Gurgam Column Spotted

We moved on from Marrekt and its surrounding villages two days ago.  They seem to have grasped some of the concepts we explained to them; some of their young warriors are quite enthusiastic about the prospect of fighting Gurgam, but tactically quite naive.   Gallanarre is joining in more and more – he's really getting the hang of this.

We had a similar experience at the towns of Thenburn and Ellighust during that day, more keen defenders and some more outspoken critics of the fighting.  We passed through another a couple of small villages as darkness fell that night.  These were little more than just two or three farms clustered cosily together and we rested there for the evening and set off again at first light.

By late morning yesterday we had arrived in a town called Birgelth, which is quite a bit larger than any of the other places we've visited on the surface.  It is, from what Gallanarre was saying, surrounded by more villages than normal too.  It's quite a significant settlement in this region.  As we walked around the town it was clear that this place is larger than Marrekt, and we'll need to spend more than half a day here.  We spent the rest of the morning in discussions with the elders in the town, then spent yesterday afternoon going around the outlying places raising morale and drilling some defensive order into them.

When we returned, after sunset last night, the elders brought us up to date on the days events.  They had received word that a column of Gurgam has been spotted away in the hills below these villages.  They were not thought to be heading straight this way, but they were heading uphill – and Birgelth is uphill from where they were.  The message called for the town to be on its guard.  This original message had come from Hushmaz, as he and his his group of Dzarraf troops were in the hills nearby.  The message had been received shortly after Gallanarre and I left for the villages at lunchtime.  Hushmaz's scouts had picked up the trail of the Gurgam a couple of days before, and had trailed them into this region.

Upon receipt of this message Firrumum took the right course of action.  He sent out Gnaeblin scouts yesterday to try and pinpoint the Gurgam column.  Those scouts have continued to report in through the evening, and the enemy column is being monitored.

Another message from Hushmaz was received around midnight.  It said the Gurgam column had changed course, and seemed to be heading right for this region.  It said he was moving his troops to engage the column, and asked if we had a small force we could send to flank the Gurgam.  There was no shortage of volunteers, and thirty Gnaeblin were chosen.  They set off two hours before dawn.

It's now just before lunchtime, and our scouts have reported in again.  The main column of Gurgam had been diverted away from Birgelth, they will passed these towns and villages, and seem to have set off across land to engage Hushmaz's troops who have been harrying them.  The Gnaeblin warriors from this town have been heavily involved with that process.  They've been taking pot-shots at the enemy with their crossbows, and have carried out a hit and run attack against the column causing them to be in some disarray.  The worry is that a small rearguard, maybe fifty or so Gurgam were behind the main column.  They seem to have been some kind of reserve force, and their scouts were probably monitoring events and knew where the Gnaeblin had come from.  This force, according to our scouts, has turned aside and is heading directly to attack these villages.

I'm quite apprehensive.  Firrumum has called for all able bodied folk of warrior age to rise up and aid in defence, he made quite a speech, but I don't think he needed to.  The volunteer force took in far more of the villagers fighting stock than I'd have liked, it seems many are being dragged into the fighting that would otherwise not be used.  People like me.  In fact, not just people like me; the list includes me.  It's been a while since I wielded an axe, and I've never used one in earnest in a battle, although I have been trained like every Dzarraf.  I hope I do well.

It's quite a mix of emotion - the desire to get through the battle unscathed, the hope of recounting tales of glory among comrades afterwards.  The fear of death, and my own contempt, even hatred, of the enemy whom I have been working to thwart for many days now.  All this is exaggerated more by the people I journey with to do battle.  There are those who are fired up for the combat and ready to fight, those who are quietly fearing they will not make it all the way through, and one or two seasoned warriors who've been through this stuff before and hold an air of confidence and capability.

The Gurgam should reach the outlying village of Tummer first, and in less than an hour.  That is where we hope to engage them.  We'll be there in just a few moments, but it will not give us much time to organise ourselves for the defence.

Bickering in the Tribes

As we've moved through the villages, down into the valley and further from the entrances to the under-land, I seem to have become more and more of a celebrity.  I don't think these villages receive many visitors outside of their own people, and, as Gallanarre was telling me, there is no road down from the mountains here into the lands of the Hznaman.  He tells me the route would be difficult through the mountains, the best way is back through Gora, through its ornamental entrance overlooking the rolling plains to the west, then south around the mountains to a town called Saltley.

