A Sea of Skulls (Arts of Dark and Light Book 2)

by Vox Day

  “Do something!” Bereth shouted.

  “Like what?”

  Neither of them noticed the momentary flicker as a dark shape briefly obscured the risen moon. Bereth sheathed her daggers and stomped over towards Lassarian, who was cleaning his sword on the rags worn by the goblin he’d killed.

  “We’d better hope they weren’t part of a larger patrol. What if they come back here before that mage is finished with his cursed spell. The other moon ain’t risen yet.”

  “Oh, no!” Bereth hadn’t thought of that. She’d been thinking about the orcs being warned off the water. The idea that they might actually be in danger tonight didn’t cross her mind. “We’d better go tell him to hurry up, if he can!”

  “Watch out!”

  They both jumped at the sound of a voice calling out from above them. A moment later, a pair of thickly wet thumps were accompanied by a cracking sound as something, two somethings, struck the ground right in front of them.

  It was a goblin and his wolf. Or rather, the corpse of a goblin and his dying wolf. The beast, bleeding from three massive puncture wounds in its side, bared its teeth at them and tried to push itself up, but whimpered in pain as its broken forelegs couldn’t bear its weight.

  “Kill the poor thing!” Bereth put her hand over her mouth in horror.

  “You kill it. I just cleaned my damn blade!”

  “Just put it out of its misery, will you?”

  Grumbling under his breath, Lassarian drew his sword and flicked it across the dying animal’s throat. Blood spilled out darkly onto the ground as the wolf tried one last time to rise, then finally collapsed into death. Still grumbling, Lassarian walked over to the body of its former rider and wiped off his sword for the second time that evening.

  “Satisfied?”

  “Was that so hard? You saw how much pain the poor brute was in.”

  There was a rush of strongly-scented wind, the loud ruffling of feathers, and then Rhian landed his big hawk on the rock wall above them. “Tough bastards, they are,” he called down to them. “I can’t believe the cursed thing survived the fall.”

  “You’re the bastard, Rhian! You nearly hit us!”

  His high-pitched laughter echoed off the rocks. “I wish I could have seen your faces when that goblin hit the ground. Lassarian leaped farther than I’ve ever seen an elf jump at the Queen’s Games. And he did it backwards!”

  “How did you get here so fast?”

  “Awyrllid must have caught their scent. He was so agitated that he woke me up. Considering the two of you weren’t likely to be on your guard, I thought we’d see go up and what was out there. Not much of a plan, there, Lassarian. You shouldn’t have killed the first one right away.”

  “It would have worked if the other one went for Bereth like I thought he would.”

  “They’re goblins and scouts, my thick-headed friend. In my experience, they’re not generally known for standing and fighting to the death.”

  “Well, he didn’t get away, anyhow,” Lassarian said in a surly voice. “Come on, Bereth, let’s see how that blasted mage is getting on with his spell. It can’t be too much longer before second moonrise.”

  “What about the bodies? We can’t leave them here!”

  “We’ll have the birds pick them up and drop them somewhere decently far away when we leave.” Rhian laughed again. “If that won’t scare you too badly, Lasri.”

  It was nearly a full day later when they returned to the watering hole, this time as the fifth in a full wing of fliers. The prince-general himself was flying lead, in the hopes of seeing if their plan had come to pass. The last patrol to return had reported that a large group of boar riders had been seen in the vicinity of the pond, but as ordered, they’d retreated before the orcs got too near and became suspicious about the lingering eyes in the sky.

  The mage, Terfielon, was on one of the other birds, but Rhian and Awyrllid were finally getting some much-needed rest. Bereth was a little worried about Mellt being overworked, but Lassarian reassured her that his hawk was in fine fettle.

  “If he doesn’t fly everyday, he starts to get bad-tempered. He’s the happiest soldier in this war.”

  Even so, it was hard for Mellt and the other birds to keep pace with the prince-general’s giant, with its wingspan that was a third again broader than any of the four hawks escorting him.

