Crusade - James Lowder [82]
As he had each evening of the march, Torg traveled from clan to clan, marked in camp by their different standards. Before the soldiers went about their duties or to sleep, the ironlord gave them a short, direct speech about the crusade. The orcs, he told the army, were an evil they would put up with until the battle was over. Then the Zhentish beasts, or whatever was left of them, would answer to the troops of Earthfast for their insult.
As the soldiers from Earthfast silently set up camp for the night, Princess Alusair studied the dark edge of the forest to the east. The area the dwarves had been crossing was grassland, generally devoid of trees, so the huge expanse of woods presented an imposing front. And though the most direct route to the location where they would join up with the Army of the Alliance was through the forest, Torg refused to consider taking his troops that way.
"Only elves and other such questionable creatures lurk in forests," the ironlord had told Alusair. "I'll not put my soldiers in danger needlessly by taking a shortcut through an obvious haven for traps. We'll go south, then skirt the forest and head east."
Alusair wasn't quite sure who the ironlord thought would set a trap for the dwarves, but she really didn't care. Torg's inflexibility on the matter only fostered a vague but growing dissatisfaction the princess felt with the ironlord's army. Nine months past, in the middle of autumn, Alusair had gone to the Earthfast Mountains in search of a lost artifact. Instead, she found a small but proud group of dwarves defending their decaying underground city against a seemingly endless onslaught of evil orcs and goblins. Always searching for a worthy cause, the princess joined the fight. Her knowledge of military strategy, gained from her father when she was still a child, proved invaluable to the dwarves of Earthfast. The orcs were routed, and the crumbling city was saved.
Most of the time Alusair had spent with the dwarves had been taken up with battles against orcs and goblins. The princess had never felt anything for the soldiers other than respect or the camaraderie one has for an ally in battle. Until now.
Torg cared little for the tremendous confusion Alusair felt. She'd tried to speak to the ironlord about her father on the first day's march, but he had simply dismissed the topic as idle chatter. The princess knew that few of the dwarves had families; the orcs and goblins had slain most of the women and children in Earthfast years ago. Even Torg's queen had been killed in a battle fifteen years past.
That shouldn't make them so cold, Alusair decided as she watched a lone falcon soar up into the twilight. It moved out from the forest's edge and circled idly over the camp. Occasionally, the bird of prey shrieked. The noise echoed mournfully in the warm early summer's night.
The princess sighed and turned toward her tent, wondering over the fact that Torg had sent a letter to Azoun agreeing to supply troops to the crusade at the end of winter, almost four months past. The year was soaring by as quickly as the bird overhead.
The dwarven sentry that Alusair passed on the way to camp only nodded.
Apart from a few softly spoken orders and the unavoidable noise made setting up tents and building watchfires, the camp was silent. Once, Alusair had found the peace and quiet relaxing; now it left her too much time to think. That was the last thing she wanted.
Azoun's actions had puzzled the princess and made her, perhaps, a bit sad. She'd certainly expected the conflict over her leaving home. However, Alusair hadn't believed it possible her father would admit she had control of her own life. She had been ready to take the moral high ground in the dispute, ready to prove to the king how her actions weren't so very different from his own as a youth. She looked at the signet ring Azoun had left with her and cursed.
Her father's less dogmatic attitude toward her independence might have meant an easy reconciliation a few months ago, but not after what Alusair had seen in the