“No, we stay here. We want any travelers to pass by. This close to the city no one expects an attack from behind.” The speaker with the deep voice said. He had his back to Justan and all that he could tell from his angle was that he was a big hulk of a man who wore thick, overlapping, dark-green plated armor of some sort that covered his entire body. “You know they won’t be able to escape me.”
The two other men that had spoken were rough individuals of average build that looked as if they were wearing second hand armor. Justan saw wariness in their eyes as they watched the larger man talk.
Justan kept still, not wanting to make a sound in the crunchy leaves. He sent his thoughts out to Gwyrtha to see where she was. She was quite far away. She had lost track of time. She and Stanza had found some succulent berries and Gwyrtha was now munching on her second fresh rabbit.
Justan told her that he needed her right away. She immediately dropped her meal and glided through the forest in his direction. A confused Stanza followed as quickly as she could.
The men continued to talk amongst themselves and Justan tried to think of a way out of his situation. He didn't like the idea of leaving a group of brigands to stalk the next family or caravan to leave the city, but he didn't see what he could do about it on his own. Gwyrtha had his bow strapped to her back and he didn't know how he would fare with his swords against three men at once, especially the big one. He was a much better fighter since he had bonded with Gwyrtha, but there was something about the larger man that made him uneasy.
Slowly he edged himself toward the relative safety of the trees, hoping that the men were too intent on their conversation to notice him. He almost made it too, but at the tree line his foot snapped a twig. The leader's head whipped around and Justan saw that he was not a man at all, but an orc.
The two smaller men stared in surprise as Justan waived cheerily and ran into the trees.
As he ran, Justan’s mind churned. What were two men doing following the orders of an orc? Part of him wanted to turn back and fight so that he could find out the answer to his question, but his logical side overrode his curiosity. He did not know for sure whether he could defeat the three of them by himself, but he was confident that with his lead, he could easily outrun them.
To his surprise, Justan didn't get more than a few strides before he felt a large hand grab him by the back of his collar and another one grasp the seat of his pants, jolting him to a stop. He was then hoisted into the air and before he could do anything about it, he was thrown across the clearing to roll through the leaves and slam painfully into a tree.
Justan was stunned by the quickness and strength of the attack. He wondered how the orc had caught up to him so quickly, especially wearing all that armor? He tried not to panic. After all, he had experience fighting quick foes, even if they were strong.
He quickly shook off the pain of his landing. Justan jumped to his feet and drew both of his swords in one smooth motion only to find that the orc was already upon him. He felt rather than saw the kick that landed on his chest and threw him back into the trunk of the tree, knocking the wind out of him.
He nearly blacked out as he slowly drew himself up from the ground on his hands and knees. Dimly, he wondered where his swords had fallen. He shook his head to clear his vision only to see the armored feet of the orc right under his nose. He distantly wondered where Gwyrtha was.
“Just kill him, Huck,” said the man with the whiny voice. “We’ll bury him under some leaves. No one will find him.”
“No, wait . . .” Justan protested as he started to gather his wits about him. The orc responded by picking him up by the front of his shirt and slamming him against the tree with one powerful arm, pinning him there.
“Charles is right, Huck,” said the other man. “He will just tell others about us if he lives.”
“Shut up! You don't tell me what to do!” the orc growled. The two humans looked down.
“Yes sir,” they replied.
Neither of them looked happy to take the orc's orders, and Justan was coherent enough to file that fact away in his mind. The orc turned back to Justan, whose feet were dangling off of the ground.
“Tell me human. Why shouldn't I kill you?” Huck grinned an evil grin, showing a mouthful of sharp yellow teeth. He raised one armored hand and flicked Justan across the nose with one heavy finger. The strike sent a shooting pain through his sinuses and jolted him into alertness. “Why shouldn't I take this fist and pummel you into jelly?”
Justan said the first thing that came to his mind.
“Because I want to fight you!”
“Fight me?” The orc dropped him to the ground and took a single step back. Justan sat back and looked up at the orc, who stared back down at him with his bulging arms crossed.
“I want to fight you fairly, Huck. If you kill me now, without my weapons, you show these men that you are just a coward.” Justan hoped that this tactic would work as well on this orc as it had on the last one that he had faced.
“Ha!” The orc let out a thick mocking laugh that filled the clearing. “A fair fight is impossible for you, puny thing! I am too much faster and stronger than any human. Besides, with my master’s gift, it would be impossible for you to hurt me.”
The way that the armor moved with the orc's chest as it laughed struck Justan as odd and he realized that the thick overlapping plates on the orc weren’t from a suit of armor at all. They were part of his body. They grew out of his skin. Justan had never heard of an orc having natural armor like that. It had to be caused by magic.
He quickly shifted to his mage sight and saw the swirls of magic twisting the natural order of the orc and strengthening its body. Huck was right. This could not be a fair fight. Justan mentally shouted at Gwyrtha to hurry up.
