The Lost War

by Karl K Gallagher

  “I don’t know. I don’t know.”

  ***

  The hard part of weaving the weir was finding enough long pieces of wood. Long branches from cut trees and scraps from shaping logs were the best she could do.

  Goldenrod’s personal charisma wasn’t enough to overcome Autocrat Sharpquill’s frown. She had to finish the weir by herself. Once she had a stack of cross-pieces by the weir it was time to find some spearmen.

  Goldenrod suspected the eagerness of the volunteers wasn’t for the chance to kill some cuttlefish. She didn’t want to subject her bras to river water so she did the work in just shorts and a t-shirt. This made the guards very attentive to her.

  She’d rather they were watching out to see the cuttlefish approaching. None of them had dragged her under the water but more days than not she wound up clinging to the weir while the spearmen stabbed an annoying critter.

  They did seem to be getting scarcer.

  Actually building the weir wasn’t hard, just tedious. She wove a cross-piece back and forth between the poles sticking out of the water. Once it held in place she shoved it to the bottom.

  The shoreward side of the V was done. Working in the deeper water left Goldenrod immersed to her neck. The guards didn’t mind since she had to wade back for the next piece of wood each time.

  Her legs stung where they’d been jabbed by the rough ends of cross-pieces sticking into the hinge of the V. She’d have to trim those later but she wanted to finish the sides first. The weir was working. She saw fish bump against the finished shoreward side until they found their way through the gap of the hinge.

  ***

  Strongarm waited until all the other patients had left before approaching the chiurgeon’s tent. “Milady?”

  “Enter!” ordered Lady Burnout. “Oh, hello, Strongarm. What can I do for you today?” She waved toward the small table with chairs and tea cups, inviting him to sit down for another chat.

  “Um . . . my stomach’s bothering me.”

  “Onto the table, then.”

  He lay down and pulled his shirt up to his sternum.

  “Symptoms?”

  “Diarrhea. And . . . well . . . it feels like something’s moving in there.” He traced a circle below his belly button.

  Burnout laid her hands flat on the indicated area. Pressed down. Waited. Shifted her hands. “There is something in there.” A breath. “Maybe more than one.”

  “Oh, God. I was hoping you’d tell me it was gas.”

  “There’s a parasite. Parasites are treatable. We may have to try a few different things.”

  “Okay. Um . . . I heard about what happened to Belladonna.”

  “Everybody did.”

  “Do you know where her . . . thing came from?”

  “No.” She decided a dead patient’s confidentiality mattered less than a live one’s need to know. “She was raped on the night we arrived here. Wouldn’t say who did it. All I could tell was that it was more than one attacker.”

  “Shit. She could have been caught by orcs.”

  “Maybe. Ah!” Lady Burnout began digging through storage boxes tucked under her examining table. “I took a swab of her for DNA evidence, because I hadn’t noticed we’d gone anywhere. Completely forgot about it with all the excitement. Here it is.” She dropped a ziplock on the bench.

  “And I took a swab of you. Because habit is powerful. Ha!” She stood up and grabbed the first one. “Now we compare.”

  Strongarm sat up to watch. The two swabs had dried to almost identical orange-brown blobs. “Fuck.”

  “Well.” Lady Burnout felt this was a time to say something comforting. But she couldn’t think of a thing to say.

  “Belladonna was raped by orcs,” said Strongarm. “Is that how she was infected by that . . . whatever it was?”

  Unable to find another answer, Burnout admitted, “It could be. All we know for sure was you were both attacked and the attackers had the same color . . . fluid.”

  “And we have parasites.”

  “You have a few small parasites. She had one big one. So that’s an argument it’s something different. I assumed it was a venereal infection originally. Could still be one, just parasitic rather than bacterial.”

  “Shit. Orc clap.” Strongarm brooded. “I’m infected, whatever it is. How dangerous is it? Could it kill me?”

