Nightlord: Sunset

by Garon Whited

  “Good idea. Could take a while, though. Should we get started now, or should we look for wizards and shamans and magicians, first?”

  Let’s look, boss, Firebrand suggested. Maybe we can find the guy in charge.

  “Might as well. I’m thinking we may be able to bribe the commanders.”

  Could be. How much gold do you have?

  “On me?” I asked. “Not a lot. But we have several pounds of it in the wagons, along with a fistful of jewels. Between the Duke Ganelon and the merfolk, we’re still pretty rich.”

  Might be worth a try.

  I walked down the mountainside like I might walk down a really steep slope. The spell should keep going for half the night or until I clapped my hands. It’s a good idea to be able to shut the thing off, so I included the mundane hand-clap cancellation—a switch, if you will, that didn’t take wizardry to throw. I’m glad I took the time to figure out how to do that.

  I got back down to Bronze, clapped my hands, and then waited for a few seconds while the world rocked under me. Weird feeling, that.

  “What do you think?” I asked of both Firebrand and Bronze. “Ride straight in and see what they have to say? Or sneak in?”

  Bronze scraped dirt up in a furrow. She snorted. There was a wisp of smoke.

  I was about to suggest sneaking in, boss, but Bronze seems to think that you would leave her outside again if that happened. She doesn’t like that idea.

  “I gathered,” I replied, patting her neck and letting her nuzzle me with a hot, metal nose. “We’ll try just riding up to their gate and saying hello,” I told her. “Think you can carry me to safety even if they shoot me full of holes and set me on fire?”

  Bronze tossed her head and bared her teeth.

  She says that if you hang on, she’ll bear you across fields of goblin blood and burning orcs and the blackest depths of Hell, Firebrand supplied.

  “Really?”

  Well, she really just said “yes.” But she meant what I said, Firebrand admitted.

  I didn’t have an answer to that. I mounted up and we headed for the city.

  The palisade was mostly wood; trees had been cut from all around the place, stripped, and placed as a wall. It reminded me of a fort in a Western movie. And why not? The redskins weren’t all that far away, come to think of it.

  The wall wasn’t done; there was a lot of frontage to cover. The technique appeared to involve digging a trench and throwing all the dirt in toward the city. This, when mixed with loose rock and broken stone, became a mound where the ends of the tree trunks—and other timbers, presumably from buildings—were thrust to form a wall. Attackers would have to go down into a fairly deep ditch, then climb up twice as far to get to the timbers themselves. They had the ditch done; it was the wall itself that was still being constructed.

  Not bad. I probably wouldn’t have thought of it, myself. I wondered if they would find a way to flood the ditch and make it a moat.

  The construction crew was pretty impressive. I’ve never really seen monsters before, unless you count a demon or two.

  The goblins had the shovels and reminded me of ants, as I said. Orku were dragging up timbers, stripping trees, that sort of thing. I’m not sure what was setting them upright in the holes at the top of the mound. It had long arms, lots of muscles, tusks, floppy ears, and stood about nine feet tall. I wasn’t willing to bet on whether it was a troll or an ogre. Either way, it could win prizes for ugly. It was certainly an effective crane. Another pair with giant-sized sledgehammers made good pile drivers.

  Their sentry system was pretty decent, too. I came into view of the city at a walk; we weren’t in a major hurry. Besides, I wanted to give them an opportunity to see me. I needn’t have worried; a troop of cavalry poured out through the wooden gate and came galloping hell-for-leather toward me.

  We stopped. I watched them come for a moment. They were orku, whooping and snarling and waving spears. Each had a sword and short bow as well.

  I drew Firebrand and it lit like a torch.

  The cavalry divided into two columns of eight; they surrounded me and kept about a two-spear length away. The spears were all pointed at me.

  The leader addressed me, asking, “Who are you and what do you want?”

  “I am Halar,” I replied, “and I wish to speak to your leaders.”

  “Why?” he demanded.

  “Because I want to bribe them.”

  To my surprise, he raised his spear and fit the butt into a cup alongside one stirrup. “Come with me.”

