The Iron Wolves

by Andy Remic

  “But it’s the middle of the night, General.”

  “I need to show you something.”

  The walls contained large patches of damp and were covered with black mould and green moss. Underfoot, the large stone flags were uneven, buckled, bent, and Kiki traced her fingers down a rough hewn block wall. Again, the angular cuts fitting perfectly together. She frowned. It would take an absolute genius to cut such stonework. That, or an absolute madman.

  They reached an archway, and a terrible cold draft cut through. Water dripped. A wooden mantle had warped and swollen, bulging with a bright white fungus. Kiki ducked warily under the bloated wood, and they entered a narrow corridor with a sandy floor which led steeply downwards.

  “This way.”

  Firelight danced from the walls as they passed a hundred recessed alcoves bearing small, magnificently carved statues, angels on one side, demons on the other. The corridor ended after a hundred paces and Kiki got a real, tangible impression she was underground and the sheer vast mass of the old fortress squatted above her, threatening to collapse and bury her alive. She shuddered and something deep in her soul, some primeval fear, went click.

  They reached a door. This time, there was no damp, no infiltration of water or fungus. It was bone dry and Dalgoran pulled a large iron key from beneath his leather coat. He slid it into the lock and it turned with the tiniest of neat snicks. The door, a good foot thick, swung silently open.

  Kiki ducked a little, peering inside as Dalgoran moved forward and went around the circular chamber, lighting brands set in stone brackets. Kiki stared in wonder. The floor was bare stone, the walls hung with fabulous intricate tapestries, twelve feet in height and showing battles and conquests from Elder Days. There was a small, discreet stone altar, very basic in design, and low stone pews in double rows leading back from the altar to where she stood. The whole chamber felt… Old. Pagan. From Before Times.

  And then she looked up, and her awe was complete. The entire arched roof was lined with precious stones of all types: emeralds, rubies, diamonds, sapphires, and the criss-crossing arched beams were inlaid with beaten gold. As Dalgoran lit the brands, and fires blazed, so the ceiling sparkled and glowed and light swept in patterns across the… words.

  “What does it say?” asked Kiki, words no more than a whisper.

  “An haerarch Equiem,” said Dalgoran, lighting the final brand and moving to the altar, where he placed the burning torch in the open mouth of a demon.

  “Which means?”

  “In praise of the Equiem. They were the Old Gods, Kiki. The Bad Gods. Or so it went.”

  Kiki moved forward, and gave a little shiver. “Why are we here, Dalgoran?”

  “I need to speak to Jagged. And to show you something.”

  “Why here?”

  “How can I explain this? There is magick, in the land, in the rocks and earth, in the seas and the mountains. Forget the tales of childhood, with sparks and streams of fire and glowing eyes and all that other horse shit; this is an energy, a dark energy, based on the four elements of the universe which complement one another, run in harmony. It oozes through the world, deep in the lines. It is a circuit, Kiki, and we can tap into it. One can use it; if one knows how.”

  Kiki nodded. “I have dreamt about such things. A long time ago. When I was a child.” Dalgoran removed his coat and helm, placing them to one side. She watched him. “Is this dark energy safe?” she finally managed.

  “Of course it isn’t safe,” he snapped, then checked himself. “We are dabbling with a great power, Kiki. Have you ever watched a fire consume a forest? Have you ever ridden the sea in a violent storm? Nature is awesome, violent, unpredictable. And this is a direct chainway to the Equiem; if they still exist, of course.”

  “I thought they were just an ancient myth,” said Kiki, voice low.

  Dalgoran, eyes hooded and masked by shadow, shook his head. “They lived, Kiki. Tens of thousands of years ago. They lived and they ruled. Not something you learn about in Vagandrak history, for the arcane Lore is illegal. Too much power and too much knowledge are a very dangerous combination, eh girl?”

  Kiki nodded again, eyes shining. She had always worshipped Dalgoran; followed him as a general, despite the curse of the Iron Wolves, and listened to him like a father. But now she was learning there was more to the old man than she could ever know. He wasn’t just some old soldier in love with nostalgia and middle-aged has-been heroes; he was something unique. A part of the ancient magick…

  Dalgoran drew his sword and approached the altar. He knelt on the single step and said three low words Kiki did not catch; then he stood and moved to the stone plinth and suddenly, in this light, in this place, to Kiki’s already sparked imagination she realised it was not a table; not a table, oh no. It was a sacrificial altar. A place of death and energy and channelling and magick.

