Dark fir trees, huge and ancient stretched up through the ferns and the moss that clothed their gnarled trunks to blot out all but the most stubborn rays of light with their shifting rustling boughs. The land beneath the whispering green needles was a world of eternal twilight, bejeweled with a million gleaming dew drop stars. There were precious few features and no paths to follow just ancient fallen trees covered in soft loam and tangles of branches. It was a land of ancient silence with no sign of life beyond the endless green. There was life however, though any sound it made was swallowed up and muted by the black earth, springy moss and broad leafed ferns.

     She was galaw, an orc of great height and physical strength, her iron muscles jerked and shifted under her green skin as she ran, it made the black lightning bolt tattoos adorning her shoulders and breast dance. Her broad unsmiling mouth hung slack, exposing her sharp teeth as she panted great gusting breaths that billowed white and cold in front of her. Cold though it was her bare torso and corded arms gleamed with sweat, mighty though she was the struggling figure bound and gagged on her shoulder was beginning to wear her down.

    Coming to a stop she grit her teeth and growled a low rumbling note, her eyes as bright and golden as newly minted coins narrowed, her pursuers were not far behind.

    Swiping the sweat from her brow she rasped her sharp nailed fingers through the close shaved stubble on the sides of her head and waited. From the direction she had fled she began to hear it, the odd keening, trilling and whooping war cries of vengeful Amazon warrior women. Argora grinned nastily and shifted her struggling whimpering burden from one shoulder to the other and set off again. They had finished with those raiders she had taken with her to their village faster than she had reckoned on; their screams had been wretched albeit short lived.

    A branch snapped to her left and her eyes darted towards the sound, she caught a glimpse of a runner through the trunks, long limbed and pale, clad in little more than swirling tattoos and war paint with long golden hair streaming behind her. She screamed hatefully but made no move to cast her slender spear at her. There were others, to her left and right, flitting ghosts half seen amongst the green pillars and tangled deadfall. They had begun to outpace her, Argora grinned wider, she had expected as much, the amazons were everything she had imagined they would be.

    “Argora!” the voice was raw edged and furious. “Argora! Give her back!” she nearly burst out laughing despite the peril she was in, she was flattered her name was known to them. Closing in, red faced with fury was a woman head and shoulders taller than her comrades; she wore a chieftesses torque around her neck and carried an iron axe. She was Gidlith the Skulltaker, merciless and ambitious. Where the Eastern and Western tribes were divided against one another Gidlith remained stubbornly unaligned choosing instead to raid and pillage villages and settlements on both sides of the conflict. Her name was a curse on the lips of everyone who called the Amazonian wilderness home.

    “Come and get her!” taunted Argora laughing gustily crashing headlong through a sapling in her way.

    “I’m going to gut you like a fish!” screamed Gidlith.

    “You’ll have to catch me first, bitch!” replied Argora over her shoulder digging her claw nails into her captives flank hard enough to prompt a muffled wail. It drove her pursuers into a hysterical rage. A spear arched out and buried itself in the ground close to her feet. “That one came close! Mind your aim!” shouted Argora with a breathless laugh. It bought her some room, Gidlith howling with frothing rage cut her tribesmate down for her transgression. She dug her claws deeper into tender white flesh earning another longer wail of pain and terror to underline her point. It made her smile with cruel mirth, Gidlith was a vicious, arrogant chieftess unafraid of fear or pain, her oracle and treasured concubine however was not.

    Blinking sweat from her eyes Argora quickened her pace, it had been a long run already and her great stamina was nearly spent. Looming up out of the earth were great jagged blocks of primordial stone, she was nearly there.

    Here the trees began to thin, a quick glance over her shoulders showed dozens of pursuers, the very best Gidlith’s band had to offer, hardened hunters and killers, the very core of her fighting force.

    Ahead, still lost through the trees and growing maze of tumbled down stone Argora could hear the rise and fall of the tide, she had nearly reached the coast.

    Huffing and puffing, lungs blowing like a bellows Argora pushed herself to move faster. There! Just ahead, the land rose up steep out of the black soil showing its shale bones, her goal was a single narrow ravine that cleft through the natural wall.

    “Catch her! Catch her! Kill her!” screamed Gidlith desperately, Argora’s hostage wriggled and sobbed wildly hearing the only chance of her salvation so close by.

    Bolting down into the ravine, splashing through startlingly cold hip deep water Argora came horrifyingly close to tripping. Her heart hammered with sudden wide eyed terror, she caught herself, barely. She nearly slipped again on the muddy opposite bank; her pursuers were splashing through the water cramming into the ravine all at once just behind her.  Topping the rise out of the ditch Argora howled triumphantly. Looming before her was a tumbled down castle ruin green with lichen perched on a cliff overlooking the wide blue Hieyokscream.

