Narratives

     The shield strapped to Krumm's back was once the carapace of a huge tortoise, and so, the half-orc looked rather like a tortoise himself as he raised his tankard, threw back a swig, and then lowered it slowly back to the table. His breaths were long and controlled and his eyes moved with caution about the room.
      The maiden brought the food. She shoved the plate across the table from a distance, as if fearing she might get her hand bit off. Leaning over was, perhaps, not the wisest move she could have made. Krumm shifted slightly in his seat and cast his eyes purposefully into the blackness of his ale.
     All around him the tavern folk were either staring or trying hard not to stare. Some actually had a look of pity in their eyes, and this bothered the hulking half-breed more than any look of contempt ever could.
     They believe I am the product of violence, he thought. They believe my father was some monster who dragged away some farmer's daughter by the hair. Why correct them? Why fight them? They will always look through the same eyes.
     Even now, a battle raged upon Krumm's inner landscape. The feral blood of his bestial grandfathers versus his human sense of right and wrong. The tavern maid's scent was strong. It hovered like an opiate in the air around his huge, primitive nostrils. It filled his mind with urges more powerful than any human male would ever understand, yet somehow he managed to keep still. Krumm knew that if he so much as glanced at the girl with interest, some fool in this tavern would get himself killed defending her honor.
     Krumm turned his attention toward his food. The mutton was rare, as per his preference. The bread was fresh and warm. The ale was, perhaps, the best he had ever tasted. But he knew he would never eat here again. It would be dangerous for her. Krumm ate with a methodical slowness, not wanting to appear voracious, even though this was the first decent meal he had eaten in two days. There was a chuckle from somewhere back in a corner as Krumm dabbed the corners of his mouth with a napkin.
     His meal done, the great tortoise rose and made his way through a cramped maze of tables toward the exit. Krumm steadied the waraxe at his side so as not to accidentally knock any of the patrons with its handle. He gave them no excuses. His only words were to say thank you to the proprietor as he left. And on the table, for the tavern maid, he had left a sizable tip.

     Krumm sat on his haunches forty feet away from the center of camp. It was the midnight watch. Krumm always took the midnight watch. His traveling companions lay under blankets close to the fire, as close as piglets to their mother's teats. What, wondered Krumm, is this human obsession with warmth and light? They would sooner make themselves targets than go without their precious fire. Krumm could stand a hundred feet off in the gloom and put arrows into every single one of them before they could react effectively. Krumm would never do such a thing, of course, but the night teemed with enemies who would.
     Krumm cast a glance over his gray-stone shoulder, the first movement he had made in over an hour. Across the camp, just outside the fire's flickering sphere of illumination, another hunched form sat nearly motionless, the human picked to share the watch with Krumm. Krumm could see by the slow expanding and contracting of the human's back that the fool was asleep. Krumm curled his huge, rubbery lip in disgust, but then, after a moment's thought, the sneer became a smile. Let him sleep. The human would see just as well into the wood with his eyes closed as he would if they were open. Krumm turned his attention back toward his side of the camp.
     Far off in the black, Krumm saw a deer moving toward the river. It was a young buck with only a year's worth of antler growth. Krumm admired the animal's stealth. The deer stopped and turned its slender head toward Krumm. Half-orc and deer regarded each other momentarily, then the deer continued on its way toward the river. Suddenly, the buck turned and bolted back in the direction from which it had come. Krumm could hear the undergrowth being thrashed by its hooves as it fled. Krumm lowered his hand slowly and picked up the bow that he had lain at his feet. In his other hand was an arrow that he had been twirling between his thumb and forefinger for the duration of his watch. Krumm's only adjustment to his crouched stance was to pivot slightly to the right on the balls of his feet. He nocked the arrow, leveled it, and stared into the area from which the deer had so hastily retreated.
     Moonless midnight watches.
     These were the moments when Krumm reflected on companions lost on other nights equally as dark. It was Krumm's human side that allowed him these feelings: the pain of loosing friends; the guilt that he was not able to save them; the remorse for things unsaid to them during their time together on Oerth. There was one companion in particular that he had never thanked for the gift of letters. Griefs and regrets. These were the black and congealed thoughts that Krumm had worked into the shaft of his arrow with his thumb and forefinger, just as a leatherworker works oil into his skins.
     Krumm took in a deep, slow breath and pulled back, bending the great horn bow into its dangerous curve.
     Out in the forest, forms were now slipping from behind the trees. They were completely silent as they advanced. Krumm knew immediately what they were from the hunched shoulders and the canine snouts. They were gnolls and they were many. They scanned the forest as they came, swinging their great wolfish faces left and right, but their ultimate destination was clear. They were making their way steadily and purposefully toward the campfire. The damned, precious campfire.
     No matter. This was Krumm's preferred method of therapy.
     A large gnoll was walking point. It panted and drooled with mouth agape as it stepped carefully through the undergrowth. Krumm enjoyed shooting gnolls. Their glistening tongues made such lovely targets. Krumm exhaled the breath he had been holding for several seconds and calmly released the bowstring. Flit! The arrow punched into the gnoll's mouth and the creature gnashed at the feathers almost comically before falling to the forest floor.
     Krumm's gray, rubbery lip curled once again, further revealing the fang-like teeth of someone who was only half man.
     "Wake humans!" Krumm bellowed as he stood and drew another arrow from his quiver, "Wake and fight!"

     The sorcerer gives the waraxe back into the hands of the huge half-orc. It is the same axe with which Krumm has slain a hundred enemies, but now...now the blade sizzles with power. It seems that tiny storms make their way across the landscape of the blade toward the razor edge. Krumm's rubbery lips curl into a crazed grin. He pictures the wide, frightened eyes of his prey when they see such a weapon coming down at them. He thinks of the noises they will make and the way they will throw their heads back in agony as the blade plunges into them.
     Krumm gives the weapon a practice swing. Sweeping trails of crackling electricity are left behind in its wake, briefly filling the small workshop with light. The black hairs on Krumm's forearm stand erect and Krumm's entire body is filled with a curious sensation.
     Who needs the touch of a woman, he thinks. This...this is love!
     Only then does Krumm notice that the sorcerer has recoiled into a corner, away from Krumm's practice swing, and is looking a bit worried. Tentatively, the sorcerer holds out his hand, palm upturned. A nervous smile is on his face.
     Oh yes, thinks Krumm. Payment.
     Krumm tosses a leather pouch into the man's chest. The toss was perhaps a bit too hard, but not meant unkindly.
     The sorcerer coughs once and says, "Thank you...thank you for your patronage. I trust you will put that blade to good use...for the King?"
     "Yes," says Krumm, curiously stroking the hair on his arm. His eyes seem as electrified as his waraxe, "...for the King."