The sorcerer leaped out of his bush, danced around in circles for a few seconds, and then dove back in.
“What was that?” asked Gordo.
Tambor coughed. “Hedgehog,” he snapped. “Can’t you two find somewhere to hide?”
“It’s okay,” said Gordo. “I think they might’ve gone.”
“Don’t be ridiculous!” said Tambor. “You don’t fire five arrows at someone and then just walk away.”
Groan shrugged. “P’raps it’s a greetin’,” he said.
“Very friendly,” said Tambor. “I don’t fancy visiting their village.” He shivered at the thought.
“You know somethin’,” Gordo said, grinning. “You’re actually startin’ to think like us. Isn’t he, Groan?”
“Yeah,” the barbarian agreed. “We’re c’ruptin ’im.” Suddenly, the rain intensified, turning from thin drizzle into a heavy shower.
Tambor sneezed and flicked away some of the rainwater dripping from the brim of his hat. He was just about to start complaining, when the sixth arrow arrived.
Jimmy Quickstint galloped on down the road. It was nice of the duke to lend him this wonderful horse, he thought.
Mountains loomed ahead. Jimmy tried to think clearly. Presuming the two mercenaries were still with his granddad, they would probably have headed for Legrash. He looked up at the mountains and decided that no fool would attempt to climb something they could go around. After a lengthy struggle, he managed to point the horse toward a patch of forest around the base of the Twelve. Then he reached down and slapped it on the flank, which turned out to be a big mistake, as he fell off.
“Come back! “Jimmy shouted, waving his arms frantically as the horse galloped back toward Dullitch. “Please! I need….Oh no, somebody help!”
He stood and watched as the knight’s steed became a speck on the horizon. Then he looked round at the forest, sat down cross-legged, and began to sob.
“You said orcs wouldn’t be this far up!” Tambor screamed. He was sprinting up and down the path with remarkable speed for a man of more than eighty years. A short distance away Groan was slamming heads together, six at a time in some cases.
“Maybe these orcs are different!” shouted Gordo, swinging his battle-axe around a widening circle of greenskins. “You know, the ambitious type or something—”
“Ambitious orcs?” yelled Tambor. “Well that’s just terrific, isn’t it?” He ducked down as a saber whistled past.
A screech echoed from above and a garji-rider swooped low over the mountainside. Garjis were terrible creatures, half snake and half dragon, that were regularly harnessed and ridden by their orcish masters.
Groan took one look up at the treetops and dashed off into the woods at the side of the road.
“Where are you going?” screamed Tambor.
“Get a tree to fro’ at ’em!” the barbarian shouted back.
Gordo was doing what he always did in battle; silently promising the dwarf gods that, should he escape now, he would never leave his village again. Divine intervention came in the form of a large pebble, which he tripped on, narrowly avoiding a saber hurled by one of the greenskins. Lucky, Gordo thought, but I’d have preferred a lightning bolt or something.
Groan came thundering out of the woods, a small tree balanced on one shoulder. He stopped running, reached back, and pitched it at the winged monstrosity. It missed. Again, Groan turned to run.
“Where are you going now?” screamed Tambor, who was perched on the lowest branch of a nearby oak.
“Get annuva one!” shouted Groan.
“We haven’t got time!” yelled Gordo, above the fray. “Besides, you’d probably miss again.”
Groan scowled. “Never missed anyfin’ twice,” he said. Never hit anyfin’ twice, he thought.
Tambor had experienced a sudden flash of inspiration. Maybe he could get the carpet working if he remembered exactly the right words. He felt around beside him but his fingers just found bark. He thought, The carpet’s still in the bush. He peered over at Gordo, who was struggling against a greenskin waving what looked like a shovel.
“Hey, Gordo! Could you pass me my carpet?”
The dwarf’s reply was lost on the wind, which was probably for the best.
Gordo’s battle-axe flew through the air and buried itself in the stomach of the garji, whose rider screamed and dove off. Tambor shrieked, Gordo smiled and ran to retrieve his weapon, and even Groan looked momentarily taken aback. The elation didn’t last for long. A cold scream echoed round the mountain as a second group of greenskins poured into the clearing, scrambling over one another in an attempt to draw first blood.
