeed, are captured in the icy spray, but so is Alouicious, who was moving to block the ghouls' advance. Diego's shield, strapped across Alouicious's back, bears the brunt of the wand's force, and the magical cold is deflected at an angle off of the face of the shield, much to everyone's surprise. As when it was attached to the flail snail, the shell's colored opalescent face takes on a swirling aspect. It emanates entrancing lights and patterns, and Antonus, Eig, and the horses all stand motionless, staring at the pretty colors while the Company finishes the ghouls.
"Where did you get that?" yells Alouicious at a startled Antonus, who remembers nothing after triggering the wand of snow. Antonus looks around and finds Alouicious standing before him, red with rage, clutching the wand in one hand, his axe in the other.
"Dell gave it to me," explains Antonus. "He said it would be more useful to me than to him, and he instructed me in its magics. It should have slain the ghouls there."
"I was the one nearly slain," rages Alouicious. "Mages! Can't trust them not to shoot you in the back! In! The! Back!"
"Give him the wand back," directs Raven, "I'm certain he'll be more accurate now that you've explained things to him." Raven and Alouicious have a brief contest of wills, but Alouicious still remembers being freed by the Company, not a minor event in his life. With a dwarven snort, Alouicious tosses the wand on the ground before Antonus and storms off. "You will be more careful now," glowers Raven at Antonus, "or Al will show you the sharp end of his axe in a very personal and private way." With that threat, Raven turns and heads off to collect Giuseppe.
The Company is still disgruntled from their experience with the ghouls and much concerned that, as they push further into Sterich, the powers of their gods wane. "Zombie," calls out Al, who is on watch.
"I've got it," says Raven, looking at the now resting clerics. Waiting for the zombies approach, Raven prepares himself. The funerary shroud wrapping the zombie flaps in the breeze and a black rain begins falling as the undead shudders towards them. Finally, Raven judging the range to be right, he sends three arrows through the zombie, two of them flying completely through the beast. It falls down, dead again. "Who needs priests when they come in small numbers?" asks Raven rhetorically. The zombie rises yet again from death, a fearsome sight. Raven and Alouicious shout in surprise and fear and run screaming through the camp, leaving Jasper, the other man on watch startled and confused. The zombie staggers into camp and is cleaved in twain by Jasper's great halberd.
Otto, recalling how that last time some sort of magical panic led to him being impaled on spikes in a pit in the Pomarj, gathers the others to search for Raven and Alouicious. The Company rides after the two warriors, Hugh leading one group and Otto the other. The tracks left by Raven and Alouicious are plain to see in the muck and mire, posing no difficulties to the accomplished trackers. Indeed, the Company finds their frightened warriors returning towards the campsite, their fears having ceased to drive them into flight.
The black rain continues through the night and into the next day, coating their bodies with an inky film. Antonus regrets the loss of the pearly whiteness of his fine robe. Through the gloom ahead, Otto spies what he thinks may be movement on a hillside. Quickly calling over, he has Winthrop unlimber his spyglass, one not as powerful as Dell's but still a fine piece of craftsmanship. Indeed, captured briefly in Winthrop's gaze is a human profile, silhouetted for a moment as it furtively stares at the Company and then goes over the crest of the hill.
The Company is torn with doubt and recrimination. Are some humans left to be saved in Sterich? As the Company rides through, are they failing to help those for whom vengeance is yet to be served? Hugh and Winthrop strongly urge that any who have survived in Sterich should be found so that their revenge can be facilitated, and, surprisingly, Antonus agrees with them, though likely for his own reasons. Faced with internal dissension, Raven and Otto lead the Company towards the hills.
The tracks are difficult to trace, with neither Otto nor Hugh able to find their origins. Some tracks appear midway up the hill and then head up to the crest, presumably where Winthrop spotted the person. Crawling on his stomach up to the top of the hill, Otto peers over the ridge to see what lies beyond.
