Waves crashed against the jutting stone tusks of Gardram’s Tusks, throwing up a spray of mist and foam that obscured the mouth of the bay. Spikes of jagged rock lurked just under the surface, eager to rip open the bellies of anything that didn’t know the safe path through the Teeth. And yet three big human boats now sat at anchor in the bay with rowboats ferrying a small army onto orcish beaches. It was as her eyes ’n’ ears had said; she recognised both flag and ship only too well.
Her ears clamped flat to her skull as she picked out a tiny grey-haired human coming ashore, feet sploshing through the surf. Humans all looked alike to her, but this woman was small and old and disgustingly feeble – it could only be Verena Awildan, Chieftain of the Awildan Isles. Even when Amogg had smashed heads in Black Herran’s army, she had never trusted that human – a thief and a liar without honour. A few trade deals with her people in the many years since had not changed that opinion.
She turned to her eyes ’n’ ears, and spoke quietly, though it was a struggle not to bellow and charge down, axe swinging. “Head up to Spear Point and look for more ships. I need to know if there are more than these three.” He bared tusks in agreement and slipped away.
Amogg squinted at the other figures following Verena off the small boat. Their presence felt like a bubbling broth of acid in her gut. The ship’s crew shied away from those three, and though it was hard to read human emotions she thought them afraid. Her gut told her they had every right to be. One was big and dark-skinned and there was something unnatural in his flesh – it shifted and moved. The tattooed corpse-white woman was unarmed but stank of sorcery, while the smaller pale man with burn-coloured hair and a sword tickled some old and almost forgotten memory. With it came a sharp sliver of fear. It was not an emotion she had experienced in decades, and she welcomed its return wholeheartedly. It meant a real challenge after years of dreary peace. She had always hated humans with burn-coloured hair. The problem with humans was that each and every one was clothed in lies. Their very skins lied: they remained the same colour instead of turning the grey of shame or the red of rage. Orcs were honest and better in every way.
She growled and gripped her axe tighter, unable to track the emotion to its source. Who was that human to make her feel such a thing? She could crush the little male’s skull with a single hand.
Her unease did not go unnoticed by the two elders. “Is this an invasion?” Wundak said. “Want us to string our bows and start dropping them?”
Amogg grunted, “Not yet.” What were any of them doing setting foot on orcish lands?
“You know this big boat, don’t you?” Ragash said. “Dangerous humans, yes?”
She bared her tusks. “My gut’s saying so.” That caused the two elders to exchange worried glances. Amogg’s gut was rarely wrong. “I knew their chieftain long ago. The word of humans is worthless. They lie and cheat to get what they want, and what they want is everything you have.”
Ragash growled. “Truth.”
“We wait,” Amogg said. “There’ll be no fighting until these trees are full of Hadakk orcs.” There was much glory to be found in battle, but there was far more in winning.
Verena scanned the tree-line and cliff top, seeing nothing. She couldn’t shake the feeling of being watched, and green and grey orcflesh made the vicious brutes especially hard to spot in forest.
“I appreciate their décor,” Lorimer said, smiling at a grisly line of wooden stakes topped with human skulls that separated beach from forest. “Their celebration of life and death makes me feel most welcome.”
“Aye, that’s orcs fer you,” Tiarnach replied. “Wonderfully savage big bastards, ain’t they?”
The two men exchanged a puzzled look, aggrieved at finally finding something they could both agree on.
Maeven moved from post to post, examining the skulls. “Men, women, and even children,” she said. “Orcs do not discriminate in who they slaughter. Certainly Amogg Hadakk never showed us they possess any concept of mercy.”
“Mercy is weakness,” Verena said. “And orcs cannot abide that. All orcs fight: male, female and even the sexless creatures that pass for their children take up arms as soon as they can hold them. Given they live in these barely fertile hills surrounded by fortified human towns I suppose they don’t have much choice.”
“Is that a hint of pity I hear on your tongue?” Maeven said.
Verena shrugged, causing the slynx around her shoulders to grumble. “There has never been any friendship between us. We had a common enemy a number of years back and I traded food and supplies in exchange for bars of orcish iron.”
