Chapter 12 - Part 4

Units 0038DN and 0039DN had been forged right after one another, and had spent all of their time in service with one another. As such they had developed a great sense of teamwork, and they had been picked early on to be corporals. The two were very good at obeying and implementing orders. So when they found themselves together at the rendezvous point and the lieutenant had not arrived, they set up a defensive perimeter and began to consult their maps.

“Did they get turned around, lost perhaps?” Corporal 0038DN asked as the other warforged began to big trenches and gather braches and fallen wood for cover.

“Anything is possible," 0039DN said. “Still, all twenty-one of them? Someone should have noticed and corrected.” He waved on three squads. Each had four warforged, and they were to set up picket positions to watch along likely approaches.

“These maps appear correct, but they are from a survey some eighty years ago when this was Aundair,” 0038DN said.

“It still is Aundair,” 0039DN reminded him. “Do not forget we serve Aundair now, Cannith no longer.”

“Ah yes,” 0038DN said. This did not bother either of them in the slightest. “So, we should assume that the lieutenant and his team were incapacitated? Attacked by a superior force?”

“Theirs is nothing out here,” 0039DN pointed out. “Unless perhaps it was a natural occurrence. Perhaps there is quicksand or some similar bog, and they were all sucked in.”

“Dare we advance without them?” 0038DN queried.

0039DN paused, and then shook his head, a trait he had picked up from a human officer. “No, not yet,” he said. “We wait, give him until nightfall. If we have no commander by then, we draw straws, you and I. Then we decide what to do.”

0038DN agreed, and they began assisting their men with the defensive fortifications.