Chapter 5 - Intrusions 

                Shakash swung his dark-bladed axe, burying it in the chest of the moaning dwarf on the floor.  Placing one foot on the now still body, he pulled his weapon free with a squishing sound.  Already his eyes had left his victim, scanning the stone hall for more targets.  To his disappointment, the only movement to be seen was that of the other orcs in his band.  With a disgusted grunt, he slid the long wooden handle of his axe into his belt.  A deep-voiced wail echoed from a side passage, then ended abruptly.  The raid was over.

                Agosh, leader of the large party of orcs, stomped up to Shakash.  “Dwarf-meat tonight!”  Agosh’s plated metal armor was splattered generously with blood, although he appeared to have taken no wounds in the battle.  His eyes shone with a violent gleam, and he fingered his long, jagged-edged sword longingly.  It was always hard when there was nothing left to kill.

                Shakash nodded in agreement.  Dwarf-meat, despite its toughness and lack of flavor, was a rarity.  Most dwarves had long ago been driven out of the Misty Mountains by the encroaching orc tribes.  Those dwarves that hadn’t taken flight had largely been annihilated. 

                This small settlement had been a mining community on a western spur of the mountains, outside the orcs’ normal territory.  Several dozen dwarves had resided there, coaxing precious metals from the earth with picks and shovels and trading them with men to the west.  Agosh, once hearing of the mines, had decided that the presence of dwarves only a few days’ march to the west was too tempting to resist.

                Here and there, orcish warriors bound their wounds with rags torn from the corpses scattered around the floor.  Some of the bodies were those of orcs:  dwarves were notoriously good fighters, especially when defending their homes.  Surprise and sheer numbers had won the day for the orcs however, and they had suffered relatively few casualties.

                As Shakash stood by Agosh’s side another orc casually strode up to the pair.  This orc wore only light armor and carried a curved scimitar at its side.  The blade was unbloodied, but not the wielder.  His torso and arms were splattered with patches of quickly drying blood, and he looked weary despite his clean blade.  This was Agosh’s shaman, and he had been magically binding the wounds of some of the more seriously injured warriors.  In the battle itself, he had used his magical arts to fill the tunnels and halls with an unnatural darkness.  He had followed that up by sending bolts of mystical lightning into whatever small groups of dwarves managed to mount resistance to the raid.  This had clearly drained the orc’s energy.

                “Well, Grranh?”  Agosh questioned, glancing at the approaching shaman only briefly.

                The orc smiled gruesomely, blood dripping from his protruding upper canines.   Clearly he had not hesitated to indulge himself in the plentiful dwarven flesh.  “Good.  Seven dead, some wounded.  We’ll only have to leave a few behind.”  He referred to the practice of leaving any warriors behind who were too wounded too keep up a fast pace.  Those able to walk followed as well as the could manage, while those too injured to walk at all were left to fend for themselves.  Most of the ambulatory casualties eventually made their way back to the home caves without being eaten by some predatory animal of the mountains.  Once in a while one of the others lived long enough for that too.

                “We leave none behind this time,” Agosh spoke quietly, though his harsh voice still carried in the broad hall where they stood.  “At least not yet.”

                Shakash eyed his captain, wondering what he meant.  They had never before taken the seriously wounded along when they departed after a raid.  Doing so only slowed the entire party, jeopardizing their safe return.  “We are taking them?”

                Agosh snarled.  “Don’t be a fool.”  He turned to the shaman.  “Tell the warriors to make this place defensible.  And send a patrol out to make sure there are no more dwarves around.”  He watched Grannh walk away, then, turning back to Shakash, he spoke again.  “We aren’t taking them because we aren’t leaving.”

                If Shakash had thought the concept of taking the wounded along was strange, this idea was baffling.  The dwarves they had just slaughtered had only a modest cache of gold, gems, and metal which would be easy to carry back to their caves.  Most of the veins they had been mining were only base metals that were readily available much closer to home.  There was nothing in the dwarves’ little halls worth defending, either.  “Why stay here?  There’s little gold and nothing left to kill!”

                “We’re not staying for gold, but there’s plenty to kill five nights’ march from here.  It seems some weak snagas from the Zaugurz tribe have ventured down from the Frozen North.  Those snowlovers think they can move in on Tarkhnarb lands and get away with it.  We’re here to prove them wrong.”

                “Why us?  This is too far to bother our caves.  Let some closer tribe take care of them.  It’s not like the Zaugurz have anything worth killing for.  Most of them don’t even have a decent sword to use.  It’s a waste of time.  If we’re going to go that far, we should go west and take gold and metal from the men there.”  Shakash was one of the few in the band who had earned enough of Agosh’s respect that he could question his decisions without losing his head.  Only privately however; public criticism, whoever the source, was as good as suicide.

                “Because I’m thinking bigger.  You know Grrsh’s band?”

                Shakash nodded.  “Of course.  They’re one of the best armies on this side of the Misty Mountains.  Almost as good as ours.”

                “Grrsh is dead.  And his two top lieutenants.  And no one else in that army is strong enough to lead that many orcs.”

