The Iron Wolves

by Andy Remic

  “But man, this is good ground for an ambush,” observed Narnok, and stood up, scraping the chopped onions into the stew. He placed his flat rock chopping board down, and grabbed his axe, as if the great weapon afforded him some comfort. It certainly gave him the same great protection afforded by any razor-sharp double-headed axe. He grinned at Ragorek.

  “Who would want to ambush us?” asked Ragorek, softly.

  Narnok shrugged. “I’m just saying, that thing back at Ralph’s tavern. That killing. Was it just a random chance meeting? Seems funny to me, is all.”

  “How funny?” said Ragorek.

  “Well, Dalgoran’s off on some personal crusade to reunite us old bastards, no matter what our scars. He says the mud-orcs are coming back. Now, I’m a cynic. Only have to take one look at my face to see why. But things don’t feel right. I know Dek described these beasts from his fight in Heroes’ Square, but seeing them in the flesh…” Narnok shuddered. “They was not what I expected.”

  “No, I suppose not,” said Ragorek, and rubbed the bristles on his chin. The bruises on his face from his fight with Dek had pretty much healed, but his nose was still buckled. He touched it tenderly and Kiki saw the movement.

  “How’s things with you and Dek?”

  “Calm,” said Ragorek, eyes fixed on Kiki. “Can I ask you something?”

  “Depends what it is.” She smiled to take the sting from her words.

  “You and Dek. You were together, once, weren’t you? At Desekra? During the War of Zakora?”

  Kiki gave a short nod, averting her eyes. “We thought we faced certain death. At times like that, people can find… unlikely company. Not that I’m saying Dek is unlikely; he was certainly ruggedly handsome back in his day.”

  “Just as you were wildly pretty?” butted in Narnok, grinning a broad grin.

  “I like to think majestically beautiful,” smiled Kiki. “But it fades. It all fades. Things change. We were young and doomed to die. It drove us together seeking warmth and comfort in the lonely night hours of downtime, when there was no killing to be done.”

  “Wasn’t that a court martial offence?”

  “Ha, yes, but when there’s tens of thousands of mud-orcs snarling and drooling and screaming curses, waving their swords and axes and spears and trying to remove your head; well, then you tend not to bother about such things. Neither do your officers, especially those newly baptised in war.” She gave a little shudder. “It’s something no person should have to go through.”

  “And what about now?” asked Ragorek, eyes still fixed on Kiki.

  “Well, if you were asking me about now, I’d tell you to mind your own fucking business, or I might just pour this stew over your damned head. Understand?”

  “Oh I understand all right,” smiled Ragorek, and suddenly Kiki realised how much like his brother he really was. It wasn’t in their build or colouring, or even facial structure; they looked modestly different. But it was in the set of their features, the way they occasionally smiled, the subtle gap between their middle lower teeth. It was a hint, nothing more.

  “What I want to know,” said Narnok, resting back, his axe on his lap like some long lost son, “is Dalgoran reckons these thousands of mud-orcs are on their way back, to invade Vagandrak or whatever, which seems mighty improbable to me; especially just based on the word of some mad old woman probably high on the honey-leaf.” He rubbed idly at one facial scar with his thumb. “Ach, but this bastard itches. Listen, I just don’t understand it. So some twisted horse creatures have been attacking people, and maybe we aren’t targeted, maybe we are; but that doesn’t mean there’s a link. These beasts could be from the Plague Lands; have you ever visited the Plague Lands? A barren, evil place, everything twisted and dead, and all the trees are black. Poisoned. Broken.”

  “You went there?” said Kiki, aghast.

  “When I was younger, and wilder,” nodded Narnok. “Nobody tells Narnok that he can’t do something. You know what a stubborn mule I was. Am. You know what I mean.” He grinned again, a quite horrific vision.

  “You’re insane,” said Kiki.

  “Just insanely curious.”

