Dark Obligations: Book One of the Phantom Badgers

Dark Obligations

ISBN 9781310938733

Copyright 2014 by Randall Krpoun

Dedicated to my wife, Ann, and to the happy band of brethren of days gone by: Bobbi, Joel, and Mickey.

A glossary of terms is included at the end of this novel, followed by information on the author and the cover artist

Part One

The storm
was born at the edges of the great polar ice cap that crowned the world of Allmar, a swirling mass of storm cells and icy winds that slipped down onto the great northern continent of Alhenland. Deflected by the mighty Thunderpeak range, the army of thunderheads spread out onto the vast expanse of the Northern Wastes.

The howling winds dumped the year’s first snow onto the half-sunken Orc dwellings
along the Waste’s northern third, and inside the domed structures the chieftains began to sort out the details of raiding south. They sent summons to the wolf-riding Goblin camps whose shamans had already sent riders to all points of the compass bearing the word: rally, for when the ground froze the raids south would commence.

The first
freeze warned the only free humans in the Wastes, the almond-skinned Ceth, to direct their herds towards their winter pastures. The tough horsemen spent their summers raiding the Goblins, and their winters repelling Goblin raids, all the while tending their shaggy half-wild cattle in the central reaches of the Wastes.

The
Wastes are both wide and deep, and by the time the storm front reached the earth embankment known as the Emperor’s Ward it was largely spent, capable of inflicting only a frost and a few rain squalls. The Ward was a symbol rather than a barrier, marking as it did the north border of the Eisenalder Empire, a line drawn half the width of the continent and an open challenge to the Orcs from the Human civilization to the south.

T
he storm’s dying gasps caused the Imperial Legions along the Wall to shift internal gears, recalling punitive expeditions from north of the Ward and preparing the garrisons for winter. Officers and centurions studied maps and troop status reports as they prepared for a season of Orc raids.

South of the Ward farmers hurried to get the last of their crops to market or safely stored, the hard weeks of the harvest past and the long winter months filled with maintenance and repairs ahead of them.

It was the first war cry of winter, a brief sally that came and went as a harbinger of things to come.

Durek Toolsmaster stood scowling at the tall granite tower that rose overhead, his boots ankle-deep in mud churned into froth by feet and iron-rimmed cart wheels. The Captain of the Phantom Badgers mercenary company was a broad-shouldered Dwarf in the prime of his life, the black of his long braided beard not yet marked by gray. Tugging irritably at the onyx and brass
zurnal
that bound his beard braids the Captain turned to scowl at an older Dwarf standing beside him. “Just what do you mean: you’re
almost
done?”

The c
onstruction chief shrugged. “We’ve nearly completed our work. The main effort will be completed in three days’ time; say another two weeks to take care of the final details, and we’ll be out of the fort completely. Now, the piers at the ruined village need some more work to bring them up to standard as we just knocked them together to serve our immediate needs, and the quarry wants some tidying, but all in all, perhaps two weeks more. In short, say not much more than a month left in the job.”

Durek
, tapped a stubby finger onto the leather-clad, beard-covered chest of the older Dwarf as emphasis to his words. “Helvin, you said you would be here until
spring
,” Durek punched one callused fist into an equally rough palm. “That rain we just got is the first taste of winter-you know there’s a lot more where that came from.”

Helvin
shrugged again. “We thought that the stairwell supports would need shoring, but once we got in there and started looking around, it turned out to be solid as the day it went up; we replaced a few risers and one section of rail, and there you are. The collapsible roof for the war engine on top turned out to be a great deal easier than we thought, and the smaller jobs went quickly, too.” He waved a hand at the tower. “She’s as sound as the day they built her, Durek. That is
good
news.”

“But the problem is, yo
u said you would be done in the
spring
, and we agreed we would pay you when you finished, which would be
in the spring
. Now you’re telling me you are about to finish
in the fall
and winter’s just a Goblin-fart away. How the blazes am I supposed to lead a raid to get your payment in the dead of winter?”

