Chapter 20

“Something’s off, boss. Doesn’t look good.”

“You’re gonna have to do better than ‘something’s off’.”

The Deepwarden looked over Falagrim’s to the caravan behind him. He expelled a long sigh.

“It’s too quiet,” he said in a low voice. “The entire riverbank’s empty of everything. Shoulda been someone there – drawing water, or washing their things and whatnot.”

“You sent someone for a closer look?” Falagrim asked.

“A few’re doing that right now,” the Deepwarden answered. “I came back to let you know in advance.”

One of the grey robes nearby raised his head to peer out over the tall grass of the plain. Their destination was far out of the effective range of their Darkvision, but there should have been signs. So many Demihumans had to have some fires visible from where they were, yet only the still darkness of the night could be seen. Fearing that some threat lay ahead, Falagrim sent his scouts to investigate.

“Should we turn around?” Agni asked from beside him.

Falagrim’s mouth twisted at the thought. The caravan behind them was the largest since the last Goblin army formed decades ago. With the leaders of the current one mulling over whether to advance before winter set in, Clan Felhammer put together nearly everything it had to seize the opportunity before it wandered off.

They were delivering equipment forged for tens of thousands of Demihumans; tools and other items for camp life; the supplies to feed all the men and women hired to deliver their goods…not to mention all the wages they owed. Turning around was worse than going home empty-handed – Clan Felhammer would be realizing a catastrophic loss if they couldn’t make their sale.

“Let’s see what the rest of the scouts find out,” Falagrim said. “They might’ve gone over the pass – I can’t see how a hundred thousand Demis just vanishes in a month. Keep moving.”

They trudged forward. No one dared utter a word about the crisis that had suddenly come upon them. As the sound of the first river ford could be heard in the distance, more scouts returned. They bore grim looks, but that did not mean very much: Dark Dwarves were nearly always grim.

“What did you find?” Falagrim asked.

“We found the villages the Demis put up,” one of the scouts answered, “but every one of them is empty.”

“Did something happen to them?”

“Hard to tell. Place got cleaned out, and there’s tracks from a lotta different races everywhere. They’ve been gone for weeks – whatever happened must’ve been a week or so after we last dropped by.”

Did they move on? Or were they attacked? Falagrim’s gaze turned to look south. A hundred kilometres of wilderness separated the Demihuman villages from the border of the Slane Theocracy. Was it possible that the Humans had acted preemptively to remove the potential threat to their borders?

He had never heard of them doing anything but clearing out their immediate area; certainly nothing that would bring them this deep into hostile lands. There was no point in expending resources so far from any place they had a vested interest in.

“How much damage was there?”

“Barely any,” the scout shook his head. “They might’ve packed up and moved over to the other side. We sent some teams to take a look, but it’ll take days for them to report back.”

Days. How much would that cost them? They wouldn’t run out of supplies since he expected that it would take a week to sell everything, but unless they figured out where their customers went, they would be burning it all away for nothing. What other choice did they have?

“We’ll stay in those woods until the scouts report back,” Falagrim said. “I’ll be damned if we have to camp out in the sun.”

The caravan crossed the river fords, and Falagrim settled them in the nearest village. His people picked out which of the crudely constructed hovels they would stay in, and their merchandise was collected along the village lanes and put under guard. Within an hour, the settlement returned to life, though the inhabitants had changed.

Once their surroundings were secured, the Dark Dwarves split up into shifts for camp duties. Falagrim gathered his regulars around the bonfire built in the village crossing.

“If this place was ‘cleaned out’,” he muttered, “why is all the firewood still here?”

“The Orc boss – Qrs, was it? – he mentioned something about the forest being full of Undead.”

“Are you suggesting that the Undead got them?” Falagrim scoffed, “A lot of those Demis were strong: even Elder Liches wouldn’t stand a chance.”

“Hey, just putting it out there. I heard of Undead collecting a lot of things, but I never heard of ‘em collecting wood.”

Falagrim rolled his eyes. He looked to his left.

