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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Rel" data-source="post: 996373" data-attributes="member: 99">Escape and Return Ilrath's first thoughts were of battle.  He asked Speaks to heal him so that he might attempt to hold off the orcs from retaking the ice fortress.  Speaks looked at him as though he were crazy and informed him that, sadly, he had used the last of his healing magic on Rhys.  Rhys and Krase glanced again at the oncoming orcs.  They both immediately reached a decision on their only possible course of action.  They brooked no argument when they looked at Ilrath and Speaks and yelled in unison:"RUN AWAY!" (For those who despise such things, I can assure you that this is the only Monty Python quote that will appear in this post.  Furthermore, those responsible for this quote have been sacked.)The party quickly descended the slippery stairs of the ice fortress and beat a hasty retreat to the edge of the woods.  There, they were forced to pause for nearly a minute while Ilrath bulled his way into one of the webs to retrieve Rhys' familiar, Tavis.  Poor Tavis lost a good deal of her winter coat to the sticky strands of web that held her fast.  Ilrath ripped her out of her bonds with a brief squeak of pain (the weasel squeaked, not the barbarian).Once she was free, the group retreated further into the forest and angled off to the west.  They intended to skirt the burned clearing and make their way back to the hill fort to report to the leaders of the joint barbarian/Glynden army.  As they began making their way south with the clearing some distance off to their left, they heard a cry in the tongue of the barbarians.  Ilrath made his way quickly and quietly toward the clearing with the rest of the party in tow.From just beyond the clearing, they could make out four barbarian warriors accompanied by a pair of large brown bears, charging into the flank of the retreating orcish stragglers.  In moments, the orcs had recovered from their initial surprise and began to encircle the group.  The barbarians slashed out with axes and claws felling dozens of orcs in the initial moments of battle.Ilrath gripped his axe grimly, wanting nothing more than to charge into battle to aid his fellows.  But he was barely standing with fatigue and wounds and poison.  Speaks laid a hand on his shoulder and said, "They are already dead.  You cannot aid them and we will need you to fight tomorrow."  Ilrath knew that the wise druid spoke the truth and muttered a quiet oath as he backed away.  As the group retreated back into the obscurity of the woods, they saw that two of the barbarians had fought their way clear of the orcs and were fleeing back toward the hill fort.  A few orcs gave chase but were quickly outdistanced by the fleet footed Fodorans.The party continued to make their way quietly south and within half an hour they were approaching the hill fort.  They gave out a shout so that they wouldn't be mistaken for orcs in the confusion and shot.As they approached the palisade, they could see that it was in bad shape.  Almost the entire northern side of the outer palisade had been torn down and now lay in a quagmire of mud from the hillside.  Other sections of the wall were on fire.  Dead and wounded were everywhere but were quickly being dealt with (barbarians being helped inside the intact inner wall and orcs being put to the sword).Speaks quickly broke off from the party to try and aid the wounded where he could.  Krase and Rhys went to speak to Kyndalyn and Ilrath reported to Hrongar.Kyndalyn seemed pleased to see the boys from Glynden alive but he had little time to speak to them at first.  He was busily giving orders to repair sections of the palisade where possible, douse fires and police up weapons in the case of another attack by the orcs.  After several more minutes of directing the troops, he came over and sat heavily on a log near Rhys and Krase.  "It has been one hell of a morning."Looking around, the boys from Glynden could tell that it had indeed been one hell of a morning.  In addition to the hundreds of dead orcs and barbarians, a huge swath of the hillside appeared burnt along with a majority of the tents on the hilltop.  Kyndalyn explained the events of the last several days:The orcs had arrived near the hill fort three nights ago.  They could be heard moving off in the woods but they didn't approach close enough to be spotted.  Then, they set the woods on fire and burned the huge clearing that now existed.  When the smoke cleared, the ice fortress stood at the far end of the field, seemingly having sprung up overnight.The orcish army seemed in no particular hurry to attack and spent some time settling into camp.  Kyndalyn was not surprised by this as he expected that the orcs would attack at nighttime when they would be at their greatest advantage.  He was surprised when they began forming up for battle in the mid-afternoon of yesterday and came charging at the barbarian fortress.This was the event that the combined forces had been waiting for and they were prepared.  Uncle Claudius and the elven Wizard/Merchant let fly with a volley of fireballs that staggered the front lines of the approaching orcs.  The pair of wizards had been vigorously preparing scrolls so that they would be able to continue pounding the advancing orcs and inflicting huge casualties on them.As the orcs drew closer, the fireballs relented and the barbarian shamans had their turn at the orcs.  They had all been practicing the spell that Speaks had taught them and now they put that practice into effect.  