Orcs: Bad Blood

by Stan Nicholls

  The group went off.

  Coilla looked around the room and saw that the human clerks and their orc menials stood frozen and gaping. She beckoned a trio of Vixens. “Get the civilians clear, and don’t let them out of your sight until we’re done here.”

  The onlookers were rounded up and led away, a couple of them dragging the overseer by his heels. As the orcs passed, heads bowed, Coilla needled them with, “We wouldn’t have to do this if you had guts!”

  “Don’t be too hard on them,” Chillder said. “They’ve known no other way.”

  Coilla shrugged.

  “What about the treasures?” Brelan asked.

  “What?” Coilla replied.

  “Our birthright. The artworks they were —”

  “Yeah. What about ’em?”

  “We can’t leave them here.”

  “The plan was to grab the loot and torch this place. Nobody said anything about —”

  “We can’t leave them here,” Chillder echoed her brother. “It’d be profane.”

  “We barely have enough hands as it is.”

  “We don’t need your permission when it comes to our heritage,” Brelan stated flatly.

  Coilla sighed. “All right. You two take care of it.” She looked to her depleting forces. “But we can’t spare more than four to go with you. We’ll meet up on the way out. And if anybody tries to stop you —”

  “We know what to do.”

  The twins quickly picked their helpers and made for the door.

  “This we could do without,” Coilla grumbled.

  Spurral nodded. “It does spread us a bit thin.”

  “So let’s get on with it,” Pepperdyne urged.

  The Vixens set to trashing the room. Files were torn from the shelves and papers scattered. Furniture was smashed and strewn around. They splattered oil over the debris.

  “Right,” Coilla said. “As soon as the others get back —”

  There was movement farther along the room. A door they hadn’t seen, set flush to the wall, sprang open. Three robed men came through it. Coilla recognised the trident-shaped weapons they clutched.

  She exclaimed, “Shit.”

  One of the robed figures pointed his trident.

  Pepperdyne yelled, “Get down!”

  The Vixens hit the deck.

  A violet beam cut the air. They felt its heat above their heads. Its glow was so intense it pained their eyes. The bolt struck the shelving behind them, splintering wood and liberating a cloud of fluttering paper. Another blast came instantly. It glanced off a pillar, showering marble chips. A pungent, sulphurous odour perfumed the room.

  The Vixens scuttled for shelter. Coilla and Spurral crouched behind an overturned table. Pepperdyne used a nearby heap of wrecked furniture.

  As one, the robed humans advanced, tridents raised. A further purple energy shaft crackled past. It punched a wall, exploding plaster and fragments of stone.

  “We have to take them out, Coilla,” Spurral said. “Fast.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  “Why the hell didn’t we bring a couple of bows?”

  “I’ve got these.” Coilla pushed up the baggy sleeve of her shirt, revealing an arm sheath of throwing knives. She plucked one and handed it to her. “Don’t use this ’til I tell you.” Coilla turned and attracted Pepperdyne’s attention. She tossed him a knife. He caught it deftly. Then she mimed an order, holding up one, two, then three fingers, and indicated the approaching sorcerers. “Together,” she mouthed. He understood and nodded.

  The robed figures kept coming, unleashing beams of dazzling vigour, ravaging wood, stone and glass.

  As the trio passed a tangle of wreckage, one of the Vixens popped up from her hiding place brandishing a sword.

  Coilla shouted, “No!”

  The Vixen made to swipe at the nearest sorcerer. He swung, aiming his trident at her. There was a blinding flash. The Vixen’s blade took the brunt and instantly turned as red as a heated poker. She squealed and dropped the searing weapon. The sorcerer made to finish her.

  “Now!” Coilla bellowed.

  She, Spurral and Pepperdyne leapt up and tossed their knives. Coilla’s throw was true. The sorcerer who blasted the Vixen’s sword took it directly in the chest. Spurral’s pitch was good too, though it incapacitated rather than killed her target. The blade struck his face and put him out of the running. Pepperdyne’s shot was an honourable miss, but a miss nonetheless. It flew past his mark’s left ear and embedded itself in the spine of a tome.

