Harvest of War

by Charles Gramlich

  Ehma shudders. “How can they be stopped?”

  “Only at great cost. They are most vulnerable at night. When less active. In the dark of winter, the pods from which they birth can be destroyed as a control on their numbers. If your father’s armies kept the Orcs from raiding the nesting grounds this past cold season. That would explain the Reapers now in the foothills.”

  “I must tell my father these things when he arrives,” Ehma says.

  “And how will you explain your knowledge?” Khales asks.

  Ehma smiles. “Do you not think he will believe me when I tell him I spoke to you?”

  “I think he will…tan. Your hide.”

  Ehma’s guffaw is explosive. Then she looks at him with amazement. “Did you mean to make a joke?” she asks.

  Khales frowns. “I don’t know. I heard it…somewhere.”

  --- 9 ---

  The scent of gore and fire awakens Khales. The cage is too low for him to stand fully erect but he rises as far as he can and lifts his head to let his nostrils catch whatever the breeze blows him. Horses and men. Sweat and blood. Sputtering torches that stink of sulfur and pitch.

  An army is coming. Not a victorious army. Khales hears the drag and stumble of booted feet, the clatter of unsecured weapons and torn armor. He hears the gasps of pain that accompany the hurting ones. He scents fear. Lord Aaron’s army has been attacked. And though Khales smells nothing of any foe, that in itself is enough to name the enemy. Reapers have no odor of their own.

  Within moments, the village, too, awakens to the army’s approach. Oil lamps flare. There are running feet and shouts. Soon, clots of exhausted soldiers pass Khales’ cage. Many are wounded. They scarcely glance in his direction. A few lonely campfires are lit, but most of the men drop to sleep wherever they can.

  Only the abbey blazes with light. Ehma’s father is there. With his knights. Khales wonders if Ehma is frightened. He wonders how close the Reapers are. And how many. He wonders if they will come in the dawn against the village. His fists clench. He chuffs with anger. But there is nothing he can do. He sits in the center of his cage, waits with the patience of his kind.

  In the darkest time before dawn, Khales opens his eyes to the sound of scuffling feet. A shadowy figure approaches in a crouch. He knows who it is before the girl can speak.

  “Khales,” she says. Her voice is strange with both excitement and fear.

  “Ehma. You should not be here.”

  She scoots in close to the bars, leans against them. “I had to come,” she says.

  Khales thinks how, through most of the days of his captivity, he would have killed any human who approached his cage so carelessly. He chuffs quietly to himself, but not in anger.

  “The Reapers attacked my father’s army,” Ehma says.

  “I know.”

  “The civilians are being evacuated. Tomorrow. We’ll be sent with a guard toward the capital. My father will try to hold the Reapers here. He thinks he can defend the village.”

  Khales shakes his head, a gesture he learned from Ehma, but says only: “Warn him. The Reapers are burrowers. They will come up from beneath.”

  “I will try. But he…is not in a listening mood at the moment. Certainly not to his twelve-year-old daughter.”

  “I am…glad. You will be safe,” Khales says.

  The girl’s eyes glisten in the dim light; her gaze searches him. With a sudden, convulsive movement, she thrusts something toward him. He sees a bar of thick iron, hooked at one end, tapered to a point at the other. It is a tool for breaking rock, for bending metal. He does not reach for it.

  “Take it,” Ehma says. “There is no lock for this cage. No key. But surely with your strength you can bend the bars with this.”

  Still, Khales does not touch the tool. “Why?”

  “To free you.”

  “Why?”

  “We are friends. We are friends. But you must promise me one thing.”

  “What?”

  “I must hear your promise that you will not harm any person as you flee. You must not kill or the guilt will be mine.”

  Khales thinks of those who have tormented him. He thinks of taking their throats between his fists and crushing out their lives. He thinks of revenge for the manure and the urine and the rotted foods. He thinks also of Ehma.

  “I promise,” he says, and takes the tool.

  She smiles, and once more reaches into his cage. She touches his gnarled hand, and is gone.

