Alfray smiled weakly. “We got into . . . this . . . together. It was a . . . good mission, eh, Stryke?”
“Yes. A good mission. And you were the best comrade an orc could have, old friend.”
“I take . . . that as a . . . compliment to . . . be proud . . . of.” Now his lips were working but no sound came. Stryke leaned close and put his ear close to Alfray’s mouth. Faintly he heard, “Sword . . .”
Stryke took his blade and pressed its grip into Alfray’s trembling palm. He closed the fingers around it. Alfray gripped feebly and looked content. “Remember the . . . old ways,” he rasped. “Honour . . . the . . . traditions.”
“We will,” Stryke promised. “And your memory. Always.”
The ground gave another bass rumble. Showers of plaster fell from the ceiling. Off to one side of the vast chamber Jennesta and her kin battled on in a blaze of supernatural radiance and flashing lights.
Alfray’s breath was thin and laboured. “I will . . . drink . . . a toast to you . . . all . . . in the . . . halls of . . . Vartania.”
Then his eyes closed for the last time.
“No,” Coilla said. “No, Alfray.” She started shaking him. “We need you. Don’t go, the band needs you. Alfray?”
Stryke took her by the shoulders and forced her to look at him. “He’s . . . gone, Coilla. He’s gone.”
She stared at him, not seeming to comprehend.
Orcs weren’t supposed to be able to cry. It was something humans did. The mist filling her eyes belied that.
Jup had his face in his hands. Haskeer’s head was bowed. The grunts were struck dumb with the shock of grief.
Stryke gently took back his sword. Then he looked up at the magical duel and rage began to return. They all felt it. But they felt impotence too. There was no way they dared intervene in the exchange of sorcery, nor could they pass it.
No more than a minute later their quandary was resolved.
Jennesta cried out. Her fiery magical shield flickered and died. She staggered, her head down, looking exhausted. Damp locks of ebony hair were plastered to her face.
The enchanted, flaming buffer protecting Serapheim and Sanara vanished too, snuffed out like a candle. He darted the few steps separating them from Jennesta and seized her wrist. Drained by the efforts of their duel, she put up little resistance as he began dragging her toward the portal.
Leaping to their feet, the band made to charge and vent their wrath on her.
“No!” Serapheim bellowed. “She’s my daughter! I have a responsibility for all she’s done! I’ll deal with this myself!”
Such was the force of his outburst that it stopped them in their tracks.
They watched as Serapheim pulled her the last few feet to the portal’s edge. As they arrived, she came to herself a little and realised where they were. Her eyes moved from the dancing grandeur of the portal’s vortex to her father’s face. She seemed to divine his intention, but she showed no fear.
“You wouldn’t dare,” she sneered.
“Once, perhaps,” he returned, “before the full horror of your wickedness was brought home to me. Not now.” Still holding her wrist in an iron grip, he thrust her hand near to the portal’s cascading brilliance, the tips of her fingers almost in the flow. “I brought you into this world. Now I’m taking you out of it. You should appreciate the symmetry of the act.”
“You’re a fool,” she hissed, “you always were. And a coward. I have an army here. If anything happens to me, you’ll die a death beyond your wildest imagination.” She flicked her gaze to Sanara. “You both will.”
“I don’t care,” he told her.
“Nor I,” Sanara backed him.
“Some prices are worth paying to rid the world of evil,” Serapheim said, pushing her hand nearer the sparkling flux.
She gazed into his eyes and knew he meant it. Her cocksure expression weakened somewhat then, and she began to struggle.
“At least face your end with dignity,” he told her. “Or is that too much to ask?”
“Never.”
He forced her hand into the vortex, then let go and retreated a pace.
She squirmed and fought to pull her hand free but the gushing fountain of energy held it as sure as a vice. Then a change came upon the trapped flesh. Very slowly, it began to dissolve away, releasing itself as thousands of particles that flew into the swarm of stars and spiralled with them. The process increased apace, the vortex gobbling up her wrist. Rapidly she was drawn in to the depth of her arm, which likewise disintegrated and scattered.