A third shrug. “Winter, summer, it’s all the same underground.”

“Very profound, very observant. I grew up in a Hold myself, you know, a full century child and Dwarf; I
know
that there’s no seasons in the heartland, but we’ve got to ride for weeks aboveground to get to the place, and ride just as far to get back. That’s across the Northern Wastes, mind you: tough enough any time of the year, but damn near suicide in winter where blizzards roll right off the ice cap and dump all over you.”

“We have a contract,” Helvin observed complacently. “Payment to be received within one month of completion. Payment is to consist of
fifty forge tiles of the first water.”

“And you know dam
n well that I have to go to
Gradrek Heleth
to get them: it’s a bastard to travel there, a bastard to get into it, a bastard to get out of it, and a
real
bastard to come back from it, all in good weather. Listen, we’re both Dwarves: what does a few months delay mean? You know I’ll get them to you just as soon as the mud dries in the spring.”

“We have a contact.”

“ ‘
We have a contact
’,” Durek mimicked. “What are we, Threll? Since when have Dwarves played about with such trivialities in dealing with the Folk?”

“You are of the Folk,” Helvin nodded. “As are a few of your followers, but the rest aren’t. You can’t classify yourself as
Folk. Of course, blood is blood, so I’ll spot you a week or two delay, but this is hardly Clan business.”

Durek
controlled his temper with a visible effort. “Look: I’ll double the payment in return for an extension until one month past spring drying. And this after all the loot the Badgers have sold your Clan from our previous raids into
Gradrek Heleth
. Good customers should count for something.”

Helvin frowned thoughtfully at the lead-colored clouds. “Double payment, you say. Yes, that
might make a great difference. Let me consult with the payments-chief to be sure, but I believe that we may come to terms.”

Parting court
esies were observed out of deep-seated custom, for while both were of the same race a yawning chasm separating them in nearly every other regard. Durek Toolsmaster was an
Umherr
, a Dwarf who chose to live amongst non-Dwarves in order to further the war between Light and the Void, while Helvin was a
Juran
, a Dwarf who worked outside of the Hold to obtain goods or goodwill the clan could not provide for themselves.
Juran
usually spent a decade or so away from home before returning for good, while few
Umherr
survived their choice of life-paths.

The Captain remained planted in the well-stirred mud after the construction chief had moved off, scowling at the soaked landscape. He stood on a low ridge crow
ned by a walled Dwarven-built outpost called Oramere, the source of his haggling with Helvin and numerous other headaches.

Oramere had been built ninety years earlier
as an outpost to protect Dwarves who were cutting timber in the area back when these lands were north of the Empire’s border. Twenty-odd years later the Dwarves abandoned Oramere at the onset of the Second North War. The end of the fighting between the Empire and the Orcs had seen the Empire’s boundary (and the Ward which marked it) pushed forward an average of one hundred miles, a huge belt of land that stretched half the width of the continent.

The new Imperial holdings had included Oramere, which lay at the very north
eastern corner of the new lands in the western foothills of the Thunderpeak Mountains. The outpost was deeded to the Empire as part of a lengthy treaty with the Thunderpeak Dwarves, and saw use as an Imperial Army base camp for a few years half a century ago before being abandoned yet again. The Phantom Badgers had acquired the outpost and two thousand acres of wooded hillsides cheaply-in Imperial terms, the new holding was in the far reaches of nowhere.

Although Dwarven-built
Oramere had seen no maintenance in five decades so Durek had contracted with Helvin to bring a crew of Dwarven artificers and put the place to rights. Helvin’s crew was also to reopen the quarry and build two stone piers on the nearby Burgen River. The Dwarves had done the thorough, expert job one would expect but were now complicating Durek’s life by completing the job months earlier than expected.

And complications were something
Durek was heartily sick of this year: the Badgers had spent the summer in the pay of the Empire hunting Goblins north of the Ward, a routine enough occupation. As usual the Imperial authorities paid well, the supplies they promised arrived on time and were of good quality, and they were generous with bonuses for captives rescued.