  The sorcerer left standing reacted with a wild spray of energy bolts. Grabbed by her comrades, the Vixen who tried attacking was pulled out of sight as the rays demolished desks and gouged walls. The orcs resumed hugging the floor.

  “To hell with this,” Coilla muttered. She gathered up her rough peasant skirt, revealing the hatchet in a scabbard strapped to her thigh. Tugging it free, she rose from her hiding place, arm back, ready to throw.

  The remaining sorcerer was a dozen paces away. He saw her, and levelled his trident. There was a kind of stasis. It lasted no more than a split second, but seemed to stretch to eternity. His eyes narrowed as he took aim. Her arm came up and over, muscles straining. The axe left her hand.

  It tumbled as it flew, end over end, its blade glinting reflected light. The sorcerer followed its path, his head going back, puzzled at the hatchet’s unexpected trajectory. Not towards him, but upwards.

  Above the sorcerer, and a little ahead of him, hung one of the massive chandeliers.

  The hatchet’s razor sharp edge sliced through the rope supporting it.

  With a tremendous crash the whole affair plunged to the floor, smashing to pieces on impact. Lit candles bounced in all directions. The scattered oil ignited instantly.

  A sheet of yellow-white flame sprang up. It engulfed the sorcerer. His wounded companion, on hands and knees, the throwing knife protruding from his gory cheek, was caught too. Their robes blazing, the shrieking men blundered about, spreading the flames.

  The fire swiftly followed the trails of oil, probing the length and breadth of the room. It streaked to the shelved walls and began to climb. Where strewn candles came to rest, fresh gouts of flame broke out. Red tendrils snaked to heaps of furniture, setting them ablaze. A pall of smoke rapidly filled the room.

  “Get out!” Coilla yelled. “All of you! Out now!”

  Coughing and wheezing, sleeves pressed to their mouths, the Vixens groped for the door.

  “Come on, come on!” Coilla urged, and with Pepperdyne’s help shepherded the group out.

  In the smoky corridor she undertook a quick head count and judged all present.

  “Shouldn’t we shut these doors?” Spurral asked, indicating the inferno raging in the chamber behind them.

  “No,” Coilla said, “let it spread.”

  There was movement at the other end of the corridor. The Vixens went for their weapons.

  “Easy,” Pepperdyne cautioned. “They’re ours.”

  The unit Coilla sent to search for the chancellery were returning, along with the three who took away the prisoners. They were carrying four or five wooden chests.

  The Vixen in the lead, a pleasingly muscular example of orc femininity, nodded at the fire. “Thought you weren’t going to set that off yet.”

  “Change of plan,” Coilla told her. “Any trouble?”

  “Nothing we couldn’t handle.”

  “What’d you get?”

  They lifted the lid on one of the chests. Gold and silver coins shone in the fire’s glow.

  “Good.” Coilla turned to another of the females. “What about the prisoners?”

  “We found a courtyard back there. Shoved ’em into it, barred the door.”

  “All right. Now let’s find Brelan and Chillder and get out of here.”

  She took the lead, with Pepperdyne close behind.

  The corridors grew hazy with smoke as they retraced their steps to the room where the looted art was stored. Ther
e seemed to be nobody about. That changed when Coilla, jogging ahead, passed a half-open door.

  It was thrown wide, and a sword-wielding human leapt out. Alerted by cries from the Vixens, Coilla spun round while fumbling for her sheathed blade. The man lunged at her, sword raised.

  He stopped dead in his tracks. The centre of his chest burst in a shower of blood, the tip of a blade protruding. The stunned human looked down at the flowing wound. Then his eyes rolled to white and he toppled, landing at Coilla’s feet.

  Pepperdyne stooped and wiped his gory blade on the dead man’s tunic.

  “Owe you again,” Coilla said.

  “Forget it.”

  They carried on, their mood warier, but met no one else until they reached their destination.

  Bodies of several humans littered the storeroom floor. Chillder, Brelan and their helpers were placing artefacts in crates.