“At least let me gather my swords and die like a warrior,” Justan sputtered, hoping to delay the fight long enough for help to arrive. Huck glared at Justan over his crossed arms and allowed him to stand.
“Pick up your swords then. You still won't see my fists coming until I have crushed the life out of you.”
Justan found his swords and trudged over to them slowly.
“What you just said doesn't make any sense,” he said as he bent over to pick the weapons up. Come on, Gwyrtha, he thought. You are almost here.
“What?” growled the orc.
“You said that I won't see your fists coming until after I am dead.” He stretched slowly, trying to keep his outward appearance calm. Inwardly he was tensing himself for the attack he knew was coming. This orc was extremely fast and he needed every sense trained on the fight. “How can a dead man see anything? I mean, that's just silly.”
“Enough!” The orc charged with amazing speed, but Justan was focused, and timed his move just right to dart aside just in time. Then Justan went on the offensive, raining a series of attacks on the weaponless orc.
It turned out that the orc didn't need a weapon. It blocked all of Justan's strikes with its forearms, deflecting the blows as quickly as he could attack. Justan put the failure of his offense to good use, focusing all of his strategical prowess into finding a chink in the orc's armor. He had to have a weakness. He just had to.
Physically, Justan had his doubts as to whether he could defeat this creature. Not without his Jharro Bow, anyway. But Gwyrtha had the power to make a difference and he knew that he just had to survive until she arrived. He went back to the one thing that had helped him before.
“Hey, you two.” Justan said to the scruffy men, not taking a single eye off of the orc who was barely being held back by his attacks. His swords were barely scraping its armored body. “If you give me a hand, we can take him easily.”
The two humans stared at him in surprise.
The orc threw a punch that Justan narrowly dodged, and Justan used the opening in the orc’s defense to slash one sword across its face. The blade barely scored the beast's hard skin.
“Just listen to me.” Justan said to the men, darti
ng to the side to avoid another attack. He wondered how long he was going to be able to keep this pattern of attack up. “We are humans. This guy is just an orc. Do you really like taking orders from him?”
Huck snarled and jerked at Justan as if he was about to leap at him, but when Justan jumped back the orc ran in the opposite direction. For a brief moment Justan hoped that the orc would keep running, but it didn't go very far.
The orc bent over and picked up a weapon from the ground. Justan hadn't seen the orc carrying it before, so Huck must have dropped it before Justan first saw him. The weapon was a long, spiked mace that glinted in the afternoon sun as Huck raised it into the air.
“This is Brainer. You will see how it got its name!” The orc smiled. “Or as you pointed out before, you won’t. You will be dead before you see it coming.”
Justan gulped. It had been hard enough to stall the orc when it didn't have a weapon. Gwyrtha was going to be here in any moment and he couldn't bear the thought of Huck bashing her with that wicked weapon. He glanced back to the two humans who were eyeing their leader in unabashed fear.
“Come on, guys. You can't like taking orders from something that stupid. I'll bet he gets lost in the forest.” The orc was shocked at Justan's bravado, and its green skin turned a shade of red with anger. The two humans cringed with every word. Justan continued. “I'll bet he drools at night. Look at him. He's drooling now! You two intelligent humans are following a filthy orc that is too stupid to swallow its own spit!”
The orc charged at Justan with its mouth open in a sound that was more a scream than a roar. Justan barely dodged the orc's wild attack. A piece of his shirt was ripped away by the spikes on the end of its mace.
As the orc flew past him, Justan twirled and thrust upwards at the orc's back with both sword blades. The left sword skidded along the bony armor, its fine edge leaving barely a scratch, but the right blade slid between two of the orc's bony armored plates. The tip of the sword entered just under the orc's shoulder blade. Unfortunately, it only sank in a couple of inches before binding up in the bony armor as the orc arched its back and howled in pain.
The orc spun around, ripping the sword from Justan's grasp. Its brows were furrowed and its eyes blazed with anger. It pawed at its back, trying to pull the sword out, but its armor plates got in the way and it couldn't reach the blade.
The two scruffy humans backed to the tree line, unsure of whether they should help the orc or not. They had never seen their leader hurt before and though they still didn't think that Justan could win, they didn't want to be around when the orc was finished with the fight either. Justan had embarrassed Huck in front of them and the orc wouldn't forget.
Justan gulped. His blow hadn't been fatal and now he only had one sword. The orc's first charge had been predictable, but now he had no idea what it would do. It would probably be more cautious and dangerous than before.
Huck finally just ignored the sword sticking out of its back and ran at Justan just as Gwyrtha leapt into the clearing. She landed on the orc with a roar, her considerable weight bearing it down to the ground. Her claws skittered across the orc's armored body, leaving furrows in the bony plates. She bit down on the orc's head, though her teeth could not penetrate the thick skull.
Huck was caught off guard, but wasted no time in beating Gwyrtha about the head with a flurry of punches as he lay on the ground. She shrugged off the blows and she continued to hold on to his head with her teeth and slash away with her claws, but did little actual damage.
