Emmaline glanced from the carpet and back to the orcs. Even Gerald was on his feet now, swinging a captured orc cleaver in his good hand, his ox like strength shattering a rusted coat of mail with a sound like a million pennies being hurled against flagstones.

"The gold!" Emmaline wailed, momentarily unable to control her own gold lust even as she ducked a thrust by a spear tipped with what might have been the blade of a shovel. She lifted her hands and chanted a spell aiming it at a nearby orc. Charmon rushed in on her like a crashing tsunami and she sqeaked in terror a heart beat before a golden beam of light six feet in diameter erupted from her hands, leaving nothing of the greenskin save a pair of smouldering shoes. To her horror she couldn't disengage the spell and she swept her arms around drawing the beam like a great sycthe. 

"Down!" Amal shouted, tackling Sir Brenly and yanking Douglas by the ankle so hard he lost his footing and toppled to the ground. Gerald gaped in wide eyed horror and managed to dive into the leaf mold a moment before the wildly swinging beam of golden light would have decapitated him. The spell fire burned across the stones like a blast from a steam tank, singing the grime and lichen away in a streak and leaving the stone undamaged. The wild arc cleared the hilltop of orcs in a few seconds but Emmaline continued to blaze with power as she frantically tried to close the tap to Charmon she had opened. At last she cut the spell and the golden beam vanished, leaving her shaking little motes of golden light from her hands like water droplets.

"She is a mighty sorceress!" Douglas declared making a sign to ward off evil.

"No it isn't that I'm really not... I mean its this place... you know what forget it," Emmaline stammered dropping to her knees and begining to gather up gold coins into the folded hem of her borrowed jacket. Brenly pushed himself to his feet, using the elven sword to lever himself upright. His eyes were wild and he glanced around. There were still orcish shouts in the fog beneath them but none appeared eager to rush the hilltop again.

"We need to get out of here," Emmaline stated, completely unnecesarily. Everyone already agreed on that point but any direction they wen't they were likely to met with greenskins.

"Can't you use your magic?" Douglas asked. Emmaline scowled at how quickly people went from 'beware the witch' to 'save us witch!' but now was hardly the time.

"It doesn't work like that," she said "We need to..."

There was a shout from the fog below and then another. More and more voices took up the cry until it echoed across the valley.

"Galzeez! Galzeez ! Galzeez!"

"Ummm," Emmaline temporized her face draining of color as the fragments of orcish conversation came back to her.

"Do you know what they are saying?" Gerald asked, his eyes still half glazed with battle lust, "What is this Galzeez?" Emmaline shook her head and stuffed the remaining gold into her jacket, knoting the corner to serve as a makeshift pouch.

"Not a what, a who, he is a..."

There was a sudden surge of unfamiliar magic and a wind rose from nowhere with the force of a spring gale. The fog fled up the valley like the retreating tide revealing the forest below. Three score of orcs stood crouching behind rocks and trees roughly encircling the small rocky hill. On another large rock stood a small twisted figure in dark robes. It lifted a staff hung with what might have been human skulls and a variety of unfamiliar objects and shook it angrily towards the circle. Emmaline was familiar enough to recognize a goblin and a shaman besides.

"This might be a problem," she admitted, licking her lips nervously.