  “Come on,” Coilla insisted, “we’ve got to move!”

  “Nearly there,” Chillder replied. She was ramming a figurine into a box.

  “We can’t take it all.”

  “We know,” Brelan said. “More’s the pity. We’ve picked the best pieces.”

  “Well hurry it up.”

  Three more chests added to their spoils, the group made for the exit. By the time they got to it, the smoke was a lot thicker.

  Checking that the street was clear, they quickly loaded the crates on to the wagons, and covered them with sacking. They slammed shut the entrance doors, and once the outer gate had been negotiated, set off.

  Pepperdyne, again at the reins of the lead wagon, looked grim. “If that fire’s spotted before we get clear —”

  “We’ll have to hope it’s not,” Coilla told him. “So let’s play it calm and innocent.”

  “And if it is spotted?”

  “You know the odds. We’ll fight our way out.”

  It was all they could do to stop themselves from constantly looking back. In their mind’s eye a towering column of black smoke formed an accusing finger, pointing their way.

  They approached the first checkpoint with trepidation, but in good order. It proved as slipshod as when they entered, and they were scarcely acknowledged, let alone stopped. The second was no different. Jaded sentries allowed them through with hardly a second glance.

  At the third and most substantial roadblock there was less laxity. There was no queue to get out, as on the way in, but they were obliged to stop.

  The same sergeant they dealt with earlier was still on duty. On sight of them his expression turned chary.

  “I wasn’t expecting to see you back here so soon, sir.”

  “No?” Pepperdyne answered.

  “The clean-up crews usually take twice as long.”

  “Do they?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Well, this is a particularly hard-working bunch.”

  “That makes a change for these lazy devils, sir.” He fixed Pepperdyne with a hard stare. “What’s your secret?”

  “Secret?”

  “How do you make ’em move their arses?”

  “No secret, Sergeant. Just a generous application of the whip.”

  The sergeant grinned approvingly. “Yes, sir.” He glanced at Coilla. She avoided his gaze.

  He looked into the back of the wagon. His interest was held long enough to have Coilla suspecting he’d spotted the booty. She began slipping a hand into her folds of clothing in search of a blade.

  The sergeant returned his attention to Pepperdyne. “Thank you, sir. You can move out.”

  Pepperdyne nodded and cracked the reins.

  He and Brelan resisted the impulse to speed up. They kept to a steady pace even when the distant sounds of tumult rose behind them in the restricted zone.

  Coilla and Pepperdyne exchanged brief smiles.

  The wagons trundled past a patch of wasteland on one side of the road, an area where a house had stood before it was destroyed by the incomers. Now the lot was scrubby and overgrown.

  An especially eagle-eyed passer-by, or someone particularly receptive to the ambience of magic, might have sensed an anomaly there. A pocket of nothingness slightly out of sympathy with the air around it. Like a transparent bubble which light was not quite capable of passing through. But so muted, so elusive, that an onlooker would likely dismiss it as a mote in their eye.

  Wrapped in her cloak of sorcery, the elfin figure of Pelli Madayar observed the Vixens’ exploits, and was troubled. There was no doubt that the renegade orc warband was seriously violating the Gateway Corps’ precepts. They were playing with fire.

  And she knew they had to be stopped.

  23

  There was a gathering in the grand hall at the fortress in Taress.

  The room was crowded. Military top brass were present, along with representatives of the lower ranks. Robed members of the Order of the Helix were in attendance. Bureaucrats, administrators and legislators rubbed shoulders. They had stood waiting long enough to bring on a spate of shuffling feet and stifled sighs.

  General Hacher was at the forefront. His aide, Frynt, and Helix luminary Brother Grentor flanked him.

  “How much longer?” Grentor whispered. “It’s intolerable being treated like supplicants.”

  “Perhaps you’d care to express that to the Envoy in person when she arrives,” Hacher suggested. “She is, after all, the titular head of your order.”

  Grentor shot him a poisonous look and returned to morose silence.

  The sound of approaching footsteps brought on an involuntary stiffening of spines.

  With a crash the doors to the hall were thrown open. Two elite guardsmen came in and positioned themselves on either side of the entrance.

