“Perfect,” Varen agreed. The small, pleased smile that flashed across Korik’s face for just a moment made his chest feel tight. Before all this, he could not have imagined thinking the tall, gangly orc wascute; but there was just something so damned endearing about him.
But that was the last thing he should be focusing on, so he tamped down the feeling and focused on the task at hand. With both their steps silenced, observing the camp undetected wouldn’t take too long.
Just as Korik had described, the camp had been completely torn down, and the orc bodies were buried in a mass grave about a hundred feet away in the woods. In his inspection of the camp, Varen found no indication that there was anyone still here, keeping watch or spying on them. Whoever had cleared the camp had been careful to disguise their steps, though, as Varen found the game trail Korik had mentioned, but no footsteps marred it.
Still, there were no signs of activity in any other direction, so the game trail was still their best option. Varen made one more pass around the abandoned campsite, using his magic to make his eyesight sharper—Korik tried to copy the spell, but had a harder time with it. This time he could see tiny details like the crushed leaves that had been brushed aside, and flecks of dirt that didn’t match the soil beneath their feet, but had been tracked from somewhere further away. The original party had come from the north, he was sure, and those that had cleaned up the camp had returned the same way.
It seemed their path was laid out before them. The camp had nothing more to offer them now.
In the evening, Varen again kept watch for a bit after Korik laid down to sleep. When he was sure the orc was no longer awake, he reached for his saddlebags, pulling out a small, folded-up piece of parchment.
General Palleas’ assistant had given him the parchment as he’d been gathering their supplies from the quartermaster. It was enchanted, the assistant had explained; the library had precious few as it was a new experiment, but a piece was being given to him due to the importance of his mission. Its twin was in the office of the general: anything he wrote on his piece would appear on the other, and vice versa.
He had not used it yet, but now he had information to report. It was the size of a standard letter, so he would have to keep his handwriting small and his message concise. With a charcoal pencil, he wrote out his missive, keeping it to a single line.
Original orc camp destroyed, bodies buried. Pursuing signs of movement in the north.
Nothing seemed to visually happen on the paper, no signal that it had worked. Varen looked at it for a moment, shrugged, and folded it back up before laying down to rest.
In the morning, he checked it again to find a single word had been added, not in a separate line but right next to his own words—the most efficient use of the limited space.
Received.
Chapter Sixteen
Korik
Ontheseconddayafter leaving behind the abandoned camp, Korik spotted campfires in the distance. The rebel camp had been nearer than they’d thought.
He’d been scouting for miles ahead each day, morning and night. The first day went uneventfully; but when he peered through the eyes of a rock dove that had been guarding its nest in the early hours of the next morning, he thought he saw the faint, blurry hint of smoke along the distant horizon.
Korik froze for a moment, leaving the dove hovering, then urged it forward to get a better idea of where exactly the camp was. Part of him wanted to release his hold on the bird immediately to tell Varen that he’d found the camp, but he knew that gathering as much information as he could first would be paramount.
The camp came into detail as he drew closer. What had started as a faint haze of smoke became two separate cooking fires, one on each end of a camp that was nestled between two rocky hills. It was larger than Korik had expected, but as he got nearer, he could tell that it was too small to be the primary rebel force. They were a camp on the move, and if he and Varen were careful, they could follow at a distance until, hopefully, the smaller group led them to the larger threat.
It was exactly what King Ruven had asked of them. With any luck, they would only be out here a few more days, then could go their separate ways: Varen to report what they found, and Korik to return to his home, finally.
Through the dove’s eyes, he counted over twenty tents. From so high up, it was hard to tell the size, but he doubted they were sleeping more than two to a tent. He guessed there were somewhere between twenty and forty orcs in the camp, a sizable number. Part of him wondered what exactly they were doing out here; he saw no sign of captives, but the horses he could spot tied to trees looked formidable. They were tall and broad, like warhorses; and Korik thought that perhaps they were gathering forces for some kind of attack, which made his heart sink into his chest.
He only saw a few orcs tending to the cooking fires in this early hour with hardly any other activity he could observe, so at least they didn’t seem to move with urgency.
He considered drawing closer, but if the group had their own druid—or even just knew the signs to spot the presence of a druid, which was far more likely—they would surely suspect a lone dove observing them, then fleeing. The last thing he wanted was to warn them of his presence, so he remained high in the sky at a safe distance before finally releasing his hold on the animal.
When he came back into himself, he shook his head to clear his vision, the world spinning uncomfortably around him.
“You were gone for a while,” he heard Varen’s voice coming from above him. “What did you see?”
Korik stumbled to his feet.
“I found the camp,” he said, rubbing his eyes. Even without looking, he could feel Varen tense up.
“How far?” he asked.
“Maybe fifteen miles at the most. It’s hard to tell from the air,” Korik answered. “Somewhere between twenty and forty orcs. I only saw them because of the smoke from their cooking fires. The camp is mostly hidden against a hill. It looks like they’re on the move, heading north or northwest, like we thought.”
Varen had started packing his things haphazardly as Korik spoke. “Shit, that’s more than I expected. They must have been here even more recently than we thought. I bet a smaller group came and is catching up with the big group now. They’re going to be moving slowly with that many, so we should be able to catch up without too much trouble.”
Korik wanted to protest: a group that size would certainly have scouts of their own, or even another druid that could spy on them just as easily as he was watching the camp. Varen was speaking in a rush now—mostly to himself, but fast enough that Korik couldn’t find a place to interject.