Tiarnach scratched matted red hair. “I doubt I could pick Amogg out from any other orc after all these years. Did she have an eyepatch?”
Lorimer snorted. “You are a drunkard and a fool.”
He nodded. “Aye, what of it? I could be confusing her with some other orc with an eyepatch. Wait… or was that the big berserker from Vandaura? I’ve met or killed so many over the centuries that I’ve lost track, and their faces all blend together.”
Verena again scanned the cliff tops surrounding the bay. “We had best tread carefully. I want no part of a war with orcs, and I doubt our trespass will go unnoticed for long.”
“I have no fear of orcs.” The necromancer glanced to Lorimer. “None of them can stand against a vampire, nor my sorcery.”
Tiarnach chuckled. “Yon big vampire is scary, aye, but you’ve never been on the wrong side of an orc warhost, have you?”
She scowled at him. “Amogg was little bigger than Lorimer.”
“In that case, no,” he replied. “You haven’t met a real orc. Amogg was a mere stripling warrior when she served under Black Herran.” He didn’t deign to elaborate further but his smirk seemed designed to annoy her.
As the necromancer and the once-god bickered, Lorimer ambled along the beach, sniffing the air. He turned to look east towards the forest. “I smell orc sweat, steel and oil. They are watching us.”
Amogg pulled back from the edge as the dark-skinned human turned to face the paler ones. He was big for a human and definitely dangerous judging from how the lesser worker humans avoided him. He, too, seemed oddly familiar, but then she had killed more than a few humans that had foolishly chosen to raid orcish shores. She hoped this one might even pose a challenge in battle. His skull would guard the Hadakk’s borders well against evil human spirits.
“Tell me Gardram’s truth,” she asked Wundak.
“The tattooed female has magic,” the shaman replied. “Very bad. Death surrounds her. She should die first.” Wundak was the closest thing orcs had to what humans called a sorcerer, but her power was good and pure – their god’s will worked through her.
Amogg grunted, the feelings from her gut were always right. “What of the tall one and the burn-haired swordsman?”
“The tallest man-thing is not natural.” Wundak growled and spat, as if he tasted of rotting food. “His spirit is not tied to his flesh as is right and proper. He wears a body like we would a cloak of animal skin.”
“Humans!” Ragash said. “They corrupt all they touch.”
“Truth,” Amogg agreed, baring her tusks. This was a worrying group. This was sounding more and more like one of her old chieftain’s other captains, who was also a darker skinned human. The vamp-ire they called him. Sword and spears and ogres had all failed to bring that man down.
“The burn-haired man,” Wundak continued, “he sears my eyes. There is a speck of blinding light inside him. I think him not all human.”
The sliver of fear Amogg had felt did not seem unwarranted now, but it only made her want to hack their heads off all the more. That was the orcish way.
She backed into the trees and stood stretching sore muscles. She gently ran a finger down the edge of her old axe, the metal slicing a neat line through the surface of her skin. A few beads of bright blood made her smile. Old and honoured it was, but still sharp, deadly and hard as always. She striped her cheeks with
the blood, readying for battle.
Wundak and Ragash strung their bows and tested the pull to ensure the gut strings were good.
“We fight,” Ragash said. “Take their heads and drive the rest back into the sea.”
Wundak shook her head. “Something important is happening here. I feel power gathering. I am afraid.”
Amogg laughed. “Afraid? You? A good joke.”
Wundak’s green face faded to grey and her ears pressed flat to her skull. “Do you not feel it? The world balances on the edge of a blade.”
Amogg’s mirth faded. “You think this little army so dangerous?”
Wundak scowled. “The normal humans are nothing, but the three you asked about are different. From their boat’s chieftain I sense nothing at all. She is hidden from Gardram’s sight.”
That gave Amogg food for long thinking, and she was still chewing on it when her eyes ’n’ ears re-emerged from the shadows.
“Chieftain,” the orc said. “No more ships, and the Hadakk warriors are gathered.”