Aside from their paymasters, however, the summer had b
een a nightmare. Instead of ambushing scouting parties and gathering intelligence the Badgers were embroiled in one skirmish after another with Goblin wolf-riders and Orc raiders, culminating in a vicious fight with a party of Undead who turned out to be servitors of the White Necromancer, a powerful liche who lived in the Wastes and who already had good reason to be displeased with the Badgers. Hard campaigning and powerful enemies had made for a tough season.

Finally the mercenary officer turned and moved downslope towards the tents which housed the Compan
y until Oramere was refurbished, as one of Helvin’s conditions in the contract was that his crew would not have to work around the occupants until after the first snowfall.

The Badgers themselves were not idle: work parties were clearing all brush and trees from the slope and for two hundred paces further out while other groups planted hundreds of fire-hardened stakes embedded at an angle
. Three paths would zigzag through the defenses, allowing a safe approach but not the opportunity to build up speed. Portable barriers would be made and stored in the hold to close off these routes should an enemy approach.

Oramere itself consisted of stone walls one hundred yards on a side,
with square fighting towers at each corner. In the center rose a broad, slightly tapered stone tower, eighty feet tall at the fighting platform at its top, giving it an excellent view of the surrounding countryside. The Legion had added a gatehouse in the south wall and stone warehouses along the other three walls during its service as an Imperial depot.

At the moment Dwarves were winching up sections of a peaked roof
to the top of the tower that would shed rain and snow, but which could be removed if battle was imminent. The sight of their progress brought the Captain no cheer, as he did not believe that Helvin would settle for double payment. A veteran haggler, Durek knew a ploy when he saw one: the construction chief was going to gouge them good, the Captain was sure of it.

As he made his way down the muddy track, eyes on the boot-torn ground, Durek reviewed the problems facing him. In all their years of soldiering, the Company had lived out of their saddlebags, wandering the continent in the quest for gold and loot. Now they had a permanent home and would need a support staff and a steady income to offset the cost of maintaining Oramere.

T
hey planned to sell the land they had acquired under the charter at pennies an acre and establish a village on the river where the piers were being built. The revenues from the land sales and the stipends the farmers would pay the Badgers for protection should keep the outpost in good shape until the tavern and other business interests Durek had planned got underway. Of course, should enough people move out here, the Imperial government would send Imperial troops, and the defense stipend would be replaced by taxes. Each solution seemed to spawn a dozen new problems and difficulties, each demanding a quick, lasting, and effective solution.

Someone calling his name
pulled his attention from his problems and back to the present. Looking up he saw Starr Brightgift running towards him from the tents, heedless of the mud. Even sunk in his gloom and worry the Captain appreciated the young Lanthrell’s lithe grace as she swept across the ground: Starr, a relatively new recruit, was a shining example of fine-boned Threll beauty with ivory skin, rich gold hair, and startlingly blue eyes. She was also striking in her lack of height: bare inches over five feet, she was a good eight inches shorter than an average Threll female, a touchy point with the little warrior made worse by her youth, for although nearly fifty-seven years old the little Lanthrell was the emotional equivalent of a Human nineteen years old.

“Captain, there’s a messenger from the Wizard, Bluefire,” Starr exclaimed, sliding neatly to a stop beside the Dwarf, whom she topped by a foot in height. “She just came out of nowhere.”

“And she’ll go back in the same way, the pretentious bastard,” the Dwarf shook his head. “And I’ll bet she’s tall, big busted, pretty, and wearing either a very small or very tight blue outfit. Every Human male in the command within eyeshot will be useless as long as she’s around, and when she’s gone they’ll waste a couple hours telling each other about her.” For Dwarves, copulation was a process to create babies, and nothing more; moreover, due to the slow fertility cycles of a long-lived people, it was not something that had to be done very often. Durek felt this was right and proper, and made for a much more orderly social structure and tidy relationships.