Orcs

by Stan Nicholls

  Knowing him to be lame, the band didn’t expect Keppatawn himself to be leading the offensive.

  “Looks like Gelorak,” Jup reported.

  The young centaur’s muscular physique and distinctive flowing chestnut mane were now plain to see.

  Haskeer finished wrapping a piece of dirty cloth around his wound. “Why talk when there’s killing undone?” he grumbled.

  “Too right,” Coilla agreed, breaking ranks. “At the bastards!”

  They weren’t slow in following her lead.

  The custodians were in bedlam from the arrow blizzard, their dead and maimed littering the plain. Loose horses and walking wounded added to the anarchy, and those custodians still mounted milled in a directionless daze. They were easy pickings for a vengeful warband.

  No sooner had the orcs waded in and commenced their slaughter than they were joined by the troop of centaurs. With clubs, spears, short bows and crooked blades they assured the rout. The rump of the custodian force soon turned and fled, chased off by a knot of fleet-footed centaurs.

  Exhausted, battle-grimed, Coilla surveyed the aftermath. The auxiliary chief of the Drogan clan trotted to her side and sheathed his sword. He pawed the ground a couple of times.

  “Thanks, Gelorak,” she said.

  “Our pleasure. We have no need of such unwanted guests.” He gave a flick of his plaited tail. “Who were they?”

  “Just a bunch of humans serving their god of love.”

  He smiled wryly, then asked, “How went your journey to Scarrock?”

  “Well and . . . not so well.”

  Gelorak cast his eye over the warband. “I do not see Stryke.”

  “No,” Coilla replied softly. “No, you don’t.”

  She stared at the darkening sky and tried to hold back her despair.

  2

  He was in a narrow tunnel that stretched endlessly before and behind him.

  His head almost touched the ceiling, and when he extended his arms he could lay his hands on either wall, which felt cold and slightly clammy. Ceiling, walls and floor were made of stone but the tunnel seemed to have been bored rather than constructed because there were no joints or sign of blocks having been fitted together. There was no illumination of any kind either, yet he could see quite clearly. The only sound was his own laboured breathing.

  He didn’t know where he was or how he came to be here.

  For a while he stood quite still, trying to make sense of his surroundings and uncertain of what to do. Then a white light appeared far ahead. No such light showed in the other direction, so he assumed he was facing the tunnel’s exit. He began walking towards it. Unlike the slippery smoothness of the walls and ceiling, the floor was rough in texture, giving him purchase.

  It was hard to keep track of time but after about ten minutes, as best he could reckon, the light didn’t look any nearer. The features of the tunnel remained absolutely uniform, and the silence was unbroken save for his footfalls. He pressed on, moving as fast as he could in the confined space.

  His lack of a sense of time became timelessness. All notion of the passing of minutes and hours deserted him. There was only an endless now, and a universe consisting solely of his pursuit of a light he could never reach. His body became a trudging automaton.

  At some indefinable point in his monotonous journey he was roused by a fancy that the light had grown brighter, though not necessarily larger. Soon he found it hard to look directly at it for more than a few seconds.

  With each step he took, the pure white light grew stronger and stronger, until walls, floor, ceiling, everything was obliterated. He closed his eyes and still saw it. Keeping on, he clamped his hands to his face to shut it out, but that made no difference.

  Now it pulsated, throbbing to a beat he could feel pounding at his chest, tearing at the very core of his being.

  The light was pain.

  He wanted to turn and run away. He couldn’t. He was no longer walking but being sucked into its blinding, agonising, searingly cold heart.

  He cried out.

  The light died.

  Slowly, he lowered his hands and opened his eyes.

  Before him stretched a vast barren plain. There were no trees, no blades of greenery, nothing he could equate with any landscape he had ever seen before. It resembled a desert, though the sand was pewter-coloured and very fine, like volcanic ash. All that broke the desolate scene were numerous jagged, ebony-hued rocks, large and small, strewn across and partly buried by the sediment.

