The Iron Wolves

by Andy Remic

  Kiki gave a nod and looked finally to Prince Zastarte. Still, he lounged, like a lizard, a snake, but she could read the subsurface coiled tension in him: like a tightly wound spring, just vibrating and waiting to uncoil with a sudden burst of violence. Maybe he felt his back was against a wall, and the only way was to fight free? This little hollow in the rock was certainly claustrophobic to a large degree. And Zastarte was a creature of chaos, perhaps more than anybody here, Kiki realised.

  “You tug at the heart strings, my sweetie.” He smiled, but his eyes were hard. “Truly, you do. And you fight a good battle. But, like Trista, I feel my soul is darkened with shadows and death. Stained, I am. I am a bad man through and through. I believe I would do nothing but sully and poison your noble cause.”

  “You would strengthen it and cleanse your soul,” said Kiki.

  “I think my soul is beyond redemption,” said Zastarte, smiling.

  “Fight with us,” said Kiki. “Come on! You complete us! Complete this unit!”

  “Do you all feel like this?” asked Zastarte, eyes moving to meet the others in the group. They all nodded, and Dek squatted down before him.

  “I confess. Yes, the velvet pantaloons disturb me. Yes, the lace ruffs disturb me. Your stinking perfume is capable of drawing in every fucking mud-orc for a three mile radius, and this disturbs me more than anything, you dandy bastard. But I still love you.” He punched him in the chest, rocking the man. “We all do. We’d die for you. You’re our brother, Zastarte, despite your… crimes. You’re an Iron Wolf.”

  Zastarte nodded, smiling, eyes glittering. “Indeed, I do believe you have brought a tear to my eye. And that was something I thought impossible.” He stood, and gripped Dek’s arm, wrist to wrist, in the warrior’s handshake.

  Suddenly, something large, thrashing and violent landed in the middle of the fire, launched from above, sending coals and burning wood exploding outwards. Talons lashed out, striking sparks across Narnok’s breastplate and sending the axeman staggering back against the volcanic rock wall. Its long tail, barbed with a sting, jabbed for Kiki’s face and in reflex she swayed back, sword hissing free of scabbard, blade slamming up and through the thick mid-section of tail. The sting and writhing tail landed in the fire, still squirming.

  “Back!” yelled Dalgoran, drawing his own sword, and the Iron Wolves circled the splice as far as the constrictive tunnel would allow.

  It reared up in the flames, parts of its fur and flesh on fire, and glared at them, growling in a low rumble as its head lowered and it surveyed the Iron Wolves and their general; it was huge, bigger than the other deviant creatures they had dealt with, and muscles bulged under thick skin more like armour than flesh. It wasn’t obvious what had created the splice, from which beast it had clawed its way out, kicking and screaming; there was part horse in there and part wolf. But also something else, for its arms and legs had armoured black plates with thick black hairs, and its eyes were a jet black, glassy, emotionless. But what sent shivers vibrating down Kiki’s spine were the tiny pincers emerging from the lower jaw, constantly juddering and clicking, as if this horse and wolf had even, maybe, also absorbed an element of insect.

  “By the Seven Sisters,” murmured Ragorek, hefting his sword.

  The splice cackled, head swinging around, covering all of them. It turned, claws crunching through glowing coals, and then launched at Narnok and Dek who kicked apart, weapons slamming out to clatter from armour. Even Narnok’s axe was deflected, although it wasn’t a clean strike and was delivered with an element of panic. Narnok had never been scared of another man in his entire life. But this… thing disturbed him to his very core.

  It whirled, too fast for its size and bulk, and talons slashed for Kiki and Zastarte. Kiki took the blow against her shortsword, but the power forced her back against the wall with a grunt. Zastarte rolled with elegance and agility, rising with a knife in each fist. He threw them, and one glanced from a black-plated head sporting tufts of fur, whereas the second embedded in the centre of the splice’s left eyeball. Its pincers clicked with incredible speed, but there was no cry, no sound of pain. The stump of its tail thrashed, like an angry scorpion deprived of its poisonous barb.

  “You pointless, petty humans,” it snarled and clicked between its pincers, as a great black tongue lolled in a maw filled with broken yellow teeth. “You think to stand against the Horse Lady? Look at me. Imagine a thousand like me. Imagine ten thousand like me! Your days are numbered, little people. You are nothing more than walking, talking, breathing corpses.”

