The Three Princesses are turtled up in caves just a few miles away. A few of the mutinous sailors returned shortly after Burly Jim’s reconnaissance in force, reporting that food stocks in the cave were low and the run all gone. Hence their decision to return to camp. Already your plan of inaction is paying dividends!
Not content to rest of your laurels, you decide to send Burly Jim and a dozen lads up Cardinal River – hey, if you discover it, you name it – to see what else this island of dread has in store for you. You caught occasional glimpses of a line coyote watching you from the line of grassy dunes a half mile distance, and the natives peek in on you from time to time, but the former looks harmless enough and the latter uninterested in anything but checking in on you from time to time.
The hoots, howls, and chirrups of the local wildlife sound strange to your ears, particularly at night. The warm waters of the bay provide ample fresh catch, reassuring you that your own supplies are of little worry.
After a few tense days, Burly Jim returns from his scouting trip. He reports that the stream winds sedately inland for several miles, flanked by gently sloping grasslands on either side. “Hills so low even a halfling wouldn’t live under ’em,” Jim explained. In the distance he could could see the line of woods to the west and tall hills to the east. They seemed to be taking a circuitous path north to the wide valley formed by the two great mountains of the island, until the great glittering plain of a broad lake hove into view to the north. Across the way, maybe two miles or more, a dark green ridge of forest spilled down the mountainside to reach the shore. Passage into the lake was blocked by white water falls over a rocky shelf just two feet high. That was barely a half a day’s journey, and he tried to return to camp just as quickly.
That’s when his tale took a turn for the strange. Burly Jim always did have a knack for starting with the unimportant. Probably born with a map in his hand, he loved the things more than the world they echoed.
As he stood weighing the notion of dragging the ship’s boat over the falls, his ears caught something on the wind. He moved away from the crash of water over the bench of rock, and heard a far distant ringing, as of massive iron ship’s bells away over the horizon. With a light breeze out of the north and his keen ears, he thought he could make some sense of it, and hushed the boys.
But one shouted a low warning (extra tot of rum for Seaman Busby, if you please), and Jim turned to catch sight of a great horde of black-clad figures crossing their path to the south. A motion and all the boys dropped where they were, which [probably saved them all. Some lay in the knee-high grass, some flat in the boat, Jim leapt into the cold pool at the base of the falls. He hung on to the gunwale with one hand, the only one with a clear line of sight, and watched as the Black mob cut from the hills to the woods.
Pigmen. Orcs. Like back home, but with the black sigil of a goat’s head on shield and helm. They had out runners, scouts to the fore and aft and port and starboard, and a pair of them came within sniffing distance of he and the lads. The horde piled through the river behind, but Jim had eyes only on those scouts who used the easy path of the banks to approach. He could see their black head bobbing along the top of the rolling grass like buoys adrift, and they just kept coming. At the last moment, when they would round the last long curve of the stream and could not help but see the boat, he heard the laughing yips of the Coyote away to the west. The snouted scouts heard it too, and snapped into pursuit to the west.
Twenty minutes Jim stood shivering in the water before crawling through the grass to check their progress. Sure enough, he managed to soy the last of the horde piling into the woods at a full trot, miles away.
“A guardian angel,” you suggest, but Burly Jim shakes his head at the suggestion.
“We got halfway home when that mangy beast appeared again, ” Jim explains. “This time he was a-scratching in the dirt and whining like he’d been whipped. Kept looking over his shoulder, and I took that as a sign of maybe I should follow him.”
Jim followed, leaving two men to watch the boat. They headed west into the woods and soon came upon a road, which they followed west until it dropped into a wide and woody marsh where the causeway of the road was the only dry land for miles. They followed it for a couple miles, ears alert for danger, and caught the shouts and cries of battle in the distance. Jim had the boys wait with orders to hide if anyone but him came along, and ran ahead to get a look.
Sure enough, they had caught up to the orcs, but only a tenth the number and not nearly so intimidating. They had been whipped by you can guess who, and not by the pretties and their men alone. Strangers in blue and orange livery, and horsemen among them, helped tie up the surviving orcs and thrown the dead to sink into the swamps. The horsemen wore light leathers with steel helms, but we’re clearly led by a big man in full plate armor. He carried himself with the smooth assurance of a leader, and Jim set full sail for out of there.
Coyote didn’t like that, but Burly Jim is nobody’s fool. He knew that professional allies like that would make it all the harder to pry the girls off this island.
“On the other hand,” you suggest, “the knight and his men have no love of the orcs. There might be an opportunity to use the orcs to our advantage.”
“Hold that thought”, Burly Jim, admonished you. He still wanted to know more about those heavy bells, and decided to use the cover of night to cross the wide lake.
To be continued…