The band was rooted, their expressions a mixture of horror and macabre fascination.
Her leg had been sucked in now, and it was melting before their eyes. Strands of her hair followed, as though inhaled by an invisible giant. Jennesta’s disintegration speeded up, her matter eaten into by the surging vortex at a faster and faster rate.
When it began to consume her face she finally screamed. The sound was almost instantly cut off as the energy took the rest of her in several gulps. The last of her matter gyrated for a moment in the spinning energy field before it became nothingness.
Serapheim looked as though he was going to faint. Sanara went to him and they embraced.
Coilla punctured the awed silence. “What happened to her?”
Serapheim gathered himself. “She made contact with the portal before it was set for a destination. She’s either been torn apart by the titanic forces it contains or flung into another dimension. Either way, she’s gone. Finished.”
Stryke wasn’t the only one who felt a pang of pity for him, despite their hatred of Jennesta. “Is that how we’ll go?” he asked.
There was another rumble beneath their feet, deeper, longer than any before.
“No, my friend. I will set the location. Your transition will be profound, but not like that. It will feel just like walking through a door.” He disengaged himself from Sanara. “Come, there’s no time to waste.”
He made his way to one of the stones surrounding the portal and fiddled with the instrumentalities.
“What about you?” Coilla said.
“I will remain here in Maras-Dantia. Where else would I go? Here I can witness either the end of things or try to do some good if the land recovers from its blight.”
All present knew that his real choice was death.
“I will remain here also,” Sanara said. “This is my world. For better or worse.” Tears stained her cheeks.
The earth grumbled more persistently.
“Come, Jup,” Serapheim urged. “We’ll send you to the domain of dwarfs first.”
“No,” he said.
“What?” Haskeer exclaimed.
“This is the only world I know too. I’ve had no visions of a dwarf world. It sounds tempting, but who would I know there? I’d really be a stranger in a strange land.”
“You won’t change your mind?” Stryke asked.
“No, Chief. I’ve given it a lot of thought. I’ll stay here and take my chances.”
Haskeer stepped forward. “You sure, Jup?”
“What’s the matter, miss somebody to argue with?”
“I’ll always find somebody to do that with.” He regarded the dwarf for a moment. “But it won’t be the same.”
They exchanged the warrior’s clasp.
“Then please take Sanara with you,” Serapheim said. “Protect her for me,”
Jup nodded. Then with a last look at the band he escorted Sanara from the chamber.
“Now we must move with all speed,” Serapheim announced. “Into the portal.”
Everybody looked sheepish.
“I promise you that no harm will befall any of you.”
“On the double!” Stryke barked.
Gleadeg stepped forward.
“In you go,” Stryke told him. He added more softly, “Have no fear, trooper.”
The grunt took a breath and moved into the portal. Instantly he vanished.
“Come on! Come on!” Stryke shouted.
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One by one, the remainder of the grunts passed through.
Then it was Haskeer’s turn. He leapt in, a battle cry on his lips.
Coilla, taking a last look at Serapheim, and then turning her eyes to Stryke, went next.
Stryke and Serapheim stood alone in the trembling chamber. “Thank you,” the orc said.
“It was the least I could do. Here.” He pushed the stars into his hand. “Take these.”
“But—”
“I have no further need of them. You do with them as you will. But don’t argue now!”
Stryke accepted them.
“Fare thee well, Stryke of the Wolverines.”
“And you, Sorcerer.”
He stepped to the lip of the vortex. The palace began to fall. Serapheim made no move to escape. Stryke hadn’t thought he would. He lifted an arm and gave the human a clipped salute.
There was a moment of chaos and transition. Somehow, perhaps via the dreadful power of the stars and their portal, he had a brief flashing vision of many wondrous things.