“Agni?”

“If there are any Undead in the area,” the Cleric replied, “I couldn’t sense them when we checked the surroundings.”

“Take a troop and look further out,” Falagrim told her. “I think there were supposed to be ruined villages or towers or something like that around here.”

“Of course, my prince.”

Agni’s shouts sounded over the trees as she rounded up members for the impromptu patrol. Falagrim left the bonfire as well, making his rounds to ensure that everything was in order. Everywhere he went, he could sense the uncertainty of his caravan members as they waited for news.

By morning, they did confirm the presence of Undead deeper in the forest, but they weren’t anything that could have troubled the Goblin army. Things remained uneventful until, three days later, the scouts started to return from the other side of the pass.

“We didn’t get far,” one of the veteran Deepwardens said, “but what we saw on the way was pretty telling.”

“I’m guessing that means we don’t have customers anymore.”

The scout shook her head with a bleak expression.

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” she said. “The pass is blasted and scorched. Even the rocks are cracked. The cliffs…it’s like someone took thousands of Demis and mashed them up to give the mountain a new coat o’ paint. Five hundred metres above the trail. Did they piss off an Ancient Fire Dragon?”

Murmurs rose from the gathered Dwarves. A few looked up towards the canopy as if they expected flaming death to befall them at any point.

“There hasn’t been a Dragon sighted in the Abelion Wilderness since before the time of the Demon Gods,” a grey robe said. “The Forest Giants killed off or drove away the last of the Green Dragons, then the Humans from the Theocracy got the last of the Forest Giants after they were thrashed by the Demon Gods.”

“If it wasn’t an Ancient Dragon,” Falagrim said, “then what was it? What else could do that to this Goblin Army?”

The crowd fell silent. Truth be told, Falagrim couldn’t think of anything that made sense, either. Another scout appeared, making his way through to him.

“A Dragon!” He said, “I saw a Dragon on the other side of the pass!”

“Let me guess,” Falagrim said, “a Fire Dragon.”

“What? No – it was a Frost Dragon…well, it was an ice-blue one, at least. I saw it on the way back, around sunset. The thing was skimming over the trees without a care in the world.”

Falagrim scratched his tattooed scalp. The new information didn’t make any sense at all.

“What would a Frost Dragon be doing down here?” He asked, “Winter doesn’t even stick to these mountains.”

“I-I don’t know, boss – but I know what I saw.”

Maybe it was some sort of albino Fire Dragon. He scoured his memory for what he had learned of Dragons in general.

“How big was it?” Falagrim asked.

“Hm…I didn’t come that close,” the scout said, “but I’m guessing less than a dozen metres long. It felt powerful, though. Maybe around Elder?”

Maybe it was a Frost Dragon. An Elder Fire Dragon would be upwards to thirty metres in length. Or maybe it was a midget albino Fire Dragon…

A commotion rose from somewhere outside the crowd. Another scout pushed his way through.

“We brought back some prisoners,” she said.

“What kind of prisoners?”

“Armat, boss,” the scout told him. “They were holed up in a shallow cave on the mountainside. Saw ‘em coming out to forage and we rounded ‘em up.”

Armat? He recalled the Goblin army having a few of them. Maybe they could finally figure out what was going on.

“Take me to them,” Falagrim said.

He followed the Deepwarden to the outskirts of the village, where a handful of the rodent-like Demihumans were chained to a tree. Falagrim’s expression grew dark – using metal chains to bind a metal-eating race was fairly close to the pinnacle of stupidity. Fortunately, the presence of several guards appeared to have deterred any attempts to escape.

The huddled group of Demihumans shied away at Falagrim’s approach, whiskers twitching as they sniffed in his direction.

“Were you with that Goblin Army from a month ago?” He asked.

The Armat exchanged glances with one another. The largest one nodded her head.

“We were.”

“What happened to them? We came to trade, but all we could find was some blasted rocks in the pass.”

“That…that was Jaldabaoth’s doing.”

The name came out in a fearful whisper, and a keening wail rose from the rest of the Armat.