  Kiki shrugged. “Well I don’t give a bucket of horse shit what you think; I trust Dalgoran with more than my life. And his intuition, in all the years I’ve known him, has always, always, been right. His skill, and knowledge, damn, his sixth sense got us out of more trouble than you could believe possible. You know this, Narnok. You were there, man! With the Kultakka Raids, with the Zorkai Princes, and that time we nearly all died on the West Salt Plains. He saved us. Every time. And you all know what happened with Morkagoth…”

  “I agree, Dalgoran seemed like a damn mystic when it came to Morkagoth. And he helped invoke the cur…” Narnok suddenly shut his mouth, glancing at Ragorek.

  “What is it?”

  “Balls. I speak too much for a man without a face.”

  Kiki stood, and moved to Narnok, reaching out to gently place her hand against his cheek. “Stop it,” she said.

  Narnok pulled away, eyes narrowed, then stood and stretched. “I’m going for a walk before that smell drives me insane with hunger. I’m a big lad, I am. I needs my food.”

  Narnok ambled off, axe still in one large fist. After the beasts back at the tavern, Kiki could hardly blame him.

  Kiki went back to the pot and stirred the contents with a wooden spoon.

  “What did he mean?” asked Ragorek. “About invoking something?”

  Kiki glanced up, iron eyes dark and gleaming. Ragorek recoiled from the anger there.

  Forcing herself to remain calm, Kiki said, “Some things are best forgotten, Rag. Some things are better left dead,” and she moved off to her horse to unpack her saddle-bags.

  Snow was falling heavy. Kiki dreamed of a life where there was no war, no horror, no thrusting a sword into a mud-orc’s guts and watching its bowels spill out over your blade as it writhed and screamed and clawed its way up the sharp iron, pulling your blade more and more into itself as its claws grappled for your throat… she dreamed of being young, and healthy, and pretty, training at the new recruit training ground west of the capital city, Vagan; so proud to have been picked for her fitness, strength, agility, swordplay… and there was Dek, a wrestler, a pugilist, broad-chested and athletic; expert with sword and spear, powerful, handsome, with booming laugh and infectious smile. But to fall in love was forbidden, and the soldiers were worked damned hard to drive away any such carnal desires. Later, much later, they stood on the battlements. The mud-orcs were coming, so the scouts said. “We might die here,” said Dek, and he touched her shoulder, a light movement for one so big, so heavy, so brutal. “Yes, I know,” she said, and gazed up into his eyes and fell into them. Their sex back in the barracks had been gentle at first, then hot and hard and filled with need not want. But then the mud-orcs arrived, and the killing began, and there was little thought of romance…

  She turned over in her sleep, hugging her cloak tight about her.

  Snow had gathered on the stretched-out tarpaulins and had started to bow them. Outside, a fox padded into the camp and paused, muzzle to the ground near the fire. It found a morsel of beef and ate hurriedly before padding onwards. A few miles out into the forest it halted, nose twitching, scenting something… strange. Whatever the scent, the fox changed direction and sped away, head low, paws running silently across fresh fallen snow.

  You should tell him you still love him, said Suza, voice like a snake in Kiki’s bed. Tell him you are dying and only have days left; then he will take pity on you and come to your bed. A pity-fuck. That’s what you’re used to, isn’t it, you hateful wide-legged whore?

  “Why can’t you just leave me alone?” She turned in her sleep, arm falling free. Her brow was creased, eyelids twitching.

  Tell him Dalgoran is right, and the mud-orcs are coming. Tell him they are here, and you want him for those last final moments before their claws tear out your eyes, their spears pierce your body, their b
rutal black swords hack off your head. Then he’ll come to you, naked and lean and hard. Imagine him pressing against your naked body, Kiki. Imagine his powerful hands opening your legs as you roll onto your back like a yelping puppy; imagine him kissing you, his hands moving down over your breasts and belly and touching you there, teasing you, his fingers gliding into you…

  “No! Stop it! Suza, you are a wicked, evil poison; get out of my head, get out of my dreams! Leave me in peace…”

  You’ll be left in peace all right, bitch, when the mud-orcs arrive…

  “And when is that?”

  Yeah, Kiki, when, when, when. They’re expanding even as you lie here like a cheap strumpet; expanding their ranks, forging swords and spear points and axes; they feed the living to create the twisted, they feed the mud to give birth from the mud. Orlana has sent out scouting parties. And she has sent out killing parties. Vicious mud-orcs looking for certain people; looking for those who might oppose her in these first days.