He saw Aidan Galby, walking hand in hand with Jup and Sanara across a pastoral scene. He glimpsed Mercy Hobrow astride a unicorn. He knew again the allure of his orc homeland.
His last thought was that the humans could have their world, and welcome to it.
Then he turned and stepped into the light.
Acknowledgments
If it wasn’t for our human support system, writers’ lives would be intolerably isolated. So thanks are due to Steve Jackson and Heather Matuozzo, for friendship and laughter; Harry and Helen Knibb, for their matchless Internet expertise and kindness; Sandy Auden, for chocolate wisdom and Carrying On; Simon Spanton, for keeping a firm hand on the editorial tiller; and Nicola Sinclair, for publicity expertise above and beyond.
extras
Meet the Author
Peter Coleborn
STAN NICHOLLS is the author of more than two dozen books, most of them in the fantasy and science fiction genres, for both children and adults. His books have been published in over twenty countries. Before taking up writing full-time in 1981, he co-owned and managed the West London bookstore Bookends and managed specialist SF bookshop Dark They Were and Golden Eyed. He was also Forbidden Planet’s first manager and helped establish and run the New York branch. A journalist for national and specialist publications and the Internet, he was the science fiction and fantasy book reviewer for London listings magazine Time Out for six years and subsequently reviewed popular science titles for the magazine. He received the Le Fantastique Lifetime Achievement Award for Contributions to Literature in April 2007.
Interview
Over the course of your career you have written many science fiction and fantasy novels. How did you get your start in the genre?
I suppose you could say I got started as a child, when I first became interested in these subjects. I’ve likened a passion for science fiction and fantasy to malaria; if you’re bitten young the fever tends to rage life-long. But from a fairly early age I didn’t just want to consume fantastical stories, I wanted to tell them myself. The first manifestation of that was probably in the playground, where I inadvertently discovered the Thousand and One Nights principle. In the school I attended, a glib tongue proved a useful alternative to fight or flight when you weren’t very competent at those activities. Making yourself a sort of entertainment asset was a good way of keeping your teeth.
I was a cuckoo in the nest of the poor, not particularly bookish family I grew up in. Despite being the last boy in my year at school who learned to read, once I knew how, I took to it. There wasn’t much money for luxuries like reading material in our house, but I managed to get my hands on a steady stream of novels, magazines, and comic books. When I was nine or ten years old I wrote what I inaccurately, and hilariously, referred to as a novel. I wrote it in colored felt-tip in a cheap reporter’s notebook. I knew that novels were divided into things called chapters, but I didn’t know how long they were supposed to be. So I made every page a chapter. This “novel” was about a bunch of feisty kids who start off seeing a flying saucer and end up foiling an alien invasion. It was, not surprisingly, dire.
When I left school I worked in a book-exporting company that incorporated the London office of the Library of Congress, which was fascinating. Then I managed a series of specialist book- shops, including Dark They Were and Golden Eyed and Forbidden Planet. But this was all a diversion; I really wanted to write, and only got into bookselling to be near books and authors, hoping perhaps that I’d absorb the skill through some kind of osmosis. I was writing whenever I could find the time, and in my teens I’d joined with friends to publish fanzines devoted to sf, fantasy, and horror, but I became increasingly aware that to make a life as a writer I’d have to focus on it exclusively. When I finally took the plunge it was as a journalist. Fiction writing being an unpredictable way to earn a living, my thought was that journalism would pay the bills while I worked at the craft of storytelling. I concentrated as much as possible on the genres that interested me, but you can’t really prosper as a journalist if you write only about science fiction. So I became a jobbing hack, taking commissions on almost any subject from practically any publication that would pay me. I’d recommend journalism to anyone interested in a writing career, even a career in fiction. It teaches you positive attributes, like a respect for deadlines, an ability to get the job done, and brevity of expression. During this period I also worked as a first reader—or slush pile reader, as we rather unkindly call it in the UK—for a number of publishers and literary agents. That taught me a lot too, though sadly most of the lessons were about how not to do it.