This area is a high plain among the mountains, and despite the mineral mines out here being relatively poor, the lands are fertile.  If the minerals were richer, as they are in the mountains away to the south, then perhaps the Hznaman would have a trade route up here.  Without Hznaman trade, though, the Gnaeblin have thrived.  They're not isolated but they are sheltered.  And they have a great stretch of land that, if Gallanarre were a Gurgam, he would probably covet and want to take.

As we ate our breakfast in the clear light of morning, he pointed out the size of that the lands of the Gnaeblin inhabit.  To my Dzarraf eyes, looking out over the high plain stretching into the valley it seems such a distance and it's hard to focus so far away, but there seem so few settlements, the Gnaeblin have such small numbers.

He tells me that he's journeyed to the north and the east of the mountains here, to the lands where the Hznaman live.  They have the most fertile of the lands, he explained, and they stretch such a distance, right from the feet of the mountains to the east and over all the plains out to the sea, a hundred or a hundred and fifty miles from the mountains.  But their lands are just like these of the Gnaeblin.  They build homes from wood, and sometimes from brick or stone, and they grow crops and keep animals just like this land here before us.  Perhaps I'll get to visit those places some day.

Alongside our formal work, we have been chatting to many of the villagers and peasants to try and understand how they feel.  There is a general consensus that the Gurgam are a bad enemy, and should be dealt with before they kill any more Gnaeblin.  The people are pragmatic and they don't like the conflict, but they see how open this land is, and they've been aware for generations of the threat the Gurgam poses.  If the Gurgam were to live elsewhere, there'd be no desire among these people to hunt them down or to fight them.

I have found a few dissenters, though, and in both extremes.  Those who are keen for the fight seem to be those who have already suffered at the hands of the Gurgam, and some whose losses stretch over many years.  I met some who have lost fathers, cousins, brothers and their own children.  These seem to be the keenest to fight – the first to talk about manning the defences and getting their revenge.  It is hard to keep a lid on this kind of deep rage, all you can do is try to focus it out on the Gurgam who may be here any day now.

At the other extreme, everywhere we've bumped into small pockets of people that are not so opposed to the Gurgam.  Some have said the Gurgam are just the victim of scaremongering and malicious stories, others told me they'd heard rumours that the conflict is down to us Dzarraf building up the threat to more than it really is.  There are some that suggested that the Gurgam really want to fight the Dzarraf, and the Gnaeblin are just in the way (and I think there may be some truth to this one).  I even found a couple of older Gnaeblin here in the village of Marrekt who believe that the Gurgam have been drawn into this fighting by a Gnaeblin-Dzarraf alliance for some obscure political gains, that these raids have been a response to other provocation and that they're not normally interested in fighting over these small lands.  We do what we can to convince them; Gallanarre's story often helps, but there is a hard-core that thinks that fighting isn't the answer.

Whatever the real reason for their objections, the purpose of my visit hasn't changed.  I've helped out where I can, but there is still much more work to be done.  Already these villages are capable of defending themselves much more effectively, and with fewer people doing the defending, but I'm concerned that the fighting will begin before we've visited everyone, and there will be some that will suffer because we've not been able to help.

I'm going to continue gathering information from the folk living here.  If there is some kind of political game being played, I'd like to know about it – Banneghenn never mentioned anything, and he was sincere in his dealings with me (his real problem was earning consensus from his own people) so he's probably unaware of anything going on.  If the protagonists are Dzarraf, then it has particular interest to me, and I'll be taking that matter much further.  I'm not yet sure who I'd be reporting it too though.  Surely Bekzham would have to be involved if the Dzarraf were co-ordinating this whole mess?

The Great Outdoors

My word, what a world this is.  As we emerged from the underground yesterday morning the world was bathed in a grey light, it turned out that clouds covered the sky and there had been some rain.  This seemed incredibly bright, though – the whole sky seems to glow.  As the morning passed the cloud broke up, and behind it was revealed the most amazing of sights.  The sky.  During the daytime up here it is so incredibly blue - more than I ever remember it.  And the sun itself is painfully bright.  It hurts my eyes.  Perhaps as we move further down the slopes the light will become weaker and burn less, but for now I'll just have to live with it.

The biggest surprise came as the day drew to a close.  The sun set away beyond the valleys and the mountains to the west, and as it did so the sky became darker and darker, and one by one pinpoints of light appeared in the darkening sky.  These, Gallanarre explained, are the stars.  I'll be honest – I do remember these from my last visit here when I was young, but I do not remember them being this vivid.  The stars go on for ever.  You can lay back on the ground in the night and just gaze up at them and be lost.  I must admit to being in awe of them.