  It lunged, but Narnok batted away the claw. Then Ragorek, longsword in both hands, screamed a battle cry and charged forward, sword slashing down, which, against a human, would have been a strike from clavicle to hip-bone. The sword raked against armour and the splice punched out, claws curled into a fist; the fist rammed Ragorek in the ribs, just below his lungs, smashing through chainmail vest and deep into the cavity beyond. Dek hammered his own blade into the splice’s neck, where it hacked through flesh and blood arced out in a shower. Narnok’s axe cleaved through the limb embedded in Ragorek’s body as he gasped, and coughed out blood, and staggered back to hit the wall where he slid to the ground, face ashen in shock, both blood-splattered hands gripping the severed limb embedded within him as blood poured and frothed at his mouth.

  “Ragorek!” screamed Dek, as the Iron Wolves attacked the beast.

  DESEKRA

  Desekra Fortress. Guardian of the south. Vast and mighty protector of the Pass of Splintered Bones. A thousand years old, and built by the direct ancestor of King Yoon, the mighty King Esekra the Great, who had grown old, and cynical, and weary of pitched battles against the then Zenta Tribesmen of the south.

  A keep and four protective walls which spanned the Pass of Splintered Bones to the south; nearly four thousand men had died protecting the building site as the first wall was erected and constant waves of tribesmen attacked; then, a thousand trained archers had wreaked havoc on charging tribesmen, who retreated to watch and contemplate and cogitate and the wall got higher, black and grim, and foreboding, like a mammoth version of the Pit, Vagan’s main prison deep under the city. Each wall was fifty feet high and twenty feet thick, huge blocks carved from the very mountains themselves. Huge steps of stone serviced each wall, and the battlements were wide, the crenellations high enough to give good cover for archers and to make life for prospective attackers just that little bit more difficult.

  A wall was only as strong as its gates, and King Esekra had considered this problem well. Never anticipating a huge need to leave the fortress south in a hurry, the first wall had a single gate through which a mounted cavalryman, or a narrow cart, could pass. The outer door was made of stone blocks that fitted flush with the wall and ran on wheels of iron thicker than a man’s waist. Behind this were four more foot-thick oak gates, and finally, for times of war, there was a small stone compound beside the tunnel, which was constantly stocked with mortar and large blocks of stone. In times of siege, the tunnel could be blocked solid in very little time.

  Each wall was named after a hero from Vagandrak Legend. That first wall held the name of the greatest hero of all time, Sanderlek the Slayer, also known as Sanderlek the Black; supposedly carved from stone, he’d hunted the last of the shapeshifters which crept into children’s bedrooms and stole them for food.

  The second wall was Tranta-Kell, the hero an old warrior of the axe who made a name for himself during the Southern Zenta Wars. The third wall was named after Kubosa, a Battle King of fearsome reputation who had conquered the Plague Lands before they became the Plague Lands. And finally, wall four was named after Jandallakla, a warrior princess who had wed the King of Vagandrak and brought not just five strapping sons, but a love of sword, bow and spear from the northern ice wastes. She was a fearsome warrior in her own right, a formidable hunter, and became engraved in Vagandrak folk lore, her deeds exaggerated by the travelling bards of the time.

  Finally, was the Keep. The Las
t Stand. Simply named Zula, an ancient word from the Equiem which meant “peace”.

  The melancholy of Zula was not lost on Torquatar, cavalry captain and now a bearer of two well-used iron shortswords as he turned his gaze back from the distant keep: massive, stocky, brooding, and dominated to either side by the sheer frightening scale of the violent mountain cliffs which rose up and up and up, forcing Torquatar to lean back, craning his head, gazing up towards the lofty rugged black peaks.

  “Quite a sight, isn’t it?” said Tekka, his appointed sword-brother. Each man had a sword-brother tasked with watching another’s back in the event of a wall breach. Tekka was a short, squat man, quite sullen and rare to smile. It wasn’t that Torquatar disliked the soldier, it was just he’d rather choose his own accomplice in battle.

  “Vast,” agreed Torquatar, returning his gaze to the plain below Sanderlek. From their vantage point, the plain seemed to roll away for eternity, dominated by a bloated red sun sinking slowly over the horizon.