Vines and tree roots sprang from under the trampled snow and began to envelop the legs and arms of the advancing orcs.  This further broke up their formations and the large number of orcs were now advancing as a huge, unorganized mass.The barbarian and Glynden archers then began sending volley after volley of arrows among the entangled orcs, killing another couple score.  The lead elements of the orcs came crashing into the palisade.  The orcs hacked at the timbers with their axes as the barbarians manning the wall hacked at the orcs.  Ropes were thrown by the orcs across the weakened sections of palisade and in a few places it was pulled down.  But many an orc paid for this offense with his life.Without warning, a cry went out among the orcs and they began to retreat.  As quickly as it had begun, the attack was over.  The barbarians had suffered only a handful of dead and maybe a score of wounded.  At least two hundred orcs lay dead in front of the fortifications.  All in all, a resounding victory that surpassed Kyndalyn's wildest hopes.The sections of palisade that had been toppled were quickly repaired and the wounded were tended to by the shamans.  As darkness fell, a great deal of celebration took place and the combined forces of Glynden and the Fodor were anxious to have another go at the orcs.During the night, several small groups of orcish archers made small feints against the fortress.  They inflicted little damage but each time they attacked, the defenders were forced to cast some sort of light in the area they were attacking from (mostly by using a supply of Sunrods that Tadius had made available for a very reasonable price).  Then the Glynden archers with their superior long bows would shoot at the orcs until they were driven back into the darkness.Only a few behind the palisade wall were wounded by the archers although one unfortunate guardsman from Glynden was struck and killed in his sleep.  But by morning, Kyndalyn was looking with some consternation at how low their supply of arrows was getting.After the devastating loss they'd been handed yesterday, Kyndalyn was astounded when the orcs formed up again to attack this morning.  Uncle Claudius was roused and prepared to unleash more of his fireballs.  Tadius was completing his spell preparation but would soon report atop the hill to aid in the continued roasting of the orcish army.Just as the orcs were getting into the maximum range of the fireballs, the side of the hill exploded in flames.  Uncle Claudius was killed instantly and several of the leaders including Hrongar and Urdrax were wounded.  Shamans rushed to their aid but just as they arrived, the hillside was shrouded in silence and their chants of healing could not be uttered.In the confusion, the Wyrm was spotted above.  Kyndalyn rushed out of the Silenced area and gave orders to his archers to start firing at it.  They did so but the thing was surrounded by a chaotic, swirling mass of colors that made it difficult to hit.  It had also climbed high enough to stay out of range of most of their attacks.Returning his attention to the field of battle, Kyndalyn saw that the orcs were still approaching unmolested.  The hillside was in chaos as many of the barbarians were trying to put out the fires that burned on the inner palisade and among the tents.  Kyndalyn looked desperately for the shamans who were being counted on to break up the orcish charge with their spells.  He saw that Urdrax, chieftain of the Brigantes was bodily hurling the confused shamans out of the area where the silence lingered.  They began to realize the situation and by ones and twos they started to turn the approach to the fortress into a tangle of grasping roots and vines.Kyndalyn told his archers to forget about the Wyrm and to start putting arrows into the orcish ranks.That was the last order he gave to any group of more than a few men.  He ran down to fight on the front lines with the barbarian warriors.  After that, he rather lost sight of the big picture but he could tell that, although the barbarians were dealing out casualties faster than they were taking them, there were a lot more orcs.  The outer palisade was falling in large chunks and a fighting retreat up the hill to the inner palisade was going to cost a lot of lives.  Things looked very grim.And then, just as before, the orcs began calling a retreat.  Instead of an orderly backing off supported by their superior numbers, they just turned and ran.  Without the palisade to contain them this time, many of the barbarians pursued the fleeing orcs a short distance and many an orc was cut down from behind.  Why exactly the orcs began to flee when they still outnumbered the barbarians by more than two to one was a mystery or a miracle or both.Rhys offered that he may have the answer to the mystery.  He described how they had assaulted the ice fortress which was practically unguarded during the battle.  He detailed the battle with the Banelar, who seemed to be the same creature as the Wyrm that Kyndalyn had referred to.  Rhys surmised that the Wyrm must have been the leader of the orcish army.  Knowing that many, if not all, of the orcish shamans possessed the Amulets of Communication and that the Banelar seemed to have a similar device, he supposed that when the Banelar was hard pressed by the party, he had called for aid from his shamans and they had sounded the retreat to the rest of the army.Kyndalyn responded that if that was indeed what happened, the party had undoubtedly saved a great many lives inside the remains of the hill fort and may well have prevented the utter defeat of the allied forces.  