  Dalgoran lifted the sword, gripping the pommel, blade a vertical shimmering totem carved with ancient runes from the general’s considerable ancestry. Only then did Kiki see the brass circle in the floor before the altar’s platform.

  Dalgoran inserted the point of the blade into the slot, and with great care, lowered the sword until only the hilt was visible. But still he gripped the weapon, with both hands, his muscles trembling. Kiki waited patiently, but nothing happened. After a few minutes she began to grow impatient, and realised a slow cold was creeping into the chapel. She began to shiver, and realised her toes inside her boots were frozen.

  “Dalgoran?” she asked, quietly.

  There was no response. She blinked, then realised ice was shining in his grey hair and beard.

  She took a step towards him, wondering if this was normal; whatever normal was supposed to be.

  Her boot slid on ice.

  “Dalgoran?”

  And then he spoke, voice loud enough to make her jump and seeming to boom around the hollow stone chapel.

  “Jagged? Is that you?”

  “It is I,” came the reply, but it was metallic; hardly the voice of a man.

  “Have you reached King Yoon?”

  “We are a day away. He is camped thirty miles east of Drakerath with thirty thousand infantry and a thousand archers. If we are right about the mud-orcs, then he could support Desekra. With forty thousand men in total on the walls, we would stand a much better chance. All depending on how many of the filthy bastards are coming our way, of course.”

  “Make a strong case, Jagged.”

  “Be sure, Dalgoran, I will. Have you found the Wolves?”

  “Kiki and Dek. We go now for Narnok.”

  “I hope you’re right about them.”

  “I am right.”

  Dalgoran went silent, hands trembling on the sword’s pommel. Then he spoke, more quietly now. “Kiki? Go in my coat pocket. There’s a pouch. Bring it to me.”

  She did as she was bid, shivering now, her own hair filled with ice. The pouch was leather and contained… something soft. Organic. Like meat. She carried it to Dalgoran, and he held out one hand.

  She tipped the contents into his palm, and almost recoiled. It was a dark meat, containing skin, tufted fur, and a small fragment of bone. Dalgoran closed his fist around it, then suddenly turned, looking at Kiki. “Come here, hold the sword’s pommel with me. We will look into the future together. We will see where this beast originated.”

  Every atom in Kiki’s body wanted to scream a refusal, but ever the soldier, she obeyed Dalgoran’s command. Climbing onto the altar, she knelt in the ice and grabbed the sword with both hands, covering Dalgoran’s large fingers with her own.

  “Now close your eyes,” he said, and drifted into words from ancient language that were soft, musical, but turned slowly harsh and guttural. Kiki felt goosebumps scatter across her flesh, and the hairs on the back of her neck stood up good and hard.

  “We will see, we will see…” he said, and Kiki found herself drifting, and looking out from alien eyes onto a world that seemed different, curved around a small glob
e, corners shining, and she was running with a pack, and glancing left and right she saw other huge horse creatures, twisted, broken, bent, deviated: huge equine heads stretched wide open showing row upon row of razor fangs… and they were screaming, the horses were screaming, and she realised she was screaming with them as they thundered on broken hooves out from the borderland and onto the plains before Desekra. Dawn was breaking, winter sun streaming over high mountain ridges gleaming with black rock, snow and ice, and she ran, huge muscles pumping beneath her so she was in a flood, a huge dark flood of screeching, drooling mud-orcs…

  She let go of the sword with a start, and gasped, coughing, leaning forward on her knees as Dalgoran withdrew the sword, which was now rimed with ice, and slid it into its sheath at his waist.

  He stood, and reached down. Kiki took his hand, looking up at him in horror.

  “Will that happen? Truly?”

  “I do not know. With the flesh I held, we were linked: to the past, the present and the future. But at least it confirmed one thing. The mud-orcs are back.”

  “How many?”

  Dalgoran shrugged and turned, heading for the door. Then he stopped. Glanced back. “More than last time,” he said. “Come on. We need to reunite the Wolves. We are running out of time.”

