Chapter 26: Chapter 24 – Big Game Hunter

"Some beasts that inhabit the Xewaur plains often get you ridiculed merely for trying to describe them. It took an orc caravan bringing a skull trophy before I stopped getting ridiculed for telling people my story, for example." Clarence Whitemore, Human adventurer.

 

Orcs were an efficient and resilient people, Cal found. Despite the fact that they partied to no end just the night before - and indeed, this morning many of them woke up from wherever they fell asleep, dead drunk, last night -, they got up and prepared for departure with nary a hangover - if they had any, they didn't show it - in sight.

 

It was not two hours past dawn before the whole caravan was packed and departed their camp, their herd of animals kept pace alongside the wagons under the guard of the orcish warriors - amongst which Cal spied Davor and Mira, apparently orcs were foreign to the idea of vacation for newlyweds -, with Bogdan himself in the lead of the caravan astride his saber-toothed lion.

 

The caravan made a good pace for the day, a pace which Cal predicted would have made it to Gal-Morogh with a week or more to spare before the gathering began. That said, she was somewhat surprised when the caravan stopped and made a circle as if they were about to settle down for the night, not two hours past noontime.

 

"What's up?" She asked Bogdan, who was in discussion with a couple of young orcs that served as scouts for the tribe. "We're stopping early today?"

 

"The scout found traces of thunder lizards." Bogdan explained. "We stop so we have time to hunt."

 

"I imagine they must be of some importance, seeing that you stopped the convoy just to hunt them." Cal queried, not aware of what a thunder lizard might be.

 

"Oh, yes. If we succeed in taking one, we will not lack meat for the month, and it would be a great trophy to showcase the honor of the tribe too."

 

"A month? Just what are these thunder lizards?"

 

"Why don't you come with us? Join us for the hunt and witness for yourself."

 

"I think I will take you up on that offer." Cal said. "Could use some workout myself."

 

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Cal was quite surprised to see that easily half of the most capable warriors amongst the orcs joined the hunting party, as the rest were tasked with the defense of the caravan. They went on foot with the scouts in the lead, the rest of the party walked in silence as they followed the lead.

 

She spotted a track she presumed belonged to one of these thunder lizards about half an hour after they started the hunt. A massive footprint imprinted in a softer patch of soil, easily as large as the trunk of a century-old tree. Not too far away from that footprint, the scouts discovered a colossal pile of dung, still relatively fresh, a sign that their quarry was nearby.

 

The first time Cal saw a thunder lizard, she mistook it for a tree like the one it grazed on, until it moved. The creatures were gigantic, easily eight or more meters in height at the shoulder, and likely close to three times as long from head to tail. They had a barrel-shaped torso perched upon six tree-like legs, with a long neck and slender tail each as long as their torso. Their heads looked comically small compared to the size of their massive bodies, and the visible dentition she saw reminded her of cattle, likely a creature that subsisted on plants. It was also a creature that could have likely turned her into a red smear if it accidentally stepped on her though, and its long, slender, whip-like tail wasn't something she looked forward to either.

 

"Davor, you're with me. Mira, you, Sena, and Zard keep it distracted. Omar, have everyone else prepare to strike when opportunity presents." Bogdan commanded the other orcs. "Friend Celeysria, pardon the query, but if you are a mage, I would ask for your affinity."

 

"Blood, Water-Major." Cal said, her halberd firmly in her grip by now. The orcs around her also had their respective weapons in hand by now. Bogdan himself had a three-meter spear with a broad head in his hands. "You have a plan, I assume?"

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"We aim for the old one there." Bogdan pointed at a particularly large thunder lizard that moved with some apparent lethargy as it grazed. "They will be less likely to fight to defend an old one than to defend their young."

 

"You are more familiar with these beasts than I am." Said Cal in reply. "Where do you want me?"

 

"You're a blood mage, come with me and Davor. We will try to climb and strike its head. It is more vulnerable there."

 

"Works for me."