A small village at the intersection of two roads sits in a small valley nestled among the hills. A large, square cemetery with a spire-topped mausoleum lies off to the north, while houses of varying shapes and sizes fill in the rest of the village. The houses range from small hovels to a large manor house with outbuildings, but the most notable aspect of the buildings is a house that is shaped like a large boot. Furthest from the hill, on the western side of the village, it rises up like a wide tower. The manor house seems to be occupied; two large bonfires burn outside of it and one of them has a large black object in it, possibly a cow, cooking.
Otto reports back to the others, sketching out in the mud what he's seen. One road looks like it might converge on the capitol, while the other appears more a farm track. The Company can easily bypass the village, but the presence of the bonfires is too much for their curiosity to resist. The Company rides down to the town, carefully watching the buildings for signs of life. The buildings lack doors and shutters, their empty, hollow frames echoing the vacant country that surrounds them. Tattered, dirty curtains whip through one of the windows, flickering in and out of vision. Raven keeps an arrow knocked and a close eye back on the cemetery and mausoleum. With the number of undead roaming Sterich, it is a natural place for the Company's adversaries to be found.
Winthrop also peers around in the gloom. As his magical powers have waxed, his sensitivities to mystical auras has increased. His long study of the Nekton Fragments has made his notice the logic in the blackness that binds the unlife to the living world as well. The bindings fascinate him, and he is certain that he nears the critical breakthrough that Captain Sharone understood so well before that incompetent barber Bondwood erred so badly. The vacant town feels wrong to him, and his eyes try pick out the patterns of deceit that surrounds him. Thus, he is unsurprised when a remarkably ugly man strides into sight, the rest of the Company staring vacuously past it. "Hey!" he shouts, gesturing at the creature, "I see you hiding there! Come on out and face us."
Apparently the subject of his words is misunderstood. Gnolls, orcs, and armored ogres burst out of the buildings the Company approaches. Gnolls to the left, ogres ahead, and orcs to the right, the Company has tripped their ambush early. Only the gnolls and ogres are near enough to the Company to immediately engage. The gnolls stop and fire their great bows, arrows falling like hail amidst the Company while the ogres continue their rumbling charge.
The man looks at Winthrop with surprise and reaches out towards him. Winthrop's head suddenly begins to pound and ache, as some force tries to impose its will upon Winthrop. Winthrop will have nothing with that. "Burn!" he cries, the sharp stench of split air filling his nostrils as a thunderous clap of lightning arcs out from him through the man. Its form blows apart, expanding into a massive singularly horned creature, an ogre magi! The creature makes nary a sound as its body carbonizes, its skin splitting and peeling under the torrent of power that flows out of Winthrop.
"Steady, steady!" shouts Raven as the orcs continue to boil forth, at least fifty of them charging down from the manor house. Otto and Herbert summon the power of their god and goddess, the earth and grass clutching at the charging ogres. Winthrop eschews such subtle magics, summoning a great wall of fire beside him and running it over the gnoll archers, laughing as their skin boils, bubbles and sloughs from them. Eig and Antonus ride aghast at the callous slaughter.
Eig joins Otto and Herbert in warding off their flank, large swaths of land now grasping greedily at the ogres that run through it. Raven's carefully aimed arrows penetrate the weak points of the Ogre armor, and they begin to fall. Winthrop cares not for the others that charge towards the Company, instead marshaling his fire to slay those gnolls that stagger in near-blind ruin. "Going to be just like that time in the caves," says Alouicious to Otto. "By the time it gets to us, they'll all be dead."
Alouicious's words are premature as, out of nowhere, a tall horned form appears. Gesturing with a wickedly taloned hand, a wave of unearthly cold sweeps through the Company, flattening Eig, Herbert, and Antonus, as well as half the horses. The rest of the Company, while chilled, is nowhere as injured. Eats Salmon, immensely displeased by the sudden stinging cold, roars his rage and charges the creature. Jasper, understanding the bear's angry cry, joins him, hacking at the ogre mage with his halberd. The bear's anger is terrible to watch as Eats Salmon sweeps up the ogre mage, ripping great chunks of flesh from the ogre mage's neck and crushing its form to Eats Salmon's broad chest. The bear tosses the broken corpse of the ogre mage to the ground, rears up, and dances on its corpse.