                This was surprising news for Shakash.  Grrsh’s skills as a warrior were renowned throughout the entire population of orcs in the Misty Mountains.  It would be no mean feat to kill him.  “How?”

                “The Zaugurz.  Sneaky little snagas set a trap.  They raided an outpost and stole a few slaves.  Grrsh took only a small force, since only a dozen of the Zaugurz had been seen.  But more than a hundred were waiting for him.  Even cave rats can kill you, if there are enough of them to gnaw the meat from your bones.”

                “And you are going to avenge his death because you loved him so dearly?”  Shakash guffawed at his own joke.

                Agosh laughed coarsely himself.      “Of course not!  I just want his army!  His warriors were quite loyal to him, as they should be to someone who gave them food and blood so often.  They certainly want to destroy those Zaugurz for his death.  And they will follow anyone who can give that to them.”

                Shakash thought for a moment.  “If they join us, we will have the largest army for miles.”

                “Only the Red Hand would be larger,” Agosh answered, referring to a mighty army far to the east, led by the Great Goblin himself.

                “We could demand tribute from the smaller clans.  Food and metal and slaves.”

                Agosh’s rumbling laugh rasped from his throat again.  “You’re smart, I’ll give you that, Shakash,” he admitted.  “But your problem is that you think too small!  I’m going to gather an army so big that we will get our own loot.  Enough to last us until we are old and toothless!”

                “You don’t mean the Zaugurz, do you?”  Shakash knew that the Zaugurz warriors would never accept slavery, and that tribe’s snagas would not be worth any more than their own.

                “No.  I mean pukeskins.  It’s been many years since orcs have tried to take those lands to the west.”

                “The west?  Even with Grrsh’s warriors we wouldn’t have enough to face an organized army, especially with those filthy Rangers.”

                  “The men out there have surely grown weak in the time since the last decent raid.  Those nasty Dunedain aren’t so many these days, and I doubt all the rest of the pukes together could form a decent army.  If we moved fast enough, we could destroy them before they could even try to fight us.”

                “Man-meat does sound good.  I hear its best roasted, if you can get enough to put on a spit.”

                “You’ll eat so much man your skin will turn white!  But first we must deal with the Zaugurz, because without Grrsh’s orcs we’ll be just as likely to be digging worms to eat.”  Agosh pulled a crudely scribbled map from a pouch in his cloak.  Squatting on the bloody floor, he pointed to a symbol that represented the orcish word for dwarves.  “We’re here right now....”

****

                A week later Agosh’s small army had joined with a nearly equal number of warriors that had been in Grrsh’s ranks, swelling their numbers to nearly four hundred.  It had been decades since the last time so large a force had been gathered together under a single leader.

                Agosh had split the newcomers into two groups.  More than half of them joined his own band of warriors, which would serve as the main force in the coming  battle.  The others, some sixty in number, had been placed under Shakash’s leadership.

                Shakash felt ill at ease as he led his troops down the rocky trail leading to the Zaugurz orcs’ outpost.  Orcs were notoriously resentful of authority, and seized upon any weakness shown by their leaders.  A leader who demonstrated vulnerability was usually soon disposed of.  The fact that none of these orcs knew Shakash was not at all pleasing to Shakash, either.  Leading his assigned troops into battle personally was a display of strength and power, but Shakash was uncomfortable having these unknown orcs at his back.

                Shakash paused after rounding a stone outcrop that blocked vision down the trail.  The path ran a hundred feet down a steep slope before reaching a relatively flat section.  A few hundred more feet down the trail stood the Zaugurz‘ oupost, a rough palisade of piled stone and hewn timber straddling the trail.  The ends of the wall met sheer crevasses that split the earth on both the eastern and western sides of the trail.  Shakash waited for his troops to catch up, then ordered them to spread out as much as the path allowed.  Roughly six abreast, he led them down the path toward the palisade.

                As the orcs made their slow way down the treacherous path, arrows flew from the walls before them.  A few of the arrows dropped into the ranks of Shakash’s force, and were answered with grunts and snarls.  Bodies were left behind as the warriors marched forward, but there were apparently too few archers to seriously reduce the attackers’ numbers.

                When his warriors were within a hundred feet of the palisade, and well onto the somewhat wide and flat span of the trail upon which the outpost nestled, a gate disguised as a section of the palisade was swung open.  Through this opening swarmed dozens of orcs who immediately charged toward Shakash’s formation.  The Zaugurz, realizing their superior numbers, were taking the offensive to ensure victory.

                Shakash, unsurprised, barked out an order, and his followers spread out slightly more to each side and halted their march.  The few archers of his own force, located in the back rank, loosed arrows at the approaching enemies.

                The Zaugurz screamed out battle cries, answered by crude insults from the attackers.  Within moments, they were in melee with Shakash’s warriors, outnumbering them by three to one or better.

                Shakash’s company, better equipped and armed, withstood the initial charge.  The Zaugurz, by comparison, were clad mostly in incomplete and mismatched sets of armor, and many of their weapons were crude and primitive.  However, Shakash’s warriors were not as numerous, and began to fall back up the trail, fighting as they moved.

