The Iron Wolves

by Andy Remic

  Awareness started to come to her, as if her mind had been full of smoke and gradually it was clearing. She realised with a start that she was naked, and that the place, the underground chamber, was warm. She heard the crackle of coals, with tiny hisses and pops. She frowned.

  “Hel… Hello?” she managed through dry lips.

  “Why, hello, my little darling,” came a rich, resonant voice, and she frowned again, deeper now, for she recognised that voice; it was a fabulous voice full of life and love and laughter. Where had she heard it before? And where was she?

  “Er, why… where am I? What happened?” She tried to lift an arm to rub at her head, but again felt the restriction, heard the jingle of chains. Her eyes were swimming in and out of focus, and she turned her head to the left… and her world dropped out through the bottom of her soul like a body in a tarpaulin dropped down a well.

  Two people hung against the wall, their wrists in thick iron shackles, both naked, both unconscious, both slumped against the chains, which had been fastened to thick iron hooks hammered into gaps between the stones.

  One was a woman, her body filthy, bruised, and… bloody. Strips of skin were missing on her belly and breasts. Her toenails, also, were missing, her feet brown where the blood had dried. The second figure was a young man with short blond hair. His wrists and arms were streaked with blood, presumably from struggling. He had no marks on his naked body, but ducking down a little, she could see his face was heavily bruised.

  Now there came a sigh from behind her, and a figure stepped into view. He was tall and handsome and gallant and noble, and her heart leapt, for surely the wonderful Prince Zastarte was here to rescue her?

  He grinned at her, then, a look of genuine good humour. He tilted his head, eyes locked on hers, as if trying to decipher what was going on in her head. Then he licked his lips, and she saw he carried a pair of tongs, their end punctuated by a hot coal glowing orange, sizzling softly, and offering threat implicit.

  “Prince!” she said, startled. Then pulled against her chains.

  “Ahh, sweet Ember Wellton.” He moved closer, puckering his lips at her as if she were some little cry-baby and he was about to mock. “You are such a pretty little thing, yes you are. I bet that little mind is all tumbled over and so confused, isn’t it?” He screwed up his face.

  “You have brought me here?”

  “I would clap, but I fear this coal would burn off my flesh.” His voice sounded more authoritative now. It was like a knife of iron had suddenly eased through him, and the glint of humour had gone.

  “Why? Why would you do this?”

  “Questions. Always the questions.” He moved yet closer and rested his hand lightly on her soft, naked, pale ankle.

  She licked her lips, and then looked up at him. “Seriously, Prince Zastarte,” she managed, although her voice was a little cracked, “why have you brought me here?”

  “I would like to say it was for the money, little Ember. I would like to say it was because I was in great debt at the hands of the Red Thumb Gangs, and thus driven by despair to desperate ends, taken to kidnapping young wealthy individuals in order to extort large amounts of finance from their bloated, over-stuffed parents.” He smiled, and trailed his hand from her ankle, to her knee, then halfway up her thigh. She shivered. He smiled at the response. “But then, that would be a lie.”

  His hand continued its journey, moving up her thigh, sliding slightly inside so that his trailing fingers gently teased against the edge of her pubic mound, slowing a little, as if they might explore further to an intake of her breath, but then circling, and moving up her flat white belly to rest gently on her ribs.

  “I would like to say I am overcome with lust for your amazing and fabulous tight little white body. Your bottom is so firm and strong, your breasts pert, nipples erect with fear even as we speak… and yes, your eyes and lips are all perfect, your hair oiled with the finest of lotions, your legs long and straight, your quim an absolute exquisite joy to behold…” he came close, fast, face looming into her, “and yes, of course I would like to fuck you just as I fucked your mother, twice, hard and fast against the wall, her hands on my rump pulling me in harder faster deeper as she bit my chest and neck and just couldn’t get enough; then later, up in your father’s bed whilst he drank himself stupid down below on port and brandy, pulling out at the last minute to eject my seed all over her tits and face, rubbing my juice into her lips, into her mouth, watching her taste me and her together, our sexual honey converged and mated forming the sweetest elixir; oh yes, sweet Ember, I could do that to you, I could give you the forbidden fruit and watch you drink it so deep. Alas, sex is something that bores me. To fuck you, yes, it would bore me very much.”