Eats Salmon's moment of triumph is short lived. Two more of the ogre magi appear, both flying, and they ape their brethren, sending icy cold through the Company. Most of the horses collapse from the impact, with those that failed to withstand the former unnatural cold simply expiring. Both Giuseppe and Cyfael, the Raven and Otto's faithful steeds, collapse to the ground.
The strong and dexterous among the Company withstand the worst of the icy spray, shrugging off or dodging the pelting cold. Winthrop releases his grasp on the wall of flames, runs forward, and unleashes another great bolt of lightning, pinning both of the ogre magi. Raven adds a series of arrows, and one of the ogre magi falls.
With the attention of the Company drawn away from them, the orcs begin to extract the ogres from the twining grasses, as well as flank the Company. Their efforts fail as they meet the warriors of the Company. Otto and Al wade into the milling orc mass, sword and axe striking off heads and limbs, while Jasper and Eats Salmon rush back towards the Company. Adrienne takes her place in the line as well, swinging her military pick with great precision and devastating effect. The orcs quail at the ferocious mien of the Company, but are urged onward by their leaders.
Hugh views the battle raging around him. Two fronts are secure, one by the writing grasses and one by the wall of flames. Before him lie the broken bodies of the druids and the apprentice, Antonus, as well as Raven's and Otto's faithful steeds. Choices face him. Decisively, Hugh steps forward and calls upon Trithereon to first heal the wounds of the great charger Giuseppe and then those of Cyfael, Otto's mount. Only after that is done does he turn to the fallen humans and elf. They are quite pale with blood loss, but still remain within the bounds of life. Hugh digs among Eig's belongings, searching for a pouch filled with enormous berries. Finding them, he moves from fallen person to fallen person, thrusting and crushing a berry into their still lips. Miraculously, the fallen's wounds seal, blood no longer seeping from them into the ground.
When Hugh looks back up, the orcs are in full retreat and the other of the ogre magi lies dead, an arrow protruding from its head like a second horn. A great burnt patch shows where Winthrop must have summoned fire into the midst of the packed orcs, cooking more than a dozen of them. Another two dozen orcs and ogres lie strewn across the battlefield, the losers of their fights with the Company's warriors. The orcs and a few ogres flee at their best speed southward, out of the village and into the gray gloom. Hugh can see Winthrop trying to judge the distance and the clustering of the orcs in preparation for yet more magical destruction, but the range seem overly much for him.
Adrienne and Hugh quickly begin restoring the members of the Company to health, pulling them back from death's door. The Company may have fended off the ambush, but they must not be out of danger yet.
The Company travels northwest through Sterich. Zombies and skeletons roam the land, and they are quickly dealt with by the Company's priests should the venture too close. Otto does find surprising signs of life as he leads the Company. Off the sides of the road are a variety of tracks, most dead or recently dead, but many seem to be the prints of foul humanoids. Many head towards the south, towards the Jotens and the Yeomanry. Fewer head to the north, presumably towards the Hornwood, the Oytwood, and the Stark Mounds. A small number though, they seem to wander about, trodding the same land over and over. Otto suspects that some of the humanoids have deserted their warbands and taken to small-scale plunder or several bands of humanoids have been left behind to perform unknown acts. The land is not without some human and demihuman inhabitants though. Rarely, he finds a trace of halfling and elven track, skulking through the countryside, presumably avoiding the voracious undead.
The Company is faced with a logistical conundrum: should they head through Istivin or avoid the city totally? Raven can not imagine that it has withstood the ravages of the unlife let loose in Sterich, but also posits that it might be the last place where an organized resistance remains. Otto shares Raven's doubts and, with Winthrop's acquiescence, the Company plots a course that avoids not only the city, but the roads that lead towards it.
