[Arry]

Kreblug shivered as he looked at the proffered cup. ‘Just a taste,’ he whispered hoarsely. ‘Just something to wet my whistle. Easier to talk, if you catch my drift.’

Gromwakh poured just a tot into a small cup handed him by Snikdul and watched as the his benighted fellow Orc chased away his demon for the moment. Kreblug smacked his lips together when it was gone; looking deep into the cup in case he had missed a drop. He looked up hopefully at Gromwakh, only to see his eyes narrow and his head shake a definitive ‘no’.

‘Right, then,’ Kreblug began. ‘It were late last night, nearing sun up I think, when me and a couple of friends were off on some private business of our own.’

Snikdul wiped his dripping nose on the back of his arm and gave a small cough. ‘Drinking your “private business”, more likely,’ he thought to himself. Looking up he thought he saw the same assessment flicker in Gromwakh’s eyes. Gromwakh, in fact, had decided that perhaps the ‘information’ the Orc had might be from drunken imaginings. He urged Kreblug to go on.

‘It’s when we saw ‘im. Well not so much as saw him as smelled him. That stinking stench they have. Near enough to set our guts to roiling.’ Kreblug snorted as if the foul stench had hit him once again.

‘Probably got a whiff of himself,’ muttered Snikdul, moving to stand near Gromwakh. Grom kicked him in the ankle and cast what passed as a smile toward Kreblug. ‘Go on . . . we’re all pins and needles here,’ he said to the informant. ‘What was it that smelled so bad?’ Kreblug wavered, about to ask for one more little taste, but the look on Gromwakh’s face decided his course.

‘A stinking Elf it was! Sniffer, it was, who caught the scent - smelled him sure in one of the trees near us. Try as we might we couldn’t see him; couldn’t hear him either . . . the sneaking blighters!’

‘I know that Sniffer fellow,’ commented Snikdul. ‘Got nostrils the size of some of the caverns beneath Mount Gundabad, he does. Very reliable at sniffing things out.’

‘Anyway,’ continued Kreblug, ‘we moved away from that place and conducted our little business away from spying eyes. Went back in the morning, on our way back to camp, for a little look-see, so to speak, but he was gone by then.’ Gromwakh nodded thoughtfully and passed the cup of Deadman’s-jack to the eager waiting fingers of Kreblug. ‘Have you told your Captain about this?’ he asked.

‘Told my Captain!’ spluttered the Orc between convulsive swallows of the potent liquid. ‘Are you daft? We’d have to explain what we were doing away from camp, now wouldn’t we?’

Gromwakh sent Kreblug off and gathered his fellows about him. ‘Well, isn’t this a fine mess we’re in. Old One-Eye to the front of us, and him marching us to certain death. Elves spying in trees . . .’ He looked consideringly behind the slowly advancing wagons as the last of them pulled past him. ‘And what’s behind us I wonder?’

‘Can’t see anything, Grom,’ one of the band offered helpfully. Gromwakh led them back to the wagons, joining the forward march with a few jostlings and cursings thrown their way. ‘There’ll be no striking a bargain for our benefit with the ones in charge here. We’re so much fodder for their little war.’ He chewed thoughtfully on his lip for a moment.

‘Wonder if we could strike some bargain with the Elves,’ he muttered to himself.