  “I don’t know. Most parasites try to avoid killing their hosts. There’s ways to get rid of them.” She pulled out the emergency whiskey bottle hidden under the exam table. She considered cup sizes and just handed him the bottle.

  Strongarm took a swig. “Will this kill them?”

  “Not directly. It’s absorbed too soon. But if we get your blood alcohol level high enough it might get them. Let’s call this experiment one. Keep drinking.”

  She wrote in her notebook. Every so often she prompted him to take another slug of whiskey.

  “Crap.” Burnout put down her pen. “The hunters find worms in some of the deer they catch. I told them to burn the infected ones. Didn’t ask for samples. Maybe I should have.”

  “Yeah, it’d be nice to know what the hell’s happening to me.”

  “I’ll do research. And I’ll let you know what I find out.”

  “Thanks.”

  ***

  Goldenrod’s original plan for holding the fish failed. The borrowed baskets tore loose from the weir or let the fish escape as she levered the baskets clear of the weir.

  The fourth experiment was half a dozen net laundry bags nailed to a wooden frame. When she went back to check on it the guards had to spear a cuttlefish with its tentacles buried in the bottom bag.

  The other bags were full of fish.

  Goldenrod managed to get the frame to shore on her own. She needed both guards to help her haul it out of the water. Whippet and Husky were on water hauling duty. They earned a fish each helping on the steep path up the bluff.

  Master Chisel’s shop was the first stop. Goldenrod kept dumping fish on him until the apprentices were forced to produce a third basket to hold them all.

  That was more than his fair share. The look of disbelief on Chisel’s face made her want to rub it in. It was more fish than the apprentices could eat. Chisel would have to give some away before they spoiled—and explain where they came from.

  They went to the common pavilion next. Goldenrod granted the guards two fish each. She kept the two biggest to feed House Applesmile. The rest went to the commons, feeding everyone who wasn’t gathering their own food.

  If the weir keeps bringing in that much fish we’ll have some to store some for winter, Goldenrod thought.

  ***

  “Lady Burnout? We found one of the wormy ones.”

  She followed the hunter outside the wall to where the infected deer was being butchered. The intestines had been dumped in a metal basin.

  A glance at the bloody guts was enough to show multiple parasites were alive in there. They quivered. The sight nauseated her. Embarrassing. She’d thought nothing could bother her that much anymore.

  Poking through the mess with forceps let her catch two worms, quickly transferred to a clear plastic box. The rest were too nimble for her.

  “Bring me another basin. I need to take away their hiding spots.”

  She pulled out a two foot length of intestine and squeezed it empty with her gloved hands. Nothing. She tossed the empty sausage casing into the new basin and chose another.

  The fourth one had a worm in it. That she squeezed into the small box, along with some blood. The worms turned to feasting on the deer blood.

  Some of the parasites were smart enough to hide under the tubes instead of inside them. They’d have to wait until last.

  “Oh, ewww!” squealed one of the hunters.

  Lady Burnout turned to her sample box. Two of the parasites were eating the third, one biting just behind the head, the other working on the tail.

  “Interesting. Obligate sibliphagy,” she said.

  “Wha
t?”

  “They eat each other until only one is left. That’s why Belladonna only had one in her. It was the survivor.”

  “Ewww,” said the hunter again.

  “There’s stuff just as nasty on our planet.” Lady Burnout tossed another worm into the small plastic arena. “Do you find any partially eaten deer carcasses?”

  “Yeah. Well, how partial? There are ones with enough bits on the bones you can tell they’re freshly dead.”

  “Any with just the belly eaten out?” asked Burnout.

  “That part’s always gone. It’s softest. But there’s always more than that eaten.”

  “Of course. The surviving offspring feeds on the host for as long as it can.”

  The hunter looked puzzled. “Didn’t Belladonna’s . . . parasite run off right away?”

  “Yes, because there were strange creatures acting in a threatening manner. Which means these things are born smart enough to make threat assessments as well as fast enough to escape.”

