El-Vador's Travels Read Online Free PDF Page B

that had been routed as soon as
the champions had appeared, a disgrace to his name and his ancestor's
memories.
    He
had almost reached the safety of the trees when an arrow pierced his
arm.
    He
snarled one last curse at the Goblin that had shot him and staggered
deeper into the forest to evade pursuit.
    He
caught sight of his homeland a few days later. The Orcs had done
their best to stop him from ever returning and they had failed.
Though he may be craven he still yet lived, while more than a few of
them lay dead at his hands.
    It
was little solace to him as he made it to the door of his home. They
had lost.

    Gurgash
stared at the wounded Elf, uncertain how to feel after the battle was
over. The Elf glared up at him and spat in his face. With a sigh,
Harg speared him in the gut. 'That one would have made a decent
slave.' he remarked. 'I wonder what their price on the meat markets
is these days?'
    Gurgash
didn't comment, sending another Elf he found still breathing on the
field out of this world with as much speed and mercy as he could give
them. Somehow they had won the fight, and it had been the champions
they had been cursing before that had swung the battle.
    Most
of the Orcs and Goblins he had seen felt the same way, wondering why
the champions hadn't come in sooner and changed the course of the
fight before so many lives had been lost. No one who had stood
against the Elves rushing out of the woods could have reckoned them
anything but worthy foes requiring the intervention of their
strongest forces.
    'Isn't
it obvious?' Harg commented as he picked over a corpse for valuables.
'They want to save their best until the very last moment, we're the
grunts and we're expendable, all of us. The champions are not. They
probably feel aggrieved that their hand was forced.'
    Chief
Sarvacts rode up as the foot soldiers continued picking through the
corpses, a murderous look of disapproval in his eyes. It was as if
they had failed him personally by dying too often.
    'When
next we fight the Elves.' he said. 'My champions will not intervene.
Should you all fall we shall simply replace you with others.'
    'Aye,
Chief,' came the chorus from the Orcs. The sight of Sarvacts in such
a mood despite victory scared them. They didn't want to see what
would happen should they ever be defeated. Then again if they were
ever defeated they'd probably not live to witness it. After all, they
were mere grunts.
    'Our
goal remains the same, we shall seize this land and make it our own
by washing it clean of the Elven impurity. Then in time the site of
our final victory will become a city to rival the great Orcish
burials of home. We have smashed the back of their armies but there
is much yet to do, we must still root the rest of the Elves out of
their huts and exterminate them so that they breed no further.' he
waved at the corpse-strewn field. 'When everything that is Elven
feeds the ground with its maggot-riddled pestilence, then we shall be
free of their blight.'
    From
the battle that Gurgash had just fought through, he hoped that there
were few places left to conquer and that had indeed been the bulk of
the Elven military might.
    'I
just hope that's the most they can send against us.' said Harg in a
low voice, echoing Gurgash's own thoughts. 'We barely made it through
that last encounter. If that happens again we'll need more than
champions to turn the tide.'
    'Do you suppose hunting the rest of the Elves down will be as easy
as he says?' asked Gurgash.
    Before Harg could answer, their commanding officer arrived. 'We've
broken their backs now, it won't be easy to hunt them to extinction
but I don't expect an armed resistance like this again.' he said.
    Harg
looked up from searching another a corpse. He rose, muttering to
himself and shaking his head. 'I've not found anything worth keeping.
The poorest, most miserly Goblin carries more in the way of loot than
these pale ones. This conflict just isn't worth it.'
    Before
his commanding officer could bite