As the Company pushes on into the heartland of Sterich, the destruction of the countryside becomes more and more obvious. Where the crop was left rotting in the fields nearer to the Javan, here the fields have been razed, burnt during battle, and the herds slaughtered. No building, not even the smallest outhouse, still stands, and even the most minor of animals seems to have risen again in some skeletal form. Hugh and Adrienne dispatch these creatures with impunity, but their presence is unnerving to the druids and Antonus, who have never seen anything of the like. Eats Salmon, identifying the skeletons of dead sheep, bemoans his fate to Jasper, complaining over and over again how he was mislead, first into the horrible boat, then into the land of dead beasts, and now without his sheep. Jasper empathizes, not being too fond of the surroundings himself, and repeatedly feeds Eats Salmon magical berries created by the druids in order to assuage the bear's hunger.
The grayness overhead is thicker and thicker, slowly turning the brightness of noontime into the dreariness of twilight. The Company resorts to using their lightstones even during the day, lighting up an area around them and their horses. This, of course, serves as a beacon to the undead, and they draw closer with ever more frequency. A pack of ghouls provides a certain amount of anxiety as Hugh and Adrienne's piety momentarily fails them. Few of the ghouls succumb to the Company's clerics, and suddenly they are in the midst of a pitched battle. The more novice members of the Company do not shirk from battle. If anything, the Company is distinctly reminded of Winthrop.
Eig and Herbert both use the surrounding dried grasses and dying trees to slow and trap the ghouls, avoiding the members of the Company fighting through the pack. Antonus is less subtle. He pulls forth a wand etched with snowflakes and levels it a the largest concentration of ghouls. With the muttering of words of power, the wand's might is unleashed, a cone of icy cold emanating from it. The ghouls, indeed, are captured in the icy spray, but so is Alouicious, who was moving to block the ghouls' advance. Diego's shield, strapped across Alouicious's back, bears the brunt of the wand's force, and the magical cold is deflected at an angle off of the face of the shield, much to everyone's surprise. As when it was attached to the flail snail, the shell's colored opalescent face takes on a swirling aspect. It emanates entrancing lights and patterns, and Antonus, Eig, and the horses all stand motionless, staring at the pretty colors while the Company finishes the ghouls.
"Where did you get that?" yells Alouicious at a startled Antonus, who remembers nothing after triggering the wand of snow. Antonus looks around and finds Alouicious standing before him, red with rage, clutching the wand in one hand, his axe in the other.
"Dell gave it to me," explains Antonus. "He said it would be more useful to me than to him, and he instructed me in its magics. It should have slain the ghouls there."
"I was the one nearly slain," rages Alouicious. "Mages! Can't trust them not to shoot you in the back! In! The! Back!"
"Give him the wand back," directs Raven, "I'm certain he'll be more accurate now that you've explained things to him." Raven and Alouicious have a brief contest of wills, but Alouicious still remembers being freed by the Company, not a minor event in his life. With a dwarven snort, Alouicious tosses the wand on the ground before Antonus and storms off. "You will be more careful now," glowers Raven at Antonus, "or Al will show you the sharp end of his axe in a very personal and private way." With that threat, Raven turns and heads off to collect Giuseppe.
The Company is still disgruntled from their experience with the ghouls and much concerned that, as they push further into Sterich, the powers of their gods wane. "Zombie," calls out Al, who is on watch.
"I've got it," says Raven, looking at the now resting clerics. Waiting for the zombies approach, Raven prepares himself. The funerary shroud wrapping the zombie flaps in the breeze and a black rain begins falling as the undead shudders towards them. Finally, Raven judging the range to be right, he sends three arrows through the zombie, two of them flying completely through the beast. It falls down, dead again. "Who needs priests when they come in small numbers?" asks Raven rhetorically. The zombie rises yet again from death, a fearsome sight. Raven and Alouicious shout in surprise and fear and run screaming through the camp, leaving Jasper, the other man on watch startled and confused. The zombie staggers into camp and is cleaved in twain by Jasper's great halberd.
Otto, recalling how that last time some sort of magical panic led to him being impaled on spikes in a pit in the Pomarj, gathers the others to search for Raven and Alouicious. The Company rides after the two warriors, Hugh leading one group and Otto the other. The tracks left by Raven and Alouicious are plain to see in the muck and mire, posing no difficulties to the accomplished trackers. Indeed, the Company finds their frightened warriors returning towards the campsite, their fears having ceased to drive them into flight.
