Bright, lancing, bolts of sickly yellow green lightning sprang from the man’s fingers, reaching out and grasping at dozens of Orcs and goblins alike. With explosive force, everybody the lightning touched exploded into half-charred bits of meat and gore that smoldered as it rained down amongst Gnak’s allies. Though any rational man of any race would have been wise to turn and flee the man, those nearest him simply rushed into the void created by his devastating strikes, taking up the fight where those destroyed had left off. Filled with the screams of the injured and dying, a breeze carried aloft the scent of burnt hair and flesh, causing Gnak’s stomach to turn uneasily.
Again the lightning came, but this time the horde retaliated with magic of their own, as great balls of fire burst forth from the invaders to smash into the human wizard. But still the human did not falter. Raising his hands, it were as if the magical ballista simply snuffed out as it broke around him, but that was only the beginning of his show of power.
As the fireballs relented for only a fraction of a second, the man appeared to shimmer as he separated into more than a dozen identically clad warriors. Each of them then spread out all across the hillside of the valley, as the horde’s magic users spread their assault among all of the newly appeared human warriors. But Gnak could see through the man’s trick. Looking intently upon the scene as he moved forward with his clan, he noted that only one of the replications had a will within it. Even from here he could see the small light within the man. The rest were apparitions he had created. It was an impressive conjuring.
Moments passed and the magical assault upon the human’s replicas lessened. Without warning all the false illusions vanished, as the human wizard began casting destruction anew. All around Gnak his clan began to turn and flee in panic, making a hole in their line as a great shadow fell over them. Diving aside as the immense foot came crashing down from above, he looked up from his back as the giant of an Orc rushed forward, trampling its own allies beneath its feet. Just steps ahead, and dozens dead beneath it, the giant Orc brought blades to bear against an equally sized human warrior.
The two titans clashed, trading blow after blow, smashing lesser warriors beneath them. Dodging a slash from the human, the giant Orc retaliated with a blow to the human’s shoulder, the thick Orcish blade biting through the armor and deep into the joint. But injured and at a disadvantage, the human did not falter.
Falling back a step, the giant human jerked away from the Orcish attacker, prying loose the blade from his shoulder just as a giant ball of green-hued fire smashed onto the face of the blessed Orc. Back the Orc stumbled, and Gnak looked up to see the thrower of the magic still upon the hillside, before he was again forced to dive out of the way of the giant warriors.
All around him lay the dead and dying, crushed by the blessed warriors battling above them. Screams and cries burst forth from ruined bodies everywhere, their orbs of light pulsing within them. Gnak fought to regain his feet. Fighting to stay focused amongst the chaos, and rising again, he stumbled just barely out of the way of the Orc’s massive foot as it again smashed to the ground. Looking up, half in a fog of confusion, Gnak watched as with a popping sound the giant Orc warrior shimmered before shrinking back to an unblessed size just feet away from him. He watched as the Orc tried to flee, but with the towering human warrior before him, there was nowhere he could go as the heel of his foe descended from the air above to crush him beneath a great armored boot. Gnak watched as flesh became jelly and sprayed out all around the massive foot, and in that instant a rage enveloped him.
For all the wrongs his people committed, and for all the faults they had, they did not deserve such slaughter. None needed to die in this wretched place, crushed beneath their own race or another, or incinerated by magical fire. No. Things needed to change. Filled with anger and frustration, Gnak rose to his feet, his hands half curled above him as he roared to the heavens. As if in answer the sounds of the battle dimmed in his mind, and a vision of Jen appeared in his memory as something around him changed.
As if they were thrown from all corners of the battle by those who faded from life, the wills of thousands began smashing into Gnak, bursting through him and congregating within him in an instant. Discarded were the wills of those lost to life, and as such they came to him at his time of need. Reacting by both anger and instinct, he pointed to those who lie dead around him, either half charred or half crushed and he willed them back to life and back into the fight so that no more living must die. As if great puppet strings descended from the sky, the fallen began to jerk and rise, some of them crawling and dragging destroyed limbs behind them.
