by Andy Remic
“Need a helmet?” said Narnok. “There’s helmets over there.”
“No. They obscure my hearing and my peripheral vision. Better without.”
The drums boomed louder, and with the rhythm came a cacophony of bestial snarls and squeals and growls like nothing they had ever heard. They ran up the steps to the battlements, heart rates increasing, adrenaline pumping, and the full extent of the plain opened before them like some terrible vision, with thousands upon thousands of mud-orcs ranged in unit squares, but at the front, like snarling leashed giant rabid dogs, were the splice; not in their tens, or hundreds, but now in their thousands, many pawing the ground with twisted iron hooves, many lifting great broken jaws to the heavens and howling long and high and mournful.
“They’re too big to come over the walls,” said Narnok, slowly.
“You think?” said Kiki, weighing her sword.
All along the wall soldiers were nudging one another, and muttering, and flashing them smiles. Several men pointed.
“Word gets around fast,” said Dek. “You’d better make a speech.”
“What, me?” said Kiki, frowning.
“We’re the heroes from the War of Zakora! There’s not many fought the mud-orcs, Kiki. Our soldiers will be expecting something!”
“We’re here to test the enemy, observe the attack, not make new fucking friends,” she snapped.
“He’s right,” said Narnok, nudging her in the ribs. “You need to speak.”
“I am not speaking to these men!” snapped Kiki, shaking her head. “You bloody do it!”
“Ha! Be my pleasure,” grinned Narnok. With Dek’s help, he hauled his bulk up onto the battlements and stared down at the sea of faces. He scratched his heavily scarred face, then shouted, “Ha! I see you there, Dunda you young pup! Who the fuck made you a sergeant? They need their heads seeing to!”
“You did, Narnok!” he roared, and laughter rippled along the line.
“Now then, soldiers of Vagandrak, I am Narnok; some of you may have heard of me, some of you might not; and it’s true I ain’t a pretty sight, lads,” he boomed, voice projecting well, as if he were a born orator. “But I’m prettier than the sisters of these here motherfuckers attacking the fortress today.” He gestured with his thumb behind him. “I ain’t one for speeches. I usually let the other prettier ones do the talking, but you’ve been doing a grand job here without us; don’t think we’re anything special, we’re just here to help out some old friends and protect our country. Just like what you’re doing. Now, it looks like they’re sending in these splice creatures, and we’ve fought a few now on the road here, and we killed them dead. They die just like any other bastard. They might need a bit more stabbing because they’re bigger and fatter…”
“Like you, old man!” shouted someone from the back.
“Heh, come over here, you little weasel, I’ll show you who’s old and fat! I’ve been killing men and beasts since before you were suckling on your mother’s tits, but that’s probably only a few years back anyways, judging by the lack of real hair on your chin. The point is, don’t be frightened by these bastards. We stood here twenty years ago, the Iron Wolves, and built ourselves a legend. Left with so much gold our horses had buckled legs by the time we reached Vagan, and the never-ending parties beyond. Just think of the wine, the women, the riches, the honour and how once we were normal soldiers just like you. We fought for our brothers and sisters and friends and our country; and we left as heroes!”
Just then a roar went up from the mud-orcs and splice combined, a terrifying primal scream that slammed across the killing ground like a wave of terror.
“YEAH!” roared back Narnok, “THAT’S THE SOUND YOUR SISTER MAKES WHEN I GIVE IT HER GOOD!”
He leapt down to laughter, and then the line spread out, soldiers readying themselves for the onslaught.
“You didn’t mention the King,” said Dek.
“Eh?”
“You know, for King and Country, that sort of thing?”
“Ha. Fuck him. He’s a dick.”
“They’re coming,” said Kiki, and watched as the splice formed into two columns and the mud-orcs arranged themselves about the splice, once again carrying ladders and grappling hooks.
“What are they doing?” muttered Narnok.
“The splice are going to attack the gate tunnel,” said Kiki, realisation dawning. “Sergeant! Has the gate tunnel been sealed?”
“King Yoon has forbidden it.”
“So, we’re relying on the gates?”
Sergeant Dunda nodded, and Kiki cursed.