Gordo’s battle-axe danced in a complicated arc around him, opening gashes and lopping off limbs, while Groan was employing half a branch to swat away the brave few who dared approach him. However, their numbers were increasing, and Tambor fancied that he could make out a second line of orcs in the shadows around the clearing. Even with Groan as a deterrent, he had to admit the situation didn’t look good.
FIFTEEN
WHAT JIMMY HAD TAKEN to be a forest was unexpectedly turning out to be more of a jungle.
Incredible, he thought. Outside it’s freezing cold and in here it’s like the oven of the gods. It would be fair to say that he was not enjoying the beauty of the wild. He didn’t know which was worse, losing the royal horse or losing all the money intended to lure the mercenaries back. Time was probably running out for the children of Dullitch and here he was, stranded in some dense wilderness, without any hope of ever finding the mercenaries, and no money to pay them even if he did! The whole day had been one big disaster. Come to think about it, his whole life was one big disaster.
He coughed and swatted away a few mosquitoes.
There were trees in every direction. He imagined a pair of eyes beneath every twig, hissing and biting at anything that didn’t qualify as a member of the same species which, in a jungle of this size, amounted to just about everything. A crescendo of unpleasant sounds was building in the distance, as a pack of unknown terrors hunted down some poor primate. He expected an explosion of jagged claws and needle-sharp teeth at any moment. Instead, a small, featherless monstrosity of nameless origin squawked a hideous cacophony from a nearby tree. I’m lost, he thought. That’s the second time I’ve been past that tree with the red arrow scrawled on it.
He tripped over a tree root, then gave it a vengeful kick. A branch that lay horizontally across the path opened half an eye and slithered away behind a tree stump. Jimmy shivered; he’d had a dreadful fear of snakes ever since his grandfather had told him that his favorite uncle had been strangled by a feather boa.
The recollection didn’t do much to calm his nerves. The quicker he got out of this place, he thought, the better.
Jimmy was, in fact, struggling through the Carafat Jungle, north of Dullitch, which played host to some of the oldest (and indeed most terrible) tribes in Illmoor. The Carif Backslashers, Gib’s Minions, the winged hordes of Yud the Acolyte, Trumnf Caew’s Marauders—they all had a stake here. Wander into this territory by accident, and you were lucky to last five minutes.
These jungles housed spear traps triggered by a spit in the wrong direction, death mazes where twisted minds painted misleading arrows on the walls using their own blood, and freak log slides that could roll you flatter than a pancake. In Carafat, the only thing more dangerous than standing still was moving.
Jimmy had heard mention of a handful of notorious expeditions, the most successful of which had been one led by a man called Passion. After months of torture at the hands of a mysterious heathen death squad, Passion had returned with some insightful advice to all would-be travelers. Unfortunately, it was stapled to his head and written in hieroglyphs, so no one ever found out what it meant.
Something large with no shortage of feathers flew in Jimmy’s face, and he reached up and smacked it aside. It hit a sweating palm tree and spent the next few seconds hobbling around on the floor. Jimmy stepped
away from the creature and took a good look. It wasn’t surprising Dullitch didn’t have an aviary. There really wasn’t much to like about birds, he decided. Especially birds of prey. Where was the connection, for goodness’ sake? He tried to think of a sacred psalm with the word vulture in it, but came up empty-handed.
A vine swung loose from a nearby tree and dangled provocatively in front of him. I’m not falling for that one, he thought.
The path he was following ended rather abruptly at a rock face. It looked false. Jimmy cocked his head and closed one eye, a habit of his that kicked in whenever he had to size up a situation. There was definitely the outline of a door there, a sort of rectangle etched into the stone. He pushed gently, then put all his weight against it to give him proper leverage. There was a tiny creak, screech, and an unrelated rumble in the distance; apart from that, nothing happened. He swore under his breath, stepped back and gave the slab an experimental kick. To his surprise, this worked wonders….
