There is a critical distinction between fear and desperation. Fear is the knowledge that something dreadful might be, the awareness of a horrible possibility. Desperation is the knowledge that something dreadful isn’t just possible but probable, and that escaping misfortune is becoming increasingly unlikely. Gorm felt the difference acutely when he saw the first professional heroes riding toward him on the road to Bloodroot.
“That’s a bad omen,” said Kaitha.
“Heroes don’t leave a quest unfinished,” agreed Jynn.
“Keep movin’,” said Gorm.
Any faint flicker of hope faded as the day wore on. They passed more and more heroes returning empty-handed: a likely indicator that a job had ended before their team had a shot at it. About midday, they started to see wagons loaded with treasures: sacks and chests of giltin, cartloads of Vorpal Blades packed in branded cases, fine silks and bejeweled beads, pots and pans and armor scraps, and anything and everything of value that one could imagine coming from an Orc village.
Behind the last of the wagons came a party of four heroes, their weapons and armor still stained blood red. They laughed with each other and talked about loot and career advancement the way Gorm and his friends had done not three days ago.
Kaitha and the others watched the bloody heroes until they were nothing but a laughing dot on the horizon behind them. “Gorm, I’m not sure …”
“Ride on,” he said.
“We know what happened.”
“We do.” The certainty was like a lead ball in Gorm’s stomach. He squared his jaw and turned back to the road ahead. “And we’ll see it through.”
They saw smoke on the horizon an hour’s ride from Bloodroot. They could see the fires smoldering from well outside the gate. Yet the full extent of the desolation didn’t dawn on them until they were in Bloodroot’s streets, walking among the ruined huts.
“My gods,” breathed Laruna.
Ash fell on Bloodroot like a dusting of snow, leaving the city gray and still. Fire had gutted and blackened the huts until they resembled strange outcroppings in a bleak landscape. Fires still burned in the larger buildings, and thick clouds billowed from the windows of the factories.
Still, silent forms lay amid the ruins, petrified under the thin layer of ash and soot, like reposing sculptures strewn about the streets. Anything of value had been stripped away: the warriors’ weapons and armor, the women’s jewelry, even the wargs’ pelts had all been torn off and hauled away.
Gorm walked aimlessly through the ruined city, his arms hanging at his sides. His mouth was dry and his eyes burning, but the pain was separate from himself somehow, the message coming from someone else’s body. The voices of the other heroes sounded distant and muffled, and the images he saw blurred together in one gray, dead miasma. Every sensation was muted and distant, drowned out by the agony roaring in his heart.
His eyes fell on a tiny doll, sitting forlornly in the middle of what had been Bloodroot’s main street. Her skin was burlap dyed olive; her hair, an unruly mop of black yarn, and her eyes were cherry-colored beads stitched on with thick twine. She wore a burlap dress and a red-twine smile, complete with a tiny pair of wooden fangs jutting up from the corners of her mouth. Some young Orcess had loved that doll, had carried it into the streets, had dropped it in front of the oncoming killers as she fled. How far had she made it?
He lifted the doll slowly, tenderly, and tucked it into his belt as he started down the road. He heard the other heroes call after him, asking him what he was looking for. He couldn’t bring himself to say. They knew the answer anyway.
The chieftain’s tower had been looted of every last item, but the marauders had otherwise left it untouched. They found Zurthraka a short way from the tower’s base, slumped against a building that was ringed with the corpses of fallen professional heroes. He still wore his gaist; the ancestral iron skull mask was caked with blood and ash. Enchanted weapons had cut deep furrows through his flesh, and arrows protruded from him like strange blossoms. Gorm nodded solemnly, apologetically, to the fallen chieftain as he passed.
Near the High Vault, the shrine of treasures at the center of town, the fallen guards were thickest, having died to protect the treasures within. Their efforts were in vain. The vault was bare; every treasure, plundered. The pedestals in the back room, set aside for the burial stones, were empty and smashed. Lying among their wreckage was the small, broken form that Gorm had been searching for and yet dreading to find.
