Ace and Gerrod halted their party when they saw that the troops ahead of them, still in the distance, had stopped. After a quick look around the outskirts of a nearby clearing, Ace reported that the Guard was setting up camp below a cave opening. The unusual stop before sun down indicated that they had reached a marker in their trip. The amount of settling the tired men were doing signaled that they planned on being there for a while. They gathered stones for fire pits, set up scheduled watches, and even set up defensive perimeters around their camp; far too much effort for an ordinary overnight stay. Come nighttime, Ace planned another trip, trusting in the darkness of the night to help him get closer. Perhaps he could get close enough to hear talk around the campfires. For now, though, there was little for them to do than set up a camp of their own and wait. They found a defensible spot some ways back from where the army had set up their outpost.
A little after nightfall, Ace slipped out into the darkness of the shadows, taking a rounded trip towards the Guards' camp.
"Perhaps you should take Star," Gerrod suggested. The ranger spoke into the pitch of the night, refusing to allow his eyes to slip into the more comfortable infrared spectrum. He couldn't see anything past the glare of their firelight, and he knew the army wouldn't be able to either, but it was always better to be safe. He didn't like the thought of Ace being out there in the dark, alone against two hundred soldiers.
"Must think I'm getting soft," he harrumphed. "I don't need your dog," Ace protested. But when Star gazed over at him from where he was laying, those big soft wolf eyes looking so hurt at the insult, Ace quickly rescinded. "Well, just in case I do get in trouble. As long as he stays out of my way." As he left, with Star padding behind, they all agreed that Star was wearing soft on Ace.
They built a small fire to keep warm. They kept their distance from the enemy camp so there was no risk of the army seeing their fire through the thick trees. That was why Gerrod was quite surprised, a short while later, to hear the rustling of fallen leaves, and the quiet but obvious signaling whistles of a patrol.
The ranger could tell by the sounds they made that there were not any more than four or five in the patrol, but they were attempting to circle around them. Gerrod could barely see their forms flitting between the trees, the heat from their bodies just blurs of red to his night eyes. "Looks like we're not the only ones with friends in the woods," he remarked casually, directing attention to the sounds he'd heard.
Corinna quickly assigned targets, directing Allison and Amanda in one direction, and her and Gerrod in another. It was important to spread out, in order to avoid all of them from being caught up in a magical spell or too close to each other to defend themselves. In too close of battle, a deflected sword can injure or even kill a friend standing close by. But first, they needed the soldiers to come into the circle of light of their campfire. It was difficult fighting in the dark, and they didn't want to attract any more unwanted attention.
It was clear that the leader of the group was surprised by their find and at a loss as to how to handle the situation. He obviously wasn't expecting to find people camping out here in the wilderness, especially so close to their outpost. Now that he had stumbled upon them, he didn't know how to proceed. This indecision showed his lack of experience in patrols. These campers weren't street scum, and these weren't the streets of Oswegonia where the King's Guard ruled. Out here in the wilderness, these adventurers were far more at home than he and his equally numbered troops.
"Good eve'," he greeted, stepping boldly from the seclusion of the trees. It was clear the party was aware of their presence. His young voice stammered with his uncertainty. "What business have you in these woods?" he demanded, a brave false front that served as a poor mask for the quivering hand on his sword hilt.
"Seems the question should be, 'What brings you out into these woods?' Surely the streets of Oswegonia seem more fitting for the likes of you and your sturdy little band," Gerrod observed.
Gerrod's refusal to give into his demands, and knowledge of his limited numbers, upset the young leader as he knew it would. He rocked nervously from one foot to the other, his hand flinching and stretching near his sheathed sword. He was used to attitudes, but out here he had no authority to order people around and no dungeon to throw them in for being unruly. Without a legion to call upon for backup, he suddenly felt way over his head.
"We are furriers, come to bring in some pelts and, hopefully, a handsome profit for our troubles," he lied. Gerrod guessed this young soldier couldn't tell a furrier from a farmer, and it was all that Corinna and the girls could do to keep from busting out laughing at such an obvious, bold tale. A wide grin spread across Allison's face. This type of teasing was right up her alley. In the very least, Gerrod hoped the tale would lull the guard into a sense of security, however false. The last thing they needed was this troop to flee into the woods, back to report to their camp. They would bring back their legion of reinforcements, and hunt them down. That would not be good.
Gerrod could tell that the young leader no longer feared their band. His sword arm no longer quivered, and the muscled chest under the heavy platemail puffed back up in a bold show of courage and authority. After all, he considered, this was only one man and three women. It apparently didn't give him much question, three women and a man being furriers, especially with Corinna dressed in her black robes and Amanda's obvious clerical vestments. Gerrod didn't question this stupidity or their good fortune. He tried to keep the attention centered on him, as he heard chants starting up behind him. He had to give the girls time to do what ever they planned.
"So," Gerrod asked again, "you never did answer my question. What brings soldiers from the King's Guard of Oswegonia so far from home?"