  “That’s scary.”

  ***

  Butchering a deer was a straightforward process for the hunters. They’d had enough practice to efficiently separate out the edible portions. The definition of edible was stretched to the limit to provide all the food they could.

  Lady Burnout’s current project was less elegant. Her subject lay on a board between two tree stumps, shaded by the edge of the forest. Instead of extracting the parasites from the latest “wormy” deer she was trying to follow the trail of damage they’d left in the intestines. Figuring out their behavior should let her devise new treatments for Strongarm. So far, she’d just wound up wondering why the poor son of a bitch wasn’t dead of peritonitis.

  “My lady, we found something that might interest you.”

  Burnout looked up from the carcass she was dissecting. Leadsmith had a tense look on his face. She followed him to the butchering station.

  “This one doesn’t have a worm, it’s some big critter inside it. I hit it by sheer luck.”

  The deer carcass was suspended by the neck. Leadsmith pivoted it to face the interesting part toward Lady Burnout. An arrow stood in the beast’s belly. A handspan away something poked out of a tear in the hide.

  “That’s certainly a parasite,” she said. “Thank you.”

  Before trying to extract the creature she wiggled the arrow to check for reaction. Nope, it was as dead as it looked.

  “Hold on to the arrow as I cut,” she told Leadsmith. “I don’t want it falling out.”

  The watching hunters held the deer steady as Burnout opened the hide with a scalpel. This parasite was at least ten times thicker than the ones she’d found before. The maw held sharp triangular teeth. Where she wiped blood or other fluids off, the skin exposed was green.

  “Damn, I wish I’d saved some gloves for later,” she muttered.

  Cutting open intestines was messy. She stepped back to wait for the dripping to stop. Then she resumed cutting, exposing the rest of the parasite. Two arms were folded against the torso. The lower torso tapered into a tail. The arrow was stuck in the ribcage.

  Lady Burnout nudged Leadsmith aside. Some leverage on the arrow let her slide the parasite out of the deer.

  “Ugly,” muttered a hunter. The others agreed.

  She had to agree. In full sunlight it was hideous. The small eyes sat over a mouth fixed in a dead snarl. The head reminded her of . . .

  “I need to check something. Don’t dispose of the carcass. I want to examine the extent of damage to it. Move it to my dissection table if you need to.”

  “Yes, milady,” said Leadsmith.

  The chirurgeon was already marching across the field of stumps between the woods and the camp. Two guards stood at the gate, hands resting on the hilts of their rapiers.

  They were flanked by a pair of wooden stakes with orc heads impaled on them. Lady Burnout held her specimen up to one for comparison.

  Triangular teeth, check.

  The skin was different shades of green.

  The orc’s eyes were protected by a bony ridge. Burnout had to press her fingertips to the creature’s face to find its equivalent.

  The ears were in similar spots on the side of the skull.

  Orcs, of course, were bipedal. Burnout palpated the parasite’s tail. The hips were easy to find. The lower tail held two sets of bones in parallel.

  Lady Burnout stepped back to pull her thoughts in order. The big parasite was clearly a transitional form between the little worms and whatever the thing was that burst out of Belladonna’s body.

  She winced at a memory of a black claw cutting from the inside. Then she checked the hands of the parasite. Pressing on the fingertips found a needle-sharp point on each one.

  Which made Belladonna’s thing a transitional form to . . . Burnout looked at the severed head. No. She needed more data before leaping to that conclusion.

  The guards were watching Burnout as a distraction from the boredom of their long shift. When she snapped her gaze to them they braced to attention.

  “I have a message for Count Dirk. I need orc bodies to dissect. At least four.”

  “Yes, my lady!” blurted a guard. He ran through the gate.

  ***

  “Hey, Newman, catch,” said Deadeye.

  Newman was almost at his tent, but he stopped and reached for the object the other hunter tossed across the lane. It was a good catch, but the feel of it against his skin shocked him into knocking it up in the air.