The black rain continues through the night and into the next day, coating their bodies with an inky film. Antonus regrets the loss of the pearly whiteness of his fine robe. Through the gloom ahead, Otto spies what he thinks may be movement on a hillside. Quickly calling over, he has Winthrop unlimber his spyglass, one not as powerful as Dell's but still a fine piece of craftsmanship. Indeed, captured briefly in Winthrop's gaze is a human profile, silhouetted for a moment as it furtively stares at the Company and then goes over the crest of the hill.
The Company is torn with doubt and recrimination. Are some humans left to be saved in Sterich? As the Company rides through, are they failing to help those for whom vengeance is yet to be served? Hugh and Winthrop strongly urge that any who have survived in Sterich should be found so that their revenge can be facilitated, and, surprisingly, Antonus agrees with them, though likely for his own reasons. Faced with internal dissension, Raven and Otto lead the Company towards the hills.
The tracks are difficult to trace, with neither Otto nor Hugh able to find their origins. Some tracks appear midway up the hill and then head up to the crest, presumably where Winthrop spotted the person. Crawling on his stomach up to the top of the hill, Otto peers over the ridge to see what lies beyond.
A small village at the intersection of two roads sits in a small valley nestled among the hills. A large, square cemetery with a spire-topped mausoleum lies off to the north, while houses of varying shapes and sizes fill in the rest of the village. The houses range from small hovels to a large manor house with outbuildings, but the most notable aspect of the buildings is a house that is shaped like a large boot. Furthest from the hill, on the western side of the village, it rises up like a wide tower. The manor house seems to be occupied; two large bonfires burn outside of it and one of them has a large black object in it, possibly a cow, cooking.
Otto reports back to the others, sketching out in the mud what he's seen. One road looks like it might converge on the capitol, while the other appears more a farm track. The Company can easily bypass the village, but the presence of the bonfires is too much for their curiosity to resist. The Company rides down to the town, carefully watching the buildings for signs of life. The buildings lack doors and shutters, their empty, hollow frames echoing the vacant country that surrounds them. Tattered, dirty curtains whip through one of the windows, flickering in and out of vision. Raven keeps an arrow knocked and a close eye back on the cemetery and mausoleum. With the number of undead roaming Sterich, it is a natural place for the Company's adversaries to be found.
Winthrop also peers around in the gloom. As his magical powers have waxed, his sensitivities to mystical auras has increased. His long study of the Nekton Fragments has made his notice the logic in the blackness that binds the unlife to the living world as well. The bindings fascinate him, and he is certain that he nears the critical breakthrough that Captain Sharone understood so well before that incompetent barber Bondwood erred so badly. The vacant town feels wrong to him, and his eyes try pick out the patterns of deceit that surrounds him. Thus, he is unsurprised when a remarkably ugly man strides into sight, the rest of the Company staring vacuously past it. "Hey!" he shouts, gesturing at the creature, "I see you hiding there! Come on out and face us."
Apparently the subject of his words is misunderstood. Gnolls, orcs, and armored ogres burst out of the buildings the Company approaches. Gnolls to the left, ogres ahead, and orcs to the right, the Company has tripped their ambush early. Only the gnolls and ogres are near enough to the Company to immediately engage. The gnolls stop and fire their great bows, arrows falling like hail amidst the Company while the ogres continue their rumbling charge.
The man looks at Winthrop with surprise and reaches out towards him. Winthrop's head suddenly begins to pound and ache, as some force tries to impose its will upon Winthrop. Winthrop will have nothing with that. "Burn!" he cries, the sharp stench of split air filling his nostrils as a thunderous clap of lightning arcs out from him through the man. Its form blows apart, expanding into a massive singularly horned creature, an ogre magi! The creature makes nary a sound as its body carbonizes, its skin splitting and peeling under the torrent of power that flows out of Winthrop.
