“Yeah, relax, it’s just a jape,” Kyra said, tossing the wing bone on the ground, “anger doesn’t look good on a shining hero who farts lightning, slays dragons and marries princesses.”
“Who said anything about a dragon?” Quistainn asked.
“You two are hopeless,” Kyra said and stood. “I bet I can find better company in my sleep.” She walked off carrying a rolled up sleeping fur.
“She has the right idea,” I said.
“I doubt a woman so rash has any good ideas,” Quistainn said, a look of confusion and fluster on his face.
“I mean, that we sleep,” I clarified. “We rise and ride at dawn.”
14
The blood on the leather jerkin strewn on the ground had turned a rusty brown. The corpse it lay on reeked as maggots ate its flesh away. It was the first sign we were getting closer to the town of East Clove. A fence along a farm field was broken in places, like some giant creature had gnawed at it in a frenzy, and the field itself was scorched black.
As we neared the edge of town, there was more debris: broken wagon wheels, charred farmhouses, someone’s rotting arm.
“It is strange to see so much death in such a beautiful land,” Bellabel said. She had been fairly quiet in the days of riding so far, as the Northern lands were so different to her desert home that they seemed a paradise, the misty crags rising out of forests that ran for miles uncounted.
“There may still be people here,” I said as the lingering scent of both humans and Orcs came to me amidst the chaos of the rotting remains of battle.
“Someone watches us,” Kyra said as she dismounted and snatched her bow from her white horse.
“It’s alright,” I said. “They smell human, men as I can tell.”
“Still, I’ll keep an eye out.” Kyra snuck some paces off the main path and crouched under the cover of trees.
As we moved forward, I saw someone scurrying behind a house up ahead.
“We mean no harm!” I said.
I saw a bearded man peak out from behind the building, yet he was silent. I could not blame his caution after such a terrible raid. “We’re from Wolf Rein! We come to aid you in the Orc fighting!”
The man nodded. His movements seemed weak, as someone trying not to fall asleep. Perhaps he was injured after the bloody battle.
“Are you wounded?”
The man nodded his head awkwardly.
“We have some healing supplies,” I said and plodded my horse forward when suddenly the man screeched out, “TEE HEE!” in a sharp cackle.
As he stepped out from behind the house, I saw that he was not a man at all, but only a decapitated head impaled on a long pike. The creature holding this pike was one of the dwarf cousin race to Orcs called goblins. He had long pointed green ears, and a face that looked like one of the stunted inbred dogs that nobles in the south bred. “Tee hee! Ngah ngah!” He screeched and hopped with absolute glee at his trick.
His wild wicked jangling made the beast in me stir awake, and I charged my horse forward, my great axe swirling from its leather thong to my hand.
From my left side, I saw a body run at me, an Orc in red boiled-leather and studded half-armor. He raised his spiked war club, and would have buried it in my horse when—thunk!—an arrow went straight into his neck with a gush of blood.
I glanced in that direction. “Kyra!” I muttered as I saw her form crouching amidst some trees. I kept charging ahead. My war horse trampled the fleeing goblin. Small bones snapped under iron shod hooves.
More of his goblin kind scurried out of the charred remains of a building, all dressed in rags and scavenged pieces of armor. They had long pikes and daggers, the most common weapons their kind were armed with, the pikes to unhorse men, the long daggers to find the joints in their armor.
I leapt off my horse, not wanting it to fall prey to their pikes. In large numbers, goblins were rather fearless. Now, near two dozen surrounded me.
“I wish there were more of you, that it might be a fair fight!” I began swinging my great ax with cruel intent, feeling the strength of Fenris surging through me. Their pikes splintered and I began slicing them apart. As sinewy limbs went flying and my face changed to a snarling wolf’s, the goblins began panicking.
“Demon!” one cried, its voice a high pitched gurgle. “Demon dog thing!” another screeched. “Dog man! Dog man eats us!” Another one took flight faster than a racing hound. “Run you bitches!” he screamed all the way.