During the evenings, I've been wandering off from the gatherings (where we've been made very welcome, I should add) and just sat and stared at them.  The light they give is so clear and precise but so tiny.  They are hard and unmoving – but of course they do move.  It was Gallanarre who pointed out to me their slow trail across the sky as night passes.  The stars track across the sky during the night much like the sun does during the day.  You can use them, he explained, to help find your way across distances in the darkness.  He pointed out the stars that track across the north, of patterns of stars and how they can keep you on course if you're lost.  While I found it fascinating, I didn't pay too much attention to the detail.  I'll be back safely underground in a few days, and none of it will be needed.

The night time here isn't even all that dark – I'm used to the dark of the under-land, where there are no stars.  Out here I can see for a long way in the night with all the starlight.  Another contrast I've noticed here is that the water on the surface tastes so pure and so fresh, and, compared to the steady temperature found underground, it's so cold.  As it trickles over rocks the land and the cold air seem to pull any heat it might have had out of it.

We journeyed to several settlements yesterday and today.  I find it odd that the Gnaeblin are not not just our underground neighbours, but that so many of them live in quaint little villages with houses built from wooden planking and sealed with a mixture of tar and mud.  It all fits together so well – it is very pleasant.  They do not have to dig out their living areas from the surrounding rock, and there is so much space in the settlements, they can create homes as large as they need (although some have complained a little about the lack of good wood – they seemed jealous of Dzarraf underground homes).  I think I quite like the outdoors, but I do have one gripe.

It's sodding freezing.

Not that I'm letting that interfere with my work.  I wrapped up on several layers of the woollen clothes I brought along with me, and that helps a little, at least until the wind blows.  Gallanarre's plan is to visit only one or two of these outposts every day, now.  The collective nature of them, the small town and outlying villages, make them easy to help and organise, but bring different challenges, and they seem spread out so far from each other.

It is curious that they live so far apart - it's much further than villages would be spaced underground, and I've found the distances, especially with the natural rising and falling of the ground, quite tiring to walk.  I'm astounded that the Gnaeblin here don't even consider the villages to be a long way apart.  Mind you, they seem to have plenty of space in which to build their villages out here.  They even grow their food and livestock in the large open spaces between the villages and towns.  It's quite unusual.

Out on Patrol

Over the last couple of days we've visited several of the border areas underground, and I've helped as much as I can.  But the next leg of the journey is more exotic and more unfamiliar to me – we're going up to the surface.  I've not been there since I was a child, and I must say I'm not looking forward to it.  The thought of wide open spaces, stars above our heads, and sunshine.  People like me weren't cut out for this, it's why we're underground most of the time.  I know many of my brethren have chosen to live there, and that there is little to truly be worried about.  But I am anxious, I'm not sure what I'll make of it.

I'm expecting it to be cold - all I can remember of the last time I was there was the brightness of the sun, and something the surface people called 'weather'.  Sometimes water falls from the sky and makes you wet (and more cold).  That's how the rivers are filled up, they tell me.  I don't remember there being any of that on my last visit, but I do remember the continuous blast of air, not not so different to the air movement we get from the large forges down in the deeps.  But this is icy air, not hot like the air rising from any forge.  The Hznaman call it 'wind'; we have nothing like it in the under-land it stands out in my memory even after all these years.  It comes, I recall, hand-in-hand with the cold.  It seemed to blow straight through the woollen clothes I was wearing, and I struggled to bear it.

I think it's the cold and this wind that has me most anxious, although I'm doing what I can to keep it all hidden from my travelling companions.  I keep wondering if I brought enough woollens to keep my knees warm.  If I'm honest, I don't mind admitting that part of me is looking forward to seeing the stars once again – I recall finding them to be fascinating when I was young.  Perhaps I'll begin to understand what it is about them that inspires the Welven folk.

There are a small string of villages dotted around each of the many entrances to the underground lands here.  From what Gallanarre has been saying, none of them are heavily populated, but they all have open farmland, even up here in the mountains.  The Gnaeblin lands sit on a high plain up among the mountains where the rains that his the mountains keep the lands moist.  The mountains to the south of this plain provide some shelter, although from what Gallanarre tells me the winds that flow from the peaks is quite cold and can be blustery.  That doesn't really ease my anxiety.

As we go further northwards, down into the valley, the settlements become a little larger, and these are the places where the Gurgam attacks are most likely to be aimed.  The villages there are gathered together in small groups, usually around some central town.  From his descriptions, they seems to be long distances apart, but he tells me they're not, and that travelling between them is faster out there on the surface.  We shall see.