  Jennesta followed. The hem of her cloak, fashioned from the jet-black, glossy pelt of a beast that could only be guessed at, brushed the timber floor. The clack of her precariously high stiletto-heeled boots echoed throughout the hall.

  She swept to the head of the room and climbed the steps to a dais. Then she discarded the cloak, letting it fall from her shoulders in a careless motion. Hacher wasn’t alone in thinking of a snake shedding its skin.

  Facing her audience, Jennesta spoke without preamble.

  “I’ve been here only a short time,” she began, “but long enough to see how this province is run. More importantly, I’ve seen who runs it. Is it the might of Peczan’s armed forces? The empire’s commissioners, or its lawmakers? The brotherhood of the Helix?” She scanned them coldly. “No. Acurial’s true rulers are the very creatures you are supposed to suppress. Rebels. Terrorists. Orc scum. How else can it be when the so called resistance strikes at will? When cattle stampede through the streets of the capital, patrols are ambushed and buildings torched. And when humans are reported to be aiding the insurgents.” She let that soak in for a second. “Discipline is woefully lacking in this colony. Examples need to be set, and not only among the native population.” She nodded to the guards at the entrance.

  They opened the doors. A pair of Jennesta’s undead bodyguards shuffled in. Between them was a terrified looking soldier, his hands chained and his feet in shackles. The bodyguards’ appearance, and unsavoury odour, had the crowd willingly parting to allow them through. They looked on in silence as the zombies shoved their prisoner to the front of the room and up to the dais, where he stood trembling before the sorceress.

  “The outrage yesterday was the responsibility of many in this administration,” Jennesta announced, “but let this man represent all who fail in their duty.” She turned her baleful gaze on the accused. He did his best to hold himself erect. “You are a sergeant in charge of a roadblock barring access to the quarter housing the Tithes Bureau?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “And you allowed a gang of orc terrorists to pass your checkpoint and stage an attack?”

  “They were accompanied by a human officer, my Lady. I —”

  “Answer the question! Did you let them through?”

  “Yes, Ma�
�am.”

  “Then you admit your dereliction and stand condemned. Negligence on such a scale demands punishment equal to the offence. Prepare to pay the penalty.”

  The sergeant tensed, expecting perhaps to be hauled away and thrown in a dungeon, or even to be struck down by one of his undead captors. Neither happened.

  Instead, Jennesta closed her eyes. The keen sighted might have noticed that her lips moved silently, and that her hands made several small gestures.

  The accused looked on in troubled bafflement; the audience exchanged mystified glances.

  “There,” Jennesta said, her singular eyes popping open. She sounded almost amiable.

  For a moment, nothing occurred. Then the sergeant let out a groan. He lifted his hands and pressed the palms to his forehead. One of the bodyguards jerked the chain binding his wrists, pulling the man’s hands back down. The prisoner moaned, gutturally, and his eyes rolled. He swayed as though about to fall. The groaning became constant and higher pitched.

  The area of his temples and up into his hairline rapidly took on a purplish discoloration, as though bruised. His skull visibly swelled, and in the deathly silence a crackling could be heard as the expansion began to split his scalp. Writhing in agony, the sergeant screamed. Just once.

  Like an overripe melon dropped from a castle battlement, his head exploded. The discharge scattered blood-matted chunks of hairy flesh, skull fragments and portions of brain. Headless, the stump gushing torrid crimson, his corpse took a faltering step before crashing to the floor. It lay twitching, its life essence pumping out into a spreading, sticky pool.

  Many in the front row had their ashen faces and smart dress uniforms splattered by the eruption. An objectionable reek hung in the air.

  One of the zombie bodyguards, noticing dully that blood and brain matter covered his bare forearm, started to lick it off with noisy relish.

  “Note this well!” Jennesta intoned sternly. “As this man confessed his guilt I chose to deal with him mercifully. Any others who transgress will not be treated with such lenience.” She touched a hand lightly to her brow. “The effort has tired me. Go. All of you. Except you, Hacher. You stay.”