  Ember stared hard at him, mouth open, pink lips dry, unable to comprehend what was actually going on. Then slowly she closed her mouth and the terror came, and it was a terrible dark worm coming up from the pit of her belly, through her heart, into her mouth like a dead scaly thing, sucking out her life.

  Understanding had arrived.

  “Please don’t hurt me,” she said, voice barely more than a whimper.

  “Hurt you?” he shouted, whirling suddenly away like a dancer, the glowing coal leaving traces of bright swirls before Ember’s eyes. “Of course I won’t hurt you!” He returned, and rested a hand near her throat. “Not yet, anyway, my sweet darling.”

  He turned and moved to the two people hanging against the wall, ducking a little to look up into the young man’s face.

  “Aha! So you are awake, you cheeky little scamp. You thought to fool old Uncle Zastarte with your playground play acting?” He grabbed the man’s hair and jerked his head up roughly. Then he glanced over to Ember. “See, Pestrat? You have an appreciative audience now, my friend!”

  Ember gasped, for one of Pestrat’s eyes was gone revealing nothing but a black, empty socket. The young man started to whimper, then to wail, and Zastarte slapped him hard across the face, knocking his head to one side and silencing the noise.

  “Enough of that, fucker.” He lifted the tongs, with the glowing coal, until it was near Pestrat’s face. The man started to squirm, trying to get away from the terrible heat. “What’s the matter, cat got your tongue?” Then he gave a low laugh. “Of course not. I’ve got it. In a jar, over yonder.” He pointed with the coal to somewhere behind Ember, who was slowly pissing herself, her urine dripping from the bench upon which she was chained.

  Pestrat’s face began to glow with a gentle soft light as the coal came closer once more. His remaining eye was wide in absolute terror.

  “Don’t do it,” croaked Ember.

  Zastarte half-turned, but he was focused on his task.

  “Please, don’t hurt him anymore!”

  “Why?” snapped Zastarte, whirling about and stalking towards her. He thrust the glowing coal towards her face and she squealed, trying to back-pedal, to get away. “You want to take his pain for him?”

  “No, no, I just don’t understand…”

  “And you think I expect you to? You think I care whether you understand why I bring you people here? You are the dregs at the bottom of the barrel, and yet you float at the top. You wade through your lives stepping on all those around you, using them like cattle in your factories, your tanneries and fish gutting plants, your slaughter-houses and sewers; and you take the money, the profit, and let them live in filth and squalor and poverty. You abuse your fellow human beings and you think there will be no retribution? Well, I am here to show you not everybody is afraid! I am here to show you the poor and the weak and the abused, they can fight back, they can turn on their masters and make them suffer just like the poor and the weak of this world suffer.”

  “I have done none of those things!” wailed Ember.

  “No,” snarled Zastarte, “but your family have, they have built their wealth on the backs of the poor, and for that, my sweet little girl, they must be punished. And they will be punished. Through you. Through your pain and throu
gh your exquisite suffering.”

  He advanced on Pestrat, and thrust the coal into the man’s remaining eye. Pestrat screamed a deformed scream, a strangled, cauterised wail, his bloody tongue stump waggling, his head lifting high as if praying to a god who didn’t love him for a miracle that couldn’t happen.

  It took a minute, but to Ember the minute lasted a lifetime.

  Then Zastarte turned, grinned at her, his face a sheen of sweat with a few smudges from the coal brazier. His iron grey eyes were gleaming. He said, “Then again, that whole ‘for the good of the people’ horse shit could just be all be… horse shit. After all. Some of us just like to watch people suffer.”

  Captain Zelt of the Timanta City Guard looked up from his desk as Feest, one of his men, entered. Feest’s eyes were gleaming. A single candle burned, and outside snow fell. The wind howled outside the single pane of glass.