Haggling with the Gnaeblin Youth

As we passed through a larger town just after lunch, I think it was called Bilerren, we encountered the strongest resistance to our cause yet.  Gallanarre and I sat with the town's elders – a small council of the wise – and we discussed defensive tactics with them.  Some of them had military experience, and that helped speed up our work, but as we moved out of the meeting to review the physical defences we ran into a small crowd of youngsters, maybe twenty or thirty of them, who object to the whole fighting thing.  Rather than wave them away, Gallanarre and I took a step we hadn't taken before – we invited them inside the meeting room where we'd just sat with the elders.

While the protesters assembled in, I had a chat with Vachney, the senior of the Gnaeblin elders and I asked him to keep quiet during the discussions that followed, I told him that it was important that he leave the talking to Gallanarre and myself and to just back us up if asked any direct questions.

Because we had run into this kind of resistance on our journey, Gallanarre and I have been thinking of ways to counter it.  In previous towns and villages we'd only met with a few token protesters, nothing like this, although the further we've journeyed the bigger the protest groups have become.

We sat and listened to their protests.  We asked them to define their position – we had lots of them do it, over and over; we really wanted to know _why_ they thought it necessary to endanger the lives of their friends and family by trying to broker a peace with invaders.  I've not actually had to fight Gurgam before, of course I've heard stories of Dzarraf encounters with them, but they're not first hand accounts.  Gallanarre, on the other hand, had so he did the talking.  He told them of his earliest days in the military, his first posting which was part of a defensive station out in the valley beyond Meer-Pevero (a well known outlying surface town of the Gnaeblin) and how, just as dusk was falling one day, they were attacked by a wave of Gurgam.  They were caught on the hop, but rallied – and butchered many of their attackers, turning the Gurgam back.  Some of his friends were injured in the fighting though, and they struggled to tend to the wounded before the Gurgam returned, this time with disgusting Ogruks behind them.  The Ogruks had swords and whips and drove the Gurgam onto the Gnaeblin defences.  It was carnage.  Most of the Gurgam perished in the fighting, but the Ogruks pressed on.

The Gnaeblin were outnumbered and were pressed so hard they had to  abandon their positions.  They retreated up the valley back towards the towns, but they couldn't take their own injured.  The Gnaeblin screams from the defensive camp as the defenders were beaten back were terrible – the Gurgam dealt brutally with the injured that had remained behind.  It wasn't the Gurgam that were the real problem that day, it was the Ogruks who used them as infantry.  They're rubbish as soldiers and are weak and easily overcome.  But they're numerous, and easily manipulated.

Gallanarre held the protesters' full attention as he told his first-hand account.  He continued his story from three hours later, when reinforcements arrived from the towns and from other defence stations nearby.  The Gnaeblin troops pushed back through their base, wiping out the Gurgam and getting to the Ogruks.  They captured a few but those that didn't die mostly ran off into the darkness.  Questioning the prisoners was useless.  All they learned was what they already knew, that Ogruks hate the Gnaeblin with a passion, and they hate the Dzarraf even more.

This pulled some of the protesters on board, some were finally convinced that military defence was the only solution, but not all of them.  There were some that still felt that a negotiated peace had never been tried, that it would be the best way to ensure the survival of people on both sides of the conflict.  We asked if they would volunteer to visit the Ogruks who are driving the Gurgam on, to try and negotiate that peace.  There were no volunteers.  Cowards.

I threw threw in some more details of my own – the names of my own friends who had joined the delve defence forces only to be killed defending our delves from the likes of the Ogruks and their tougher cousins the Oggar.  Despite all this, there were those who still refused to accept that the enemy wanted anything but peace.  I really struggled to contain my rage – several of the friends I'd had as a youth had fallen victims to the most savage, spiteful, hateful rage-filled people imaginable.  And these idiots wanted to negotiate with them.  And they weren't even willing to attempt to start that negotiation themselves.  I stormed out of the meeting rather than lay into them verbally.  At first there was silence behind me – then the protesters began bickering and arguing among themselves, I could hear it kicking off behind me.

