Read Dark Obligations: Book One of the Phantom Badgers for Free Online

worst-case scenario, if we do not recover them this trip, at least we will know what we are up against, and we’ll get them on a second run. Are there any questions?” There were none. “Fine. We leave as soon as it is light enough to see, so look to your equipment and get as much sleep as you can. We’ve hard riding ahead of us.”
    From the tent the Captain made his way to a stump some distance from the Badger’s camp to smoke his pipe and ponder the future. Squinting at the stars peeping through the rents in the layer of clouds overhead, the Dwarf stroked his beard and worked at the timing of it all.
    This was the tenth day of Zahmteil, the ninth month in the Imperial calendar in the fifty-first year of the Age of Enlightenment, or Third Age; they would depart on the eleventh, and should reach the Ward on the thirteenth, paralleling the mountains while riding due north. Barring complications, they would swing east into the foothills on about the thirtieth (allowing two days to rest the mounts en route), and should be at the entrance sometime around the first of Hoffnungteil, the tenth month of the year. By that time frost should be on the ground every morning, and snow flurries were very possible. Figure ten days to two weeks in Gradrek Heleth, a day or two rest when back out, and they would not see Oramere until sometime in early Forsteil, the eleventh month, by which time winter would be firmly in place.
    Cold weather was very dangerous to soldiers: it made wearing metal armor a constant frostbite risk, the heavy clothing made fighting difficult, the cold sapped endurance, they were easy to track in the snow, and fires were essential at night to keep the troops warm. Small surprise that the Imperial Legions, whose mantra was always to attack, stayed close to their bases and defensive works in the winter. For that very reason the Orcs, who were armor-poor, swarmed in winter time, the worse weather the better.
    He had no choice, however, no choice at all: they had to undertake the raid this fall. The Eight and Luck would see them through, that and their own prowess. He hoped.
     
    The smoothly rolling expanse of the Northern Wastes swept out in every direction like a brown-furred sea, spotted here and there with shoals of green brush and the odd clump of leafless trees, the misty wall of the Thunderpeak Mountains to the east the only break in the dun-colored landscape. Gabriella Zanetti studied the grassland with a practiced eye from her vantage point under a low shrub, one of the plant’s hard, waxy leaves dancing between the fingers of her right hand. The Ward was eight day’s ride south, not counting yesterday, which was spent resting, or today, which was likewise given to recovering their strength.
    Eight hard days, with thirty miles covered before the evening camp, cold food at dawn and dusk, and the only hot meal at noon to reduce the chance of smoke drawing unwanted attention. Starr and Janna had hunted along the way, bagging several fat antelope and a goodly number from the endless supply of big rabbits to supplement their limited rations. It was hard travelling but safe: they left little sign of their passing, and covered ground fast enough to throw off anyone who might stumble upon what tracks they did leave.
    Gabriella flipped the leaf to her other hand and set it to dan cing between those fingers; she had volunteered when Durek had asked for someone to mount a foot patrol a mile or so out from the nearly-dry riverbed that served the Badgers as a rest camp, bored after a day and a half of inactivity. Starr and Trellan lay a short ways below her, partially hidden in the tall grass; the little Lanthrell had volunteered as well, eager to make her mark as a scout, and the ex-sailor had been sent along to keep him from causing any mischief. He was safe enough on this patrol: Kroh had vowed to tear Trellan’s arms off should he bother Starr, a statement which no one (especially Trellan) took as a figure of