  The atmosphere was tropical. Tendrils of yellowish-green mist crept sluggishly at ankle level, and there was an unpleasant odour in the air that reminded him of sulphur and rotting fish. Way off in the distance towered black mountains of impossible height.

  But what shocked him most was the sky.

  It was blood red and cloudless. There were no stars. But close to the horizon hung a moon, and it was vast. He could see every pockmarked, scarred detail of its glowing, tawny surface. So large and near was it that he half believed he could pierce the great globe with an arrow. He wondered why it didn’t fall and crush this forsaken land.

  Tearing his eyes away, he turned and looked behind him. The view was exactly the same. Silver-grey sand, craggy rocks, distant mountains, crimson sky. There was nothing that could have been a tunnel mouth.

  Despite the moist warmth, an ominous thought chilled his spine. Could he have died and gone to Xentagia, the orcs’ hell? This certainly looked like a place of eternal purgatory. Would Aik, Zeenoth, Neaphetar and Wystendel, his race’s holy Tetrad, descend on fiery war chariots and condemn his spirit to everlasting punishment?

  Then it occurred to him that if this was Xentagia it appeared sparsely populated indeed. Was he the only orc in history to deserve being consigned here? Had he alone committed some crime against the gods, of which he was unaware, that warranted damnation? And where were the tormenting demons, the Sluagh, that some said inhabited the infernal regions and whose single pleasure was making misery for errant souls?

  Something caught his eye. Across the blasted expanse there was movement. He strained to make it out. At first he couldn’t. Then he realised he was watching a cloud of the yellow-green, all-pervasive smog. Only this was thicker and travelling with purpose. His way.

  Had he been right? Was he about to be judged? Denounced by the gods? Horribly tortured?

  His instinct was to put up a fight. On second thought, how futile a plan that would be if he really was going to be confronted by the gods. The idea of running seemed just as stupid. He determined to face whatever it was. Whether deity or demon he wasn’t about to betray his creed with an act of cowardice.

  He squared his shoulders and readied himself as best he could.

  There wasn’t long to wait. The cloud, which billowed but somehow remained compact, rolled directly to him. There was no question of it being blown by the wind. It moved too precisely for that, and there was no wind anyway.

  The cloud settled in front of him, perhaps a spear’s measure short. It continued to spin, and he would have expected to feel the misplaced air, but didn’t. This close he could see there were uncountable numbers of golden pinpoints woven into the swirling smoke. He was less sure of what the cloud contained. But there was a shape of some kind.

  Almost immediately the sphere’s rotation slowed. The dense mist began stripping off, layer by layer, and melted into the air. The darker form it surrounded gradually started to reveal itself. It became obvious that it was a figure.

  He tensed.

  The last wisps dissolved and a creature stood before him.

  He had imagined many things, but not this.

  The being was short and stocky. It had green-tinged, wrinkly skin and a large round head with spiky, projecting ears. Its attenuated, slightly protruding eyes had inky orbs with yellow-veined white surrounds and pulpy lids. No hair covered the pate or face, but there were bushy, reddish-brown sideburns, turning ashen. The nose was small and pinched, the mouth had the
quality of hardened tree sap serrated with a file. Its clothing consisted of a modest robe of neutral colour, held with a cord.

  The creature was very old.

  “Mobbs?” Stryke whispered.

  “Greetings, Captain of the orcs,” the gremlin replied. He spoke softly, and a faint smile lightened his face.

  Myriad questions filled Stryke’s mind. He settled on, “What are you doing here?”

  “I have no choice.”

  “And I do? Where am I, Mobbs? Is this some kind of hell?”

  The gremlin shook his head. “No. At least not in the sense you mean.”

  “Where, then?”

  “This is a . . . between land, neither of your world nor mine.”

  “What are you talking about? Aren’t we both Maras-Dantians?”

  “Such questions are less important than what I have to tell you.” Mobbs indicated their surroundings with an absent sweep of his hand. “Accept this. See it as a forum that enables us to meet.”

  “More riddles than answers. You’re ever the scholar, Mobbs.”