                Shakash swung his axe furiously whenever there was enough space around him to allow it.  More often, he used it to parry blows and shove opponents out of the way.  His company’s retreat began to speed up as more of his warriors fell to the Zaugurz.  A third of his force was out of the fight already.

                When they reached the point where the trail began to slope upward, Shakash and his remaining warriors turned and scrambled up the trail as fast as they could manage. The Zaugurz, howling in victory, took up the chase, intent on preventing their escape.

                Suddenly, with the Zaugurz already beginning to run down stragglers, horns blew from within the Zaugurz outpost, drawing its counter-attacking garrison to a halt.

                During the combat, Agosh had led the rest of his army around the opposite side of the outcrop and approached the small fort.  His forces now lined the edge of  the western crevasse, unnoticed until they began bridging the gap with tightly lashed trunks of small trees.

                Warriors began working their way over the crude bridges and into the interior of the outpost.  The defending archers managed to shoot a handful of the attackers, knocking them into the open air below.  However, Agosh’s warriors were already beginning to spread out within the outpost, striking down any Zaugurz they found.

                Seeing this, the orcs that had been pressing Shakash’s troops began racing to defend their outpost.  Before they reached the palisade, though, Agosh’s forces were already surging through the gate to meet them.

                The clash of steel echoed through the mountains as Agosh led his army against the Zaugurz.  Screams of wounded and dying orcs also filled the air, and the Zaugurz were quickly pushed back along the trail.  The battle soon became a rout as Agosh’s force plowed into the Zaugurz, winded as they were by their sprint up and down the trail.

                The battle cries of the Zaugurz were replaced by unheeded pleas for mercy, and the remaining Zaugurz broke and ran up the trail once more.  Halfway up the slope, they were met by Shakash’s small force, which was charging down at them after a brief rest at the peak of the ridge.

                Shakash, now with much more room to swing his thick-bladed axe, tore into the exhausted enemies.  He screamed wordlessly with each stroke, leaving limbs and bodies in the wake of nearly every swing.  All of his attention was focused on finding foes to kill, and he left his followers behind in his search.

                At one point Shakash found himself surrounded by six Zaugurz warriors, including one apparent officer dressed in a nearly complete set of plate mail.  The Zaugurz were desperate to fight their way past him and escape up the trail.

                Shakash didn’t hesitate.  Stepping to one side, he brought his axe up in a great arc which removed the sword hand from one orc.  He allowed the momentum of his heavy axe to pull him forward as a sword flashed through the air where he had been standing.  Spinning to the side, he screamed in rage as he swung again, disemboweling one Zaugurz and slicing through the leg of another just above the knee.  That orc dropped to the ground screaming.

                Dropping to the ground, Shakash avoided a vicious slash that met only air above him. Springing back to his feet, he used the blade of his axe to parry another sword, then smashed the butt of his weapon into the face of the sword’s wielder.  Bone crunched and blood sprayed in the air.  The orc dropped to the ground, dead from the blow.

                Shakash now found himself facing the officer, who swung a sturdy long sword with one hand and carrying a thick wooden shield in the other.  With surprising quickness, the officer struck at Shakash, his blade grazing Shakash’s upper arm.

                Shakash’s scream of outrage drowned out the sounds of battle and death across the battlefield.  With all his might, Shakash swung at the officer, who confidently brought up his sturdy shield to block the blow.  Shakash’s axe, however, clove through the shield and continued through the officer’s neck.  The headless body dropped to the ground.

                To Shakash’s left, a flower of blood blossomed in the side of the remaining Zaugurz as a blade struck the warrior from behind.  Angered at being deprived of his last victim, Shakash brought his axe up for another blow.  A rough laugh stopped him.

                “Don’t tell me that’s not enough blood for you!”  Agosh laughed, wiping his sword clean on the corpse at his feet.  “You did well.”

                Shakash only grunted, panting through his flat wide nose as he slowly regained awareness of his surroundings.  All of the Zaugurz were now dead or dying.  A number of warriors were walking among the fallen, slitting the throats of the latter.

                “I think that you’ve made some friends,” Agosh continued.  Many of the nearby warriors were watching Shakash with respectful expressions on their cragged faces.  The orcs who had followed Shakash into battle, especially, looked at him admiringly.  “With the Zaugurz here destroyed Grrsh’s warriors will join my army for certain now.  And I think I’ve found someone to lead them.”

                Shakash stood, stunned.  He had led other orcs into battle before, but never more than a score before this day.  And now his captain had just told him that he would be placed in command of more than one hundred and fifty, minus those lost in the battle.

                “That’s some nice armor there,” Agosh spoke again, pointing at the fallen Zaugurz officer.  “It looks like it should fit you, too.  Keep it.”  Agosh turned to head back to the outpost below and supervise the looting.

                After a few steps down the trail Agosh looked back over his shoulder and called to Shakash, “But if you want the helmet, you’re going to have to chase it!”

                Shakash’s eyes looked down the slope in the direction Agosh was pointing.  The Zaugurz officer’s head, encased still in a large metal helmet, was rolling slowly down the trail.