Chapter Twenty-Seven
Krujha
“Wait!”
He could hear Alwyn’s nervous hiss chasing him out of the tent, but Krujha forced himself to close the back panel.
He picked up the crate that he’d set down just outside and stumbled through the narrow alley between the surrounding tents.
It had been a hasty decision to come speak to Alwyn, but hopefully, he just looked like another new grunt, hauling supplies amidst the stacks that had already been shuffled around today.
The stolen moment was worth the risk, though; he knew he wouldn’t be able to hold up his part of the plan if Alwyn proceeded, and that would be a death sentence for the elf.
This second camp joining them had been an unexpected thorn in his side; it reinforced Brugo’s information that something major was in motion, yet he was no closer to knowing the details than he had been before.
The whole camp was bustling with activity, and the stables were no exception.
There were many more horses now than there had been just a few days ago, enough that every stable pen was full, so several horses were being brushed down and fed out in the paddock instead.
He spotted Brugo out among them and jogged over to him; the orc glanced up at him as he approached, grimacing.
“Good morning,” he said, despite his grim expression. “I thought you might come see me.”
“I need to know more about what’s happening,” Krujha whispered.
Brugo sighed, glancing back at the stables.
No one was particularly close to them, and with all the activity and noise, Krujha doubted anyone could hear them.
Still, Brugo knelt down beside the horse he’d just tethered to the fence, pulling up one of its hooves to examine the horseshoe.
He gestured for Krujha to look, and he squatted down so they were at eye level.
“I don’t know this for sure,” Brugo said in a low voice, continuing to point at the horseshoe.
“But the rumor is that Zesh has summoned all the splinter camps to him here, and as soon as they’ve all arrived, he’ll move on Drol Kuggradh.
He’s hoping to cut off the food supply lines to the city just as the first snows start. ”
Krujha sighed, rubbing a hand across his face as he processed the information. How much time would they have before the remaining two camps arrived? It would be a matter of days, surely—which meant they needed to act quickly.
“There’s another matter complicating things,” Brugo said after a moment.
“There are too many elf prisoners to fit in the one tent now. The new arrivals are being kept in a pen just outside, but I don’t know how long they might have that setup.
In a worst-case scenario, they might start culling the extras for body parts to send a message to the city.
Hopefully, they will pursue ransom money more aggressively instead, but. ..”
“With any luck, it won’t get to that point,” Krujha mumbled, still scrubbing a hand over his face. “Gods damn it. I have to figure something out with the elf I came here with. I’ll be in touch.”
“Be careful,” Brugo said as Krujha straightened up. “I know there’s at least one of ours in this new camp who might be able to help us. I’m going to make contact as soon as I can, but—it might take some time.”
“I’ll be careful. But we might not have time to wait,” Krujha said.
He stood and started walking away before Brugo could reply—he needed to see the penned-up elves for himself.
It would have been a quick walk over to where the prisoners were being kept, but the walkways were glutted with orcs carrying all sorts of supplies or setting up tents in places that had once been empty.
He wove through the now-unfamiliar labyrinth until he arrived at the prison tent; beside it was the new, fenced-off area Brugo had described.
There were about ten elves huddled within.
As Krujha walked along the perimeter of the fence, he could see they looked haggard, faces gaunt and shoes caked with mud.
He couldn’t tell for certain, but he thought they were the same elves that he and Alwyn had been forced to leave behind when they’d tried to enter that first camp where Torlag was slain.
The canopy that had been erected over the fence, to give them some minuscule relief from the sun and snow, looked familiar—though it had been too dark to really make out the colors the first time he’d seen it.
As he reached the opposite side of the fence, his eyes landed on the orc standing watch there.
Recognition dawned, and he nearly stopped in his tracks.
These were surely the same elves, then, because the guard standing watch was the very same that Krujha had taken a drunken swing at, belligerently attacking to distract him.
He couldn’t risk the guard recognizing him, too, so he quickly veered away, instead heading back down the main thoroughfare of the camp.
He could now see that a secondary campsite had been set up outside what had once been the southern perimeter, so he started walking through the rows of newly raised tents, looking for anything that might help direct his next steps.
Eventually, he noticed a group of four men sitting around an upended crate, using it as a table for a game of cards. He kept going, snatching a bottle of wine from another open crate along the next row of tents, then circled back to the card game.
“Mind if I join you?” he asked with a grin as he approached, holding out the wine as an offering.
One man only glared at him—an older, grizzled fighter with a deep scar on one cheek that pulled his mouth into a snarl.
Two others—younger, likely foot soldiers from their muscled builds and the short swords on each of their hips—returned his smile, though, and gestured for him to join.
Krujha filled everyone’s cups with the wine as they dealt him in. Over the course of the game, he learned they were all indeed foot soldiers, and their camp had been told to prepare to join Zesh’s force to lay siege to Drol Kuggradh. It sounded as though the rumors Brugo heard were true.
Krujha didn’t want to seem suspicious, so he continued to drink and play cards with them, even past the time he was due to report for kitchen duty.
Despite the jovial grin he kept plastered on his face, his heart was thudding anxiously and his mind was racing with half-baked plans.
More than anything, he needed the chance to talk about this with Alwyn; but considering how busy the camp was now—and how close he was to the command tent, where so much of the activity was centered—he doubted he would get the opportunity to sneak into his tent again anytime soon.
He’d managed it that morning, but he knew better than to press his luck in broad daylight a second time.
After a few rounds—all losses, but luckily the bets were small—Krujha set the cards down with a grimace.
“Nature calls,” he grunted, standing up. “And, ah, I think I’d better close my coin purse while I still can.”
The soldiers laughed and waved him away.
He continued skulking through the new campsite, keeping an eye out for any other hint of what was to come and listening for any useful snippets of conversation as he passed by.
The most he found was an inventory list left out amongst a pile of barrels, listing all sorts of foraged supplies and rations; depending on how many more caches there were of this size, it might be enough foodstuffs to keep a siege going through most of the winter.
The thought of trying to siege Drol Kuggradh in deep winter felt like insanity, but everything Krujha found confirmed it. Zesh was desperate, he thought. King Zorvut had spared his life in their first conflict, but now he was clearly preparing himself for a fight to the bitter end.
The sun had sunk toward the horizon by the time Krujha headed back to his own tent, skipping supper with his lack of appetite.
His heart leapt up into his throat as he noticed a slip of parchment pinned to the flap.
He unfolded it quickly, hoping for some helpful missive from Brugo, only to find an admonishment from Glasha for shirking his duties.
Report at sunrise for breakfast duty, or your place in the camp will be forfeit, it concluded.
Krujha swore under his breath as he crumpled up the parchment and climbed into his tent.
He hated having to get up that early, but with how frayed his nerves were, he doubted he’d be sleeping much anyway.
Still, it meant the window of time he could get to Alwyn was shortened.
He would rest for a few hours, then venture back out to speak with Alwyn close to midnight.
Lying down in his bunk with his eyes closed, he tried to quiet his mind from all his racing thoughts to little avail.
If he could just get to Alwyn, maybe they could flee together, returning to Drol Kuggradh to warn them—though he doubted Alwyn would ever agree to run away.
Succeeding in his mission was too important to him.
Krujha’s heart squeezed thinking of the elf.
He still couldn’t understand why it was so important to Alwyn to win the approval of the Mage Princeps.
Everything Alwyn had described about him was far from flattering, though he seemed to idolize this Tessarion anyway.
That was hardly the biggest of his worries now, but it felt easier to dwell on that than the current situation, which was changing too quickly for him to get a grasp on.