Justan looked for the two other men, but they had run into the woods at the sight of Gwyrtha's fury. He looked back at the scuffle. Gwyrtha had released the orc's head from her jaws and was trying to pry a piece of the body armor from his chest. Huck was roaring in defiance while still raining blows upon her thick head with his armored fists. She was beginning to look pretty beat up and was bleeding in several places.
“Stop, Huck, if you want to live!” Justan shouted. Stop Gwyrtha! Justan sent.
The two paused and Justan walked up to them. Gwyrtha had torn a small chunk of armor away from the orc's chest in her fury and Justan pressed the tip of his remaining sword against the wound.
“You may be tough. But I can still kill you if I press right here.”
Justan didn't know what he was going to do with this monster. His instincts told him that he should just kill the beast outright, but the situation was strange enough that he wanted some answers first. How had the orc come to be changed magically like this and what was a creature of this power doing as a simple bandit?
Huck laughed and spat. “I don't fear you, human! Or this beast!” Then, so quickly that Justan could not respond, the orc kicked him in the shin, knocking him to the ground with the force of the blow. At the same time, Huck brought his leg up, kneed Gwyrtha in the neck and skittered out from under her on his hands and knees.
Gwyrtha choked and huffed, trying to draw breath through her damaged throat. Justan groped along her side, using her saddle strap to help him get to his feet. The pain in his shin was excruciating.
Huck rummaged through the leaves and found the mace that it had dropped. As it bent to pick its weapon up, the orc grimaced and once again groped at its back, pained by steel still stuck in its flesh.
“Hah! Through all of your attacks I still live! I have nothing to fear!” The orc howled and lifted its wicked mace. “My master has made me too strong. I will crush you and your monster!”
Justan quickly unstrapped the Jharro Bow from Gwyrtha's back. It was his most powerful weapon. When used with the dragon hair string it did explosive damage. He rummaged quickly, but he couldn't find the golden string. A plain one would have to do. Keeping one eye on the orc, he strung the bow and pulled a bead on the armored orc, searching for the right spot.
“What’s this?” the orc laughed. “An arrow? Hundreds of arrows have broken on my skin. Please, shoot and I will catch it out of the air!”
The orc was making it too easy, but this time curiosity would not stay his hand. He found the one spot where he knew the arrow would kill the orc. He focused, and when the arrow left his fingertips, he knew it would strike true.
Huck did not even see the arrow’s flight. As fast as this orc was, it still was not quick enough to dodge an arrow from a Jharro Bow.
The arrow pierced Huck's eye and shattered against the back of the orc's thick skull, leaving just the fletchings sticking out. The force of the shot jerked the orc back a few feet before it collapsed in a heap on the ground.
Justan breathed a sigh of relief, but looked to the earth in front of Gwyrtha sadly, for lying on the ground was half of the sword that had been stuck in the orc's back. When Gwyrtha had landed on top of the orc, the sword had snapped off half way up the blade.
Justan hurriedly checked Gwyrtha to make sure that she was all right. Her throat was bruised and her head was a bit battered, but other than that she appeared to be fine. He sent thoughts of gratitude to her, but couldn’t help but chastise her a little.
“Next time I fall asleep, don't wander so far off. If you had been here with me, they might not have even attacked and we'd both be in better shape.” Justan looked over at the body of the slain orc. “Then again, I’m probably wrong. This orc would have attacked anyway.”
Justan limped over to the body of the armored orc and to his disgust, it seemed as though the armored plates were melting away. With his mage sight he could see that the magic that had been forcing the orc's body into its enhanced state was unraveling, leaving what was left a smoking mess.
He lifted up one, now rubbery, plate and pulled out the length of his sword that had broken off in the orc. A sigh escaped his lips. The swords were a gift from his mentor, Sir Hilt, and it hurt to see this one broken. He wondered if he would be able to get it reforged.
“Hey, what happened here?”
Qyxal and Zambon entered the clearing wearing confused expressions.
“Did either of you see two men running through the fo
rest?” Justan asked.
“No,” Qyxal said and hunkered down beside the remains of the orc. “If you don't mind me asking, what is an orc doing here? And . . . what are these slimy things hanging off of its skin?”
“Look at it with your mage sight and tell me what you think.”
“Strange . . . ” Qyxal scratched at the back of his neck as he pondered the remains.
“What are you two talking about?” Zambon mumbled. He looked over Qyxal's shoulder. “Ooh. That's not pretty.”
Justan related what had happened and Qyxal rushed to Gwyrtha's side, checking her injuries. The elf spent a moment healing her and when he was sure that she was okay, he checked Justan.
“You know, all these magic runes make it difficult for me to scan you properly. They interfere.” The elf's brow furrowed. “But you don’t have any broken ribs. The worst injury is the one to your shin. I think that the bone is bruised but I can fix that . . .”
Messenger of the Dark Prophet (The Bowl of Souls: Book Two) Page 29