The Crafter's Darkness: A Dungeon Core Novel (Dungeon Crafting Book 4) by Jonathan Brooks (e book reading free txt) 📕

Orc coming from.  It was the most likely explanation of where he had seen the Warband – if it were a Warband, of course – so she didn’t bother to ask; there were only three directions they would come from: North, west, or northwest.  If she didn’t see it coming from one of those, it was easy enough from the edge of the village to see the other directions.

Sure enough, the boy was right; coming out of the north was a group of Orcs running down the beaten path leading to the nearest village close to Orcrim’s eastern border with the dungeon forest.  It was hard to count how many of them there were because they ran in a disorganized mass, but she put them somewhere between 25 and 30; a decent-sized warband, definitely not the biggest, and certainly not the smallest she had seen. Furbrea also didn’t see anyone she immediately recognized, so whoever had told them about the deal was—hopefully—still spreading the word out there.

The Warband came to a stop outside of the village, and the largest of the bunch – who was undeniably the Warband Leader – walked through the others with him to address her.  Furbrea didn’t recognize him or any of those with him, though that wasn’t surprising; there were probably only a few hundred members of Warbands that she might recognize from over the years, because Warbands typically rotated through the same territories year after year, though sometimes they changed it up if they needed a new challenge and moved somewhere else.  Then there would inevitably be the arrival of another up-and-coming Warband that would take their place, and the cycle inexorably went on from there.

“Are you Furbath?” the Warband Leader grunted out impatiently, not even the least bit out of breath from his run from…who knew where.

“No, my name is Furbrea, but I’m going to assume that you’re looking for me,” she said automatically, before she realized that she was being a little too flippant with the other Orc – which wasn’t always the best when meeting a new Warband.  She could see that her response made a few of the regular members of the Warband mutter and stare at her for her insolence, but fortunately the Leader only laughed.

“Fine, Furbrea it is,” he said, a smile lighting his face up.  “I was told you may have a deal here that would benefit us.  If it’s true that you have better-quality weapons here, then we need them.  We can’t go a day without breaking another one of our iron swords, and it seems like they just get worse in quality every month and it’s led to some close calls that I’d rather avoid.”

Furbrea immediately took a liking to the Leader; he seemed genuinely to care for the members of his Warband, which was always an admirable quality she could get behind.  Some Leaders led with an iron fist and led by fear, others with the promise of a decent challenge or their vaunted reputation, but in her opinion the best Leaders were the ones where their members wanted to follow them.

“Yes, we have much better weapons for you,” she said, confirming that with a quick glance at their weapons.  They were barely more than bars of metal banged into a semblance of a sword by some crummy Blacksmith somewhere; she remembered that even Kelerim, despite not having much practice at it, had produced iron swords of better quality without even seeming to try.

“Excellent!  What do you want in trade?  Are there monsters around here close to your village?  Is there another ‘band threatening you?  The one who told us about the weapons wasn’t specific in what was required.”

Well, that isn’t good.  She sighed softly, now realizing that her job was going to be even harder.  “Here, come on in and wait by the central fire.  Have you eaten yet?”

“No, we’ve been on the run since this morning to reach here today.  We have to get back to our territory tomorrow, so we couldn’t afford to stop.  We have our own rations, though; from what I’ve heard, this outpost has essentially been abandoned, so we don’t want to take any away from you.”

Ah, a Leader with a heart and respect, even better.  Though, that might make it a little more difficult to get him to part with some of his Warband.  “Don’t worry, we have plenty to go around.  In fact, you’ll probably eat better tonight than you have in some time.  I’ll be along with some more soon.”  She waved towards the central fire, where the rest of her people were already cooking their own meat, which smelled excellent even from the edge of the village.  They didn’t need any other prompting after smelling that, so Furbrea went and got more food from the supply hut, rushing back as soon as she filled up a sack with a large enough quantity to feed everyone with a little extra left over.

She also brought with her two swords from the supply hut, one that was for the regular members of the Warband and one that was for the Leader himself.  As soon as everyone had eaten – and thanked her and the other villagers heartily for the food, with exclamations of delight over the presence of a variety of fruit – she brought the weapons out and laid them across her knees as she sat near the fire with the Warband Leader – who she had yet to learn the name of, though that was soon to be remedied.

“Thank you for this bounty, Furbrea,” he chuckled after stressing her name, obviously making light of his mistake earlier.  “I haven’t had an apple in…well, at least a dozen years, and this was better than that one, I can assure you.  It almost tasted like it was freshly picked, but I can’t see any apple trees around here.  Or orange trees.  Or peach