“We honor the dead,” he said plainly as he stepped out of the High Vault, Tib’rin’s broken body cradled in his arms.
“I know your heart must ache, my friend,” said Heraldin, “but we should not tarry here.”
“We burn the Orcs on pyres,” said Gorm. “That’s their way. Every last one ye can find, drag ’em onto some wreckage. Laruna can start the fires.”
“Heraldin is right, Gorm,” Kaitha tried. “Whoever set us up will send—”
“We honor the dead,” he said again. It wasn’t a request. It wasn’t even an order. It was a fact.
“I’m not sure we should do that,” said Jynn.
“Who else should? Who else will?” asked Gorm, laying Tib’rin’s body next to Zurthraka’s. The Goblin’s knife had been looted, as had any armor he might have worn. All he had was a loincloth and a few stray beads clutched in his hand. “Can ye leave them here to rot after what they did for us? After what … after what we did to them?”
The other heroes looked away. “No,” said Kaitha.
“Then come on,” said Gorm, feeling more world-weary than ever before. “We’ve much to do.”
Laruna set another makeshift pyre alight, wreathing the charred wooden frame and figures stacked within it in a burst of sorcerous flame. She adjusted the silken scarf she wore over her nose and mouth to ward off the soot and stench as she watched the fire burn. When she was satisfied that the fire would eventually burn itself out, she went in search of the next grave.
A couple of streets over, Jynn and Heraldin were setting up another heap of bodies in the ruins of a hut. It was smaller than many of the pyres she’d cremated earlier in the day. “Do you think we’ll finish soon?” she asked, a twinge of hope in her voice.
“I believe we’re nearing the end,” said Jynn.
The noctomancer was the key to finishing the cremations quickly; Laruna remained uneasy about necromancy, but she had to concede that Jynn’s magic made locating the fallen much easier. “We should be done by tonight.”
Laruna nodded. She’d been sending off the dead since the evening before. She’d mourned for the Orcs at first, stealing moments, when there was nobody looking, to silently weep. But hours and hours of gathering the bodies to the incineration pits, seeing so many people go up in smoke, had leeched away her capacity for emotion. Coupled with the exhaustion of a sleepless night, the task left Laruna numb and aching. She wanted to honor the dead, but she wanted to be finished even more.
“Have you seen Gorm?” Heraldin asked.
“He’s still by the tower,” Laruna told him. She hadn’t seen Gorm come back to camp the night before, and his tent and bedroll were still rolled neatly when she awoke. He’d built the first pyre—the one they laid Zurthraka on—and as far as anyone could tell, the Dwarf had been working straight through.
A sudden cry came from near the campsite.
“That sounded like Kaitha,” said Jynn.
They rushed to find the Elf among the campsite, or rather, the remnants thereof. At first glance, it looked like a bear had rampaged through the small square by Bloodroot’s burned-out gatehouse that they’d used as a base of operations, flattening tents, and dragging bags out and emptying them all over the ground. Then again, bears weren’t so meticulous. Whatever marauder had struck their camp had unpacked their gear and placed the contents of each rucksack and parcel in neat rows. In fact, it was Kaitha herself who was making the mess, searching through the rows with frenzied desperation.
“The elixir!�
�� the ranger gasped as the other heroes approached. “Someone has stolen the healing potions!”
“What?”
“They’re all gone! Even the backup stash! Every one!”
“Do you need one right now?” asked Jynn.
“You keep a backup stash?” said Laruna.
Kaitha stopped searching long enough to catch her breath, glancing back and forth at the other heroes. “I don’t … need one right now,” she conceded eventually. “But we’re in a dangerous situation here. We don’t know who the guild will send after us. And if we’re going to be fighting, or even traveling in the wilds for long, a dose of elixir can mean the difference between life and death. We need to find it.”
“This is true,” said Heraldin. “We won’t last long without healing potions.”
“Now, wait a moment,” suggested Jynn. “We don’t have to rely on elixir for healing. We have a solamancer with us.”
The other heroes paused to consider the solamancer for a moment.
“Right,” said Heraldin. “We’re dead without those potions.”