"Steady, steady!" shouts Raven as the orcs continue to boil forth, at least fifty of them charging down from the manor house. Otto and Herbert summon the power of their god and goddess, the earth and grass clutching at the charging ogres. Winthrop eschews such subtle magics, summoning a great wall of fire beside him and running it over the gnoll archers, laughing as their skin boils, bubbles and sloughs from them. Eig and Antonus ride aghast at the callous slaughter.
Eig joins Otto and Herbert in warding off their flank, large swaths of land now grasping greedily at the ogres that run through it. Raven's carefully aimed arrows penetrate the weak points of the Ogre armor, and they begin to fall. Winthrop cares not for the others that charge towards the Company, instead marshaling his fire to slay those gnolls that stagger in near-blind ruin. "Going to be just like that time in the caves," says Alouicious to Otto. "By the time it gets to us, they'll all be dead."
Alouicious's words are premature as, out of nowhere, a tall horned form appears. Gesturing with a wickedly taloned hand, a wave of unearthly cold sweeps through the Company, flattening Eig, Herbert, and Antonus, as well as half the horses. The rest of the Company, while chilled, is nowhere as injured. Eats Salmon, immensely displeased by the sudden stinging cold, roars his rage and charges the creature. Jasper, understanding the bear's angry cry, joins him, hacking at the ogre mage with his halberd. The bear's anger is terrible to watch as Eats Salmon sweeps up the ogre mage, ripping great chunks of flesh from the ogre mage's neck and crushing its form to Eats Salmon's broad chest. The bear tosses the broken corpse of the ogre mage to the ground, rears up, and dances on its corpse.
Eats Salmon's moment of triumph is short lived. Two more of the ogre magi appear, both flying, and they ape their brethren, sending icy cold through the Company. Most of the horses collapse from the impact, with those that failed to withstand the former unnatural cold simply expiring. Both Giuseppe and Cyfael, the Raven and Otto's faithful steeds, collapse to the ground.
The strong and dexterous among the Company withstand the worst of the icy spray, shrugging off or dodging the pelting cold. Winthrop releases his grasp on the wall of flames, runs forward, and unleashes another great bolt of lightning, pinning both of the ogre magi. Raven adds a series of arrows, and one of the ogre magi falls.
With the attention of the Company drawn away from them, the orcs begin to extract the ogres from the twining grasses, as well as flank the Company. Their efforts fail as they meet the warriors of the Company. Otto and Al wade into the milling orc mass, sword and axe striking off heads and limbs, while Jasper and Eats Salmon rush back towards the Company. Adrienne takes her place in the line as well, swinging her military pick with great precision and devastating effect. The orcs quail at the ferocious mien of the Company, but are urged onward by their leaders.
Hugh views the battle raging around him. Two fronts are secure, one by the writing grasses and one by the wall of flames. Before him lie the broken bodies of the druids and the apprentice, Antonus, as well as Raven's and Otto's faithful steeds. Choices face him. Decisively, Hugh steps forward and calls upon Trithereon to first heal the wounds of the great charger Giuseppe and then those of Cyfael, Otto's mount. Only after that is done does he turn to the fallen humans and elf. They are quite pale with blood loss, but still remain within the bounds of life. Hugh digs among Eig's belongings, searching for a pouch filled with enormous berries. Finding them, he moves from fallen person to fallen person, thrusting and crushing a berry into their still lips. Miraculously, the fallen's wounds seal, blood no longer seeping from them into the ground.
When Hugh looks back up, the orcs are in full retreat and the other of the ogre magi lies dead, an arrow protruding from its head like a second horn. A great burnt patch shows where Winthrop must have summoned fire into the midst of the packed orcs, cooking more than a dozen of them. Another two dozen orcs and ogres lie strewn across the battlefield, the losers of their fights with the Company's warriors. The orcs and a few ogres flee at their best speed southward, out of the village and into the gray gloom. Hugh can see Winthrop trying to judge the distance and the clustering of the orcs in preparation for yet more magical destruction, but the range seem overly much for him.
Adrienne and Hugh quickly begin restoring the members of the Company to health, pulling them back from death's door. The Company may have fended off the ambush, but they must not be out of danger yet.