She nodded and waved him off. “Well, Wundak. It is time. Is your advice fight or talk?”
Wundak shrugged.
Ragash nocked an arrow to his bow. “We talk and then fight, if they don’t give us good reason.”
“That is fair,” Amogg said. “We shall do that.”
The three of them slipped back through the forest and joined the warriors of the Hadakk who could be summoned at short notice: a hundred or so orcs gathered in an unruly mass in the hollow of the hill, armed with axes and spears. Some boasted steel chain and scraps of plate but most wore only leather, wool and wood. Only a dozen of them were elders, looming head and shoulders above their younger, smaller kin. Around orcish feet scurried a few dozen of the braver grubbs wielding sharpened sticks and jagged stones. If it came to a battle they’d likely be slaughtered, but any that survived would be well worth feeding up – Gardram made orcflesh so that when the battle-blood pounded through their veins, they grew straight and strong. That was why Amogg was the biggest and toughest of all.
A greeting rumbled through the warband at her approach. They knew better than to raise their voices too high before battle was joined. A few grubbs squawked loudly with excitement, but her orcs beat silence into them.
Amogg flung her hands wide. “Hadakk, my heart swells to see you come to fight. Armed humans walk our beach, and their big boats sit chained to Gardram’s Tusks. This cannot go unchallenged.”
The hulking forms of elder orcs shoved their way through the crowd towards her and began herding the others into groups. She bared her tusks at them and set her axe to her shoulder, watching them to ensure it was done right. The elders knew what do to though – every one of them bore numerous battle scars.
The orcs with bows had been shoved into one group, those with spears into another, and those with the best axes and armour clumped around their elders. The poorest hill farmers, forced to make do with slingshot and clubs, were distributed among them to harry the enemy.
There was no shame in stones and arrows, but less risk meant less glory than meeting the enemy tusk-to-tusk. Every orc and grubb here had come hoping to earn themselves a story, and if they did something truly worthy, a title. Only a few orcs ever attained a title, and a handful of elders boasted two or three. Amogg had many.
She began the traditional orcish discussion about battle tactics with the other Hadakk elders. A single punch and a bloodied nose later they had all agreed to her plan. She sighed. There was little challenge left in them anymore. She missed her youth during the years of slaughter and war at Black Herran’s side, yearned for a return to frantic ritual single combat over matters of honour. Nobody dared offer more than a token objection anymore. She stripped to the waist to show off all her scars, the fights she’d survived and won. Her orcs roared approval as she lifted her axe high, “Hadakk – to the beach!”
As she marched through the forest with the might of her clan at her back, she felt the stirrings of bloodlust again, the likes of which she had not felt in years. She hoped the talk would fail.
“Orcs are coming,” Lorimer said, ambling back towards the beach. He sniffed the air again. “Lots.” His fingernails cracked and spread, forming long claws at the tips of widening fingers. He grinned, jaw yawning wide to reveal an array of fangs. “I’ve never eaten orc before. I wonder if they taste anything like ogre.”
Verena cursed and finalised arranging the men in a defensive line in front of her rowboats, a shield line at the front and bowmen at the back. If it came to a pitched battle, she was under no illusions how they would fare. As sailors, most wore little armour and with the cliffs circling most of the bay they would be incredibly vulnerable to archers. “Your vampire had best be up to this,” she said to Maeven.
Lorimer shrugged, not terribly concerned.
Tiarnach drew his sword and tossed the makeshift scabbard aside, testing the balance with a few expert cuts. He shook his head at the vampire’s indifferent attitude. “Seen you fight, big man, but a proper orc could easily lop that head from your shoulders. How quick would you heal then, eh?”
“He knows what he’s doing,” Maeven said. “Which is more than I can say for you.”
Tiarnach tossed the sword up in the air, spinning, and snatched its hilt again on the way back down. “Oh, I know exactly what ah’m doin’. You just don’t know what I do. You’re underestimating the big green bastards. Amogg was cunning and vicious as any demon of Hellrath.”