  They escorted me to the gate while keeping me surrounded. They knew what they were doing. I revised my optimistic estimate of how many my people could have fought their way through. I think Tamara could have accounted for a lot more of them than all of us sword-wielders together, but I don’t think it would be enough.

  Once inside the gate, we continued into town. I was not surprised to find the ducal manor had been left mostly intact. Nor was I surprised to find it was now the command center for the invaders. It was a nice place. We stopped just outside the front door.

  “Dismount,” the orku cavalry leader said.

  I dismounted.

  “I’ll have your sword,” it said. I had a strong feeling of déjà vu. I sheathed Firebrand and kept my hands away from the hilt.

  “You have my permission to borrow it for safekeeping, but I can’t guarantee it’ll agree.”

  The orku growled a command and spears pointed at me from all sides. He pushed his way up to me and seized Firebrand’s hilt.

  He screamed and jerked back as Firebrand sizzled like red-hot metal. It left a hard burn on the offending hand.

  “Maybe we should just leave it where it is, hmm?” I suggested.

  Nursing his burned hand, he snarled something in orku. One of his troops stuck me in one arm with a spear; I held still and let him. It was a good hit, too; went right through the muscle, missed the bone by a hair, and stuck out the other side of the bicep. It hurt quite a bit, but it hurt even more when he jerked it back out. There were barbs on the spearhead. The commander grinned at me.

  “Take off the belt and drop the sword.”

  I examined the hole in my shirtsleeve. The wound was healed up and gone by then.

  “You know,” I replied, conversationally, “I’m going to mention this to your commander. A new shirt is eating into the bribe I can offer.”

  He snorted. “You’re a tough one.” Then he said something else in orku and three spearmen went for my legs. They knew their job; I wound up kneeling suddenly.

  “Well?” he asked. “I can keep this up all night.”

  While he spoke, I regenerated. I could learn to like this rate of recovery. I stood up again.

  “So can I, but I won’t be patient that long.”

  He snarled again and I interrupted him in the middle of it. I took a spear away from one of the troopers and swung it in a circle, whacking skulls in passing with the butt of it. Then I threw the spear into the heavy outer door of the manor; it went completely through and vanished inside. Oops.

  I leaped forward and snatched the commander by the throat. I lifted him off the ground with one hand and looked him in the eye. He was bigger than I am by about five inches and looked like he outweighed me by a hundred and fifty pounds.

  “I’ve come a long way,” I said, softly, just loud enough to be heard over the groaning and the flailing of the troops behind me. “I’ve had a church on my ass, gods trying to kill me, a dragon trying to eat me, and now you. I am keeping the sword and you’ll never even suggest I hand it over again—or I’ll break every bone from your fingertips to your spine and send you out to play with a pair of forest cats. Do we have an understanding?”

  I don’t like orku much. Nasty, smelly, evil brutes. They remind me of jocks when I was in high school; I have bad memories of those.

  He gurgled and clawed at my arm, tried to kick me, and finally drew a dagger. He stabbed my forearm with it, in and out, quick and efficient. I pul
led back my sleeve and let him actually see the wounds close. His eyes, already trying to bug out, couldn’t get any worse. But his frantic gurgling changed tone. He flung down the dagger.

  One of his troopers put a spear through me from behind. I looked down at the spearhead sticking out of my chest, then back up at the commander. I sighed. I put him down gently. He sat down, coughing and hacking.

  The trooper behind me yanked out the spear. It hurt a lot; all of them were barbed. The trooper probably expected me to go to my knees, blood bubbling in my mouth. Instead, I turned around.

  “Bad idea,” I said. I knocked the spear aside and was on him, bearing him to the ground. I sank fangs into his flesh and tendrils into his spirit before he knew what hit him. In seconds, I had a flash of his existence: Cold mountains, tough farming, climbing rocks and hunting, challenges and fighting with his fellows, long feuds with other valley clans, combat over females, trials of blood and pain.

  And he was gone.