  “You think they’ll come tonight?” ventured Tekka. His voice was steady and sure, but Torquatar could read the subtle fear in the man. It was in his eyes, in the occasional tremble of his hand. But Hell’s Teeth, every man had a right to feel fear waiting for battle, right? Every man.

  “According to King Yoon, they will not come at all.”

  Tekka hawked and spat, wiping his bearded mouth with the back of his hand. “That’s what I think of the king’s prediction. Let’s see him talk his way out of this one! There’s a rumour around the fortress that some of our cavalry intercepted a group of mud-orcs; a scouting party, no-less! They charged through, lost a few men, then came screaming back here to deliver the good news. What do you think of that?”

  Torquatar pictured the drooling, snarling, savage mud-orcs. He remembered the impact as his lance speared one high in the chest, driving through chainmail vest and puncturing a lung before smashing out the other side in a shower of gore. Still the mud-orc tried to attack, and it had taken two blows from his sword to half-sever its head before his horse was free and pounding the thick grassland plains…

  He smiled. “I’d pay less attention to gossip, if I was you, friend,” said Torquatar, carefully. Sworn to silence by Vorokrim Kaightves in order to try and dispel any panic rising in the fortress whilst they waited for urgent news from King Yoon, Torquatar was unsurprised to find news of their encounter with the mud-orcs had leaked out. Bad news travelled fast, especially in a demoralised army waiting for an enemy they had only read about in their school books.

  Tekka nodded. “Maybe. Maybe. We’ll see, Torq.” Then his face shifted, and his eyes stared off to the distant horizon. Something in Tekka’s face changed; it was a subtle shift, but it stirred something deep in Torquatar’s soul. He felt himself go cold, and he lifted his head, and turned, and looked to the horizon.

  The first ranks of the advancing army marched in a massive crescent, at the centre of which sat a tall, pale woman on a massive, twisted, deviant horse-beast. It whinnied, and howled, and drooled, and pawed the grass with great buckled iron hooves the size of plates.

  As Torquatar watched, the line of black figures expanded outwards to either side as more of this vast crescent became visible, slowly spreading as far as the eye could see, left to right, a giant stomping sweeping line of mud-orcs, many thousands across and bearing jagged swords and battered axes.

  And then their marching boots and hooves came booming over the plains, a rhythmical thunder that went on, and on, and on, and grew and grew as the marching ranks expanded in size, and the plain behind was filled with yet more, thousands upon thousands upon thousands of mud-orcs snarling and growling, drooling saliva and bearing their evil, twisted weapons. Amidst the ranks came units of splice, padding like huge lions, sometimes limping, sometimes making twisted lurches as damaged limbs and spines and bodies advanced, gradually, upon Desekra.

  Torquatar watched, mouth clamped shut and dry and bitter, as the enemy filled the horizon, filled his vision, filled the world beyond the tall black walls of Desekra Fortress. And still they came on, thousands upon thousands of mud-orcs and beasts, like some terrible nightmare made real; like some dark and twisted plague magick.

  “An ugly bunch,” growled Tekka, and spat between his boots, hoisting his spear, intent clear in his shining eyes.

  “How…” Torquatar coughed, and glanced to Tekka. “Gods, man. How many are there?”

  “A lot,” said Tekka, face grim.

  A runner arrived at a sprint, face screwed up in pain, breath hissing between clenched teeth. “General Kaightves requests your presence, Captain.”

  “Right away.”

  Tekka grinned at him. “Now, then, no running away, Torq. I’d hate to have to face these bastards on my own.”

  “Like I could ever be that lucky,” muttered Torquatar, marching for the Keep.

  Further along the wall, Jagan and Reegez watched with open mouths as the mud-orcs massed, and advanced, their howls and rumbles and boot thuds terrifying to hear, their vast ranks seeming to fill the horizon like a distant seething army of ants.

  “By the Holy Mother and the chains of the Furnace,” breathed Jagan gently, his eyes wide, face pallid, breath coming in short gasps. His knuckles were white where he clenched his spear, and his hand went to the hilt of his sword as his dry stalk tongue licked bark lips. “Have you ever seen such a sight?” he managed.