"The business of the King's Guard is none of yours," he avoided the question once more, unsure of how to answer. "How is it that we did not see you here as we passed through this spot this afternoon?"
"We came from the south, making our way up the mountain. It was here that we tired of the climb, and so here we camped. Sorry if it's an inconvenience to you and your troops. We certainly didn't mean to startle you with our presence."
"Not at all, I assure you," he responded with a grin. Gerrod had seen that look in men's eyes before. He realized that no one would question their disappearance out here in the woods, and they would make a fine prize to take back to camp. He would proudly display Gerrod's dead body, and the women would make more than suitable entertainment for the low moraled troops who had been on the road for too long. Gerrod would not be able to distract him much longer.
Gerrod could almost see the plan form in the man's head, could hear the thoughts click into place, knew the exact moment he decided to react to it. In a flash, his hand reached for his sword, and swung its length out of the sheath. He dove, head long, thrusting the sword point before him, hoping to run Gerrod through with his surprise attack.
But somewhere, between where he stood and where Gerrod waited only five feet away, he was suddenly over come by the power of Corinna's spell. Moving now only under his own momentum, he tripped over his own lifeless feet and came crashing to the ground before the ranger. Gerrod easily deflected what was left of his attack, as he fell into a deep slumber. As the wave of magic reverberated out, he heard similar sounds of collapsing men all around them, and realized they had all fallen to Corinna's sleep spell.
It didn't take long to round up the members of the ill-fated scout troop, and drag their unconscious bodies into a large, makeshift cage Gerrod constructed to hold them. They were stripped of their equipment, and bound and gagged. Once the men were inside the cage, they hoisted them high into the canopy of limbs above. They would escape eventually, but not before the party was long gone. Until then, they couldn't alert their friends, and they didn't get in anyone's way.
Looking at the pile of bright, shiny armor they had stripped from their captives, Corinna got an idea. She secretly discussed her plan with A
manda and Allison, who seemed more than willing to go along with it. Like children gleefully playing dress up, they started putting on the suits of armor. While the large metal pieces fit Gerrod fine, though he found the heavy encasement of metal too restrictive and uncomfortable, it was obviously far too large for the others. Even Allison, who had grown thick with muscles, was not the right shape to fill in the bronze plates.
Once they were dressed in the amusing armor, the women began to chant again. Gerrod recognized Alley and Mandy's chant as a prayer to Corellon Larethian. Corinna was casting a spell. Within minutes, all three beautiful ladies started to grow and change. Before his eyes, they transformed into three human males, all appropriately dressed in the suit of armor of the King's Guard. While they could never have passed as members of the Guard before, now they were as indistinguishable as Gerrod was. With these costumes and their new forms, they would be able to march right along with the army, taking the place of the soldiers they had captured.
"So how do we look?" Corinna asked in her new, deeper male voice. Its sudden throatiness surprised her, but she swallowed hard and tried to act serious like a real guard.
Gerrod was astonished as he walked all the way around each of them, barely able to believe what he had just witnessed. If he hadn't seen it for himself, he would have had trouble understanding it. While they didn't look like anyone in particular that he knew, they were very detailed transformations, complete with the shadow of a beard on unshaven faces. As Amanda explained, in every practical sense, they had become human men. For Alley and Mandy, this was by a very special spell of their god. They said that Corellon's granting of this spell meant that he understood the urgency of this quest. This special ability was granted, only in the most desperate of circumstances.
They sat around the campfire with their enemies hanging in the cage above them, getting to know their new equipment, and becoming familiar with the new faces. Gerrod was just finally getting used to them himself, a queer feeling running up and down his back about this whole thing, when out of the silent woods stepped Ace. His battle-axe gleamed at the ready.
"Tell me, stinking dogs, where be me friends?" he demanded in a convincingly threatening tone.
Amused that the deception was so complete to fool even their old friend, Allison could not help herself but to torture Ace. Gerrod stayed to the back, so Ace wouldn't recognize his familiar face, and to give him a better view of the three transformed women. They would let Allison have her fun. Of course Star recognized them at once, by their scents, but obeyed Gerrod's mental command to stay where Ace had told him to hide in the bushes.
"You are nothing but a grouchy old dwarf wandering around in the middle of the woods late at night," Allison charged, her own bravado voice almost as deep as Ace's. "What manner of friends could a grouchy old dwarf like you have?"
Ace was fuming at the insults, both at himself and his friends whom he honored. While he didn't like being played with, he also didn't care for the odds of this encounter. Still, he studied them carefully with an eye towards taking on the lot of them if he didn't get the answers he wanted. "The manner of which were camping out on this very spot when I left them, this very eve," he huffed back, undaunted by Allison's intimidation.
"If they were indeed here, the lot of them must have run off when they heard us near. For clearly you can see none here but the honorable men of the King's Guard," she teased further.