  A thousand miles away, in a black silk tent, Orlana’s eyes opened in the darkness with a click. Outside, the splice were howling. Zorkai snored beside her, his handsome face troubled in sleep.

  “I see you,” she whispered, and stretched out her hand which coiled with serpents of mist.

  “I know you,” she breathed, licking her blood dark lips.

  “Come to me, Iron Wolves. Come to Orlana.”

  MUD-ORCS RISING

  The Oram Mud-Pits. More than a thousand individual hollows, each one a small lake of ooze. They stank of sulphur, bubbling softly in huge craters amongst the violent upthrust of savage rocks; Nature’s natural daggers.

  King Zorkai stood on a rocky plateau, looking off towards the setting sun, a huge orange orb slowly dying over the vast horizon. It was bloated, like a seven day corpse. Suddenly, Zorkai felt as if he was going to vomit. He closed his eyes for a moment, calming himself internally; and then took a deep breath. He wished he hadn’t, as sulphurous fumes filled his lungs and he spent the next three minutes choking.

  Finally, wiping tears from his eyes, he glanced off across the Pits. They stretched away from his vantage point for as far as the eye could see; huge clusters of vertical jagged red rocks, each a sentinel mound guarding a vast elliptical chamber filled with mud and oily water, some black, some red, some a murky, metallic rust colour, some green like pus from a gangrenous wound. Many bubbled. Some were stagnant. But one thing was for sure: nothing lived here. Nothing could survive in this godforsaken place.

  Orlana was standing out in the midst of the Mud-Pits, a tiny stick figure in flowing white robes. She should be dead, Zorkai knew; he was on the verge of puking his internal organs out and he knew from experience to move any further in would be to perish. And yet there she stood. The witch. The demon. The bitch. Zorkai smiled. But she was his key to becoming an Immortal Legend.

  Hearing a whimper, followed by a deep-throated growl, he half-turned, but then paused and turned back to observe Orlana. He forced himself. She was walking toward him, bare feet treading lightly on the scorched, razor rock.

  A pang of guilt rose in Zorkai like bile, but he quelled it savagely. Had he not killed his brothers and sisters? Had he not slit the throats of cousins lying in their beds? There was a time for feeling, emotion, pity, understanding and love; and there was a time for brutality, and savagery, and greatness. Now, he knew, was a time for greatness.

  Behind, on the paths leading to the Oram Mud-Pits was a huge stream of people. His soldiers had emptied the hospitals, toured the streets of Zak-Tan proclaiming a new incredible Healer had come to the palace, and how she would cure diseases, deformity, blindness, deafness and any other ailment a person suffered. Thousands had poured from their homes and had been led west away from the city with carts of food and wine, with promises of healing. How many had Tsanga said? Fifteen thousand, so far. And that didn’t include those being brought on carts from the hospitals and the asylum.

  Only now, the splice had arrived, savagely tearing apart several runners as an example to the others, and the huge group had been split into sections and escorted west; brought here.

  Be strong, Zorkai told himself.

  Soon, this abomination will be over.

  And things can only get better.

  He watched Orlana approach, and she gave him a cursory smile and passed him by, leaping up the rocks to stand at the summit, looking down on the winding paths and the plains beyond, and the huge gathering of the ill, the deformed, and the crying. She lifted her right arm and the splice began snarling, their huge heads lowered and weaving, nudging the people forward. Crying and begging, they began the trek up the remaining pathways until they reached the summit. A woman tried to run, turning and fighting her way free, but a splice bit her in half at the waist, showering women and children with crimson arterial gore.

  “Feed the Mud-Pits,” whispered Orlana, eyes bright.

  Men, women and children were pushed, jostled and urged over the summit where they began to choke from the fumes, disorientation fast overcoming many. These were dragged by the splice and dumped unceremoniously into the many huge ovals of bubbling mud.

  At first, Zorkai could not watch. Each scream pierced his heart. But then curiosity got the better of him and he opened his eyes, cutting off the cries and the begging, to stare down at these: the weak, being given a second chance.

  As the sun sank, and darkness descended, so tens and hundreds were fed into the mud pools, where they sank, silently, without trace. Orlana stood beside Zorkai, watching impassively.