  Reegez snarled something incomprehensible, as the massed ranks of mud-orcs grew larger, and larger, filling the horizon, filling the world. And then the drums started, a simple, single beat to which the mud-orcs marched and the splice limped, a deep thundering intonation as if the mountains themselves had opened up their throats and were grumbling at the gods for the abomination of this day to come…

  “It’s all for fucking show,” growled Reegez. “Look at the width of their line? You watch, Jagan. You see how Esekra built this place? Set back from the mouth of the pass? It’s a funnel. No matter how wide their lines, they’ll have to funnel in to the width of the walls.”

  “But… there’re so many! Ten thousand? Twenty?”

  Reegez said nothing for a moment. All along Sanderlek the Vagandrak soldiers were staring with open mouths, haunted eyes and sweating palms. Fear swept along the wall like a forest fire at the height of summer. Tears rolled down cheeks. Men were making the sign of the Protective Cross and the Seven Sisters.

  And then Sergeant Dunda leapt onto the battlements, and screamed, “Don’t you worry, lads! We’ll give these bastards a taste of Vagandrak fucking steel they’ll never forget! You all stand here on Sanderlek, named after Sanderlek the Slayer – well, my granddad knew that grumpy old bastard! He told me the stories first-hand! And you know what Sanderlek would have done at a time like this?” And with a swift downward motion, Dunda dropped his pants and showed his big hairy backside to the enemy.

  Laughter rippled up and down the wall, as other sergeants, lieutenants and captains moved amongst the men, offering words of encouragement and exhorting them to “stand steady”. The archers were called forward and notched arrows to bows as the Vagandrak soldiers waited, watching the charging mud-orcs.

  Faces could be made out now: bestial, feral, pale green skin streaked with crimson smears like tribal tattoos; hairless round heads sported large howling mouths ringed with rows of razor teeth, and with many showing short curved tusks. They were bigger than men, and moved with great agility across the uneven terrain.

  And in their midst were the splice, deviations of horses and men and wolves, charging in discrete units to the booming thud of hundreds of drums.

  At their centre, atop a massive splice formed from man and lion, sat Orlana: the Changer, the Horse Lady, pale white, high cheekbones, haughty and beautiful, with short white hair and black eyes. Her tapered fingers held huge tufts of tawny hair, a tattered mane, a cruel smile on her face at this, her advance, her attack, her impending slaughter.

  Jagan stared down from the high walls, horror a f
ist in his heart.

  “Who is that? A queen?” he said.

  Reegez spat again, eyes sweeping across the charging ranks. “She looks like a bitch to me,” he snarled.

  “Will she want to stop… maybe talk?”

  “I don’t see no general going down there,” said Reegez. “I think this is a straight attack, lad. I think they’re coming over the walls!”

  “ARCHERS!”

  Jagan and Reegez moved back, allowing the archers to take up positions. All along Sanderlek, five hundred quivers touched cold cheeks and the archers regulated their breathing. They focused on targets, but this was not going to be difficult. The seething mass below filled their vision, filled the plain, and turned blood in the veins of the soldiers of Vagandrak to ice.

  “I’m frightened, Reegez,” said Jagan, staring hard at his friend. “I honestly didn’t think it would come to this. I thought the men in power would sort things out. I thought King Yoon would stop this happening.”

  Reegez gripped Jagan’s arm and squeezed hard. “Stick with me, lad. When them bastards come over, you watch my back, I’ll watch yours. Can you do that?”

  “I can do it,” whispered Jagan, fear deep in his eyes.

  “LOOSE!” screamed Captain Yoran, arm sweeping down.

  Along the Sanderlek wall, the archers loosed arrows which arced high, then slammed into the advancing mass of mud-orcs and splice. Yew shafts punched through eyes and mouths, into chests and arms and legs and a whole line went down like wheat under a scythe. Mud-orcs and splice stumbled over their comrades, slowing the charge as a second volley of arrows cut through the air taking down another line. More arrows followed, and the charge was slowed by the onslaught of shafts and steel barbed heads. Mud-orcs went down screaming and clawing at eyes and throats, blood pumping out in huge crimson spurts. Splice were hardier, taking many arrows to slow and fall. But the sheer weight of the charging army pushed them on, and the drums slowed their beat as ranks fell and were trampled, then leapt, and the charge picked up pace again.