  Khales swipes angrily at his eyes, then hefts the weapon the girl has given him.

  --- 10 ---

  In yellow afternoon, from a hill lined with oaks, Khales watches a troop of armored horsemen riding below. He hides, though they are not searching for him. This morning, outside the village where he had long been held captive, he’d seen these same horsemen. They’d been escorting a column of civilian refugees east toward safer lands. Now the soldiers are returning west, no doubt to rejoin Lord Aaron’s army. Perhaps they think the refugees are finally beyond any danger from the Reapers.

  Khales shakes his head and continues toward the east himself. He moves slowly, for he has spent many months in a cage and his muscles are weak. His wounds pain him. Still, he trails the refugees. Ehma is among them.

  The sky is just beginning to redden toward evening when Khales pauses and rises to his full height. Since the blow from the stallion’s hooves that led to his capture, his left ear does not hear well. He turns his right ear toward the west, and listens. A distant sound wells, fades, is gone. But he recognizes it. It is the scream of dying horses. He imagines that men are screaming too, but at this distance their weaker voices do not register. The armored troop that passed Khales earlier has met an enemy.

  Though his legs protest, though his body threatens to rebel, Khales begins to run toward the east. Ehma is in danger. The Reapers are coming.

  --- 11 ---

  Dusk approaches. Khales runs, though at times now his run is half a stagger. He has come down from the ridges and travels in the wheel-rutted road the refugees leave behind them. He can move more swiftly this way, though he knows that those who follow are swifter still.

  As with all human treks, debris litters the trail. He passes a child’s lost toy, imagines there will be tears shed tonight at its loss; it is a thought he would not have had before Ehma. He spies a tin cup, dropped and smashed flat under the tramp of oxen. He finds a broken boot-lace, a discarded apple core. He eats the latter.

  Then he stops, squats down. Ahead of him, campfires burn. He hears laughter. He smells meat roasting and his stomach rumbles. But that is not why he snarls. Night is falling and the Reapers do not move at night. The humans could gain much ground on their enemy, but they are foolish.

  Of course, they did not hear the screams he heard. They do not know they are pursued. And it is not like he can warn them. Though their Lord’s soldiers are gone, men with bows and other weapons stand guard. He would be quilled the instant he showed himself. If he could reach Emha, she might listen. He sees no way to accomplish that goal.

  He circles the camp. Guards stroll everywhere. A dog catches his scent and sets up a ferocious barking. Others join in and he retreats quickly downwind before they are unleashed to run him. He finds a thicket of brush and hunkers down. He hopes the humans will be lucky, that they will rise with the dawn and be on their way before the Reapers come upon them. If he knew any gods, he would pray. For Emha. Instead, he waits.

  --- 12 ---

  Dawn. Khales watches the human camp awaken. Fires are lit; smoke rises. The smell of cooking gnaws his belly until he bites his own lips in hunger. The humans appear in no haste to leave. Khales hears voices raised. It seems as if some refugees do not want to venture any farther from their homes. A new voice is heard, young, female, strong. Khales recognizes Ehma. The arguments fade; the people began packing up camp.

  Khales licks his lips. He has never truly known impatience before, but he knows it now. In his mind, he urges the people to hurry
. Then he feels something in the earth beneath him. He places his right ear to the ground. Vibrations tingle. Fear ices his flesh.

  He leaps to his feet. It is too late now for the humans to flee. They must prepare to fight, even if there is little hope of victory. He throws his head back. He howls black rage at the sky. Birds startle. The human camp falls still a moment, then erupts with wild clatter. Men shout. Dogs howl in pitiful copy of the savage sound that hackles their fur.

  Guards come running to face the woods from which the sound has risen. So it is they see the dust coming down on them from the west. So it is they realize their enemy has found them. With the moment here, the humans no longer behave as fools. Wagons are overturned for barricades. Axes and swords are drawn. Archers load their bows. Men and women prepare to feed Death’s wolves to protect the children they love.