  “I thought I was. Since being here I’ve realised I knew nothing.”

  “But where —”

  “Time is short.” With hardly a pause he added, “Do you remember our first meeting?”

  “Of course I do. It changed everything.”

  “Helped a change already under way, more like. An act of midwifery perhaps. Though neither of us knew the magnitude of what was to come once you chose your new path.”

  “I don’t know about magnitude.” Stryke pronounced it with the faltering respect due a word he’d never used before. “All it’s brought me and my band is trouble.”

  “It will bring you more, and worse, before you triumph.” The gremlin corrected himself: “If you triumph.”

  “We’re holding together with spit and gumption, running around looking for pieces of a puzzle we don’t understand. Why do we want more trouble when we don’t even know what we’re doing?”

  “But you know why you’re doing it. Freedom, truth, the unveiling of mystery. Big prizes, Stryke. And they have a price. In the end you may or may not think that price worth paying.”

  “I don’t know that it’s worth it now, Mobbs. I’ve lost comrades, watched order crumble, seen our lives torn apart . . .”

  “You think it wasn’t coming to that anyway? The whole of Maras-Dantia is on a downward track, the incomers have ensured that. You have a chance to make a difference, at least for some. If you stop now, you guarantee defeat. Carry on and you have a slim chance of victory. I won’t pretend it’s more than that.”

  “Then tell me what to do.”

  “You want to know where to find the last instrumentality and what to do with them all once you have?”

  Stryke nodded.

  “I can’t tell you. I have no more knowledge than you in that respect. But have you considered the possibility that the objects of your search want to be found?”

  “That’s crazy. They’re just . . . things.”

  “Perhaps.”

  “So you’ve nothing to offer me but warnings?”

  “And encouragement. You’re so close. You will be given the chance of completing your task, I don’t doubt that. Though there will be more blood, more death, more heartache. Despite this you must keep on.”

  “You speak with such certainty. How do you know these things?”

  “My present . . . state brings me a small insight into events yet to be. Not particulars, but a glimpse of the larger currents shaping future times.” His face darkened. “And a fire is coming.”

  Stryke’s backbone prickled again as realisation dawned. “You said you had no choice in being here,” he mouthed, half aloud.

  Mobbs didn’t reply.

  Stryke repeated his earlier question, this time with some force. “Where are we, Mobbs?”

  The aged scholar sighed. “You might call it a repository. A realm of shades.”

  “How long have you been here?”

  “Since just after we parted. Courtesy of another orc, a Captain Delorran.”

  The gremlin pulled aside the edges of his robe and revealed his chest. He bore a wound, dry of blood now, so deep and pernicious it could have had only one effect.

  Confirmation of his suspicion had the colour draining from Stryke’s face. “You’re . . .”

  “Dead. Undead. Between two worlds. And not likely to rest until things are resolved in yours.”

  “Mobbs, I . . . I’m sorry.” It seemed such a weak thing to say.

  “Don’t be,” the gremlin replied gently, closing his robe.

  “Delorran was chasing me. If I hadn’t involved you —”

  “Forget that. I have no ill will for you, and Delorran himself has paid. But can’t you see? Free yourself and you free me.”

  “But —”

  “Whether you like it or not, Stryke, the game is afoot and you’re a player.” Mobbs stretched an arm to point over the orc’s shoulder. “Heed!”

  Mystified, Stryke spun around. And gaped at insanity.

  The gigantic moon, just beginning to set behind the mountain range, had transformed into a face. It had the features of a female, and one he knew too well. Her hair was black, her eyes were unfathomable. She had skin that glinted with a faint emerald and silver lustre, as though flesh had commingled with fish scales.

  Jennesta, hybrid queen, opened her overly broad, canine-toothed mouth and roared with silent laughter.

  A hand rose from behind the range. It was of the same incredible scale as the face. Its unnaturally slender fingers, tipped with nails half as long again, clutched some vast object. With an almost casual flip, the hand pitched its load toward the plain.