Knowing that they had fought a desperate battle that morning and seeing that both Rhys and Krase looked pale and wan from the poison of the Banelar, Kyndalyn told them to get some rest because if the orcs attacked again, it would take every man they could muster to resist them.The pair walked up hill to where Kyndalyn's command tent stood, one of the few tents that still stood atop the hill.  They found a dry corner and collapsed.  After a bit of rest, Rhys pulled out the magical Candle of Identification and proceeded to unlock the secrets of the three magical items they had recovered from the ice fortress and the Banelar.By the late afternoon, he was happy to report his findings:  The small stone that had been orbiting the head of the Banelar was known as an Ioun Stone and this particular one gave the bearer a natural increase in his defenses.  The headband had the ability to boost the intelligence of the wearer and also incorporated the abilities of one of the Amulets of Communication at a somewhat increased capacity.  By far the most curious of the items was the metal flask.  It had three words engraved on it in Draconic.  When unstoppered and one of these words spoken, water would pour forth from the bottle in either a "Stream", "Fountain" or "Geyser".Eager to test this newfound item, Rhys went to the collection of barrels encircling a fire that served as the camp water supply.  Several of the barrels were almost empty, having been used to douse fires along the palisade.  Rhys quickly filled them using the bottle.  Much pleased with this, he reported his find to Kyndalyn and told him that he was exhausted and needed sleep but that Kyndalyn was welcome to make whatever use he could of the bottle, during the night.  Kyndalyn thanked him and set about trying to find a use for the bottle.Krase, Rhys and Speaks awoke in the morning, feeling slightly better but still weak from the Banelar's poison.  They emerged from the command tent and saw that a vast sheet of ice extended from the base of the hill off to the north.  Several large portions of the outer palisade had been patched with walls of ice.The party slowly made their way down slope and encountered a smiling Kyndalyn."I think I know where they got that ice fortress," he said.He handed the bottle back to Rhys and explained that they had run the water all night.  The frigid air of the northlands had quickly turned it into a sheet of ice, which Kyndalyn figured would be very difficult for the orcs to cross.  As dawn had risen, he discovered that he had little reason to worry.  It appeared that the orcs had left the field of battle.  The siege was ended for now.Krase was immediately worried at the prospect of having half a thousand orcs roaming the countryside, whereabouts unknown.  He, Rhys and Speaks made their way carefully across the ice (where many a fallen orc was entombed) and across the open battlefield.  As they went, they were able to piece together some details of the battle from where the bodies lay.A bit over halfway across, they came to where the Brigantes and the Totem Warriors (the were-bears) had fought.  There was a big ring of dead orcs around where they had fought.  The bodies of the fallen warriors were not in evidence and neither were the orc-slaying weapons they had been carrying.In the vicinity of the ice fortress, they found evidence of another battle having taken place and discovered the bodies of nearly a hundred orcs.  Leading away to the north and northwest respectively were two sets of tracks.  The group heading to the northwest (the direction from which the orcs had initially approached) was clearly the larger of the two groups.  The party concluded that there must have been some kind of rift between the orcs that had occurred in absence of their leader.  This had ultimately led to a fight that left a hundred orcs dead before the two groups departed the scene.Speaks transformed himself into an eagle and took to wing to locate the remaining orcs.  He first flew north and soon found a group of about a hundred orcs moving steadily northwards under the cover of the forest.  Their destination was unknown but they seemed to be in no shape to turn around and resume their attack on the hill fort anytime soon.Speaks then veered off to the west and located the other group of orcs.  They seemed to number around three hundred and were moving back along the trail that they had followed from their headquarters at the foot of the mountains.  They too seemed beaten and bloody.  Speaks turned around and made his way back to the hill fort.In the meantime Krase and Rhys went inside the ice fortress again and discovered that a big hole had been dug in the floor where they had earlier had spotted the rectangular object under the ice.  Rhys cursed aloud at this.  Whatever treasure the orcs had brought with them had been carried off before he could loot it.  He spent the remainder of the afternoon using his ability to Detect Magic to scan the battlefield for any treasure buried under the ice.  He managed to turn up a few shamanic scrolls among the orcish dead, none of which he could use.Reports began to come in from the Allmani scouts who were monitoring the retreat of the larger group of orcs.  They seemed to be making best speed back to wherever they had come from and showed no signs of turning around.  Scouts also searched for the other group but they had already moved at least as far north as the Nervii lands.  It seemed that the orcish army was, for the moment at least, shattered and no longer a threat.The war was over and it was time to lick wounds and count the dead.NEXT:  Aftermath</blockquote>

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