Suddenly a hail of arrows began raining down on me and the goblins alike. For a moment I believed Kyra simply had awful aim, but then one took me in the leg, its shaft searing through muscle. I grunted. Then I saw that up ahead, behind a dilapidated farmhouse, goblins manned some kind of arrow machine. It seemed like a barrel with arrows firing off one after another as it turned.
“Gnah! Gnah! Bahaa!” Its long nosed green operator cackled. This gave the other goblins courage, and they turned their pikes on me once more.
Suddenly gold light reflected off of Quistainn as he stood next to me. “Rothan!” he said as he raised his shield and knelt in front of me in protection. “Stay behind me.”
I also crouched, plucking the bolt from my leg. “Bah, you think I’m going to hide behind you? I’ll get the crazed bastards!”
I sprinted to my right side, leaping over fallen wooden walls and rotting bodies.
I kept an eye on the arrow machine, and the goblins could not turn it nearly fast enough. The damn fools were using a war machine in a skirmish, and on someone faster than man or a wolf.
“Die!” My ax came blurring down on a goblin, cleaving him diagonally in two with a smatter of violet blood. I was ready to fell all the other litter of goblins, when suddenly an armored Orc was swinging a cruelly bladed ax at me. He was fast. I narrowly raised my ax just enough so that our two blades met with a clang. I stepped back to regain my balance when I realized there were more of these Orcs. They were strange, armored in full plate from head to foot, which was unheard of for Orcs. Black armor it was, stronger metal than even most man-made steel. They all wielded two handed axes and maces too large for a man to have swung.
We were a flurry of blows, my ax arching and staving off swings of ax and mace. The ring of steel against steel exploded all around us. I snarled with effort as I managed to slice through a weak point in one's armor and slice his arm off at the elbow joint. Another was upon me, but I slid out of the way raised my ax over my head and brought it down on his chest with all my strength. Even with his heavy plate, my blade found its way through the armor and spilled violet blood. However, with so much force it had required, I had left myself open for a blow from another. This one had its helm in the form of a white skull. He coiled his arms to deliver me a blow when suddenly a sparking shower of gold energy exploded on his chest.
He shook and reeled back as a smoking crater was left where his chest had been.
A streak of the same gold energy pierced the air, shooting away from the Orc. I looked back to see Quistainn catching his hammer in his hand.
“Since when can you do that?” I roared out.
He only smiled righteously—something I never knew was even possible. Weapons kept ringing out as I clashed with the rest, but even these elite Orcs backed by goblins seemed to lose their lust for battle as they faced both a wolf monster, a cleric of Thrawn, and the raining arrows of a skilled Skaldean hunter. They fell one by one, and those that did not simply fled.
As I looked around at the strewn bodies, Kyra came forward, pulling hair back from her forehead.
“I counted nine dead by my arrows,” she said. “You?”
“I don’t know. I stopped counting a long time ago.”
“Are there any still alive?” her eyes scoured the battlefield. “They might know where to find Thousand Fangs.”
As I walked about, all I could see were dead, lifeless goblins, their lips curled into permanent snarls around their jagged teeth.
“What of the ones in the armor
?” Bellabel said as she rode up beside us.
“I doubt it, but it’s worth a try.” I walked to the nearest body. It was of no help: he had been decapitated. Another was disemboweled, and utterly dead. The next was perhaps alive. It was a massive Orc, made more massive by the shining black armor that he was encased in from head to foot. One of these elite Orcs I had not seen before. He was bleeding through the gaps in his armor, the red blood looking vivid against the dull black of his armor.
I yanked his horned helmet off.
“By the gods. What is this…” I stared down at his uncovered face. His face was that of an Orc, but his skin was not green at all… it was red. Red as blood. He was still breathing, however faintly. “What are you?”
“A dying warrior…” he replied.
“Your flesh. Is it war paint you wear?”
“No… it is human blood.” He laughed so hard some of his own blood gurgled from his mouth.
“You lie. What are you truly?”