"There be none but cowards before me now! It would be a fine day indeed when my friends would seek refuge from the likes of you," Ace returned, a lather of spit forming in his beard about his mouth, giving him a wild look.
"Your slander tempts me to cut out your tongue, dear dwarf. I bid you leave before I give in to my passions. I cannot allow you to belittle the King's Guard so. Be gone, little man, and save your pride and your life," Allison chided still.
Ace turned a deep shade of red, stomping the ground like a raging bull. He never did care for trying to reason with the King's Guard, and these four before him were no different. Worked into a battle rage, he sprang forward, his great axe slicing into the air in front of him. He was set to clear a path straight through them.
In a lightning fast response, only slowed a bit by the bulk of the new armor, Allison instinctively trapped Ace's blade into the dirt, under a heavily booted foot, while kneeing him in the face with an armored leg.
Ace refused to release the grip on his weapon, and worked to twist it out from under the great fighter's foot. A light line of blood drained from his nose, but he would not let that slow his conviction. The deception had gone far enough.
"Hold, good friend," Gerrod called out from his place in the back of the group, and stepped out into the light so his friend could focus on his face. "Relax, Ace. It's us."
Straining his blood-clotted vision to focus on the source of the familiar voice, Ace squinted to recognize Gerrod beneath the red-crescent helm. He mindlessly dropped the handle of his weapon in shocked recognition. "Gerrod? What in Moradin -- ?"
Gerrod laughed at the surprised look on Ace's face as he struggled to recognize the other strange men. "I'd like to introduce you to Corinna, Amanda, and of course you've already met Allison," Gerrod said smugly, pointing to each. They waved in a more characteristic wave in return. Ace would scarcely believe it until he saw Star come out of his hiding to sit by his companion's side.
"In the name of the gods, what has happened?"
"And of course," Gerrod pointed to the cage hidden above, continuing his introductions, "the real 'stinking dogs' you would have defended us from."
With a dim light of understanding, at the sight of the men wearing nothing but their underclothes, Ace began to piece together what had happened. His eyes suddenly scowled at the women. "I should have known. Magic!" he spat onto the ground. "If I'd had sense about me, I would have seen it earlier."
"Ours is not magic," Amanda was quick to defend her god. "Ours is a gift of our god. Corellon Larethian smiles favorably on those who do his work," she explained emphatically in a preachy voice.
"Forgive my sister," Allison apologized, as she always did whenever Amanda took on that tone. "It's just that we take great offense at the naming of the works of Corellon as simple magic. It happens everywhere we go."
"Yes, I'm sorry," Amanda jumped in. "Occupational hazard."
"And forgive me too," Allison continued, with only minor irritation for her sister's interruption. "Perhaps I let the joke go on too long. I hope I didn't hurt your nose. Would you like me to look at it?"
"No offense taken, I'm sure," Gerrod agreed, accepting the apology for the still embarrassed and stunned dwarf. "I think we kind of flustered our dear friend."
"What in the name of the gods are you kids planning now?" Ace stammered, still lost in his own bewilderment.
"With these costumes," Corinna explained, "we'll be able to travel right with the Guard. That way, they won't be able to lose us once their tracks are not so easily followed within the caverns."
"Well you'll not be stretching me out to fill one of those tin cans! And don't be thinking they won't be noticing a dwarf among them. Even they aren't that stupid," Ace pointed out.
"That's why you'll have to take the cargo ride." Gerrod diplomatically filled him in on this particularly unpleasant part of the plan.
"You mean to carry me around like a piece of baggage? I won't have it!" Ace objected, as they feared he might.
"Well, maybe at least when you can't keep to the shadows and trail us," Gerrod compromised tactfully. "Otherwise, you'd have a seat of honor, being carried around like a king on a throne," he promised.
"Foolhardy plan if I ever heard tell of one. But with these folk, it may just work. Besides, we got a while before we've to worry about it. It looks like our friends are going to be here a while. They're hunting and stocking up, curing meats and everything. Probably in preparation to move into those caves, as we suspected. Planning a
very long journey, too, judging by the amount of supplies they're packing."
"Would it help to talk to our friends up there in the tree?" Corinna asked, pointing to the cage above.
"Doubt it. Seems you're right about their leadership, Corinna. I don't think even LaBairne knows exactly how long they'll be. They're stocking up, just in case. I doubt the likes of this patrol would know much of value."
"We should have our own supplies, just to minimize our need to interact with the real Guard. We may look the part, but one wrong slip, and they could catch onto us," Allison offered.
"Agreed. We'll spend our time hunting as well. We'll keep our camp here until they enter the caves, and then we'll join them," Corinna decided.
"What of our friends up above?" Gerrod asked.
"We'll have to keep them there until we break camp. After that, I'll send them all back off to sleep for a very long time. They'll be ill equipped to follow us. We'll make sure we feed and water our 'stinking dogs,'" she joked. They all joined in laughter. Ace took it all in good humor, as he always did.
Chapter 17
Into Darkness