Falagrim frowned. The Demihumans they had come to trade with mentioned a ‘Demon Emperor’ who went by that name. Jaldabaoth and his minions had descended upon the Abelion Hills, indiscriminately attacking the hundreds of tribes that lived there and capturing them in droves. According to Qrs and the other Demihuman leaders, Demon Emperor Jaldabaoth was the entire reason that they were migrating east.

“So this ‘Jaldabaoth’,” Falagrim said, “he attacked your army? Any other survivors?”

“I don’t know,” the Armat shuddered. “He came so suddenly. There was an army of powerful Fiends with him. The Orc villages were overwhelmed in minutes, and he drove them over the mountain pass.”

“What about the others?” He pressed for more information, “The Gnolls? The Goblin army?”

“We were in the villages, and we fled into the forest when Jaldabaoth came. The Goblins had long crossed to the other side, and the Gnolls went days before the attack to help with scouting. But it was Jaldabaoth – Jaldabaoth! There is no way that they could have survived his wrath…”

The Armat cradled her head in her claws as if trying to hold it together against some memory within. The leaders of the Demihuman army spoke of Jaldabaoth as a Fiend who would bring about the end of the world. Falagrim, however, was sceptical. The Demihumans had been able to escape him, after all.

Until now, at any rate. He weighed the possibility of the Demihuman forces further away surviving to flee.

“What should we do with them, boss?”

Falagrim looked over at the guard who had asked.

“What kind of question is that? Lock them up – the foremen at home will pay handsomely for Armat slaves. Make sure you put them in cages that they can’t eat their way out of.”

Though they were well within earshot, the Armat did not react to his words. They offered no resistance as they were taken away, their feet listlessly shuffling forward to a life of toil in the labyrinthine mines below the ancient mountains.

Falagrim didn’t give their ragged forms a second glance, however – he had bigger problems now. The existence of his clan depended on selling goods with no buyers. Before finding any, the caravan members might turn on him for leading them to ruin…no, that was unlikely. Agni and the other regulars would stop them. Their fortunes rose and fell with him.

He returned to a frenzy of activity in the village centre. In the buildings all around, it looked like everyone was packing away their things.

“What the hell is going on here?” He shouted as he walked up to Agni.

“The last of the scouts returned,” she replied. “They found Undead on the other side.”

“So now we have Undead,” Falagrim’s knuckles went to his hips. “I don’t see why we’re in such a hurry if it’s just some Undead.”

“It’s not just some Undead,” Agni said. “It’s an Undead army.”

“Our former customers?”

“I doubt it. Scouts counted at least two dozen Elder Liches leading contingents of Undead warriors around. They’re nothing I’ve ever heard described before, but each one of those warriors was at least as powerful as the Elder Liches. We need to get out of here before they notice us because we're as good as dead if they do.”

A part of Falagrim laughed helplessly at the ludicrous situation. Demons. Dragons. Undead. Those damn Demihumans were preparing to fight Human opponents, but it looked like they got everything but.

“What are your orders?” Agni asked.

“Me?” Falagrim raised an eyebrow, “I thought you were the one that got everyone all riled up.”

“We had to do it anyway,” she said. “You’re still our leader. Where are we going?”

Where could they go? They had enough supplies to get back home but returning as they were would mean the end of Clan Felhammer. The Theocracy wouldn’t deal with them and they couldn’t get past the Undead to reach the Human nation in the north – if it still existed. Maybe the Undead had spilt over from there.

Falagrim took a deep breath, expelling it noisily through his nostrils.

“We’re going back west,” he told her.

“West?”

“Yeah. To the Abelion Hills. This ‘Demon Emperor’ has an army. I haven’t heard of any army that turns down Dwarf-forged equipment. From what the Armat we captured said, they’ll have a big supply of Demihumans from their conquest. If things play out right, we’ll do even better than we expected with the Goblin army.”

It was also their only choice. He needed to turn this disaster around. If he had to deal with a Devil to stave off ruin, so be it.