  They were flying high above the clouds, in case there were any more surprises in store for them. Only this morning had Bereth heard that two nights ago, the orcs had moved four ballistae under cover of darkness and hidden them on a hilltop over which they knew the elven scouts would be flying upon their return from the morning patrol. Thinking that they were safe, the patrol had been flying low over the treetops and only an instinctive reaction on the part of one bird had saved both hawk and rider. Even so, one of the large bolts passed through its left wing, and even with the assistance of the other hawk, the wounded bird had barely made it back to camp. And while it would live, the High Guard would have to do without the hawk until it mended.

  “Look!” Lassarian shouted, pointing ahead. There was a veritable swarm of black birds intermittently visible through the clouds below them, their cries echoing through the skies. “That looks like a good sign!”

  It did look rather like a sight Bereth had often seen before a battlefield, as crows, ravens, vultures, and other birds of waited impatiently for the slaughter to begin, knowing that they would eat well by evening.

  “They might only be there because of the camp!”

  “Not that many. We haven’t seen flocks like this since the Horse Lord butchered the goblin cavalry!”

  The prince-general had noticed the birds too, and he raised his arm, giving the signal to descend with caution. They followed him in a gentle arc towards the ground, and Bereth slipped her bow out from the saddle and selected an arrow from her quiver. She didn’t bother to nock it yet, she just wanted to be prepared in case the orcs had placed artillery, or worse, a shaman, on top of the rock wall near the pond.

  The smell hit them as they emerged from the clouds, even before their eyes took in the extent of the carnage below. Whatever lethal hellbrew of toxins Terfielon had concocted caused the boars to vomit and void their bowels before expiring, and there were scores, no hundreds, of dead animals below. Bereth choked at the dreadful odor; she couldn’t fathom how terrible it must be on the ground. She could feel Lassarian heaving, and it was only with an iron effort of will that she managed to keep herself from spewing the contents of her stomach.

  One elf didn’t succeed, and he broke formation to tilt his hawk to the left and send a thin rope of vomit down to splatter amid the stinking morass of death below. The orc encampment stretched out to the north, east, and west, but there were less than a score of boar riders standing up on the rock wall, staring in helpless horror over the lifeless corral. Bereth could only imagine the horrific scene that must have ensued last night when Little Sister rose and awakened the poisons already lodged in the bellies of the beasts.

  Around the periphery of the corral were a surprising number of smaller bodies. There were only a few near the pond itself; the lethal spell had not struck until well after both beasts and riders had drunk their fill. Although their main target had been the boars, it looked as if about half the riders had also been afflicted.

  “Mother of Hell,” Bereth swore under her breath. She had seen carnage before. She had flown over Iron Mountain during the great siege and witnessed the vast piles of corpses that were swiftly stripped of flesh and turned into boneyards. She had witnessed dozens of violent skirmishes and more than twenty full-fledged battles, but never before had she seen the cruel and implacable face of death so clearly. It seemed to mock her and her elven mortality, reminding her that no matter how many years an elf might lead, one day she too would find herself silenced by the grave.

  “Ninety-nine, two hundred…” Lassarian was counting.

  A pair of orcs in black metal armor were approaching t
he corral, and one pointed up at them. One of the other sky riders waved down at them with mock-friendly cheerfulness, but Bereth was too shocked by the devastation below to put the arrow she was already holding in her hand to her bow. It was strange. She had killed hundreds of greenskins before, and more than a few wolves, although she had never previously slain a boar. And never before had those deaths bothered her in the slightest, let alone appalled and upset her. But whether it was the sheer scale of the slaughter or her own culpability for it, she simply could not cope with the thought of taking another life, not today.

  “Four hundred and twelve boars,” Lassarian said proudly. “I’d guess around one hundred twenty riders. It’s too hard to count them exactly, they’re not as big. And do you see that one there? Doesn’t that look like it might be a shaman?”

  Bereth dutifully looked to see where he was pointing. And, she had to admit, the crumpled figure lying in a pool of yellowish filth did seem to be wearing the sort of headdress that she’d seen shamans wear before.