Bending the orbs of power within him to his will, he turned and summoned more and more of the fallen back into his service as the dead began to rise and again take up arms. The angry fog clearing from his mind as realization struck, Gnak watched the risen dead as they slowly stumbled back into battle, making their way to the front lines where they were hacked relentlessly but refused to die to normally mortal wounds.
This was it! This was the power Ishanya had given him to save lives. How many more could be saved if only those already dead were taking up the fight? Filled with pride at his knowledge and the minor victory that it came with, Gnak shouted in celebration as something unexpected made the battle take yet another turn.
With a chorus of barks and howls, the wizard’s wicked troops burst into the fight. Tearing, biting, and clawing, the creatures fought savagely, ripping to pieces all that opposed them. Gnak surveyed the battlefield and watched as those blessed among the humans surged about the field nearly unimpeded, the blessed champions of his own army seemingly having been defeated. On and on the blessed humans waded through the masses of Orcs, ogres, trolls and goblins, smashing beneath them paths of gore and death. Reaching out, Gnak raised those still able to fight who lingered in the wake of the giant men.
All around him those with magic flung fire at the humans, and the humans replied in kind, though both sides’ numbers had diminished greatly. Arrows still fell from the sky, but they were too few now to create an overwhelming difference. No. The humans had suffered great casualties and even with their obvious advantage of more blessed warriors, it was only a matter of time before their main army was destroyed by the horde. Preferring that the battle end sooner than later, it appeared suddenly that his wish was granted.
From further behind his position, a horn sounded again and again as a goblin wearing nothing but a pack upon his back and armed with nothing but a torch, came rushing directly towards him. As all others did, Gnak simply stepped to the side, letting the obviously crazed creature go sprinting past. Watching in his wake, as many from both sides seemed to be doing, he was surprised when the little beast dove into the line of the human wizard’s beast troops, stuffing the torch into the pack upon his back.
The blast that followed threw hundreds from their feet as body parts, fragments of armor, and tufts of fur rained down over a fifty yard stretch of the battlefield. His ears ringing, Gnak barely noted as more of the high pitched horns blasted all around the battlefield, as more and more goblins rushed to their own deaths only to take more of the enemy with them.
The battlefield changed in that instant as human mages and champions all lent themselves to the destruction of the suicide goblins. Dozens of the goblins died, perhaps hundreds, as Gnak worked to revive as many others upon the field as he was able. Wills came to him as lives were extinguished on a whim, and no longer did he need physical contact to collect or disperse them.
Another explosion sounded and then several more at once. Blasts sounded from all sides of the field as the goblins exploded prematurely amongst their own troops. From everywhere, wills assaulted him, filling him, with more than he could use to revive those dead still able to fight on. Rushing here and there, Gnak revived those he could, ignoring many that would add no benefit to the battle. But they were dying faster than he could work. Even his efforts, it seemed, were a losing battle. And that was before the human wizard unle
ashed another unbelievable horror.
Turning as he revived a group of blasted goblins, Gnak turned to witness what he could only describe as a river of fire. From the human wizard a raging inferno blasted from his hands, in a swathe nearly a dozen yards wide that blasted a hundred feet or more into the enemy lines, igniting and incinerating hundreds. Even from here he could see the focus on the human’s face as his torrent of fire ceased, only to be followed by another huge explosion as Gnak actually witnessed one of the goblin suicide attackers vanishing into a wisp of ash, its torch falling upon its pack as they hit the ground.
Though many between him and the goblin now lay sprawled upon the ground, their bodies wounded from shrapnel from the blast, Gnak remained standing. All about the battlefield, small circular clearings stood where goblins had been, but vanished as their packs’ contents exploded. He turned back to the armored human wizard. He had to be responsible. He needed to die.