“Here we go,” said Zastarte, tying back his hair and tightening a borrowed breastplate. He suddenly grinned at the other Iron Wolves. “Just like old times, hey?”
“Just like old times,” agreed Kiki, lips compressed, eyes narrowed, and the mud-orcs and splice charged with a howling cacophony she would have believed impossible. Archers sent hails of arrows arcing over the battlements and down to punch hundreds of enemy from their feet…
And the attack began afresh.
KING’S GAME
King Yoon walked his war charger down the Pass of Splintered Bones, head held high, eyes burning, hand on the hilt of his silver-steel sword. Behind, in rigid disciplined columns, rode a hundred of his elite guard in full black armour, helms pulled over eyes, black plumes flowing from angular helmets. They appeared like insects. Almost. The King’s shaggy black hair was swept back, oiled and heavily perfumed, his face painted white, his lips red, and he wore a shaggy black pelt from some jungle cat, and expensive soft leather riding trews and boots. Around his throat was wrapped a lavender scarf. On each finger, a glittering jewel of some different family of gems. In contrast to his dandy image, his elite soldiers oozed malevolence and dread and violence. They were battle hardened, each man tested in real combat, in army training and real-world gladiator battles, in skirmishes with Vagandrak enemies and in secret military manoeuvres King Yoon would have discussed with no man.
They approached Desekra as befitted the King of the Northern Realm, and Yoon ignored the challenge when it came from the ramparts. “If a man doesn’t recognise his own monarch,” he muttered, “then that man deserves to hang!”
Yoon was met at the gate by a gaggle of nervous commissioned officers, who quickly escorted Yoon and his ten personally chosen warriors up the stairs of the Zula Keep and into the audience chamber of General Vorokrim Kaightves, who was standing, surveying the valiant efforts of the defenders below.
Mud-orcs were swarming over the battlements.
Splice were snarling, screeching and digging through the gates. Those more agile clambered up ropes, or simply cut grooves into the stonework with razor claws, scrambled vertically up the wall and attacked… to be met by sword and spear and mace. They took a lot of killing. A lot of killing…
Vorokrim turned, and his heart caught in his mouth. He approached his monarch, knelt and kissed the proffered Ring of Kings. Yoon bade the general stand and Vorokrim did so, as Yoon swaggered across the large chamber, finger trailing across maps on the massive oak desk, until he stood, swaying slightly, and surveyed the battle below.
“So, this is Zula. This is Desekra. And these are the mud-orcs I keep hearing so much about.”
“Yes, Majesty,” said Vorokrim carefully. “As you can see, your men fight valiantly to protect the realm. They give their lives for you, and for their families and the good people of Vagandrak.”
“Indeed they do,” observed Yoon, nose turned slightly up. “You know I have thirty thousand men camped but a league from here?”
“I do, Majesty, and my burning question is why you do not bring them here. Not a year ago you reduced the full complement of this fortress. Not a problem in peacetime. But now, Majesty, you ask the impossible from your remaining men. You ask the impossible from me.”
“You seek to question my judgement?”
Carefully, as if walking a high wire, Vorokrim said, “Not your judgement, Highness; I just
see an obvious answer to all our problems, camped but a few miles from here, and idly wonder what could possibly stay your hand?”
“I do not have to tell you, you know.” Yoon’s voice was petulant.
“Of course, Highness.” Vorokrim was sweating, and decided that for now the best policy was silence.
“What I want to know, my dear Vorokrim Kaightves, is exactly who this Orlana the Changer really is. I want to know why she wishes entry into Vagandrak. I want to know exactly what she wants. And I want to know it today. Why have you not found out?”
“F… found out?” stuttered Vorokrim.
“Why have you not been out there and spoken to this woman?”
“I, well, I don’t think she’s exactly approachable, Majesty. After all, she’s brought damn near a hundred thousand mud-orcs knocking on our front door with their swords and axes. I think that’s a pretty clear statement of intent.”
“And I reiterate, General, this is your command; you control Desekra; why have you not spoken to this, this upstart?”
“What do you want me to do?” snapped Vorokrim, a frown on his face. “You want me to open the gates, stroll out there amidst her thousands of feral twisted creatures intent on our imminent destruction and have a simple chat?”
