Bone War

by Steven Harper

  An orc woman wearing nothing but a cloak emerged from the forest. She brandished no sword, but her manner was imperious and proud.

  “Queen Gwylph!” the orc woman boomed above the sound of the water. “I am Queen Xanda of the First Nest of Xaron. For your crimes against my people, for your crimes against this world, I call for your death! Surrender yourself now, and we will spare your people.”

  Ranadar caught his breath. Xanda. Kalessa’s mother.

  Gwylph chortled and raised her own voice. “We destroyed so many orcs that the wife of a third-rate chieftain now calls herself queen! You have no fight, no power, no magic. Run home, little orcs, and lick your wounds with your forked tongues!”

  Xanda raised her fist and screamed a battle cry. A horde of wyrms and naked orcs streamed from the forest and charged into the river. Xanda herself came with them.

  “Idiots,” Gwylph snorted. “Notice, Ranashka, the most basic rule of strategy—never let the enemy catch you in water. They even took their armor off for us.” She raised her voice. “Elves—arrows! Golems—attack!”

  The golems charged toward the water while the elves raised their bows. But then the incredible happened. The orcs changed shape. Their bodies lengthened and thickened, and in no time the golems were facing a legion of giant wyrms, each half again the height of a man.

  “What?” Mother gasped. Ranadar backed up a step, himself caught off guard.

  The new wyrms eeled across the river with sinuous ease and knocked the golems aside. The golems were armed with only their fists and their great strength, and neither did much against an opponent the golems were unable to grasp. Their hands and fists slid off the wyrms’ emerald scales. The wyrms whipped their heads around, snapping at the golems and flinging them about like rag dolls. The air shook with roars and hisses.

  The elves loosed their arrows. Mother unslung her bow and joined them. A hail of arrows rained down on wyrms and golems alike. The weapons did not bother the golems, most of whom did not even bother to pull the arrows out of bloodless wounds, but a few pierced the wyrms. The wounds were mostly shallow. Several of the wyrms rushed at the regiment of elves, who drew swords. On the other side of the river, another group of Xaron soldiers, these in the woven leather armor favored by the orcs, leaped aboard normal wyrms, which swam across in the confusion.

  Bronze clashed against scales as the elves fought the great wyrms. Hisses of anger and pain slashed the air. One wyrm tossed an elven soldier high in the air, caught him on the way down, and swallowed him whole. An elven warrior sliced a wyrm open from throat to gullet, spilling warm guts across the carpet of dead leaves. Still, the elves were being beaten back closer to the tree.

  The other orcs were reaching the shore now. Their swords were of iron, and would wreak greater havoc. Ranadar was an elf, but he found himself glad of this, and he kept his eyes carefully averted from the elven troops in case he saw someone he knew. Sharyl had lost a hand, but she was nowhere near the battle.

  “Next rule of strategy,” Mother said, “deal with the unexpected.”

  She put her bow over her back again, drew the Bone Sword, and charged into the battle with a yell of her own. The Bone Sword whirled. It sliced a wyrm in half, leaving it writhing and lashing on the leaves. Without a pause, Gwylph turned and ran an orc through the eye. It stiffened and died. A wyrm tried to bite her, but Mother brought the sword up and bisected the wyrm from chin to forehead. Dark blood splashed in all directions. Another wyrm fell, and another, and three more orcs. Queen Gwylph was a whirlwind, a force of nature spreading destruction all around her. And more regiments of Fae were running at them. Sprites, crackling with electricity, swarmed the sky. Hordes of fairies with their sharp little swords streamed down from the tree to leap and skitter into the fight. Elven centurions in gleaming bronze armor marched toward the battle.

  Ranadar cast about for something to do. The orcs were vastly outnumbered and going to lose. Bronze clashed against iron. Screams and hisses and cries of pain and anger echoed under the tree’s sky-shading canopy. It was like watching a battle in twilight, though it was late afternoon.

  A pair of wyrms swam up the river and emerged, dripping, on the riverbank. Riding each was a pair of familiar figures that sent a stab of joy through Ranadar. “Aisa! Danr!” He tried to run toward them, but the three sprites guarding him shocked him into immobility again. Talfi’s body lay motionless on the ground between the two flesh golems and Ranadar kept a nervous eye on him as well.