  “It’s a pity that mage couldn’t have concocted something that made them die in their sleep or something. Or at least something that didn’t make such a horrific mess. Then they might have eaten the boars and we’d have gotten two-for-one.”

  “God, Lasri, do you have to talk about eating right now?” Bereth clutched at her stomach. The smell was really getting to her. “Can you take Mellt up higher?”

  “Why?” Something in her voice made him turn around. “Dammit, Bereth, you’re as green as an orc yourself!”

  He pulled back on the reins and Mellt obediently beat his wings and took them higher. The cool air helped, and more importantly their increased height combined with the wind of their passage took most of the dreadful stink away. Her eyes were still watering and her stomach was sour, but at least she could finally breathe freely now.

  “How can you be so cheerful?” she demanded. “That was one of the worst things I’ve ever seen! Doesn’t it bother you at all?”

  He looked back at her again, but this time there was no sympathy on his face. He glared at her angrily. “Not a whit! Damned glad I am, Bereth, and you know why? Because every cursed boar that died there last night, every whorespawn orc, is one less that we have to kill once they enter our lands. You’ve seen what they’ve done to the forests up north. What do you think they’ll do to ours? Every boar that we killed is one that won’t be fed on the ground-up bones of dead elf children!”

  “I know, I know, I know,” Bereth admitted. “Lasri, I’d do it again, I would. It had to be done. We should do it again and again, if they give us the chance. But just because what we’re doing is necessary, that doesn’t make it any less terrible. And it doesn’t make it any easier for me.”

  “You should be proud of yourself. This is like something out of the legends! Not even the Feysie Sword was supposed to be able to kill four hundred foes with a single blow.”

  “They’ve still got more than seven thousand boars left. The Horse Lord has less than a thousand horse. It’s not enough.”

  “No, but it’s a start!”

  “They won’t fall for it again.”

  “So think of something else!”

  She nodded. He was right. The orcs wouldn’t fall for the same thing twice. They’d have their shamans carefully testing every spring and watering hole, and probably riding ahead to do it. And that would not only slow down the daily march a little, but might even give the High Guard the chance to take out more of the Great Orc’s most dangerous assets if they were careless enough to get too far out in front of the main body of troops.

  And there were other ways to catch the orcs by surprise. She remembered the rock wall from which Lassarian had jumped. What if a mage could summon a rock elemental, or even two or three, and keep them bound until the boars were pegged down for the night? How many could the elementals kill if goaded into a fury before the Great Orc’s shamans managed to dispel them? Or perhaps it would be possible for their mages to reverse the orcs’ possession scheme, and to seed their herd of boars with a few raging, murderous demons from one of the deeper bits of Hell.

  None of these tricks would be enough, in itself, to stop the Great Orc. But it was clear that there were many ways of bleeding his army without meeting it in battle, many, many ways. So many ways to kill. So many ways to die. So much death. So very much death.

  She leaned as far as she could over the side of the great warhawk, and her stomach violently convulsed.

  Marcus

  The two Amorrans sat on the ribbon-strewn pavilion in front of four of the equestrians who had accompanied them and behind a pair of young women who had distractingly low necklines on their colorful dresses. One was wearing pale green, the other light blue, but Marcus doubted Gaius Trebonius could have told him what color the dresses were if he asked him. The tribune’s eyes were locked on one deliciously freckled white bosom as its owner leaned forward to whisper something into her companion’s ear.

  Trebonius started as Marcus elbowed him savagely in the ribs. “What?”

  “The combat, the whatever-they-call-it, is about to begin.”

  Trebonius’s gaze had already begun to drift downward, but as the trumpets blew a fanfare, he shook his head and looked out at the strange little arena before them. A pair of men were at each end of a narrow lane, one mounted and heavily armored to such an extent that the Amorrans couldn’t figure out how he was expected to fight, the other dressed more or less like a well-appointed slave and clearly charged with assisting him in preparing for the combat. Both of the armored men were armed with a giant lance that was comically long and thick; it looked more like a battering ram than a proper spear.