  Out of the morning the Reapers emerge. They are running, and the sun refracts from them like fire. Fifty strong they come, each taller than any human or Orc, each heavy as a bear. They move on four splayed limbs, with foot-pads tipped with knives. The bodies resemble the torsos of scorpions covered with braided wire, with helmet-sized heads above in which compound eyes sparkle like diamond-dust. In the pincers of their two upper limbs, the monsters carry iron clubs, rusted spikes, and swirling lengths of chain. They come swiftly. And they shriek in voices like the turning of ungreased axles.

  The humans shrink back but do not flee, though most are no trained soldiers and none has ever faced anything like the Reapers before. They will fight, and Khales knows it is for their children and mates. Not unlike his own people.

  Arrows flash from the human ranks, strike the enemy and glance away. More arrows follow. A few Reapers stagger as metal arrowheads punch through metal limbs. But the archers are near panic and their aim is poor. The mass of the charge rolls on. From where he watches at forest’s edge, Khales sees the terror marking the faces of the human defenders.

  They will not hold them, he thinks. They cannot hold them.

  Suddenly, he powers forward, leaps a fallen log. He bursts from the trees directly in the line of the Reaper advance. A challenge bellows from his throat. In his fists rest the iron bar that Ehma gave him.

  The Reapers are startled. They are not very bright and do not respond well to surprises. Their advance slows. Khales attacks.

  With the hook at one end of his bar, Khales rips the feet from under a Reaper. He spins the weapon then, plunges the point at the other end through the creature’s carapace into its body. Sparks sleet, fall burning on the Orc’s hide. An oily green ichor stains the bar’s killing end.

  Before any Reaper can respond, Khales draws the bar back, hacks it into the metal skull of another foe. The jeweled eyes shatter; the monster falls. A Reaper strikes at him with one snake-swift limb. Khales smashes the strike aside, tears the belly of the thing open with the spike of his bar. More sparks fly. Smoke hisses upward, its stench inorganic, unnatural.

  The two Reapers in front of Khales retreat. Their feet tangle and they go down. Khales smashes open their skulls, leaps across them into the mass of the other monsters. Now the Reapers’ coordinated shriek falters. Their charge against the humans stalls. They turn their attention to the Orc who rages in their midst. They are many and he is one, but they cannot come at him all at the same time.

  Reaper chains flail; Khales dodges. A razor-clawed foot rips his thigh; a broken spearhead slices across his chest, leaving a red line behind. Khales kisses those foes with iron and hammers them away. Metal jaws snap closed an inch from his shoulder. He crushes a fist into that face, feels a knuckle give but does not care. He is berserker now. His life is given over to slaying, and pain is a far distant affair.

  With the Orc’s attack, the humans see their chance. Many of the archers are hunters. They’ve fed their families with their bows, and now they have a moment to pick their targets. Arrows come sleeting. The Reapers may be made of metal, but they have joints, they have eyes, they have vulnerabilities. Into those weaknesses, iron-headed shafts punch. Reapers begin to fall.

  The enemy’s cohesion is lost as Khales runs amok through their ranks, killing, killing, killing. His own wounds are many now. Blood pours from him. His flesh smolders where firefly sparks cling. A rusted sword hacks away his left ear. It was of no use to him anyway. From side to side he swings his bar, hewing the Reapers down.

  A black chain comes whipping, crashes hard into Khales’ side. Ribs fracture. Khales stumbles to his knees. Some sharpness he does not see flenses his back. He rolls away from that strike, surges again to his feet. Blood spackles the ground around him. The Reaper with the chain draws it back for another blow. Khales brings his bar cutting in from the side. The hook catches the chain, catches the Reaper’s limb, tears them both away in a shower of fluid and fire that wash over Khales’ torso.

  The Reapers close. Khales goes down in a churn of limbs, then vents a howl that shocks through the fray as he rises again. Something in the humans responds to that cry. And now they charge from behind their barricades. The enemy’s front line is overwhelmed. A Reaper at the edge of the fight turns and flees. Another follows. A third. The monsters came as a disciplined horde. They flee as a mob. The battlefield clears of all but wreckage and a single Orc warrior.