  “Is this true?”

  Would I lie to you, sister of mine?

  “How could you know such things?”

  The barriers between their world and my world are not so hard to cross. I watched Orlana; watched her take Zorkai to bed like a pimply eighteen year-old virgin. She ate him in many ways; just after she’d eaten his wives.

  “So, Dalgoran is right?”

  He might be. Or maybe I just like playing games with your pretty little stupid head.

  “Damn you, tell me the truth!” raged Kiki, and Suza’s mocking laughter peeled out and Kiki blinked, realising she was awake, and cursed. She kicked herself quietly from her blankets, pulled on her cloak and crawled from the tarpaulin protection. A cool breeze chilled her and she moved to the remnants of the camp fire, noting the fox prints and smiling. “I hope we left you something,” she muttered, and stoked the glowing coals.

  Then something, a tiny bad feeling, crept into the back of her mind.

  Tell him Dalgoran is right, and the mud-orcs are coming… scouting parties… killing parties…

  A noise echoed from the boulders to the right. Kiki moved back to her tarpaulin, grabbing her short sword free. She moved to Dek, nudging the large man with the toe of her boot and he grunted, rolling smoothly from his blankets and drawing his own blade.

  “Trouble?”

  “I don’t know. Something’s not quite right.”

  Dek roused the others as Kiki moved to the fire and its sanctuary of warmth and flickering flame; then she moved beyond, into the trees, where she settled into a crouch allowing her eyes to adjust to the darkness.

  A cool breeze eased through the boughs bringing the scent of pine needles. Wind hissed through brittle brown leaves far off to her left. And then… she heard them coming. They moved swiftly through the gloom, angling towards her and the fire behind. Kiki kicked up from the snow and ran back to where Narnok was weighing his axe, face a horror-show by the light of the glowing embers.

  “What is it?”

  “Mud-orcs!” hissed Kiki.

  “You’re joking?” snapped Dek.

  “Do I look like I’m the village fucking idiot?”

  The Iron Wolves formed a line, rocks to their backs, weapons before them. The remnants of the fire flickered and crackled gently.

  The trees sighed and creaked.

  Their smell came first; it was rotten eggs, it was bad milk, it was sour cheese, it was open gangrene, it was the maggot-filled corpse of a strangled cat. Putrefaction washed over the group and they gagged, and then the mud-orcs sprinted from the darkness and they were big, and moved with agility and aggression and no fear and Kiki gasped as memories slammed into her mind and she was back on the walls of Desekra Fortress in the Pass of Splintered Bones while the war-horde chanted and screamed on the plains below…

  Mud-orcs…

  They came through the darkness, a large group, perhaps forty strong, moving with inhuman speed in a ragged line. Within twenty feet they began an unholy howl, mouths like muzzles lifted to the sky, breathing ragged and panting like dogs; they were bigger than men, with spindly limbs and carrying rough-edged swords and axes.

  “Stand strong,” came Dalgoran’s voice – steady, authoritative – as the mud-orcs, growling now, became visible. Their skin was a sickly green and streaked vertically with red and crimson, as if their flesh had been hacked wide open. Their eyes were glassy black, and they had painted war markings on their flesh with white clay and mud ochre. All four limbs ended in long, curling claws as they powered through the forest…

  And then they were there, and Kiki screamed and leapt over the fire, an axe rushing past her head as she swayed and her sword clubbed between glistening eyes. The mud-orc went down in a tangle and she leapt its body, slashing her blade left into another’s eyes, then right across a throat, opening it like a wide smile gushing blood. To her left, Narnok waded in with his axe, cleaving skulls left and right, splitting them down the middle like melons so brains splashed out over his axe blades, over his jerkin, over his scarred face. He fought in silence, features a terrible grim mask.

