Ch 04: X Marks the Spot

The “Legend of Gurnlocke Fisk” Dancers:
Gherota, Human Fighter, Level 1
Gurnlocke Fisk, Dwarf Warlock, Level 1
Mairrethid, Human Wizard, Level 1
Mez Gobbo, Goblin Rogue, Level 1
Schlobrock, Ork Cleric, Level 1

First: Ch 01: Poot's Angels
Previous: Ch 03: Burning Things Builds Friendships

The five crept on their bellies, peering over the edge of a hill overlooking an unremarkable one-room shepherd’s lodge. It was twilight, but after a day’s ride, they had finally found the thieves’ hideout marked in Poot’s map. The goblins they were expecting to find inside would have a statue work 500 gold to Poot, and they meant to recover it and collect the reward.

Mez had gone ahead to explore the area covertly, reporting back to where the other four had tied up their horses. He led them to a spot that had one of the best vantage points of the area, so they could discuss a plan of attack.

“No defenses or sentries,” Fisk appraised, “but any attacker is going to have to cover a good hundred feet of open ground to get inside. And if they have dogs, or pet wolves, they’re sure to hear us coming.”

“My thinking, too,” Mez agreed.

“It looks like a pretty standard layout for this kind of thing,” Mairrethid said. “Shepherds bring their flock up here to graze through summer, then take them back down before the snow comes. House is enough to keep ‘em warm and dry, but not much else.”

“Let me guess,” Gherota snorted, “you took a class in sheep at University.”

“Something like that,” Mairrethid grumbled.

“When I was scouting the joint earlier,” Mez added, “I saw humans down there. They could have been Merry’s shepherds, but certainly weren’t Poot’s goblins.”

“Huh,” Fisk exclaimed. “I’m not sure what that means.”

“Led’z ask dhem,” Schlobrock answered.

“Just go down there and ask them about goblins and the statue and whatnot?” Mairrethid asked.

“Yeah,” Schlobrock said.

“What if they are innocent?” Gherota argued. “What if Poot’s information was wrong?”

“You move in quick with overwhelming force, weapons drawn clear directions for them to surrender,” Mez said.

“I believe we should be able to effectively dissuade a bunch of shepherds from forcing us to get violent,” Mairrethid agreed. “We can leave them with that eleventh horse if we got it wrong.”

“Hold on there,” Mez started to argue.

Fisk nodded. “And if they grab weapons and fight back, it is probably because they are more than just shepherds.”

“Let’s try to avoid lethal force, even if it does come to that,” Mairrethid counseled.

“Do you know that sleep spell you wizards like so much?” Fisk asked.

“No, I don’t,” Mairrethid replied. “I don’t waste my time on silly illusions and enchantments.”

“A mage after my own heart...” Fisk chuckled.

Gherota continued to shake her head, protesting. “I’m more worried about whether the dwarf, the ork, and the goblin can hold back long enough for us to find out who we’ve got inside the house.”

“Don’t be unreasonable, Gherota,” Mairrethid chided.

“Don’t call me unreasonable, Merry,” Gherota snapped.

“Look,” Mez said, “we’ve got a plan that we are all happy with. You’ve had your say and we’re all getting pretty tired of your ‘protect the innocent, be respectful of the dead’ bull hockey. You can stay here if you want, but we’re going down there.”

“Yeah,” Schlobrock added.

“You feel that way too?” Gherota asked Mairrethid.

“Actually, I’ve come to appreciate your shrill nay-saying,” Mairrethid answered. “But other than that, yes, I agree with Mez.”

“Fine,” Gherota said, pulling her sword, “let’s go shake our weapons at some shepherds.”

“Sounds like a good time to me,” Fisk chuckled.

“I think we should wait for nightfall,” Mez said.

“No,” Gherota argued, “because we may not be frightening enough if they can’t clearly see what a bunch of depraved, murderous dogs we are. If we attack under cover of darkness, they might think we’re only regular thieves and try to protect their homes and their livelihoods.”

“Hold on...” Mez started to argue back.

“She’s right,” Mairrethid said, “let’s attack now.”

“No,” Mez said, “I’m tired of her talking that way to me. I’ve been nothing but nice, and I’ve really tried to get along. This is what she says to me? Now we’re going to resolve this.”

“Oh, I haven’t even started, you wolf-spawned backstabber,” Gherota fired back.

Mairrethid tried again to intervene. “If I could say something...”

“Don’t pretend you’ve got a problem with Mez,” Fisk waded in, “when we all know your real problem is with me.”

“My problem is with both of you,” Gherota snarled, turned to face the dwarf. “My problem is with any...”

Schlobrock rubbed her eyes, muttering in ork.

“Okay, now you guys are being way too loud,” Mairrethid interrupted, more forcefully this time, “and as Schlobrock has pointed out, we’ve got signs of life below.”

They turned to look. A human head appeared in the house’s doorway, peering up at where the five were hiding on the hill above.