As I sat in the front office of that splendid building taking a drink of spring water and calming down when Gallanarre and Vachney came out to join me.  They seemed quite pleased.  As the worst of my anger had passed I tried to project a calm sense of purpose, to try and give the impression that I'd been in complete control the whole time, and that my rage was measured and pre-planned to achieve an effect.  I don't know if they swallowed that line, but they were certainly happy at the end result.  Gallanarre had told the stunned silence after I'd walked out that Gurgam do not take prisoners, and they do not negotiate.  That they're the puppets of the Ogruks, and they will fight and fight until there are no Gnaeblin and no Dzarraf left anywhere.  That, he said, was the point at which arguing and in-fighting in the group exploded.

We stopped and listened to the loud arguing for a while.  Some were arguing that they should seek peace, but others were now adamant that Ogruks cannot be bargained with, and that even if a peace could be fashioned, there'd still be hundreds, and maybe thousands, of Gurgam bent on attacking the Gnaeblin homelands.

We resumed our work of reviewing the defences at this point.  We'd have loved to stay and listen to the fight develop further – but we've got work to do.

Starting the Defence Review

Yesterday, after a day's journey from Sanvell we started passing through some smaller towns and villages.  This part of the mission isn't really about my reorganising the defences.  Gallanarre has been banging the drum a little, rousing the locals to spur volunteers to head back to Sanvell and a weapons muster.  He can be quite inspiring.  He's been trying to raise ten or twenty young warriors from each of the towns – and he's done that easily.  We dropped in on five settlements yesterday, and another two this morning.  I forget the names of these places as we seemed to pass through so quickly.  He talked to groups of young Gnaeblin at gatherings, while I spent most of the time chatting to the senior figures in the town.  At first this was by accident, but last night and even more so  this morning I sought them out to discuss general defence tactics with them just in case it's needed.  I've kept the advice light and as generic as possible as all we'd need from these village seniors is to be defensively prepared if they were attacked.  If the Gurgam broke this deep into Gnaeblin territory, the defensive strategy for the entire army would change – there'd be senior Gnaeblin defence commanders here with significant forces, including several thousand Dzarraf.

Our job changed this afternoon as we approached the Gnaeblin region known as the  'borders', which is a string of settlements that runs along the edge of the mountain entrances.  We are no longer raising an army, we are now doing work that I'm here to do – the discussion of formal defences.  We stopped at three towns this afternoon and finished quite late in the evening.  This has now developed into hard work.

In each case we had the local seniors take us around the defences, and we moved things around pretty much in the way I'd discussed with Banneghenn, but taking into account the size of any defensive structures or terrain.  We even gave advice to that last village, Wimmet I think it's called, about shoring up the banking they have behind the wide tunnels that lead into their caves.  We've also increased the production of arrows and crossbow bolts, short-swords, hand axes and shields for use in the defences.  Gallanarre has been involved with all this.  Out here the objective is to defend better and still provide one or two extra troops for the attack force.  These extra troops are no longer being sent to Sanvell either – now we're sending them to the surface town of Demmol, as per Gallanarre's instructions.

In general we've been welcomed – some are quite pleased to see us.  But it's not the same from all the people we visit.  Many of the younger generations don't fully understand the Gurgam problem, and they seem to think that fighting isn't the solution.  It's likely that they don't want to fight and die against the Gurgam, and that peace is only a negotiation away.  They're blinded by a mix of cowardice and ideology.  They do not yet realise that fighting is something they will probably end up doing that anyway – the Gurgam are coming to them.  And they aren't keen negotiators, and they don't stop to agree truces.

Leaving the Comfort of Sanvell

I've been in the lands of the Gnaeblin for over a week now, and we were still in Sanvell until earlier today.  As we prepared to leave the small city I was told that Gallanarre would be journeying with us.  He had been instructed to improve his understanding of military defences, learning as much as possible from my leadership.  I discussed the matter at length with both he and Llayn who visited me in the inn last night where we also shared a meal and some beer.  We talked about both the instructions he'd received and some general defensive strategies.  Gallanarre isn't so green about military defence as he might have portrayed when I first met him, but Llayn was desperately inexperienced – and he's supposed to be one of Banneghenn's personal guards.

It was mid-morning when we left, and soon the city was far behind us.  Travelling with Gallanarre and me are two Gnaeblin guards.  They don't seem particularly talkative, and they are probably peeved because they've been reassigned from the Gnaeblin attack units to guard us.  I doubt much will happen to us in the first few days of this trip, but they're likely to become more useful the further out from here that we go.

Our supplies are being pulled along in a small cart.  The Gnaeblin have provided a small pony to pull this, not a mule.  It's a plain looking animal, but seems very obedient.  It doesn't smell quite so bad either.  That's a big improvement over a mule.