Yeah. It was pretty freaky at first to hear everyone in the scout team’s thoughts. But quickly we got it sorted and then it was kind of cool after that. It wasn’t like hearing each other’s exact thoughts. But you could tell whose gear was rubbing them raw or who needed to piss. Sergeant Hardt found out about his nickname and was none too pleased with that. He also found out who hated him. Which was pretty much everyone. Big surprise. He replied with, “I hate all of you twice as much as what you think you call hate.”
The promise of severe retribution at a later date was unspoken, but understood. Thankfully I was just a guest in the scout section. Hopefully I would avoid the doom of white line drills whenever we got the next break from running for our lives and shooting everything.
Hardt did hear me snort. It just escaped as I marveled at the Kurtz levels of contempt he was able to muster. So even if I did escape retribution, I was pretty sure Sergeant Kurtz would be informed and asked to PT me appropriately and extensively once we didn’t need to fight, or run, for our lives again. But that was all down the road. We might all get killed before that. So I had that going for me.
Once we got it all settled on how to communicate with our new Elven Mind Meld Last of Autumn whammied us with, we got back underway with our new incredible night-vision toy. The elf called it “Moon Vision.”
Hearing each other’s thoughts quickly demonstrated its tactical benefit in that you received a weird sort of background noise of the senses of anyone you were communicating with via thoughts. In other words, you could see in your mind’s eye, while still using your new regular awesome vision, exactly what the other person you were thinking at was seeing. And hearing. And of course thinking. For scouts working with subvocal throat mikes, this was awesome.
And it came in handy pretty quickly.
During their route recon, Sergeant Hardt and the point spotted a patrol of orcs who’d been following the crevices between the hills. They’d come up the gully we were just about to make a linear crossing of. We had company, and we all saw it ourselves as we watched a kind of fantastic replay of Sergeant Hardt’s memory. There were eight orcs filing along the
gully, trying to get ahead of us and cut us off with an ambush. Skirmisher types. Leather armor, horns, hunting bows. Small daggers. They ran like a pack of wolves, loping after unseen prey. There was something tribal and primal about them, and it was both fascinating and disturbing to watch. At least it was for me. Instantly every other Ranger’s thoughts, via Elven Mind Meld, centered on killing them. Badly.
These orcs were even uglier in the awesomeness of Moon Vision. There was a tall stand of willowy trees down there in the gully between the two foothills, and the orcs had gone into its dark clutch and hadn’t come out. So most likely they were still down there waiting for some escaping squad to come wandering through their ambush.
“Captain says not to engage,” Sergeant Hardt spoke in our minds, quickly getting the hang of the Elven Mind Meld’s mental communication features. “But as I see it, we have to cross on to the next section of the ridgeline over there.”
I translated for Autumn. She didn’t need it. Somehow the Hunters’ Fellowship Mind Meld thing made it clear to her the parameters of our mission and what Hardt was trying to express. It seemed to transcend language for the time being. In return her thoughts came back as pictures, not so much as words. Kinda makes me wonder why she didn’t just start with this back at the camp instead of us fumbling to find some common language. Maybe the Moon Vision only comes after they decide you’re all right.
At any rate, I could see her thoughts now. Unfortunately, they didn’t involve me in any romantically thrilling way. In short, she was up for killing the orcs with her bow.
We saw the picture of her firing the weapon. Putting arrows right through the throats of the awful orcs as she advanced downslope and stormed their ambush from the flank. Then, in her version of how she wanted us to conduct the assault, she identified a specific caution for us. The skirmisher-hunter types we’d seen in Hardt’s communication of events, each of them carried a crude ram’s horn on their belts. Through pictures she clearly indicated that if we attacked, it was crucial we hit them all at once as a group before they could sound their horns to alert nearby enemy units.
Her mind made it clear this was a real possibility. The orcs had crossed onto the island and found their prey gone. Now this dark force was fanning
out in every direction, trying to hunt us down and destroy us. First one to find us would sound the alert. Then the rest would swarm en masse from every direction of the compass toward it and we’d be caught out in the open with no defenses to get behind. In her mind I saw the wide sweep of the whole river valley with the island at the center, with something akin to sonic pulses overlaid to indicate the alerting horns calling to one another. I saw a version of the sand table we’d been working on, but of a type only in her mind. Her fantasy version laid out like some ancient general’s maps on a campaign table. Something from the age of Roman legions and Alexander the Great. With all kinds of symbols and runes that indicated different types of enemy units to her.
Orc Heavy Infantry. Scout Infantry.
Goblin Army. Orc Archers.
Trolls and giants forming a kind of heavy artillery force that also had the capability to transform to assaulters.
The symbiosis she had created with her mind and ours translated these things for us to understand. And there were other things she was trying to tell us that our minds could not comprehend. Not as a whole. But I sensed there were other wizards, witches, and dark sorcerers in play for the other side. Brought in to annihilate us once we were pinned.
They were all to our west on the other side of the river, hunting in the dark under the thin moonlight. Crazy, huh?
If any one enemy unit alerted the rest of the hunting horde, then those Uroo Uroo pulses would erupt all along the twisting river valley in the night. They would triangulate and eliminate us quickly.
“Okay, so if we’re gonna do this,” I heard Hardt say, as if in a trance, “then we’re gonna have to do this silent and violent. Because if I read you right, Last of Autumn, there’s no way around this group down there hiding in the trees in the gully.”
We heard her message in our minds a second later. It was a message without words, but somehow it was still her voice, and it was crystal calm and clear in our heads.
“True.”