Several tons of rock slid away, revealing a small portal and a set of dusty stairs leading down into darkness.
Far, far below, deep inside the heart of the Twelve, Diek Wustapha stood atop a rock in a draughty chasm. Below him, a sea of tiny faces stared upward, eyes glazed, captivated by the magic that swirled around him. It was visible now, a frenzied purple cloud sprinkled liberally with glittering, frozen stars.
Acceding to the wishes of The Voice, Diek Wustapha raised the flute to his lips and began to play.
A hum went up from his young audience, resonating around the chasm like the echo of a wind chime dropped down a deep and resonant well.
All the life we need is here, Diek, said The Voice in its terrible tones. On the power of these young minds, we can exist for centuries. We can…rise again, as powerful as once we were. You have done well, Diek. You have done well….
SIXTEEN
IT HAD TAKEN FIFTEEN orc warriors to drag Groan to the ground and another three to clap him in irons. Gordo had put up a fair fight himself, eventually overcome by four heavy greenskin scouts. Tambor came a little more easily, in fact, he’d surrendered even before the orcs had noticed him.
The tribal chieftain arrived to look over his prisoners. He was a grotty little orc, stout of gut and long of tooth, with enough souvenirs dangling from around his neck to intimate that he ran a very successful outfit.
He prodded Groan in the arm, spat at Tambor, and gave Gordo a sharp kick in the ribs. Then he snatched up the dwarf’s battle-axe and waved his arm in the direction of the wood. A succession of mumbles died away and the tribe began to move.
“Psst,” said Tambor. His arms were chained to a sort of log pulley-system without the log. “Psst!”
Groan continued to walk with his head down. The rest of his body was constricted by chains.
“Hey!”
The barbarian glanced over at Tambor. “Yeah?” he said.
“Do you think you could break your chains?”
“Dunno,” answered Groan.
“Why don’t you try, then?”
“Try what?”
Tambor rolled his eyes. He had a feeling he could spend the rest of his life having this conversation. “Why don’t you try to break your chains?” he whispered.
“With what?”
“Forget I mentioned it,” said Tambor, shaking his head.
The chains were beginning to grind on Tambor’s hands. He yelped and then hurried to catch up with his captor.
Gordo was having a slightly easier time of it. Apparently none of the orcs had been prepared to walk along bending over, so they’d made some kind of platform for him to stand on.
Tambor struggled against his chains and got a sharp slap in the face for his efforts. He waited until his head had stopped spinning, then turned and gave Gordo a half-smile.
“I expect you’ve been orc-napped a few times, eh?” he said. “Incidentally, do you know the one about the mongoose and—”
“Shut it, coward,” grumbled Groan.
“Well, that’s nice, isn’t it?” said Tambor. “Considering I’m about to save us all from certain death.”
Gordo turned a beady eye on the sorcerer. Even Groan listened in.
“I think,” said Tambor, twitching to relieve an itch in his beard, “that I may be able to remember a very good offensive spell.”
Groan sniffed. He hated magic.
“What’s that?” said Gordo suspiciously.
“It’s called Tower of Screaming Doom,” said Tambor. “If I can do it right, a spinning column twenty feet tall should appear in the air and wipe out anyone standing.”
“Well, can you do it or not?” asked Gordo, excitedly.
“I think so.”
Groan heard the sorcerer mumble something in a foreign tongue.
“When I say now,” Tambor whispered. “I want you both to dive for the ground.”
The mercenaries murmured in agreement.
“Now!”
Tambor muttered an incantation and dove theatrically to the ground as a spinning column of flame winked into existence above him. It soared high over the heads of the tallest orcs, but no one paid very much attention. The spinning column was approximately five inches high.
Groan used the momentary confusion to break his chains. Orcs flew in all directions.
Gordo leaped from his platform down onto Tambor’s captor. The Tower of Screaming Doom devastated a nearby beehive before fizzling out.