  “What the hell? Where did you find ice?”

  He caught the irregular chunk again and slid it from hand to hand. His palms grew wet as the ice melted from his body heat.

  Deadeye laughed. “Plane is handing them out.”

  “Where the hell is he finding ice?” The cold made Newman remember life on Earth, and everything else there: showers, plentiful food, safe houses. He shivered from the flash of homesickness, not the cold.

  “He’s making it, dude. Plane’s the newest wizard.”

  “Huh. How’d that happen?” Newman tossed the ice back to Deadeye while it was still big enough to throw.

  “He burned himself. Was warming some venison when it fell off his dagger into the fire. Burned his fingers getting it back. Poured some water on the burn and it became ice.” Deadeye’s grin had a sardonic twist.

  “Nice trick. Pity he didn’t come up with something useful for killing orcs.” Newman wiped the cold water off on his shirt and locked away the thoughts of civilization.

  ***

  “Milady? We have the bodies you wanted.”

  Lady Burnout brought two baskets of gear to examine the orc corpses. She made the young fighter carry the heavier one.

  The dead orcs still lay on the travois they’d been dragged here on.

  Burnout chose the one on the left. She placed a chisel above the eyebrows and gave it a firm whack with her mallet. It went in just enough to crack the bone. She moved it over two inches and struck again.

  Continuing the crack around the back of the skull required a break to sever the neck. Fortunately her subject had bled out while being dragged through the woods so that wasn’t nearly as messy as she’d feared. When the chisel marks connected around to the forehead she used a tent stake to pry up the top of the skull. It popped right off.

  Opening the torso had no surprises. After looking over the organs she began taking slices and examining them under her microscope.

  The testicles were the only organ she sampled on all four bodies.

  A gate guard brought Autocrat Sharpquill at her command. He kept his annoyance at the interruption down to a “this better be important” frown.

  “Thank you for coming, my lord,” said Lady Burnout. “I’ve made some interesting finds.”

  She led the Autocrat to the right-hand corpse. She pointed at its crotch. “This is a penis.”

  “You know, I was going to guess that.”

  She pointed at the next one. “This is an ovipositor.”

 
“An ovi-what?”

  “It lays eggs. The gametes I found in it were twenty times the size of the sperm the other one produced. They’re mobile, they have a tail to push with, but they’re definitely eggs.”

  “You’re saying this one is female?” Sharpquill was no longer amused.

  “Yes.”

  “It looks identical to the male.”

  Burnout shrugged. “Sexual dimorphism isn’t mandatory. It doesn’t even apply to all primates.”

  “I’m trying to figure out what this means.”

  “It’s obvious. What they did to Belladonna, and to, to the deer, it’s not a dominance display. It’s their life cycle. Catch something about their own size, inject the gametes into the prey, then let it go. The gametes merge, the fetuses fight to be the sole survivor, then it eats its way out of the host. Then I guess the baby orc looks for a band to join.”

  Sharpquill vomited.

  “That’s—that’s horrible,” he said. “What a monstrous world we’ve been exiled to.”

  “There are wasps back home that breed that way. They’re predators in both feeding and reproduction.”

  “They don’t do it to us.” He spat to clear his mouth.

  Examples from her tropical disease rotation leapt to mind, but she didn’t want to distract him.

  “Let me show you the brain.” She called over a guard to bring the severed head. “See, it’s about the size of a human brain and has complex convolutions like ours. I’d say they’re roughly equivalent to our intelligence.”

  “Just what we need. Wait—there was a report. A patrol said they saw an orc who looked pregnant. It ran off at the start of the fight.”

  Burnout thought a moment. “They probably have some sort of dominance hierarchy. The orc on the bottom—well. It has to be bad to be the orc on the bottom.”

  ***

  Goldenrod reached through the flap of the smoking tent. Prying a strip of fish off the line by feel was annoying, but it beat getting a blast of smoke in the face. She bit an end off the strip and chewed it.