  I looked up from my crouch, suddenly aware I had done the right thing. To be respected, I would have to demonstrate power, strength, and ruthlessness. It was their way. They respected only what they couldn’t kill. It echoed with what I had taken from the goblins I’d devoured. That was the way of all their kind.

  They took my actions to heart. They were already on their knees, knocking foreheads to the pavement, their commander included.

  I got up and stood over him. “Are you going to give me any more trouble?”

  “No, master,” he replied. I got the feeling I’d had this conversation somewhere before.

  “Good. Lead me to your commanders.”

  He sprang to his feet and hurried to the door. He pounded on it and someone inside opened it. It led to a receiving room. There was a dead goblin nailed to the far wall by a spear. Whups.

  The trip through the manor was pretty quick; there was no nonsense about surrendering weapons or asking my business. My escort stayed several steps ahead of me, constantly clearing the way. Nobody gave us any trouble, not even when he ushered me into the presence of the Supreme High Overlord, Master and Commander, General of the army.

  I should have seen it coming, but I’m sometimes dense. Have I mentioned that?

  “Hi, Bob.”

  The orcs and goblins and other such beasties have two things humans don’t; they see really well in the dark and their digestion rivals that of a goat. Humans, however, have one major advantage that seems difficult to overcome: superior intelligence.

  I make no assumptions about wisdom or sense, but we’ve got intelligence.

  So when humans—with superior technology, organization, and magic—became the dominant power on the continent, they forced the orcs and goblins to move into territory the humans didn’t want. This was done inadvertently; there was no trail of tears as they were relocated. No, the humans killed any orc or goblin they found and expanded into the territory thus liberated.

  The orcs and goblins and kobolds and trolls and all the rest wound up living in the Eastrange. Literally. They occupied valleys as well as living underground, mainly toward the middle of the range. They avoided Rethven like the plague and tried to stay out of the plains on the far side—the “barbarians” in the plains don’t mind being out in the sun and they are almost entirely a cavalry force. The orku cavalry I encountered was their elite unit—cavalry is hard to maintain when you don’t have much pasturage. With the liberation of horses from Eastgate, their numbers would at least double.

  All this I learned while sitting quietly in what used to be the Duke of Eastgate’s study, sipping at a glass of blood, and talking with Bob.

  I had almost forgotten Bob. I haven’t thought of him in a long time. I recalled what I told him to do; for the life of me, I can’t think why I told him to do that. It must have been the goblin feast I ate just before—at least, that’s the only thing I can think of. The last thing I really want is to rule over a kingdom of goblins and other monsters.

  Bob succeeded admirably. He first raised troops in a goblin village, promising them blood, meat, and land. With these reinforcements, he started campaigning in the tunnels and warrens beneath the Eastrange. Community by community, he preached the Gospel of the Shadow’s Return. He showed them the handprint. He persuaded, threatened, cajoled, and bribed. Anything he could do, he did, and did very well indeed.

  He promised a campaign against the humans. He promised the sub-surface races would have a leader, one who shunned light and who would live with them in darkness. A leader who would be everything they could imagine—strong, ruthless, cunning, wise, a drinker of blood, a giver of pain, one to lord it over all the world with a fist of iron.

  Me.

  Not all of them believed, of course; not even most. A few here, a few there, always a few more than last time, community by community. They came together for a cause, for a belief, and their numbers grew very slowly. But they believed, and that made them far more dangerous than a bunch of hired thugs.

  Bob had built me an army. An army that believed in the survival of the strong—and revered nightlords as the pinnacle of the food chain.

  “So why did you start a war?” I asked.

  “I had many in your service, Dark Lord. I needed some task to set them or they would have begun to chafe at the leash.”

  I couldn’t argue with him. You get an army together and then do nothing, it tends to fall apart. Idle hands.

  “What happened to Duke Heledon? And the people?”

  Bob shrugged. “The Duke is dead. He fought, as did all the army at his command. A few tried to surrender, but all of your soldiers eat meat.” I didn’t need him to draw me a diagram.

  “How did it go down? An outright invasion?”

