The Game of Fates by Joel Babbitt

stick to augment his pair of long
knives, he noticed the fist sized rocks that Arren had placed as a border to
the small cooking fire.  After thinking for a moment, Trallik took an empty
sack out of his backpack.  Walking over to the now scattered rocks, he began
collecting a few of them and putting them in his bag.  He noticed Arren
watching him curiously.  “I lost my bow and quiver,” he explained.  After a few
moments, he ran the top of the bag through a belt and tied it off.
    “Are
we ready then?” Arren asked as he stood.
    “Sure,
why not?” Trallik answered.
    “Well
then, let’s be off.”  With that, Arren turned and began to make his way toward
the orc trail and from there to the caves that hopefully led through the
northern mountains.
     

 
Chapter 5 – The Feast
     
    D urik was greeted by pleasant
smells, soft string music, upheld mugs, and the cheers of his warriors as he
entered the great chamber through the inner door.  In the center of the hall
the large stone cooking pit was in partial use.  A pig, run through by an iron
spit, was slowly turning over a hot bed of coals.  The little smoke that rose
from the fire itself wisped upward into the stone-lined wooden chimney, rising
with the hot air out into the cool of the evening.  Off in one corner sat a
pair of females about his age softly strumming on lap-harps and humming a tune
he did not recognize.
    The
great hall itself was dominated by the large cooking pit in the center of it. 
Though it had enough room to simultaneously cook several pigs on separate
spits, only one pig was roasting in the pit tonight.  The party was small
compared to what the great hall could hold.  One row of tables ringed the great
pit on either side, with the remaining tables and benches stacked or pushed off
to either side.  On one side of the pit sat the members of Durik’s Company.  On
the other side of the pit sat council members as well as other members of
distinction in the Krall Gen.
    Following
Durik, Khazak Mail Fist did not hesitate to make for a likely seat among the
council members of the Krall Gen.  That table had been served the first
helpings of pig as well as the first helpings of vegetables and sweet bark
cider. 
    As
Durik look briefly around the room, he saw Manebrow, Gorgon, Kiria, and Ardan
seated at the end of the table closest to Lord Krall, with a seat reserved at
the table’s end.  Walking around the pit, Durik took the reserved seat and,
hanging his sword by the baldric from the chair’s high back, sat down to join
his company as they waited for their turn to be served.
    “Sire,
all are present,” Manebrow said, the wizened eyes of the much older warrior who
had recently been their trainer and who now was second in command to Durik
seemed more relaxed than normal.
    “Thanks,
Manebrow,” Durik said, then as if he had just remembered something, he
continued.  “Oh, by the way, you might want to know that there’s a dragon in
this Hall of the Mountain King, two of them in fact.”
    “And
what does that have to do with us, sire?” Manebrow asked, caution creeping into
his voice.  “Isn’t the Kale Stone to be found under the Chop?”
    Durik
grimaced.  “Khazak Mail Fist seems determined to send us to Palacid in search
of it, quoting some old prophecy.  That same prophecy says we have to go to the
Hall of the Mountain King.”
    Manebrow’s
signature eyebrows, a trait only he and his sons shared, went up in alarm. 
“What?!”  The other warriors looked his way.
    “Calm
now, Manebrow,” Durik said.  “We’ll speak more about it later, but the plan is
that we’re to sneak in while the two of them are away visiting the smaller male
dragon’s home.”
    “Well,
that’s comforting,” Manebrow said sarcastically, the revelation breaking even
his even temperament, “we’re going to sneak around with a pair of dragons on
the loose.”
    Durik
shushed Manebrow again, “Calm now, Manebrow.  I do not believe our quest