Yoon turned, and smiled at Vorokrim; a friendly smile, like a gesture of love between two very old friends. “Why, yes, General, I think that sounds like a fabulous idea. Go and see what she wants. Report back to me in an hour.”
Yoon turned his back on Vorokrim, gazing out over the defenders. Men went down under a unit of splice that had made it over the walls, fists and hooves swiping heads from shoulders, claws disembowelling screaming men, twisted fangs biting and twisting off arms and legs and skulls.
“King Yoon,” said Vorokrim, his throat dry, his voice cracked. “You cannot really be ordering me to open the gates to our attackers, stepping out into their midst, and seeking to communicate with somebody who threatens bloody extinction to your country? Really?”
“Are you disobeying a direct order from your King?” said Yoon. He turned his dark eyes on Vorokrim, and the general saw the demon madness lurking in their glittering, sparkling depths.
“Yes,” said General Vorokrim, softly.
“You dare to question my judgement?” said Yoon.
“I dare,” said General Vorokrim, forcing his back ramrod straight. “You have enough men camped close by to hold these damn walls for a year – and yet you chose to sit them down and play games whilst their brothers-in-arms are slaughtered on these bloody walls. You come here and ask me to open the gates – an act of treason against national security. And then you order me to effectively commit suicide. Only somebody who had lost his mind would order such a thing.”
“Open the gates,” said Yoon, moving closer, baring his teeth in a smile that was not a smile. Yoon glanced to his ten elite soldiers, who subtly shifted hands to the hilts of their swords.
“No,” said Vorokrim, staring hard into Yoon’s eyes.
“Open them.”
“Open them yourself.”
“That, I will do, ahhhh, yes, that I will do,” said Yoon, half-turning from Vorokrim who felt himself slipping, felt his body and mind and will slipping into a great void of insanity. How could men stay sane in such cauldrons of pressure and madness? How could a straight military man make the correct decisions when faced with such ludicrous demands?
Yoon turned, fast, faster than most warriors, and the dagger stabbed sideways into General Vorokrim’s throat. It was a long, thin, black-bladed dagger. It slid easily through flesh, through tendons, through Vorokrim’s oesophagus.
Yoon turned away and gazed out of the window as Vorokrim dropped to his knees, one hand coming up to almost idly explore the steel through his neck, and through his windpipe. He opened his mouth to speak, but no words would come out. His voice no longer worked. Slowly, blood dribbled down the corner of his chin as he explored the alien metal inside his flesh.
“I am so disappointed in you, Vorokrim,” said Yoon, inspecting his painted fingernails. “So very, very disappointed. I thought you were made of sterner stuff. I thought you had intelligence and an understanding of the finer details of military strategy.” He tutted. Then turned. He smiled and moved close to Vorokrim, reaching down to touch the hilt of the blade.
“Oh dear,” he said. “It looks like you have a little problem.” Yoon smiled reassuringly. “I think we can both agree, at this moment in time, my old friend, you are ably removed of your command.”
Vorokrim toppled sideways and lay still on the carpet.
Yoon’s head snapped up. “Captain Dokta!”
“Yes, Majesty!” He snapped to attention. Good. Good. Yoon appreciated the man’s lack of tardiness.
“You have come far in these last few months. I have grown fond of your strength, your ambition and indeed your ruthlessness. Please, go downstairs, take the rest of our elite guard, and open the gates.”
“Open the gates to the mud-orcs?” said Captain Dokta.
“Exactly so.”
Captain Dokta hesitated, but only for a moment. He saluted. “Yes, Majesty. As you command.” He disappeared down the steep stone steps.
Yoon turned back to the panoramic view of the battle. “But my, this is a fine vision,” he muttered. “I must have something similar added to the top floor of the Tower of the Moon. It offers a most pleasing light! Most rousing and heroic! Quite a magickal spectacle to be sure!”