  Stryke stared, dumbfounded, as the thing tumbled end over end and hit the ground at an angle. A massive plume of dust went up. The earth shuddered. Then the object bounced, spun in the air, came down and bounced again.

  When it had done that half a dozen times two things dawned on Stryke.

  First, he recognised the object. It was what Mobbs called an instrumentality and the Wolverines had dubbed a star. It was the first one the band found, at Homefield, a Uni settlement. But whereas Stryke knew it as something he could easily fit into his palm, now it was of titanic proportions. Its sandy-coloured central sphere would have taken a team of horses to move. The seven projecting spikes were as big as mature oaks.

  Second, he realised it was coming straight at him.

  He turned to where Mobbs was standing. The gremlin had vanished.

  Tumbling, rocking the ground like a small earthquake every time it touched down, the star bounded closer. It didn’t seem to lose momentum.

  Stryke started to run.

  He pelted across the bizarre wasteland, zigzagging boulders, arms pumping. The star gained on him, beating the ash with bone-jarring blows, crushing rocks, throwing up clouds of dust, spiralling through the air with awesome splendour.

  Stryke could hear it, feel it, at his back. Straining to outpace it, he sneaked a look over his shoulder. He saw two of the mighty spikes smash down like the legs of a giant, fall forward, rip out of the ash and fly off again. A wave of dust blinded him for a second, then another crash tossed the ground and the star was close enough to touch.

  He threw himself aside using every ounce of muscle power the sprint had left him. As he rolled in the clinging ash his fear was that the star would turn and continue the chase. He came to rest and scrambled to his feet, ready to bolt.

  The star kept to its path, flattening every obstacle, drumming a thunderous rhythm as it careered away. He watched as it sprang across the plain. When it was a distant speck he let out the breath he’d been holding.

  His eyes were drawn back to what he hoped would be a restored moon. That hope was dashed. Jennesta’s enormous form remained, floating in an ocean of blood, glaring down at him.

  Once more, she raised her hand. It held more than before. She cast again, and this time a trio of stars cascaded, strikin
g the ground in a ragged line. Triple puffs of ash erupted. The stars bounced and headed for Stryke.

  He recognised these, too. The first was green with five spikes, the second dark blue with four spikes, the last grey with two spikes. They were the other stars the band had collected.

  As they ranged in on him it seemed there was an intelligence at work, guiding them more cunningly than the first star. One came in an unerringly straight line. The ones on either side of it travelled in a more meandering fashion, bouncing far out and then back close. It was a classic pincer formation. And Stryke was sure they were moving at much greater speed than the initial star.

  Again he ran. He took an erratic, unpredictable route to make it harder for them. But every time he looked back they were still on his trail, and they remained in the same relationship to each other, like a trawl net ready to scoop him. He put on all the speed he could muster. His limbs throbbed with pain. When he gulped for breath it felt like inhaling fire.

  Then one of the tremendous stars bounced down on his right-hand side, erupting ash. He veered to the left. Another landed, blocking his way. The third was spinning above him. Stumbling, he fell awkwardly. He rolled onto his back. A shadow covered him. Helplessly he saw the airborne star plunge towards him, knowing that in an instant he’d be pulverised.

  He was trapped like an insect, watching as a great boot descended to grind him to pulp.

  And he thought he could hear a strange, lilting, faraway song.

  He was yelling.

  It took him a moment to realise he was awake. And alive. A few seconds more passed before he was sure of where he was. Sitting up, he used his sleeve to wipe at the sweat that covered his face despite the cold. He was panting, his breath clouding in the thin, chill air.

  The dream wasn’t like the others, but it was just as vivid, every bit as real. He tried to make sense of it, running through it in his mind. Then he thought of Mobbs.

  More blood on his hands.

  Stryke checked himself. It was stupid to feel guilty because of a dream. For all he knew, Mobbs was alive and well. But somehow he couldn’t quite bring himself to believe that.

  He was still muddled and had to get a grip. Climbing to his feet, he walked to the edge of his prison.