 

The rest of the orcs positioned themselves around their chosen prey, cautious as they gave a respectful distance to the lizard's long, whip-like tail. At a nod from Bogdan, Mira and the other two mages with her casted their best attempts to distract the colossal beast. Mira, evidently a light-affinity mage, shone a ray of light from her hands straight at the creature's eyes, which blinded it for the moment. Sena, the older female orc mage turned the soil beneath the creature's front-left feet into mud, in which the feet immediately sunk in deep, while Zard, an older male orc, encased another of the creature's legs in stone.

 

Cal went along with Bogdan and Davor as the rest of the orcs made loud noises and pelted the creature with some arrows - utterly ineffective against a creature of such colossal size, but at least they grabbed its attention and made the other lizards of the herd wary. Bogdan and Davor both turned out to be fellow blood mages, and they climbed up the immobilized creature with relative ease, and reached its broad back in moments.

 

"Davor, stay here and see if you can keep it distracted." Bogdan commanded. Davor wielded a pair of axes, which would not be particularly effective when the size of the creature was to be considered. Even Bogdan was unsure whether his spear was anywhere near long enough to reach anything vital from the creature's back. "We try for the head?" He asked Cal.

 

"Sure!"

 

The two of them climbed their way up the long neck of the creature, as they used the creases on its skin to aid their ascent. Halfway on their climb, they found the creases had become too few and far between to climb with, so with a look of mutual understanding, Cal and Bogdan each pulled out a pair of short blades and stabbed it into the creature's flesh as they braced themselves.

 

Both held on for dear life as the creature gyrated its long neck. Fortunately the rest of the hunting party still occupied most of its attention, and the beast was not smart enough and had not attempted to bash them against a tree or the ground. Once it calmed down, Cal pulled herself up, balanced herself with her feet on the blades embedded in the creature's flesh, and grabbed another pair of blades out of her storage to serve as the next set of footholds. Bogdan repeated the maneuver after the creature gyrated and calmed again, and they patiently repeated the process until they found themselves close enough to leap on top of the creature's head. Fortunately for them, it was an old, tired creature, and was thus far less vigorous than a younger specimen.

 

Cal and Bogdan communicated to one another for a moment with hand gestures, before Cal carefully climbed up to stand on its head, her halberd held high above and ready to strike. A moment later Bogdan leaped from his perch and stabbed at the creature's right eye with his spear, and Cal brought down her halberd with all the force she could muster at the same time. Both hits struck true, the hammerhead of Cal's halberd pierced through the tough skin and struck the hard skull, while more than half of Bogdan's spear were embedded in the creature's eye. It gave a roar in pain for the first time, and shook its neck from side to side in an attempt to throw them off, but they held on for dear life.

 

By now, Sena and Zard managed to have basically immobilized the creature, its legs trapped either in deep pools of mud or in cases of stone. It tilted towards its left - the side Sena focused on -, but did not fall. Its tilt did make Bogdan's position more stable, even as it made Cal's more precarious. They repeated their attacks whenever they had the chance, blow after blow landed on the hapless creature, and even then the creature's vitality proved to be a hard challenge to overcome.

 

It took them nearly half an hour of hard work to kill the beast, as Cal broke through its hard skull with much effort, and Bogdan thrusted his spear at the small gap she created, straight into the creature's brain. It gave a loud, sorrowful bellow, before its long neck drooped down and it took its last breath.

 

The orcs cheered at their successful hunt, and had just started to ready themselves for a long night where most of them would stay with the carcass to watch it while one would be sent to fetch the rest of the caravan to head over, when Cal offered an alternative solution. The orcs did their best to "fold" the thunder lizard's neck and tail on top of its body as she requested, then Cal simply put the carcass into her storage, where it fitted just fine. In fact, she could have easily stored another ten of the beasts as long as they were compacted like this one.

 

They made it back to the caravan before sundown to loud cheers, which increased by whole orders of magnitude once she extracted the carcass from her storage.

 

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