  The sprite guards saw Danr and Aisa and, remembering the queen’s edict, flashed toward them, chittering in wicked excitement. The flesh golems started forward, then hesitated. One of them, the one with the bad leg, looked at Ranadar.

  “Do you love me?” Ranadar said in wild desperation.

  “I do,” whispered the golem.

  “So do I,” murmured the other.

  Every word pierced Ranadar’s heart, but he forced himself to continue. “If you truly love me, do not move. Do not hurt my friend.”

  The flesh golems stayed.

  The sprites attacked. Aisa drew an iron knife that flashed into a great sword. It extended forward and skewered the sprite, which turned into a black ball of mush and slid off the end. One of the wyrms snapped the other sprite out of midair and swallowed it whole, and Danr grabbed the third one in one meaty hand. Before it could do anything else, he squeezed.

  The sprite changed shape. It became Talfi, and his hands clutched at Danr’s forearm. Danr’s eyes widened.

  “It’s an illusion!” Ranadar shouted.

  “I know,” Danr said, and squeezed. The sprite changed into Aisa, who fought and tore, but still Danr squeezed. And then the sprite became a baby with a long jaw and dark hair. Danr gasped and let go. The sprite flew into the air, toward the canopy of leaves above them.

  “Damn it!” Ranadar snatched Aisa’s sword from her startled grip. The iron burned his hand like fire, and a headache slammed his skull. The sword flicked into a knife when it left Aisa, and Ranadar threw it. The blade spun end over end and barely nicked the sprite, but it was enough. The sprite fell back to the ground and Danr dropped from his wyrm to crush it with one foot.

  One of the wyrms shifted shape. It squirmed into a naked orc woman—Kalessa! Where had she learned to do that? But the pain in Ranadar’s head drove further thought away. Kalessa snatched up the knife from the dead leaves. The battle raged on. Mother seemed unstoppable. Already hundreds of orcs and wyrms lay dead amid the heavy smell of orcish blood.

  “Are you all right?” Aisa asked. “Ranadar! Can you hear me?”

  He held up his hand. A burn scored palm and fingers. “I will be fine eventually. Where did you come from?”

  “Explanations later,” Kalessa said. “Is Talfi—?”

  “Dead again,” Ranadar said, dropping to one knee beside him. The flesh golems remained motionless. “I do not know why he is not coming back.”

  “The elves are winning,” Kalessa said. “I should go help.”

  “It’s the Bone Sword,” Danr said. “We have to get the Bone Sword!”

  “We cannot,” Aisa said. “Not in the middle of all that.”

  The earth moved again. Everyone lost their balance. The fighting paused while Fae, golem, and orc alike flailed about. The tree trembled, and leaves fell like rotting green snowflakes. And across the river, a landslide of rock and earth split away from the mountainside cascaded into the river, revealing a gaping cave wide enough for a dozen horses to ride side by side and tall enough for three trees to stand atop one another. At the entrance of the cave stood an army of Stane—trolls, dwarfs, and even giants, all armed with picks, crowbars, and wicked-looking swords. Standing at the forefront was Queen Vesha.

  “Gwylph, you Nine-damned bitch!” boomed Vesha in a voice. “Get your head out of your own twat and give me back my Bone Sword!”

  “How in Halza’s nine hells did she get here?” Ranadar breathed.

  “She dug,” Danr said. “Just as she promised.
”

  The entire battlefield had fallen silent. Everyone turned to look at Gwylph. The queen, covered in gore, stormed to the riverbed while the Fae paused in confusion. Should they continue fighting or was the queen calling for parlay? The orcs and wyrms took advantage of the moment to retreat downstream.

  “Vesha!” Gwylph called. “You have no stake in this. Crawl back under your rock! You and your beastly Stane cannot even enter the battlefield while the sun shines.”

  A trio of trollwives emerged from the blackness behind Vesha, who crossed her arms. “Have you forgotten the old magic you stole from us, Gwylph? It returned to us when Danr reforged the Iron Axe.”

  The trollwives raised their massive arms. From the cave oozed a great silent shadow. But this shadow did not fall across the ground. It slid up to the sky and spread like ink spilled into water. The sun darkened and twilight dropped over the battlefield.