“Sorry,” Kaitha said to Laruna. “I forget that you have healing magic.”
“No, I’m with Heraldin on this one,” she replied. The only part of healing Laruna excelled at was cauterizing things. She wasn’t sure she could heal a serious wound if her life depended on it, so she preferred that nobody else’s did either. “We need to find those potions.”
She turned to search the campsite and was surprised to find herself staring into Gaist’s eyes. “Er—where did you come from?”
Gaist stared down at her dispassionately.
“Is there something you need?” Laruna asked.
“What’s wrong?” asked Heraldin. “Is there danger? There’s danger.”
Gaist glanced at the bard.
“He didn’t say—”
“To the battlements!” shouted Heraldin, already running for the gatehouse.
“How can he understand Gaist?” Kaitha asked, as they ran after the unlikely pair.
“I’m not even sure that he did,” said Jynn.
“Then why are we running after them?” asked Kaitha.
“Perhaps to find out if he was right,” said Jynn. “When the whole world goes crazy, what can you do but try to keep up?”
Heraldin, as it turned out, was correct: there was danger. “Silver talon thugs,” he said, looking out at a black- and silver-clad army.
Career thugs had relatively short life expectancies, as their duties often brought them into contact with members of the Heroes’ Guild. Such match-ups invariably favored heroes; many highly skilled, lethally trained thugs with top-end gear met their ends at the hands of one plucky young hero or another who beat the odds in a narratively expedient blaze of glory. Thugs used an array of tools to compensate: intimidation, subterfuge, appeals to the law, and, most crucially, numbers.
Veteran heroes had been known to single-handedly eradicate entire platoons of mercenaries. A well-coordinated party could take down several companies of men. Yet no hero can fight forever; eventually, their magic runs out, their weapons break, their strength fails. With strength of numbers, thugs and mercenaries can take down any hero eventually. It’s not uncommon for an entire battalion of mercenary thugs to mobilize when combat with heroes is inevitable.
The Silver Talons brought at least two battalions.
They marched in neat formations, the sunlight glinting off their weapons as they fanned out around the walls. Laruna could see companies of Silver Talons moving into place along the eastern wall, and more at the west. At the head of the southern force, closest to Bloodroot’s gatehouse, a familiar pair stepped forward.
“Flinn and Brunt,” said Kaitha.
“Hello!” called Mr. Flinn across the distance. “I see we’ve been spotted.”
“Have you come to see your handiwork?” Laruna shouted back.
“Actually, I’m here to tie up a few loose ends,” Mr. Flinn hollered back. “In this business, it pays to be thorough.”
“Come out … hands up!” rumbled Brunt.
“Ha ha! I was just getting to that, Mr. Brunt! You see, by order of the Heroes’ Guild I have come to notify you that, for your crimes against the Freedlands, your Heroes’ licenses have been revoked! I am authorized to try you as enemies of the city-states and carry out your sentence.”
“What kind of corrupt institution makes the same man prosecutor, judge, and executioner!” exclaimed Jynn.
“The efficient kind,” shouted Mr. Flinn. “I think you’ll find that the ruins you inhabit are very effectively surrounded. I’ll spare you the empty rhetoric about nobody coming to harm if you surrender peaceably, but I can promise that the harm you come to out here will be much swifter and less painful than what awaits you if we have to scour the city.”
The heroes nodded to each other.
“Laruna, answer the man,” said Kaitha.
Her reply was a fiery blast as wide as the road aimed directly at Mr. Flinn. A pair of Silver Talon mages leaped from the squad behind the Tinderkin and the Ogre and erected a hasty shield, but the barrier collapsed under the fiery onslaught. Mr. Flinn and Mr. Brunt barely had time to dive out of the way, and the unfortunate mages behind them didn’t even have that.
“I’ll spare you empty rhetoric of promising to let you live if you leave now,” shouted Heraldin. “But I can promise that if you and your army disperse, we probably won’t kill you today.”
“I find it’s best not to taunt your foes when you’re outnumbered by at least a hundred to one,” hissed Jynn.
The bard shrugged. “Life is better with bravado.”