“He lives!” Kyra said as she walked to me.
“Yes, but do you see he is no ordinary Orc.”
“To hell with what kind of Orc he is. He’ll soon be a dead one.” She drew her long curved dagger and brought it to his face. “Orc,” she said, “Orc, you will speak now or your last moments in this mortal world will be worse than all the six hells.”
“P….puny woman,” he chortled out, red blood spittling from his mouth.
The Orc’s face was creviced, the lines along his upper lip as deep as dried streams and his eyes were grey, almost white, with a single red iris. “This seems to be some other kind of Orc than the common green ones,” I muttered to the rest of the group.
“What do you know about the fighting in the Lantern Forest? Were there any human survivors?” Kyra went on, her dagger at the Orc’s cheek.
“We… ate them all,” the Orc laughed, almost choking on his own blood.
“You lie!” Kyra drove the dagger into the Orc’s arm, at the elbow joint where there was a gap in the armor.
“Grrk!” the Orc grunted, shuddering with pain.
“Speak! Did you see two men, twins, one with a blue horse on his helm, the other with a red bear?”
“We ate... the horses and the bears too…drank blood out of the humans’ skulls… like they were fine goblets and we were great lords at our halls hahaha!”
“Liar!” Kyra drove the dagger into the Orc’s hand and he wheezed with pain.
“Enough!” I said, grabbed Kyra by the shoulder and pulled her off him. “What use is this, Kyra? He merely savors taunting us.”
“He deserves this!”
“He deserves death.”
“Rothan, is right,” Quistainn said, “he is a fell beast, but even a fell beast does not deserve torture.”
“You fought better than any Orc I’ve come across,” I said as I stood over him, my ax at the ready. “You are different, how?”
“We are far older, the Orcs of another age.”
“How can you be here among us then?”
“Thousand Fangs, he is waking his sleeping servants… he wishes us to burn Skald, to destroy the jarldoms, beginning with Ironrise…”
“Did your horde truly slay the twins this woman asked of?”
“Twins? What are human faces to me? I slew all I could. Now let me feast with my gods.” He began speaking in his Orcish tongue, which I did not understand.
“Speak! Tell me where Ghazrak is headed!”
He only went on laughing, speaking as I were not even there. His final smile was etched permanently on his face as my ax came slicing down on his throat in a blink.
“We could have had more information from him,” Kyra said as she scowled at me. “My brothers might still be out there.”
“Kyra, he spoke nonsense, merely enjoyed wounding you with his words.”
“If you would have let me keep making him bleed eventually he would have talked.”
“This is foolish,” I said. “I give you my word we will do all we can to search for your brothers.”
Whether she believed me, I could not tell as she stormed off. I thought about going after her, but Bellabel held a hand to halt me. “Leave her be,” Bellabel said. “Sometimes we need to be alone with pain, and others only make it worse.”
“Aye,” I said, glancing down at her. “Come, let us burn the bodies.”
As we dragged the bodies onto a pile, I thought that at least we had heard it from one Orc that he did serve this one called Thousand Fangs, and that they wanted the destruction of Skald, and Ironrise most of all. I noticed Quistainn was gazing at something intently as he crouched by one of the fallen bodies. It was the gauntlet of the the armored Orcs.
“What is it?” I asked.
“This symbol, I feel I have seen it before, but know not where.”
“What language is it?”
“One of the elder tongues.”
“I barely know the modern tongues, much less the elder.”
“Ah, if it were important Thrawn would reveal it to me.”
“Alright then, let’s clear what we can from here and be on our way.”
“The Orcs were said to have been fought off from East Clove,” I said as we rode on, the sun beginning to set.
“They must have come back with stronger force in the last days,” Kyra answered.
I buckled as my horse trotted down the slope of a ravine. “That or what remained of the people here decided it was not wise to try and defend what remained of the town.”
“If that is so then they should be able to tell us what happened when we reach Nevolruud. We should hurry all the more.” Her horse galloped ahead.