One day I got a call from an agent who had seen my work and wanted to know if I was interested in writing a book. That led to a series of commissions writing movie novelizations and TV tie-ins. People trying to break into the profession can be a bit disdainful of this kind of work, but again I’d recommend it. In this business your only collateral is your track record, and any kind of book helps build a profile, as well as giving you the chance to master the skills needed for novel writing. Having proved myself to some extent with these projects, I eventually graduated to pitching my own ideas.
Who/what would you consider to be your influences?
I’ve had the privilege of reading very widely in the sf, fantasy, and supernatural fields, and took inspiration from all these genres. I’m not someone who sees the various branches of speculative fiction as being dissimilar in quality or interest. For me, the science fiction, fantasy, and horror genres simply occupy different points on a spectrum, and I’ve enjoyed reading, and to some extent writing, in each of them. I could list numerous authors who influenced me, but that makes for dull reading, and I’d be bound to overlook some important names. So I’ll just say that it was the totality of these genres that motivated me.
One thing I’ll add is that although prose, the printed word, is what’s always captivated me most, other mediums have had an effect too. When I was younger I had a passion for science fiction and horror movies, and an enthusiasm for comic books. All of this feeds into your work on some level, even if you aren’t always aware of it.
Are you mainly a science fiction and fantasy reader, or are there other genres that you’re partial to?
If it was possible to count up everything I’ve ever read, no doubt sf and fantasy would form by far the greatest part. But I’ve long felt that reading exclusively in these genres isn’t necessarily a positive thing. If you read only science fiction, all you have to compare it with is other books in the same category. You lose perspective. So I’ve kept up a little with other fields, and to some extent mainstream literature, though my tastes usually run to genre, like crime and thrillers.
But in common with a lot of authors, I tend to read less and less fiction the more I write it myself. And I rarely read any when I’m actually working on a book. I suppose that’s because when you’re trying to think your way through the ramifications of your o
wn plot, world, and characters, you don’t want to be distracted by somebody else’s. There’s probably also an element of anxiety about unconscious plagiarism, which is something we all dread. I still read—I couldn’t imagine not doing that—but these days it’s more likely to be nonfiction, in the shape of a book on history or a biography.
How do you fill your time when you aren’t writing?
I recently made a pact with my wife, Anne—who’s a writer herself and understands the process—that I’d try to achieve a better work-life balance. You know, take a few days off occasionally and interact with real people rather than ones I’ve made up, that sort of thing. Writing has a tendency to be all-consuming, and when it’s flowing well there’s a reluctance to notice the clock. You could argue that being totally immersed is a necessary prerequisite for a writer, which it is, but there’s also a case for equilibrium. I’m mindful of the old adage that says being able to write is only half the story; you have to have something to write about. Keeping one foot in the real world is what feeds that, even for a writer of fantasy.
When I do escape my workroom I enjoy walking, particularly in the English countryside, or when I travel abroad, which is another interest. Recently I’ve been trying to learn how to record these excursions via photography. I hope to reach competent one of these years. I like history and can usually be tempted into a museum or historic monument; and art intrigues me, possibly because it’s a talent I’m completely devoid of and envy in others, so galleries are a prime destination. Of course I people-watch, as writers will, and I savor conversation—I share the delight many writers have in talking, which is why there are so many donkeys around here with missing hind legs.
The intriguing conceit of Orcs is that you have turned traditional fantasy conventions upside down. What made you decide that it was time for the orcs to tell their story?
That’s precisely it—their story had never been told. Orcs were always depicted as a mindless horde fit only to dash themselves against the heroes’ blades. I got to pondering about how winners write the history books, and thought, “Suppose orcs just had a bad press?” What if they were supreme warriors, and certainly capable of ruthlessness, but not actually evil? Suppose they had some kind of code of honor, albeit crude, and, dare I say it, even a certain nobility? Why shouldn’t they have a history, a culture, hopes, fears, dreams, and beliefs, just like other fantasy races?
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