“There goes our sneak attack,” Mez grumbled.

“You’re becoming a liability,” Fisk said, stabbing a finger at Gherota.

“Your mom is a liability, dwarf,” Gherota answered.

“And we’re going to deal with this some more later, aren’t we?” Mairrethid said with finality.

“Now dhey know we’re here,” Schlobrock observed. “Led’z go down and zay, ‘hi.’”

“Just, ‘hi’?” Gherota asked.

“It makes sense to me,” Mairrethid reasoned. “With the surprise element gone, there’s no real reason to strike first. We don’t give up our capacity for violence by going down there peacefully.”

“I think the original plan still makes the most sense,” Fisk said, disagreeing.

“With the tin can clanking around, we probably couldn’t have sneaked up on them anyway,” Mez said, jerking a thumb in Gherota’s direction. “Just let me do the talking when we get down there.”

“Fine,” Fisk said, resigned.

“Whatever,” Gherota agreed.

The five stood up, allowing themselves to be seen. Mez raised one hand, waving, and bellowed, “Hi!”

The shepherd’s head disappeared back inside the house for a moment, and then reappeared. He answered, “hi!”

The five exchanged glances and then, following Mez’s lead, started walking down the hill towards the house. The shepherd disappeared back inside, closing the door.

“What do you think?” Mairrethid asked, whispering.

“I don’t know,” Mez replied, whispering as well. “Don’t arm yourselves, but be ready for a fight.”

“They’ve got cover in there and might decide it is easier to try to scare us off with arrows than risk a chat at closer range,” Mairrethid reasoned.

“The walls are stone, but the mortar looks more like mud. I’m sure there are buttressing timbers, but we can punch through and get to them if they make us.” Fisk grinned, cracking his knuckles.

“Quiet,” Gherota hissed. “We’ll deal with that when we come to it.” She added as an afterthought, “If we even have to.”

They came down from the hill and crossed the bare-earth yard around the house. There were shadows behind the door and shuttered windows, but no one had poked their head out again. The five were all starting to feel jumpy to various degrees, like they were walking into an ambush, but they kept to the plan and followed Mez’s lead.

Mez addressed those hidden inside of the house. “We’re five adventurers searching for a lost treasure in these hills. We would love to share your fire and chat about landmarks and whatnot. If you’re agreeable, we can pay for our dinner, as well.”

The door opened and a human stuck his head out. “Well, hello there. Come in on and get warmed up then.”

“Oh, how kind,” Mez said, politely accepting and managing to conceal how surprised he was by the easy invitation. He kept his weight down and his eyes wide, scanning his peripheral vision as he walked through the door, pulling his large, toothy goblin mouth into an approximation of a warm smile.

The other four filtered in behind him, similarly hiding surprise and edginess to varying degrees.

Inside, they found four humans, all young men, and the furnishings that would be expected. There were signs of dinner and drinking on a rough-hewn table by the fire, with chests and stools pulled around it to serve as chairs. The walls were roughly what Fisk had predicted, rubble piled and sealed together with mud and clay, backed with wood. Racks and hooks against the walls suspended tools, strips of meet, and bunches of onions. There was other clutter scattered across the room--barrels, cots, piles of blankets and furs. The supposed shepherds were standing at various places around the room, roughly equidistant and with their backs to the walls. They didn’t appear to be armed, but they were all in positions where there might be weapons close at hand. Bulky clothes and lamb-skin parkas left open the possibility that they wore chain shirts or other armor, but there was nothing definitive along those lines.

“Take a seat, and help yourselves to some of the stew,” the shepherd who opened the door said. A large ceramic crock was hanging by the fire, with its lid ajar. A kettle of hot water was whistling faintly.

The five spread out across the house, but didn’t sit down, continuing to defer to Mez’s lead.

“I’m going to come clean with you boys,” Mez said. “We’re looking for something and heard it had been hidden in this house.”

“Well, that’s a surprise,” the shepherd by the door said, “because we don’t leave anyone alive to talk!”

The four shepherds all reached for well-placed, hidden swords. The five were ready for something like that to happen, and went for their own arms almost as quickly, but the shepherds managed to get off a first round of attacks. Mez was ignored, with the shepherds directing at his larger comrades. Mairrethid managed to dodge the attack, but the other three were all hit, including Gherota through her thick armor.

“I wish we could get a few of them together,” Mairrethid said, parrying the shepherd’s sword with his staff. “My spells work better when they are bunched up.”

“Hold on,” Mez said, stepping next to Mairrethid. With dagger in hand, he quickly feinted, slashed, stabbed, and feinted again, provoking a response from the shepherd. With the shepherd attacking, off balance and frustrated, Mez tripped him, using the his own momentum to hurl him, tumbling, over ten feet away and crashing into Schlobrock’s opponent.

Mairrethid followed up, hurling his transparent orb of concussive force after the tumbling shepherd. It packed into Schlobrock’s opponent, bursting with a crack and further battering Mez’s rag doll. The force explosion was shaped away from Schlobrock, who was unharmed.