  All was madness in the dark forest. General Dalgoran, despite his advancing years, fought with a mechanical accuracy gained from half a century with a blade in his hand. He was cool, calculating: each movement, each block and strike and cut performed with minimum effort, maximum efficiency. The mud-orcs, larger in numbers, and each one bigger and heavier than their human foes, were used to using their bulk and weight and power to devastating effect. But Dalgoran used clever little twists of body and blade, small accurate side-steps, neat movements of head and shifts of weight to manoeuvre himself out of danger, and skewer his opponents on his short sword. Whereas Narnok bludgeoned his way to victory, each massive blow cutting limbs and heads from bodies, in contrast, Dalgoran’s blade seemed hardly to touch the mud-orcs: a throat cut appeared nothing more than a thin red line delivered on the tip of his blade, but then unzipped like a jacket spilling out oesophagus and vocal cords in a shower of blood. Dalgoran stabbed one raging massive mud-orc in the chest, a simple flicker of in-out, his blade intruding barely more than a couple of inches into the mud-orc’s flesh; and yet with unerring accuracy it pierced the mud-orc’s heart and dropped it like a sack of shit.

  Dek was mid-point between Narnok and Dalgoran; he fought with accuracy, but also with a primitive joy in battle, hacking and slicing, twisting and moving with great agility. He also used his fists, elbows, knees and boots, effective in dirty bouts in the Red Thumb Fighting Pits, and just as effective in a melee in the darkened woods.

  And finally, Ragorek fought on the right, not as skilled as the others with his blade, but just as ferocious as being Dek’s older brother would suggest. His great mane of hair seemed aflame by the dying light of the fire, and he bellowed through his beard, half in rage, half in fear, as the mud-orcs seemed to come on in a great flood of green flesh like some necrotic army, and he found himself in a sudden island of fighting, completely surrounded by mud-orc flesh and armour and dirty great battle-axes. Rag felt himself starting to panic. He blocked a downward axe sweep, kicked the mud-orc between the legs, making it grunt, but its weight carried it forward and it crashed into Rag. He tried to side-step, as he had seen Dalgoran do, but the mud-orc’s arms wrapped around him and both went down in a flurry of limbs. Rag lost grip of his sword and screamed as a knife slid across his ribs. He head-butted the creature, breaking its already buckled nose, and twisting, crawled atop it, grabbing its windpipe, thumbs pressing in deep, throttling it. Now the mud-orc slammed a knee up into Rag’s balls, and a throw sent him flying. The mud-orc leapt across him, grinning down, eyes gleaming, long strings of saliva drooling down onto Ragorek’s face and open mouth. He thrashed, but the mud-orc was incredibly strong, and heavier than Rag. He threw punches, left and right, left and right, huge heavy blows, but the mud-orc pushed its head back out of reach whilst still delivering that windpipe crushing grip…

  Stars swam. Red ran through black, like blood disseminat
ing through a night lake. Ragorek was choking, his vision gone now, his tongue protruding like a stalk, his legs thrashing. The beast was incredibly strong; stronger than Rag.

  This is what it’s like to die, he thought through rivers of pain.

  This is where it ends.

  THE STREETS

  Vagandrak’s more southerly capital, Drakerath, was less militarised than Vagan, and concerned itself more with being a hub for the arts and culture. In societal terms, the Vagan people considered themselves tough, no-nonsense, strong of body and mind, whereas those who chose Drakerath in the south were soft and weak and more concerned with man loving man. Of course, those in Drakerath considered themselves sophisticated, educated, more prone to think than to fight, whereas their neighbours in “the second capital” were boorish, uncouth, aggressive and proved their stupidity by a lack of appreciation of the arts and response to criticism with violence.

  On this night, however, as a few flurries of snow kissed the winter gardens, the tree lined avenues, the beautiful tall houses of the rich quarter, and King Yoon’s Drakerath Palace’s sculpted battlements, white marble walkways and narrow, picturesque purple towers, so Drakerath’s citizens had something rather more serious than neighbourly insults to contend with…

  A scream echoed from the darkness. Followed by rushing footfalls.

  A woman appeared at the edges of the golden glow of a fish-oil street lantern, face twisted in terror, one shoe lost. Then something in the darkness, growling in a low burble, reached out and plucked her from the light, dragging her back into black. She screamed again, and there came various tearing noises, two cracks and a heavy thump. Then, more slow tearing and a sound like a long-drawn out deflating sigh.