Kiki flowed with the battle. She was at one with her sword and shield. She danced amongst the defenders, light, fast, agile, her sword a spear of lightning flickering between the attacking mud-orcs like some demon blade, a simple cut here, a slash there, a stab, parry, thrust, cut, slice, block, stab. She moved with elegance and perfect balance. A dancer. A dancer on the stage of death, shifting between the enemy and hardly seeming to inflict a wound, yet leaving a trail of destruction in her wake, leaving mud-orcs kneeling on the battlements trying to hold their throats together, or slipping and rolling around in their own spilled entrails.
In contrast, Narnok used his prodigious size, weight, power and ferocity to cut a two-handed bloody path through the enemy. Whilst the mud-orcs were on their ladders and ropes, his terrible axe made short work of any head or claws that appeared in an attempt to gain a handhold. On other areas of the battlements, when a breach was made Narnok, often with Sergeant Dunda by his side, strode into the breach great axe smashing left and right, cutting heads from shoulders, gouging huge horrific flapping wounds down chests and bellies.
Dek used a combination of his sword and the pit-fighting skills he knew so well, punching, kicking, eye-gouging and head-butting to stun and blind, before using his blade to finish off whatever unfortunate lay squirming at his feet. Unlike Kiki’s cool calculated attack, and Narnok’s bellowing hate-filled bludgeoning, Dek walked a path somewhere in between, his responses more like the soldiers around him, more like the men dying around him. At one point, a soldier’s sword broke, and he was borne to the ground by a mammoth mud-orc all slashing claws and frothing jaws. It strained for the soldier’s face as he desperately tried to hold it away, its teeth snapping and clashing inches from his. Dek hacked halfway through the mud-orc’s neck and it squealed high and long. He front-kicked it from the soldier and plunged his blade through the creature’s eye, skewering its brain. He hauled the man to his feet.
“Thank you,” spluttered the warrior. “I am Reegez!”
“Dek,” growled Dek. “Your turn to watch my back now, lad!” and he grinned and slapped the man between the shoulder blades.
Trista and Zastarte fought as a team, side by side whilst assaulting the attacking mud-orcs, and back to back when a breach in the wall occurred. It was as if they were psychically linked in battle, finishing one another’s sword strokes, defending one another from attacking blows of sword and spear and claws. Watching them, they were like entwined ballet dancers re-enacting some amazing scene of battle on the stage; on
ly this stage was not filled with props and fake blood, this stage was in the theatre of war, and only dying men and slippery entrails and beheaded mud-orcs formed the set against a backdrop of stone and sky and screaming aggression.
The mud-orcs were attacking with renewed ferocity now, and below they had great shields of leather and iron, stretched out over a large group of splice tearing at the great wooden gate and hacking around the stone with huge picks and chisels. More and more mud-orcs were breaching the battlements, and at one point nearly ten pockets of savage fighting broke out as the mud-orcs poured onto the battlements and the defenders fought to save the wall and the mud-orcs battled to link each individual pocket into a fighting line. The Iron Wolves waded into these pockets, dispatching enemies with skill and speed and ease, seemingly untouchable and they danced and shifted and moved like ghosts amidst the action, amidst the savagery, amidst the dying.
After twenty minutes of insane battle, Narnok threw the last mud-orc from the battlements and leapt up onto the stone, adrenaline pumping strong in him as he waved his huge axe and screamed something incomprehensible, something primeval and inhuman at the withdrawing beasts.
He dropped down to the stone, bathed in blood, his face like that of a demon. Kiki approached. “Why the withdrawal?”
“The bastards know when they’re beaten!”
“No, they don’t. Look out there! One hundred thousand of the fuckers! That’s not an enemy that’s defeated, that’s an enemy that is regrouping to try a different tactic. I’m wondering what it is.”
“We’ll find out soon enough,” said Dek, wiping blood and orc-gore from his face with an old towel that looked better placed in a charnel house than on a fortress wall. Although, in all reality, that was what the place had become.
Stretcher bearers carried the wounded and dying from Sanderlek, all the way to the large hospital blocks attached to the Keep where surgeons worked tirelessly in grim and terrible conditions. Soldiers were removing the dead, tossing them down to carts below the wall and scattering buckets of sand across the walkways. Wounded mud-orcs were dispatched with cuts to the throat or dagger blows to the brain, then tossed over the wall to further hamper their comrades below.