  Khales drops to his knees, his chest heaving like a bellows. Blood slimes him. His upper body is blackened from fire, the skin cracked and running red. His already damaged left arm has been torn again from its socket and is broken at the elbow. Shards of ribs gleam white at his side. A crimson froth bubbles from his mouth and nostrils. The humans gather slowly around him, but do not raise their weapons.

  Then a slender figure pushes through the human crowd, shoving them out of the way. It is Ehma. She falls to her knees beside Khales. He turns his head toward her, looks with one glaring green eye. The glare softens. The iron bar in his hands slips from his fingers to thunk upon the ground. Khales follows the weapon down; dirt smashes him in the face.

  “Khales!” Ehma screams. She grabs him by his good arm, tugs desperately. “Khales! You have to get up!”

  He does not.

  He can not.

  Ehma’s sobs come broken. Then she rises. She turns to face the crowd of villagers who stand there. Their gazes will not meet hers. She starts toward them and they part like waters before the prow of a ship. She strides into the encampment and does not come out again.

  After a while, the villagers pick up the corpse of Khales the Orc and carry it into the woods. They dig a grave and lay him within. They cover him with rocks.

  They leave no marker.

  ABOUT THE STORY

  In the fall of 2011, I was asked by Scott Oden to contribute to a possible new anthology of stories about Orcs. In some sense, these stories were supposed to rehabilitate Orcs, or at least show them as more complex characters than we saw in Tolkien.

  This one took a while to write. I think that’s because it began primarily as a character study rather than a high octane action tale. The ending, which was high action, was inspired by a dream I had about an aging hero who had one last great battle before his death. When the anthology idea didn’t pan out, I decided to publish it as an ebook.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  CHARLES ALLEN GRAMLICH grew up on a farm in Arkansas, near the foothills of the Ozark Mountains, then moved to the New Orleans area in 1986 to teach at a local university. He’s since sold four novels, two nonfiction books, and three collections of his short stories, as well as a chapbook of vampire haiku. While most of his fiction falls in the genres of horror, science fiction, and fantasy, Charles has also written westerns, children’s stories, mainstream fiction, slipstream works, and experimental pieces. His nonfiction ranges from reference works on science and psychology to many articles on writing.

  Charles is a member of HWA (the Horror Writers Association), and is an editor for The Dark Man: The Journal of Robert E. Howard Studies. He currently lives in Abita Springs, Louisiana with his artist wife Lana. He has one a
dult son, Joshua.

  His blog can be found at: http://charlesgramlich.blogspot.com

  His email is: kainja@hotmail.com

  He is on Facebook as Charles Gramlich.

  OTHER BOOKS BY

  CHARLES ALLEN GRAMLICH

  Available online at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Wildside Press

  Signed copies available through cgramlich11@gmail.com

  Standalone Novels: Cold in the Light. (Horror/Thriller) [print only]

  The Talera Fantasy Cycle: [print and ebook]

  Swords of Talera.

  Wings Over Talera.

  Witch of Talera.

  Nonfiction: [print only]

  Write With Fire: Thoughts on the Craft of Writing.

  Writing in Psychology: A Guidebook. (With Elliott Hammer and Du Bois Irvin).

  Short Story Collections: [print and ebook]

  Bitter Steel: (Heroic Fantasy)

  Midnight in Rosary: (Vampires and Werewolves)

  In the Language of Scorpions: (Horror)

  Ebook Only Collections:

  Killing Trail: (Western short stories)

  Days of Beer: (Humorous Memoir)

  Chapbooks: Wanting the Mouth of a Lover (Vampire Haiku).

  Available only through order at cagramlich11@gmail.com

  BACK COVER COPY

  Victory rewards the most brutal.

  But in a war fought between Orcs, Humans, and the monsters known as the Reapers, who best deserves that title? And will any of them fight for the weak? Or are the weak just prey?