His attention focused, Gnak began shoving his way through the surging army, ignoring the sounds of plight and clangs of steel all around him. Then, as if it were fate, the human wizard strode down the face of the hillside he defended, and leaving his great hairy warriors behind, he began blasting a path through the horde for him and another human to traverse. They moved directly towards him, but coming down the hill to Gnak’s level, he lost them in the crowd, working towards them only by the sound of the screams that issued out from the horde in that general direction. Continuing on Gnak followed, moving towards the source of the Orcs and goblins that began to rain down upon their allies, having been flung by the human wizard. Gnak wondered the limits to this human’s powers.
Fighting his way through the army, Gnak shoved and pushed to make himself a path, leaving his clan far behind. Stepping atop the gruesome torso of a destroyed troll, Gnak looked over the heads of his peers and located his foe and its companion. Together the pair stood back to back, as if daring the horde to attack them. Gnak moved to pick up his course to intercept the humans, but paused when the scene suddenly changed.
All around the humans, those invaders closest to the pair vanished, each of them crumpling to ash upon the ground, their weapons and armor the only proof that they had ever existed. The human wizard’s head fell back a moment as if he looked to the heavens, and Gnak stood transfixed, as did many surrounding the pair. Then without warning, a ball of roiling smoke, fire, and flickering light seemed to consume the humans as it pulsed unnaturally. For just an instant the pair were obscured from view, before the unthinkable happened.
Like a wave of wind blasting out in all directions, thousands surrounding the human pair were cast from their feet to sprawl in a tangled mess. Watching from his distance Gnak felt the blast, but leaning into it, he managed to keep his eyes open and was one of the few that witnessed what followed in entirety.
Like the blast before it, the orb of swirling death that surrounded the pair erupted out in all directions. With devastating effect the magic expanded, as it rushed away from its master with fingers of electrical fire that danced from one body to the next, clinging to every metal surface and blasting apart the bodies it touched instantaneously. Those nearest were reduced to ash, as it left partially charred bodies in yet another ring in its wake and those with burnt and blistering flesh in yet another. Gnak realized all too late that he was too close.
Armored from head to toe, the fingers snapped out at him like a whip as they came, and coiling about his body the tendrils of electrical fire seared away his flesh as agonizing pain filled him. Hoping death would claim him to strip away the pain, he fell from his perch, his charred flesh tearing at his joints within his armor as he fell. Hitting the ground, he heard a bloodcurdling scream and realized that it came from his own mouth. With every movement his burnt and blistered flesh clung to the insides of his armor before tearing away again, but the need to survive drove him to move.
Inch after agonizing inch he crawled, uncertain of his direction, as his flesh stuck to the hot metal of his armor and tore away bit by unthinkable bit. Hot fluid dripped from one of his eyes, as drool poured freely from his ruined mouth, his lips having torn away in the blast. Destroyed of body, Gnak clung to consciousness, and forced himself to rise. An Orc chief did not die crawling on his belly like a slug.
Pressing himself to his feet, he felt as the flesh around his fingers crumpled and looking down, revealed naught but bone and tendons where thick flesh had once been. Taking a step forward, he felt the flesh upon the back of his knees split open as yet more pain assailed him. His ankles split and tore more with each step as flesh was pulled from his meat, his heated armor shifting with every step. To any other the pain would have been unbearable, but Gnak held himself above all others.
Swallowing back the bile that rose in his throat with every step, Gnak turned and peered out through his malformed and melted eyelid with his one good eye to survey the carnage. All around lay the dead. Before him lay a great wasteland of smoking flesh and charred bits of armor. Ash floated down to coat everything that lay wasted below. Only two things remained within the blast zone. The humans.
From his place upon the perimeter of the blast, where its effects were the weakest, Gnak could see plainly now that nothing stood to impede his view. He watched as the armored wizard collapsed to the ground, seemingly wracked by fits of some sort. He witnessed as the wickedly armored female knelt to aid him where she removed his helm, and then her own. Gnak watched, feeling moisture seeping from the wounds that covered his entire body. For a moment he looked down, watching the fluid begin to pool at his feet. Though it sickened him to look, beneath the pooling fluid he noted a familiar object. There, coated nearly entirely in ash, a war horn rested at his feet.