He stabbed his sword into the ground and then took a small case from his pocket. He snapped it open and dabbed a finger in, then began painting red lines and swirls across his face.
Verena rolled her eyes. “War paint? How barbaric.”
He hawked up a blob of phlegm and spat it into the sand by the pirate queen’s feet. “Guess I forgot that fighting was only for civilised folk like yourselves.”
They didn’t have to wait long for the orcs to show up. The greenskins were not known as a stealthy race and their arrival was heralded by widespread cracking of branches and a rustle of foliage not unlike a wave about to crash ashore. First to show their tusks were the orc archers atop the cliffs overlooking the bay, their bows bent and arrows nocked to strings.
Then a line of dark shapes appeared among the trunks of the forest, charging towards the beach. Tiarnach watched the others carefully as the largest orc he’d ever seen crashed through the undergrowth, lifted an axe and loosed a teeth-rattling, arse-clenching roar.
Lorimer and Maeven were wide-eyed and staring. Amogg had grown another head and shoulders taller and wider since any of them had seen her last.
Tiarnach gave an appreciative whistle. “Now that’s a proper orc! It fair brings back memories.” The others had been expecting to see the lesser breed, still larger and bulkier than the average human but not this half-giant looming over even Lorimer, and five times his bulk. Lorimer turned to Tiarnach and gave an admissive nod, making the warrior chuckle. “As I said, good luck w’thon big beastie.”
A line of armed orcs crashed through behind Amogg to form a wall of green flesh and sharp steel. A handful were almost as big as the one at the front.
Verena cleared her throat and stepped forward, speaking first in the guttural language of the orcs and then in the trade tongue: “Amogg of the Hadakk, we are not here to make war. We come to bargain.”
The biggest of the orcs held up a hand and her army stopped in a rough line waving axes and spears and growling angrily, champing at the bit to fling themselves into battle. She replied in a long, snarling sentence.
Verena paused, trying to understand and then translate orcish idioms to a human equivalent for the others to hear.
“Well? What did the ugly old beast say?” Lorimer asked.
Verena winced.
Amogg grinned, exposing her tusks. She slapped the haft of her axe into her palm. In an Awildan-accented human tongue she replied, “Ho. Ho. Ho. Amogg said we have no need to bargain with humans. Leave or we
fight, vamp-ire.”
Lorimer smiled. “Ah, you remember me, then? I am honoured.”
Amogg snorted. “Lorimer Felle. Beside you stands Maeven Deathtouch and Tiarnach Burn-Hair. I know you now. Never friends with Amogg. You have insulted chieftain of the Hadakk, dung-for-brain humans. Now we fight. A long time since Amogg has had good fight.”
“Wait!” Maeven said, moving forward. “I–”
One of the other big orcs leapt forward and snarled something, shaking a fist and bone bracelets. The metallic tang of magic rose up around Amogg, cloaking the chieftain. The line of orcs readied to charge.
Maeven instinctively seized hold of her own magic and felt the orc shaman’s power swelling to try and match it. She drew in more, and yet more still until it hurt to contain it all.
Verena backed away among her men and they began to prepare an escape on their boats, if they could. There was nothing that could stop the orcs charging now.
“Shitty balls,” Tiarnach muttered. “Up to me, is it?” He sighed and straightened his tunic, an insolent grin nailed to his face. “Oh, here, Amogg, there’s something I never did tell you – the old memory ain’t what it once was, but I remember that scar down the chest now I see it again. I killed your father, didn’t I? Big lad w’steel tusks and no nose, wasn’t he?”
Every human and orcish eye turned to stare at the warrior long past his prime.
“You drunken imbecile,” Lorimer said. “Now you’ve really fucking done it.” Bone spikes erupted all over his body as he prepared for battle.
CHAPTER 11
Wundak knew enough of the human tongue to be afraid. She wisely got out of Amogg’s way a moment before the chieftain’s axe slammed down to shatter the boulder in front of her.
“What is this?” Ragash said, seeing Amogg’s ears press flat to her skull. Her skin flushed a furious red and she bared anger-froth covered tusks.
The Maleficent Seven Page 10