Sensing an opportunity, Gherota danced around her opponent’s second strike and then abandoned him, rushing to Schlobrock’s side. “Switch places with me,” she barked.

Schlobrock complied, unslinging her axe and charging towards Gherota’s opponent. She scored a minor hit, her axe turned away by chain mail. “Dhey habe armor!” she called to her allies.

Gherota left her shield hanging on her back and drew her sword, facing the two shepherds and wedging them against the wall. In such close quarters, she slashed at one and easily passed the blade through to the other.

One of them groaned, coughing blood, clearly badly hurt but not quite done fighting.

Fisk snarled with frustration at being hit, stepping back from his attacker, and throwing up a curse and his energy-sucking spell. He managed to get enough distance to avoid getting slashed again, but with the close quarters in the house, it would be difficult for him to keep shifting away.

Fisk’s attacker stepped into him, making another successful sword thurst, though the blow was entirely absorbed by the shield of captured life force Fisk had constructed.

Fisk cast another spell, but in doing so left himself open to attack, and the shepherd took advantage of it, scoring another stabbing wound. Fisk finished the spell, nonetheless, bathing his opponent in an eruption of flames from the floor. Fisk grinned with satisfaction, finding his second wind, while the shepherd crumbled weakly.

“Need help?” Mairrethid asked Fisk, looking for his next target.

“This one is mine, and don’t any of you dare touch him,” Fisk barked enthusiastically.

Schlobrock’s opponent brought his sword around, scoring another hit on the ork. She grimaced in pain, chanting a short healing prayer over herself.

“Mez,” Schlobrock called, “led’z do dhiz one like lazd dime.”

Mez grinned, dancing across the room to take up a flanking position opposite Schlobrock, feinting against the man to get his attention. Schlobrock shifted, taking full advantage of the numbers and position, and delivered her spell-charged, glowing axe-blade to the shepherd’s shoulder. Mez responded, using the now-familiar magic to guide his strike, delivering a savage series of stabs to the man’s kidneys and back. The shepherd sputtered a large gout of blood.

Gherota was having her own fun. One of the two shepherds she had pinned tried to make a run for it, rushing to the aid of Mez and Schlobrock’s new chew toy. Gherota delivered a roundhouse kick that stopped him in his tracks, knocking him back against the wall. The other shepherd had learned enough to keep his guard up as he slid far enough away that Gherota couldn’t pass her sword from his ally into him with a single motion, like last time, but he was still too far inside her kill range to be comfortable.

Both shepherds retaliated weakly, with one scoring a hit that Gherota shrugged off defiantly.

Mairrethid still wasn’t entirely sure how to respond, with no shepherd threatening him and all four roughly taken care of. He wasn’t interested in contradicting Fisk’s order, and Mez and Schlobrock had already brought their man close to death. He had an idea to help Gherota, but the spell’s blast radius was too large. He decided to try it anyway, though, turning away from combat to face the wall away from combat, stepping close to the center of the room, and carefully gauging his blast.

Clapping both hands, palms parallel to the floor and fingers outstretched, he conjured a blast of thunder that tore into the side of the house. Chunks of the wall were blasted outside, but not enough to bring the wall or the house down. His calculations were accurate, and the edge of the sonic conflagration touched the shepherd who was trying to slide away from Gherota, without hitting Gherota too. The force of the blast pushed the Shepherd back into her killzone and adjacent to his ally.

Grinning like a wolf, Gherota executed the same cleaving strike again, passing her sword through the first man and into the second, dropping the man dead.

“Very clever,” Mez observed.

“Mazderbul,” Schlobrock applauded.

 “Thanks,” Gherota mumbled, turning her full attention to the badly injured shepherd who still stood.

Meanwhile, Fisk and his opponent were locked in deadly combat. His opponent managed to score another sword thrust, scoring a deep wound. Fisk bore the pain, trusting his sturdy dwarven constitution, and channeled it back into his existing spell, fanning the flames and burning his enemy further. Sensing that the man was growing ever closer to death, Fisk raised his fist for the killing blow, pounding a blast of eldritch energy into his rival’s face at point blank range.

The shepherd’s head came apart in large pieces of wet meat, shattered bone, and half-vaporized skin. Wisps of life force wafted from the corpse and were greedily devoured by Fisk’s outstretched hand.

The remaining two shepherds were badly injured and in trouble, one continuing to be flanked by the powerful ork and the deadly accurate goblin, the other eclipsed by the shadow of Gherota’s sword, with two mages baring down on him behind her.

“Lenny...” the one said to the other, uncertain.

“Yeah, Burt,” the other answered. “Let’s hang ‘em up. We surrender.”

“I surrender,” the first said.

They dropped their swords.

Mairrethid paused, in the middle of casting a spell. “Lenny and Burt, I presume?”

“Yeah?” Burt answered.

“Alright, let’s tie them up and ask some questions.”

Next Ch 05: Human Resources