  “Is this some sort of ritual before the real games start?” Trebonius asked.

  “I don’t see how they’re even going to scratch each other wearing that much armor,” Marcus commented. “No wonder their horses are so big!”

  They had seen Savondese knights before, but the knights had invariably been wearing either leather armor, chainmail, or at the most, a steel cuirass. Of course, the cavalry they had seen was border cavalry, whose lords did not outfit them in the expensive style of the royal knights, which entirely encased the man from head to toe in shining steel plate. Whether their lords could afford to do so or not, Marcus guessed that the real reason was that the border knights had more need for speed and freedom of movement than the additional protection afforded by the plate. After all, even the heaviest armor couldn’t be expected to save one from an elven arrow aimed at an eye-slit or a chain-covered joint.

  “No, these are the real games,” Vitalis said. The half-Savondese decurion was visibly excited to finally have the chance to see the combats of which he’d heard since he was a boy. “All the contestants are free men-at-arms, and most of those who ride today will be the flower of the Savondese nobility. They don’t fight to the death here.”

  “Really?” Marcus and Trebonius said in chorus, legitimately surprised. Marcus was rather glad; he did not approve of the vulgar and violent arena games, but they were a familiar aspect of daily life in Amorr. “What do they bet on, then?” Trebonius added.

  “You can’t gamble,” Marcus said in a low voice as he leaned towards his second-in-command. “It’s not good for the men to see their officers gamble.”

  “Why on Earth not?”

  “If they know you for a gambler, you run the risk of them thinking you don’t know what you’re doing if you lose. And they’ll think you’re gambling with their lives.”

  Trebonius glanced back at the knights behind them. None of them were paying attention. “But we do gamble with their lives!”

  “They don’t know that! That’s the point.”

  “Your father’s advice?”

  “Saturnius, actually. But I expect Corvus felt much the same way. I never saw him place any bets when he took me to the games when I was a boy.”

  “When you were a boy?”

  “Once I decided I had a vocation, I no long
er attended. My tutor taught me that it doesn’t behoove a man of God to take pleasure in such a base and violent pastime.”

  “Says the legate with two thousand pairs of severed ears,” Trebonius said, grinning, but then a thought struck him. “Wait, I don’t understand. The primus pilus is one of the biggest gamblers I know! How come he can gamble if we can’t?”

  Marcus grinned, keeping half an eye on the young woman in the blue dress below him. She had taken a deep breath, for some reason, and he found it distracting. “Because centurions aren’t proper officers. They’re men. Or rather, the men consider them to be a higher form of themselves. They can imagine one day becoming an optio or a centurion. They know some of them will in time. We, on the other hand, are different creatures altogether. We aren’t bound to the legion for twenty years. It’s not our family the way it is theirs. They’ll never sit in the Senate, or command a legion, or hold office, and they know it. So, quite naturally, they don’t trust us.”

  “Even though they obey us.”

  “Did you trust every officer who gave you orders?”

  “I don’t trust the officer who gives them to me now!” Trebonius cackled and Marcus mock-shoved him. The young tribune turned and indicated a group of women who were standing off to the right of the pavilion. It was hard to know with any degree of certainty at such a distance, but on the basis of their attire, it appeared their affections might be negotiable. “Is that why you never go to the second city?”

  Marcus knew the tribune was referring to the small army of merchants and camp-followers who made a living by following the legion around. Legio XVII had lost their previous whorestown when they’d traveled through the dwarf tunnels, but already a motley collection of Savondese volunteers had replaced the larger part of it. The women were taller, fairer, and spoke a different language, but for all intents and purposes, life outside the castra was the same as it had always been.

  “I have my reasons,” he said, his tone making it clear he had no intention of entertaining further questions. Trebonius stared at him for a long moment, then shrugged and pointed at the mounted gladiators. “It looks like they’re ready!”