“I was hoping for a cleaner resolution to this situation,” yelled Mr. Flinn, dusting himself off as he eyed the black smears on the road that had been a pair of Silver Talon mages until quite recently. “But it seems that Mr. Brunt shall have his way after all. He usually does.”
Brunt raised a meaty fist above his hand and gave a guttural cry. The front ranks began to rush forward as magical shields wove into existence ahead of them. From the back of his company, a line of crossbow bolts whistled into the air.
“This is a poor spot to mount a last stand,” Jynn observed, blowing a crossbow bolt off course with a wave of his hands.
“I really wish you didn’t say it that way,” said Heraldin.
“I really wish there was a reason not to,” said Jynn, ducking another volley of bolts.
“Fall back!” Kaitha shouted.
Laruna loosed a fireball at the oncoming soldiers before running down the burned-out stairs after the other heroes. She glanced out the windows, and through the smoke and ash that still clogged the air, she could see the dark shapes of Silver Talons pouring into the city.
They made for the tower as swiftly and silently as they could, but mercenaries infested the streets, and dispatching them complicated their efforts to go undetected. Thugs gave small screams and gurgles whenever Kaitha’s arrows or Jynn’s lances of lightning caught them. Silver Talons choked on the colorful clouds that burst from Heraldin’s smoke bombs, and screamed a moment later when Gaist’s blades found them. Laruna incinerated an entire squad of Silver Talons with a tower of fire, which erupted around them, painting the smoky sky golden.
“Impressive,” Heraldin said to Laruna, shielding his eyes from the heat and glare of the flames. “But perhaps we could fight without letting the entire enemy force know where we are.”
“I don’t really do stealth,” Laruna told him.
Laruna quickly found herself wishing she was a bit better at subtlety; it didn’t take long before half a battalion of mercenaries was running at their heels. A burst of sorcerous acid nearly took Gaist’s head off. A moment later, a crossbow bolt grazed her arm. She grunted in pain and threw a spell back at her pursuers, but her eyes stayed focused on the road ahead.
Down a ruined street, through a side alley, and they were on the thoroughfare again. The tower was in sight, but she could hear the rumble of th
e Silver Talons charging through the streets behind her. Bolts, arrows, and caustic spells rained down around them, sending up plumes of dust and ash wherever they landed. Gaist was already at the base of the tower, hurrying the other heroes up the ladder.
Laruna saw something out of the corner of her eye. She gasped as a Silver Talon leaped from the top of a ruined hut, twin blades flashing in the air. There wasn’t enough time to get a spell up, and she instinctively braced for the attack.
It never landed. An enchanted arrow slammed into the assassin halfway through his flight, and he finished his final descent with an ungainly roll into a burning hut. Kaitha waved to her from the window of the tower.
“Thanks!” Laruna shouted to the ranger.
“Thank me once you’re inside,” Kaitha hollered back.
Laruna was already in motion, crossbow bolts pelting the ground around her. Another near miss tore the hem of her robes as she raced up the tower’s rickety steps.
Behind her, Gaist stepped in front of the ladder and squared himself for the oncoming assault.
“No!” shouted Heraldin, bounding back down the stairs. The bard grabbed the weaponsmaster by the collar and attempted to pull him down to his eye level. Instead, Heraldin pulled himself up to Gaist’s face, his feet dangling in the air. “No, my friend! Not now! Death is the one wish that you can be certain will be granted someday. If you must seek your end, don’t make it today. Not when we need your help.”
Gaist didn’t seem to react until suddenly, silently, he glided up the stairs into the tower, dragging the bard along. A moment later, Jynn and Kaitha pushed the heavy trapdoor shut behind them.
“Make a barricade,” Kaitha said.
They piled what ruined furniture and heavy detritus they could find before the door, but it was already shaking with the pounding of the Silver Talons below.
“It won’t hold them for long,” Jynn said.
“What do we do?” asked Laruna.
“Excuse me!” called Mr. Flinn’s voice. “I’d like to parley!”
Orconomics: A Satire (The Dark Profit Saga Book 1) Page 34