Derick watched the green horde draw nearer. He'd been a soldier all his life, but the sight he now witnessed was one he had never seen before and if God showed grace he would never have to see it again. The wooden fortress they were building was now many miles behind them. They had fought their way through rank after rank of Orcish foes. And all the forced marches and the great battles had brought them here, to the end of the known world. They had set up camp atop a large hill with steep cliffs. And thank God for doing so, because from then on the Orcs came rolling onto them like green waves on beach.
Derick knew they couldn't stay here. They were efficiently holding of the Orcish horde, but as the Orcs occupied the whole environment, their support troops and supplies were also unable to enter the encampment. Because they were miles out in the savage terrain any large-scale reinforcement operation was destined to arive to late. If only they could get some food up here. The Orcs could not even get near the gate of the camp, because Derick had chosen a hill, which had only one reasonable way up. Two hundred bowmen guarded this way. They would shoot at anything trying to climb the mountain. Derick had to temper the enthusiasm of the men because they had a tendency to shoot at anything that moved. But from previous occasions Derick knew that they would have to make sure every arrow they shot counted. If he had allowed the men to shoot at will they would have exhausted their arrows days ago, but now they still had a reasonable amount left. Enough to keep the Orcs at the bottom of the hill, at least for the time being.
Derick sat in his command tent thinking about a way out of this situation, but on the other hand the Emperor had ordered him to get into exactly this situation and hold ground. There was a large part of the Toledian army on it's way and Derick's force would be a bridgehead, breaking the green tidal wave and allowing the new coming army to reach this point safely. But the orders did not say Derick should be happy about it. Unable to change his situation, he thought back to happier times, when the old Emperor was still alive and he was a mere lieutenant for the cityguards of the Imperial city of Nordan.
What times those were. Back then he even thought of marriage and children. Then he was promoted to captain and from there on it'd just been downhill for him and in fact the whole Empire.
A knock came from his door. Or at least, it would have been a knock hadn't the door been made of canvas. 'Come in' Derick said. The cloth was lifted and Anglus came in. Anglus was the captain of his division. He was second in command, subjected only to Derick himself. 'Can I sit down?' Anglus asked. Derick waved his hand in an 'ok' kind of gesture and Anglus sat down mumbling a word of gratitude to his commander.
Derick and Anglus had fought together for the better part of a decade and were friends above all else. 'I think I found it' Anglus said while he was still getting comfortable in his chair. Derick immediately paid attention to his friend. 'Found what?' he asked. 'A way down' said Anglus 'a simple way down, which takes us behind enemy lines'.
Derick's face cracked open in a smile, it looked like they would hang on after all.