Jimmy Quickstint peered into the shadowy darkness lurking just beyond the first few steps. The way he saw it, there were two choices. He could either turn back, run home to Dullitch and face the wrath of Duke Modeset, or he could go ahead on the chance that the portal would stay open, in case he decided to run back after all. Simple, really.
He reached out a tentative foot and brought it down on the top step. Nothing happened. Then he stepped inside. A flock of birds erupted from the tree-tops behind, and he spun around, breathing heavily. Nothing happened.
Jimmy swallowed and offered a silent prayer to the god of ignorant thieves, hoping that there was one. Then he closed his eyes, clenched his fists and descended the first three steps. Nothing happened. Thank the lords for that, he thought, leaning against the inner wall. Perhaps there really was a god looking out for him, after all.
Something in the Stygian gloom below made a crraaawwl noise. Jimmy froze with fear, just as the stone slab behind him rolled back into place and locked with a decisive click.
“That was a close one,” said Tambor, staring around the clearing with a satisfied smile. “Good thing I know my business.”
The battle in the woods was over. It had drawn to a swift conclusion when Groan had happened upon the tactic of using one orc to hit another. He brushed a moldy leaf off his shoulder and flexed. “Good fight,” he said, grinning.
“Yep,” said Tambor. “Don’t mess with magic, that’s what I say.”
“Magic?” exclaimed Gordo, leaning on his battle-axe. “You didn’t do anything!”
Tambor looked amazed. “What about the Tower of Screaming Doom!” he shouted.
“What about it?” snapped Gordo.
“Didn’t you see it? It flew around for ages!”
“I saw it,” said Groan. “Smacked it over that way.”
He pointed over at a twisted oak tree, where half a beehive was smoldering.
“Idiots!” said Tambor, shaking his fists. “That was earth magic at work, that was! Will somebody get me out of these chains!”
“Croaaarrrrkk!”
Jimmy started at the sound, took half a step back, then slipped and tumbled head over heels down the staircase. He landed at the bottom in an awkward heap.
When a few seconds had passed without anything biting a chunk from his ankle, he forced himself up on to his elbows and began to look around.
Spent torches hung from ancient braziers on the walls. From what he could make out, he was on a landing of some kind. There was a cell in the far wall. It had one occupant.
Jimmy boggled at him. “Who are you?” he asked.
“I’m Stump, and this here is Mick. We’re prisoners, as you’ve probably guessed.”
Jimmy strained to look inside the cage. He couldn’t see anything. “Is there somebody else in there with you?” he asked.
Stump peered around behind him. “Nah,” he said. “It’s just me and Mick.” A flake of dust fell out of his beard. “Doubt if there’d be room in here for three of us,” he added.
“How long have you been in there?” asked Jimmy.
“Awhile, I reckon. Mick was here already.”
“Who locked you up?”
“Oh, nobody locked us up,” said Stump. “These caves are old, really old, and the tribes that used to lurk hereabouts had a habit of diggin’ out long tunnels and plungin’ pits all over the surface above. I fell through like a good’un. Serves me right for not lookin’ where I was goin’. Reckon you could get us out?”
Jimmy nodded. “No problem, there isn’t a lock in the land I can’t break.”
Gordo wiped some green slime from the head of his battle-axe. The temperature was dropping rapidly and a thin mist had begun to coil among the trees. The forest was becoming darker and gloomier by the minute.
“See all the crushed twigs?” said Gordo. “I reckon this place is crawling with orcs, and we certainly don’t want any more surprises.”
Groan suddenly snatched hold of Tambor and flung him into the lower branches of the nearest tree.
“What was that for?” snapped the sorcerer, dangling precariously from the branches. “Have you any idea how old I am?”
“Climb up, tell us what you see,” commanded Gordo.
“What, all the way to the top?”
“Yeah,” said Groan.
“We should be careful,” Gordo whispered, when Tambor was three-quarters of the way to the top. “He is getting on, you know.”
“I’ve bin’ thinkin’ ’bout that,” said Groan. “Did you see the way he jumped for that bush out on the road?”
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