  A woman screamed, arms outstretched towards her king. She was lame, he could see, with a twisted foot, hobbling urgently to get away from the snapping fangs of a splice which took her to the edge of a mud-pool and butted her, sending her into the slime. She thrashed for a moment, screaming, the thick red substance flowing into her mouth and throat – and then she sank, and was gone.

  “The Mud-Pits need to be fed,” repeated Orlana.

  “I know,” said Zorkai, both fists clenching, his left coming to rest on a sword hilt.

  “This will build you an unstoppable army. You will see.”

  “Yes.”

  The work went on long into the night. Several fights broke out, mainly men, old soldiers, who formed small squares and refused to move. They were broken in seconds, dragged screaming and bellowing by their ankles up over the ridge and down, where they were tossed into the pools.

  Men. Women. Crying children, their faces streaked with soot and dark sand. Even babes, wailing, squawking, and Zorkai gritted his teeth, muscles in his jaw tight, as they were tossed away, spinning: hurled into oblivion.

  Finally, the numbers had thinned and the splice were taking the few remaining hundred further away, down rocky aisles between the hundreds of Mud-Pits which dominated the plain.

  Orlana glanced at Zorkai. “It is not enough.”

  “You said…”

  “I know what I said. But it would appear you are a healthy people.” She smiled sardonically. “Tuboda!”

  The great lion beast was there in an instant, his huge bulk bounding up the rocks, where he settled, gazing adoringly at Orlana. “Yes, Horse Lady?” he managed between his fangs.

  “We need more.”

  “Your will, Horse Lady.”

  “Round up every second woman and child. We need the men for the merging…”

  “Yes, Horse Lady.”

  “No!” snapped Zorkai, his eyes flashing.

  “Rule with me, or…” Orlana lifted her head, gesturing to the massacre, “join them.”

  Zorkai’s eyes narrowed. “You are destroying my people!”

  “You will grow again. This will make you stronger. You wi
ll not just rule Zakora; you will rule Vagandrak, Zalazar, Lartendo, even the Plague Lands. They will speak your name for ten thousand years!”

  “And what do you get out of this?” said Zorkai, suddenly.

  “My plan goes much deeper than simple domination,” said Orlana, and watched a hundred splice charge past, over the rocks, on their way back towards Zal-Tan, and the unsuspecting, sleeping population.

  Zorkai awoke. For three days he had sat on the plateau, at first watching Orlana’s splice feed thousands more into the mud, across the whole plain, across hundreds of massive pits which bubbled and accepted the gift without sign. He kept telling himself it was something he had to do; this mass murder was for the greater good. But some small sliver of his heart did not quite believe it.

  “Your people will rise again!” Orlana soothed him, kissing his neck.

  And slowly, she had eased away his doubts, and he found the sliver of disbelief, and sorrow, and extracted it, tossing it away like a lost pin. He hardened his heart, focused his mind, and knew he fucking knew this was what had to be done. To become strong, there had to be sacrifice. To rule, there were always casualties.

  Night had fallen.

  Fires burned out on the plain, and down amongst the Mud-Pits.

  Now, all the screaming was gone and done.

  Now, Orlana said, all they had to do was wait.

  “The mud-orcs are a creature of flesh and bone and magick; they are as old as the world, a primitive seed held in the Mud-Pits of Oram where they can be summoned, and grown, starting with the flesh of others as an agent to stimulate rebirth. They are not strictly born, but are a resurrection of past mud-orcs; so even when they are young, they retain incredible fighting skill combined with a savagery rarely seen amongst Men.”

  “Why will they serve you?” asked Zorkai, eyes wide.

  “Because I channelled the magick of their rebirth. I am their Mistress. I am their Lady. I am their Queen.”

  And now, he watched as the pits started to bubble with an intensity he found alarming. The ground shook. His lungs were scorched from the hot air and the sulphur. And now it grew worse, and huge clouds of vapours, of gas and fire, erupted from the pits. There came a movement, a surging of thick mud and something, something emerged, climbing up the jagged rocks to stand, naked and proud, bigger than a man by more than a full head, with wiry limbs and a wide chest and narrow hips; its skin was a pale green with streaks of red like open wounds; its head round and hairless, eyes jet black, tongue blood red, fingers tapered into long crooked claws, feet the same; and its first words were growls of blasphemy and it lifted its head to the moon and howled like a wolf…