  “The old magics,” Danr said in awe. He took off his heavy felt hat. “Grandmother Bund mentioned them before she died. The Stane can walk in daylight.”

  “Return the Bone Sword,” Vesha called across the new twilight.

  Gwylph raised the Bone Sword mockingly above her head. “Come take it.”

  There was a flicker of light and in an instant, Vesha was standing next to Gwylph. Before Gwylph could even react, the troll queen balled up a fist and smashed the top of Gwylph’s head. Gwylph dropped like a stone. Vesha snatched up the Bone Sword before it even touched the ground. Ranadar wanted to feel bad but found he did not.

  “She forgot that trollwives can Twist,” Aisa said in satisfaction. “A mistake she can only make once.”

  “Isn’t Vesha … ?” Danr began.

  “Cursed,” Aisa said grimly. “Yes.”

  The dead leaves near Vesha’s feet swirled in a lazy circle as if stirred by an invisible hand. A heavy feeling stole through the air, the feeling of lightning licking a cloud. The sprites all froze and then fled in a thousand directions, squealing as they went. The cloud of leaves grew larger. Queen Vesha backed toward Danr and Aisa, the Bone Sword at the ready and a grim look on her heavy face. Leaves exploded upward and settled into the form of a woman. Her black dress was nearly invisible in the twilight, and her red shawl showed up like a splash of blood. Darkness overhung her face, but Ranadar cringed at the feeling of rage and hunger that surrounded her. This was a hunger that squeezed stars dry and drank their light. This was a rage that split planets in half and devoured the lava within. This was a power that had existed from the moment a few cells had learned to live and would continue to exist until the final bit of life was exterminated forever. The Nine feared it, the Fates respected it. And Vesha had angered it.

  “Time’s up, girl,” growled Death.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Stane poured down the mountainside. Dwarfs scuttled on stumpy legs. Tall trolls stomped behind them, and last of all came the giants. The orcs at the river shouted and beat their shields with their head-splitting iron again. They had clearly decided that any enemy of the Fae was a friend. But Danr barely noticed any of it. His attention was rooted on Queen Vesha and Death. So was everyone else’s. As one, the Fae backed away in terror. To such a long-lived race, death—or Death—held a particular terror, and no one wanted to get her attention.

  “You cannot kill me, girl,” Death said. “I am what does the killing.”

  “But I do know your secret,” Vesha said. “This sword of still-living bone can stop you. You cannot take the life that overcomes Death.”

  “Immortality is a heavy burden, child,” Death said.

  “I am happy to take it from you.”

  Danr gasped. “Aunt Vesha wants immortality, too?”

  “Perhaps she and Gwylph are not so different after all,” Aisa murmured.

  Quick as a lightning stroke, Vesha cut her palm with the Bone Sword and made a gesture with her bleeding hand. Dark blood flew into the air and hung there. A shadow, pulled from the others, rose to join it like sand mingling with rainwater. Vesha gestured again with the Bone Sword, and blood and shadow settled down to the carpet of leaves beneath the leaning tree in a ring.

  At that moment, an elf noticed Queen Vesha and charged at her, his bronze sword held high. He reached the boundary of the circle. A silent wave of darkness rose and engulfed him. The elf had time for one small scream. Then he was gone.

  “We will not be disturbed,” Vesha said. “Only those with the proper blood can cross the boundary. You will lose, lady.”

  “I’ve devoured worlds,” Death said to Vesha. Her voice was frozen lead. “I’ve listened to threats from gods, and moments later ushered them through my door. I will reach down your throat and drag you into oblivion by the entrails. You, mortal girl, laid hands on me, and now you will learn what that means.”

  Death drew her knitting needles from her hair. In her hands, they lengthened and thickened into whipcord rapiers. She raised one rapier above her head and used the other as a guard. “Accept your pain.”

  Vesha charged. She brought the Bone Sword down, attempting to cleave Death’s head in two. Death crossed her rapiers and caught the sword at the juncture. Thunder boomed and green lightning leaped from the spot where metal met bone. The stroke caught a retreating elf in the back and he dropped stone dead to the ground. The fight was eye-twisting to watch. Vesha was more than a head taller than Danr, and Death barely came up to Danr’s chin, but there on the dark battlefield beneath the rotting tree, the two women seemed to be the same size, though whether this was because Death grew or Vesha shrank, Danr couldn’t tell.