  “It was not so obvious. Humans do not see well at night, and these were lax in guarding against an infiltration along their western border.”

  I nodded. I recalled the condition of the garrison at Eastgate. They relied on the main gate in the pass and the static fortifications; they never thought about an attack from anywhere else. Until this happened, I doubt they ever had an attack from another direction.

  “But what of the rest? The citizens?” I pressed.

  “Many yet live, held captive to keep them fresh. The women are used for play among the orku and the men make fine sport for the others. After that, it is into the stewpot. Some of the finer flesh has even found its way to the tables of the war captains.”

  “I have other uses for the prisoners,” I said, flatly. “Have them assembled in the pass and ready to march the sunrise after this. Have you any troops that can stand the sun?”

  “There are some orku that endure it more readily than others,” he admitted.

  “Post them as guards; I’ll handle the transport of the prisoners myself. See to it they are in wagons—I’m sure you have several lying around and no horses to pull them.”

  Bob looked pained. “True enough, Dark One. Horseflesh, manflesh—these brutes care not. But they long for the chance to kill.”

  “I thought so. Have a pair of chains, each about as long as a troll’s arm, along with some heavy bolts put into each wagon.”

  “May I ask why, lord of darkness?”

  “No.” Bob didn’t even blink; he just took it and continued listening. “Now, how are you paying them? Just in spoil?”

  “Spoils and the glory of the cause, aye,” he agreed.

  “It’s hard to eat glory. I’ll see to it you have some additional funding, just in case. I plan to move through here early tomorrow with a load of humans. I have a plot ripening that involves the plains barbarians. Stay out of that region.”

  He bowed in his chair. “As my lord commands.”

  “That’s it for me. Give the orders.”

  “I humbly beg your indulgence, lord. It would aid your unworthy servant greatly if you would consent to review the troops and demonstrate your power.”

  “You have twenty minutes to get them assembled before I address them,” I replied. />
  Bob wasted no time. He rose, genuflected, and then walked remarkably quickly from the room.

  I sat back, rolled the glass between my palms, and considered moral dilemmas.

  Take the glass of blood, for example. Bob had it on hand, ready for me, just in case I put in an appearance. The man—the elf—doesn’t miss a trick. Somewhere in town there was a…(sip)…girl, about fourteen or so, terrified almost out of her wits. She was cut on the right wrist and bled into a glass basin. How I knew that was beyond me; maybe I’m a little more psychic than I think.

  Whether she lived or died from it I don’t know. I could pour out the blood or drink it. Neither course would help her or harm her; it was already done. I didn’t need to drink it—I wasn’t hungry. If I poured it out, it would be wasted. If I drank it, it might be useful later.

  I hate wasting things. I hate having to make these decisions. I drank the blood in three big swallows and brooded over my next problem.

  What do I do about the ongoing war? Like it or not, I set this in motion. I never dreamed Bob would be so blasted good at following orders. I told him, let me think… that I wanted a more elaborate domain than just a simple tower.

  So how do I get them to stop marching to war? They’ve sacked a city! They won’t want to stop there. They’ll want to spread out and take more towns and villages. Strategically, that’s a terrible idea. They haven’t got the numbers to take the whole kingdom. They barely have the numbers to defend the inner city, and even that won’t be for long if the king gets it into his head to take it—this isn’t Masada. It’s a spread-out cluster of buildings with a wooden wall around it.

  There’s going to be a lot of dead people before all is said and done. And for what? Lines on a map? A religious fervor? Loyalty to a king?

  Somewhere, there’s a kid in the Rethven army. He’s going to march a hundred miles or more to a city he’s never seen, carrying a pike he can barely use, just to fight a war he doesn’t understand, with an enemy he’s barely heard of, all because a sergeant tells him to. Where’s the sense in that?

  Hell, if we’re talking about making sense, why am I worrying about it? I drink blood for an evening snack and souls for a midnight lunch! Why am I worried about the nameless, faceless thousands in some war I won’t even see? How do I reconcile that, hmm?