Unable to fight in his current condition, with much of the battlefield frozen in disbelief of the magic the human had performed, with gut-wrenching pain Gnak knelt and wrapped his fingers of bone around the horn. With his lips gone, he pressed the visor of his helm open and shoved the mouthpiece of the horn into the back of his throat and exhaled every bit of air from his lungs in one loud blast.
A roar exploded from both opposing sides as the horde surged from all sides to put an end to the weakened wizard, and the human’s allies rushed in to protect him. And through those that parted around him to reach the human foe, Gnak watched as the female grasped her neck, blood pouring from it, as she and the wizard collapsed back to the ground once more.
Grinning from the toothy hole in his face, Gnak thought victory inevitable until he was again torn from his feet and cast backwards, bright light enveloping him as he tumbled end over agonizing end within his armor, his flesh tearing and cracking more with every unwanted movement. Everything went black.
CHAPTER TEN
Fighting the urge to pass out as his head struck the ground, Gnak waited for his vision to return. Rolling to his stomach, his ears ringing with amazing volume, Gnak lifted his head to find that all who had rushed ahead of him towards the fallen wizard were gone. Both friend and enemy of the human spell-caster had been reduced to ash. Even now, discarded pieces of armor spun to a stop amidst the soft powder that coated everything. The human was gone, and the female with him.
Rising, oh so painfully, Gnak turned to look beyond at the tattered forces of both sides. Much of the horde had been decimated. Some were already retreating. None knew if the humans had another such wizard, and none dared linger to find out. Though it was against Orc tradition to retreat, he thought it a wise idea.
Forcing himself up once more, he heard as the remaining beasts led by the vanished wizard howled in anguish as they began to snarl and bark viciously. It was time to leave.
Moving as fast as his destroyed body would allow, Gnak turned and moved away from the blight that was the only proof the wizard had existed, and favoring his left leg he half jogged, half limped towards the southern rise of the valley. Behind him he could hear the fur-covered half men closing the distance.
Reaching out his hands, he unleashed the orbs of many f
allen within him into corpses in various states of dismemberment as he passed. Looking over his shoulder as he attempted to run, he witnessed as the dead began shudder and convulse before they started to rise and shamble about, picking up the fight where they had left off in life. Just as he hoped, the wizard’s beasts set upon his re-risen allies, buying him time to escape.
For what seemed like an eternity, Gnak ran with members of the army he had belonged to surging all around him. On and on he went, being outpaced by even the smallest of goblins. It was growing late in the day when he reached the mouth to the mountain pass, and so crowded was that bottleneck point, that Gnak had not the energy to stand about waiting to gain entry.
Climbing to the rocky face beside the split in the giant mountain, Gnak pressed his back against the cool stone and letting his legs fold beneath him he slid down its hard surface to rest on the ground. Panting heavily from the exertion of the run, he reached up and pulled the helm from his head as thick chunks of flesh and one whole ear tore away with it. Clenching his jaw against the pain, he took deep breaths between his teeth and dropped the helm into his lap, before letting what was left of his head fall back against the cool stone with something between a thud and a splat.
Closing his one good eye, if you could truly call it closed with his destroyed eyelid, he concentrated on slowing his breathing and the racing of his heart.
It must have worked, for before he knew it he was dreaming of building his massive fortress once again.
* * * * *
Standing atop the temple built for Ishanya, Gnak strode across its dark surface looking out over his city. Before him stood a magnificent sight without rival. Built into the side of the mountain’s face was a fortress unlike any other. From the ground below it resembled a giant stone skull carved into the side of the mountain with a giant crown jutting off the top of its head. The thick impenetrable walls creating much of the facade. The crown was comprised of the many towering building and roads that snaked up the side of the mountain, one of which he inhabited now.
Age of the Gods: The Complete, twelve novel, fantasy series (The Blood and Brotherhood Saga) Page 160