  Meanwhile, the Stane rushed toward the riverbank. The earth trembled again, but this time it was from the footsteps of giants. The orcs rushed to join them. The Fae recovered. Generals shouted orders to the sprites, who rushed to deliver them. The Fae army swiftly reorganized itself into disciplined regiments that turned toward the advancing Stane, pushing the golems ahead of them.

  Danr didn’t have time to worry about this. Death lashed out with a foot beneath the cross and caught Vesha in the stomach. She staggered backward, closer to where Danr stood. In fact, she was only five or six paces away. She stabbed at Vesha’s sternum with both rapiers. Vesha eeled sideways with a grace Danr didn’t expect from someone of her bulk and brought her arm down on the rapiers, intending to sweep them away or wrench them out of Death’s grip. Flesh sizzled instead and Vesha cried out. Danr gasped. Vesha backed away again.

  “Mustn’t touch,” Death said with a grin in her voice. She lunged again.

  The Stane and orcs met the Fae at the riverbank. The clash of metal exploded on the air. Sprites rushed at the giants, flinging bolts of electricity at their eyes. The giants swung great clubs that plowed up enemies and earth indiscriminately. Elven arrows rained down on orcish wyrms and blinded them. Orcs took terrible wounds, then changed into wyrms to heal themselves and bit their attackers in half. Danr caught sight of his brother, Torth, swinging his great club and roaring orders of his own, and his heart swelled with familial pride. Then the battle closed between them and Danr couldn’t see him. The fairies darted in and out, slicing hamstrings and gutting the wounded. The Stane trollwives shaped shadows and flung them at the enemy, which the Fae dispelled with bursts of light and countered with mind-altering illusions, which the Stane, in turn, destroyed with a touch of iron. For a moment the sides looked evenly matched. But the Fae army was bigger and better trained, and the Stane were tired from the long journey. Even with iron weapons, the Stane and orcs were fighting a losing battle. Xanda stood atop her wyrm shouting commands and swiping at fairies in the center of it all, and Danr could see Kalessa wanted to join her.

  “Go, sister!” Aisa said. “You will do more good there than here.”

  Kalessa raised her sword high and bolted into the battle with an ear-splitting yell.

  “What good can we do?” Danr said. “We need that sword!”

  Vesha feinted to Death’s left, then spun in a circle and swept at her right. Death blocked
with both rapiers, but only barely, and the Bone Sword nicked her shoulder. A second boom of thunder cracked beneath the tree, and the green lightning stabbed at the sky. The terrible stench of sulfur permeated the air. Danr watched, entranced and horrified. It was watching gods battle.

  Death pushed the Bone Sword away with her rapiers and Danr thought he heard a tiny sound, one easily overwhelmed by all the other noise of the battlefield. He closed his right eye and looked at the Bone Sword. A thin line ran up the blade. The Bone Sword had cracked. A chill ran down Danr’s back. His eye saw how the crack would soon spread, weakening the sword until it shattered in Vesha’s hands.

  Death fought on, uncaring in her rage. She lashed and jabbed at Vesha, who parried and blocked with the Bone Sword. She also made thrusts and jabs of her own, and more than one scored hits. Death actually seemed to be tiring.

  “Die, loathsome beast!” Death screamed, but not as loudly as before. “Die, like all the others!”

  Through his true eye, Danr saw to his surprise that Vesha could actually win the fight. Vesha’s expertise and the Bone Sword’s powerful magic were working against Death, despite her threats. Death’s main weapon was her rage, and Vesha was refusing to let it affect her. Except Danr also saw something else. He clutched Aisa’s hand.

  “If Vesha wins, the sword will break,” he told her.

  “And the world will end,” Aisa finished. “The Nine! We have to stop her!”

  “How?” asked Ranadar. “We cannot enter the circle.”

  The battle of the Stane, Kin, and Fae raged on in the background. Danr’s entire world focused to the cut and parry of troll and Death near the elf queen’s unconscious form. He felt it then. A sickening jolt and a brief sensation of falling. The entire world flickered and vanished. For a dreadful moment, Danr had no body. He panicked, but he had nothing to panic with. He couldn’t see, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t—