Evasion and Murder

I had successfully evaded the orc creatures and traveled quite a distance down stream and then I came into a large field and could just see a tower in the distance though I couldn't make out any details so with no better place to head I headed towards it. Arriving at the tower it looked to be in decent shape though it was a bit dilapidated the door was fairly dry rotted and it looked like had been bashed down before it had rotted but it was also liberally splashed in a dark brown substance that might be very old blood but I was no forensics team and crime shows told you things but didn't have a lot of facts or I assumed so.

I looked through the area and found nothing else nearby so I decided to explore the tower and it was full of dead deteriorated into skeletons however they were armored skeletons which meant loot so I inspected the bodies well what was left of them but nothing stood out to me. After checking the bodies and finding nothing to salvage I looked through the entire tower and actually found some barrels filled with arrows and several unstrung bows and some that had been strung and had since been warped and the string rotted. Digging through the crates and barrels I found a few useful things that I snagged for myself a shorter recurve bow that I could just barely draw a well preserved quiver that I filled with the best arrows that I could find and then I grabbed another quiver full of arrows for the chance I might need them granted I doubted I'd need them right away still you never know what you might need and not have I'd rather have extras than not have enough those orcs were tough.

Newly armed I made sure to oil everything including a light coat on the bow then I headed out of the tower and to the road I'd spotted from the top of the tower well more of a wagon track but my thought was that if their was a tower it had to be guarding something and I'd kind of already been down one direction of the road as the last village had a road of sorts from this direction and assuming a logical road placement this would be the same road. After picking my direction I began walking it wasn't long before I found a pair of mostly rotted wagons blocking the road and more armored skeletons on the other side strange that the orc creatures hadn't eaten them considering that they had seemed perfectly fine eating humanoid flesh in that first village.

After pondering the orcs diet I decided to keep going the forest on either side was pretty impassible so I could understand why whoever had died here had made a stand here thought the wagons now were crumbling from rot. As I passed the barricade I could tell that this had been a desperate defense skeletons lay everywhere some in armor others who had clearly been wielding weapons. As I walked through the field of battle it was clear that the soldiers who died here had fought hard for what I'm not certain but they had fallen among hundreds of their enemies the field of bodies extending hundreds of yards in front of and behind the barricade and as I walked farther down the road and then I reached the end of the corpses.

The road was clear but I could tell by the scattered nubs of wood sticking out of the road the battle hadn't ended as I went I would find more and more corpses scattered across the road they were clearly not human but looked like they might belong to the orcs but there was no way I could be certain without cutting up orc corpses. I came to another battle ground orc and human skeletons coated the road this looked like a final battle everyone had died here I could feel it that and the abrupt lack of skeletons in the distance so I trudged on hoping to get out of this field of death as soon as possible.

By the time I cleared the old battlefield it was getting late and having no desire to sleep near the dead I pushed on and eventually I found myself clear of everything and in a field at the cusp of dark so I walked a short way off the road and plopped down to rest. I must have passed out because I woke up to the sun shining and my mouth dry I sat up with a start this was not a world that rewarded complacency and I was on my guard immediately but luckily there was nothing around so I decided to keep following road there was little else to find nearby. About a day after the battle site I found a second smaller one probably the survivors of the first battle though this looked like the last of them as every body had an empty quiver atleast the human ones that is the orc skeletons had mostly died from arrows it seemed and they were a wielding primitive weapons clubs and the occasional sword or axe nothing ranged though and the humans armor looked pretty cut up.

At the second battle field it was obvious that the archers had made their final stand here as you could tell they had been surrounded. The battle field was just as depressing as the first but I had to find out why they had fought so hard and as I walked I prayed that it wasn't a caravan or civilians. It was a day later that I found out what those soldiers had so fiercely guarded as I passed a few skeletons wearing faded gowns like I would imagine elderly wore a day later I found the rest of them or so I hoped it was three carriages with several families and I could tell based on the disparity of the sizes of the skeletons the smallest held to its mothers chest and shielded by her body but there were also a few orc skeletons as well.

I had to stop and take a minute and I said to what I assumed was the man's bones "you fought bravely I am sorry for the loss of everything you held dear but you fought with courage, I cannot give you the burial you and everyone else here deserves but I can give you the respect you deserve" and having said that I stood and placed my hand over my heart then saluted like they did in the movies then I said "For the bravery and courage you've shown I salute you you shall not be forgotten" and then I kept walking. I came across several more wagons some blocking the road others overturned all had the same sad story and the bodies of a few more orcs.

It was a depressing walk indeed though what made me wonder was the complete lack of horses or anything else to pull the wagons and now that I'd thought about it I hadn't seen anything of the sort at all yet. The lack of animal corpses suggested to me that either they had a way to move their wagons without them or simply had none and considering that I'd yet to see any signs of quality I had to assume the latter these weren't rich people most of them had used farm tools in their defense. So many questions unanswered it was troubling but I couldn't stop and 5 days after the first signs of battle I came to a fortress city walls towering into the air towers visible above it was massive from the perspective I was at now I wondered if they had been under seige.