  “We’ve found him,” said Feest.

  “You’re sure?”

  “A whore heard a cry and looked out of her window. She saw a man matching Zastarte’s description lift what looked like a body from his carriage and carry it down into a cellar under a shop on Fish Market Lane.”

  “To hide the smell.”

  “That’s what I thought.”

  “Get the men together.”

  “All of them?”

  “All of them. We’re going to hang this bastard. All we need is evidence, no matter how weak. You and I both know he’s guilty.”

  Feest stared into Zelt’s eyes and did not see justice there. No, this was way too personal; it had been going on for far too long. Young men and women, sons and daughters of the wealthy in Timanta, had been disappearing for nearly a year now. There were sixteen cases of missing persons and not one body had been found. However, in the last month the numbers of abductions had increased; as if the kidnapper, or indeed killer, was getting greedy. Or overconfident. Whatever, there was massive pressure on Captain Zelt and his men to catch the bastard. And not just catch him. The clamour of the wealthy demanded serious payback.

  “Let’s go. And warn the men. This Zastarte, he’s one dangerous fucker.”

  “What shall we do we when get him?”

  There was a moment of pure, unspoken understanding.

  “Let’s just say he can’t be allowed to leave the building with his heart still beating in his chest.”

  RIPPLES

  The raven circled high on the air currents, gliding under a cold, vast, blue dome of sky. Its glossy black feathers glowed beneath a winter sun, and its black eyes were like glass, observing the world below it, a huge gameboard spread out for its sole entertainment.

  It gave an echoing croak and changed direction, dropping a little and giving slow, flowing wing beats. To the north the mountains reared, distant and massive, the rock black, peaks white and cloaked in a single massive layer of mist that stretched away across the world. The raven croaked again, and circled, dropping in height. Its eyes fixed on the plains to the south and the far northern city of Pajanta Kin. Thick black columns of smoke still rose, and the raven could make out fires burning. It could not miss the destruction; the whole city burned.

  And from the south came a slow flood of darkness oozing across the land. Like ants, they progressed across the gameboard, watched by the raven with nothing more than idle curiosity. There were thousands of them, marching at a steady pace. There were tens of thousands: mud-orcs in mismatched armour and bearing rough-forged weapons. They did not march with any structure; there were no ranks or units, just an untidy straggle seemingly as wide as the horizon and many ranks deep.

  The raven flapped towards the seething mass in the distance, like giant insects that had overrun the huge city of Pajanta Kin and absorbed its citizens into their own numbers, growing them massively; and onwards they came. Marching, marching, boots stomping the hard barren earth as they headed ever north.

  The raven blinked, black eyes moving past the mud-orcs. If it could have counted numbers, it would have realised they had swelled their ranks, and were now close to one hundred and sixty thousand green-skinned beasts. And behind them came the splice, galloping disjointed, most either swollen, distorted horses, some a mix of horse and man; or a few other clusters where Orlana had used her shapeshifting magick on wolves, or bears: huge broad-shouldered lumbering monstrosities with tufts of orange and black fur and muzzles twice the length of a normal bear with hooked crooked black teeth. In total, Orlana’s army neared two hundred thousand creatures, and they moved across the land like a plague of insects, taking everything, destroying everything, creating nothing.

  The raven beat its wings, heading high above the marching army. It stank, and the raven gave a final croak, eyes gleaming. The raven was intelligent enough to know that when an army travelled, it was often followed by battle. And after every battle, it was time for the raven to gorge.

  Zorkai slumbered, and awoke with a start to see Orlana, her head resting on one hand, propped up on her elbow, as she watched him. He licked his lips. Fear was an ever-present shadow, like a stain across his soul, but he tried to pacify it with thoughts of conquest and victory and immortality and strength and power. Somehow, there was always an imbalance. Somehow, he never felt pure.