    Bolting through a broken archway presiding over a crumbling wall shrouded in ivy into a rubble strewn courtyard she stopped before the darkened portcullis of the ruined keep. Turning to face the amazon warriors streaming through the archway she took a deep calming breath and shrugged her captives small form off of her shoulder. She was so slender Argora was able to wrap her fingers all the way around her neck. The threat was enough to bring Gidlith and her warriors up sort.

    They looked tired, panting and trembling with exertion, stripped of their armor, their war paint streaking off with their sweat, they nonetheless looked eager enough to close with her.

    “No were else to go green skin! Give her back to me! Give her back now and I will kill you quickly!” shouted Gidlith pointing her axe straight at Argora.

    “Your bargaining skills leave a lot to be desired,” said Argora with a wide toothy grin “I’ve got a better offer, lay down your weapons and I promise most of you will make it to the Ralhearth slave pits, some of you will end up in the cook fire, but not all.”

     “Last chance Argora, die fast or die slow those are your only options,” said Gidlith with murder in her eyes.

    “Oh, there are always other options,” whispered Argora. Behind her, emerging from the darkness of the keep her marauders filed out. Orcs of a multitude of breeds, hobgoblins, Nutk men and less identifiable villainous mercenary scum all, fresh and eager for a fight. Others appeared from their hiding places in the rubble about the court yard and yet still more fell into place behind the amazons, blocking the exit. Besides their wicked array of serrated swords, notched axes and hooked knives they were armed with catchpoles and nets.

    Taking a calming breath Argora looked down at the trembling captive in front of her. Lash was her name a half-breed of unknown parentage, hauntingly beautiful and completely mad. She read the entrails of those still living sacrifices brought to her alter, she bathed in the blood of the young and ate the hearts of the strong to fuel her dark desires. There was a price on her head in a dozen different ports…the price was specifically on her head, not the rest of her. Argora squeezed, Lash had time to utter a single strained squeak before she was lifted off her feet and with a single hard jerk her neck snapped with a loud pop.

    Gidlith screamed with rage and charged, her warriors were only a step behind her. Drawing the short wide bladed sword strapped sideways in the small of her back Argora roared and hurled the twitching corpse into the oncoming press, her crew surged forward.  

    Shrieking, the first amazon in her path thrust a spear at her. Argora batted it aside and brought the pommel of her sword down on the spear wielders head, she walloped over like a puppet with its strings cut. Another leapt at her with a wild scream swinging a cleaver, Argora swayed out of its way and rammed her blade forward impaling the amazon picking her right up off her feet. Grunting, Argora tossed the screaming warrior over her shoulder just in time to step into the attack of another. A spear tip scored a line of fiery pain across her ribs; she trapped it against her side with her sword arm. Lashing out with a fist she sent the smaller warrior spinning, she hit the ground and did not move.

    Around her, her raiders used nets and catchpoles to subdue the exhausted but still dangerous amazons. Where a warrior fought too stubbornly Argora would intervene, some she slew, the rest she disarmed and disabled, it was a one sided but not entirely bloodless battle. 

    Rampaging through the wild melee Gidlith swung her axe left and right, chopping through catch poles and bodies with equal ease. Six of her rapscallions died on her blade before she reached Argora.

    She swung, slinging clots of gore in a crimson arch, she was frothing with rage. Argora ducked beneath the sweep and thrust with her sword. Gidlith twisted away from the stab and aimed a return stroke at her. Argora caught the haft of her axe with her free hand and yanked; using Gidlith’s momentum against her she snatched the weapon straight out of her hand and tumbled her straight down onto her face. It was such a stupidly simple move it was almost laughable, had Gidlith been less passionate and less winded she would have never fallen for it. Argora dropped down onto her, mashing her knee between the Amazon chieftesses shoulder blades and yanking her arms behind her back.

    “Watch,” snarled Argora into her ear. Gidlith writhed and struggled, snarling and spitting curses in a wild ugly tongue but could not break from Argora’s iron grip.

    “Watch!” demanded Argora. Around them the battle was going through its last throes. A few amazons were still on their feet, fighting back to back but they were swiftly falling to the jeering laughing crowd of slavers.

    “Bitch!” wheezed Gidlith.  

    “When I attacked your village and stole that witch from under your nose you gave chase with your best, you ran them straight into this trap and here you are Gidlith, how’s the feel?” she taunted.

    “I’ll kill you!” she screamed.

    “Oh, and something for you to think about, once you and your warriors were on my trail the rest of my band sacked your village. Congratulations Gidlith Skulltaker you have been the easiest job so far.” Gidlith tried to curse her, tried to wriggle free but Argora pressed more and more of her weight down on her until she turned cherry red. She glared hatefully until her eyes fluttered and rolled back in their sockets. She went limp and still in her hands.

    Standing, dusting her hands off she grinned, the sound of wailing prisoners and cheering pirates was music to her ears.

    “Chain them!” she commanded. Watching them go to work she placed her hands on her hips and regarded the ruined castle where she had laid her ambush. Gnawing her lip for a moment she nodded to herself. With a little work it would make a fine base of operations.