The Guns of Khaz Modan, Part 2
Ringo loaded the shot into his blunderbuss, keeping an eye on the bear cub. It had seemed dangerously interested in the targets a little while ago, but now was rolling on its back in the snow, playing with a large pinecone, flinging it up in the air with all four paws, then catching it, growling and biting it, rolling and tumbling through the snow in mock combat with the defiant toy.
“A dream?” Beli stood behind him, her hands wrapped around a mug of scalding morningbrew. “Like a vision?”
“I told you, I don’t know,” Ringo lifted the gun, bracing the stock firmly against the meat of his shoulder, sighting carefully. The metal disks atop the split logs had once been Dragonmaw helmets, but after countless target practices, they had been torn to ragged metal shreds by shot. Periodically, Ringo had one of the Anvilmar smiths heat up the helmets and bang them back into more or less circular shapes, but at this point, no one would know without being told they had once been helms worn by the orcs who had conquered Khaz Modan during the darkest days of the Second War. “I just had a dream.”
The pounding sounded like drums, like war drums, beaten by an orc astride a great beast, beating furiously, the sound and the vibration rattling teeth and raising hair on the scalp. But it wasn’t war drums, although the sound was punctuated by screams and flashes of sickly green light and the roar of huge predators.