  Orlana was naked beneath the thick silk sheets, and Zorkai’s eyes travelled down. One breast was exposed, small and firm and pale white, like delicate porcelain. She saw him look, and he quickly transferred his gaze. Orlana’s sexual appetite was insatiable, and Zorkai’s lust and strength and stamina were prodigious; and yet… and yet after every single act, he could not help but feel a little bit – dirty. Not dirty in a sexually frisky sense; but in a purely physical one, as if a fine oil residue was left covering his entire body after the act. An oily film of perversion he could never, ever wash free.

  “What are you thinking?” she asked, suddenly, voice low and melodious.

  “I am thinking our army is massive beyond belief.”

  “And still it grows.”

  “For how long?”

  “Until I have enough.”

  “For what?”

  Orlana smiled, then, and reached forward, kissing his head as she would a simple child. “You do not need to worry yourself about such matters; soon we will be at the Pass of Splintered Bones and we will smash the Desekra Fortress. Even now I have splice and mud-orcs crossing the mountains by treacherous, hidden paths; many hundreds will not succeed, but enough will; and these will hunt down those I know oppose me. These will work to open the Desekra gates from the inside.”

  “This I know,” said Zorkai.

  “Come here, my lover.” She leant forward and kissed him, and he returned the kiss. But he was getting tired. Not just physically, or sexually; but in his soul.

  “I have a question.”

  “Nothing more dangerous than a man who thinks.”

  “Ha! You think I built my own fucking empire by not using my mind? You think I murdered my brothers and sisters, my cousins and their cousins, without having a single element of strategy in my body? You frighten me. Yes, I know that you know. And yet you thrill me, also, and your promises are an incredible drug; not promises that I trust, but a heady drug aroma which entices me on for more and more and more. I am not a stupid man, Orlana. I see your power. I watch your army. I recognise I was a puppet that helped get things started; and I will be faithful and true to you for as long as I live, for yes, I am a vain man, yes I am in love with power and an eternal line for my children. I know you can achieve your dreams, Orlana; but I cannot help you do this, and secure my place by your side, if I do not know what those dreams really are!”

  Orlana considered his words. She looked at him in a new light.

  She reached out, fingers curling around a fine stem of crystal and drinking deeply of the strong red wine within.

  “Very well,” she said, finally. “Ask your questions. And I will not patronise you. I will treat you like a man. I will treat you like a general. I will treat you like a king.”

/>   “You have built a massive army. There are paths over the mountains; you do not need to take the fortress. And yet I think it is faster to take the fortress than risk the high passes. Correct?”

  “Yes. Go on.”

  “Why Vagandrak? You do not need this land. What do you seek?”

  “I seek to pass through.”

  “On a road to where? To what treasure?”

  “I seek to travel the Plague Lands.”

  “Why?”

  “There are three long deserted cities. Ratad, KaCarca and Eyusdan-Fall.”

  “What lies in these cities?”

  “A terrible weapon,” said Orlana, her voice low, eyes hooded. She drank again from the crystal; wine stained her lips, which glistened crimson, as if tainted by blood.

  “But this is a race? Against time?”

  “There is a time element, yes,” said Orlana softly. “And I also need to continue to build the army. To expand. The people of Vagandrak will act as fodder for my mud-orcs. A genetic base. Food for creation. We will expand until there is no room left for us… and then…”

  “Yes…?”

  “I cannot speak now. My enemies are great. My enemies are terrible. To even think the thought is to risk annihilation.” She stood and glided naked to the tent’s flap, which she snapped back. The mud-orc camps spread away as far as the eye could see, hundreds and thousands of camp fires, burning, roasting meat, roasting human meat, boiling bones and eyes in huge cauldrons, talking in guttural growls.

  Zorkai stepped up behind her, pressing in close, his hand tracing a curve down her spine. She shivered and he smiled. It made her seem more human, although he knew deep in his heart that she was not.

  “So, the people of Vagandrak, they are just an obstacle?”

  “Yes. We will smash Desekra Fortress and finish the business Morkagoth could not.”

  “There will be many deaths,” said Zorkai, his heart filling with sadness for the days of blood and horror to come.

  “You all die eventually,” said Orlana, without emotion, and turned, returning to the silk sheets.