The clop of Bellabel’s and Quistainn’s horses was close behind me. “I have never seen Orcs like that, red fleshed and armored in heavy plate,” I said.
“There was once a race of Orcs known as Orakaag,” Quistainn said as he rode up
beside me. “Legends say they were so ferocious they were constantly covered in human blood. And in time, they became red themselves. Thus, they were called Red Orcs. I don’t know if that is only a fairy tale explanation of their red hue, but they did exist once. Perhaps these are survivors of that same Orc race.”
“When were they last seen in Skald?”
“Not for hundreds of years. They were said to have all died out as part of the great War of the Serpents.”
“Ghazrak Thousand Fangs summons even dead Orcs to him it seems.”
“Perhaps he is a necromancer.” Quistainn’s eyes flitted under his helm. “Orc sorcerers are uncommon, but those that exist are said to be truly mighty.”
“We will find out soon enough. Tell me, can necromancers live without a head?”
“No, I don’t believe they can.”
I nodded, feeling my Beast stir with desire to face my true enemy once and for all.
Kyra rode far ahead of us, barely within sight. It was as if she were tugging at us, forcing us to keep a fast pace.
“She holds true hatred for the Orcs. Blames for her brothers missing.” Quistainn’s eyes flowed with sympathy. “Should we face more of these Orcs, will Kyra keep discipline in battle?”
“I doubt Kyra can keep discipline in anything.” I grinned.
Bellabel pulled up beside us and spoke to me in a hushed tone. “Did you really believe the Orc was lying about her brothers and the battle in this Lantern Forest, or did you say it to comfort her?”
“Some of both. I doubt the Orc would remember what helms were on two warriors, if he even came across them at all. But Orcs are also savage, and could very well put all to the sword, prisoners and all… even feasted on them as he claimed.”
“I pray to Akaraxis this is not so.”
I only nodded, knowing what it was like to lose a brother.
“We should make camp here,” I said when we reached a grove. A massive tree had fallen and gave natural cover.
“A good a spot as any,” Quistainn said.
“Kyra!” I call
ed to her. She had kept riding a good distance in front of us. Calling on my enhanced senses, I peered far up the path where she was, saw that she looked back, but kept riding. “Kyra! We’re making!”
“You can sleep if you want!” her shout came back, ringing through the grove. “It’s not your brothers’ lives that are at stake!”
“Kyra! Be reasonable! There’s a river up ahead! You can’t ford it alone, especially at night!”
I watched as she disappeared from the top of the hill. I shook my head and began preparing to camp for the night.
“Should we ride further?” Bellabel asked.
“I’ve already started setting up my tent!” Quistainn replied, with a massive two colored tarp in his hands that could have been a general’s pavilion.
“No, finish setting up camp, you two. Kyra will realize she can’t get far with a river in front of her. And she’ll turn back.”
Twilight turned to dusk. Crickets and owls began singing.
Camp was ready, we were all munching on some dried meat, and she still hadn’t returned. “Rothan,” Bellabel said as she sat at the entrance to our tent, “Kyra is still out there. Perhaps we should go find her.”
“It’s alright. You two get some rest. We’ve been riding nonstop for near three days now. I’ll talk sense into her.”
My horse galloped along the dirt path, shadowed greenery rushing by me.
I reached the crest of a hill overlooking the winding river. There was no sign of Kyra, only trees swaying in the wind and the night sparkle of moonlight on the river Osko.
“Kyra!” I shouted, my voice booming. “Does she really mean to ford the river,” I muttered to myself, and realized what that meant. “She’ll drown, the damn fool!” I galloped down, using my nose to track her scent. She had definitely ridden by here. “Damn it, Kyra,” I said under my breath, then charged as best I could.
The terrain here was growing denser, with boulders strewn about, tall foliage everywhere fed by a rushing river that made everything so green that even in the night it seemed to glow. My mount, though a great warhorse, was no mountain goat, nor a horned owl to be able to see perfectly in darkness.
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