THE BONE ORCS
Jonathan Moeller
***
Description
RIDMARK ARBAN was once an honored Swordbearer. Now he is a disgraced exile, outcast and alone.
Yet he is still a warrior without peer, and when death cultists attack an innocent village, Ridmark must put himself to the test to save the villagers.
Or die in the attempt...
***
The Bone Orcs
Copyright 2016 by Jonathan Moeller.
Smashwords Edition.
Cover image copyright copyright Jules315 | Dreamstime.com & Lotophagi | Dreamstime.com - Human Skull Photo.
Ebook edition published February 2016.
All Rights Reserved.
This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination, or, if real, used fictitiously. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the express written permission of the author or publisher, except where permitted by law.
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The Bone Orcs
In the Year of Our Lord 1474, Ridmark Arban needed answers, so he went to one of the most dangerous places in Andomhaim.
He thought it worth the risk, because the Frostborn would return.
Perhaps not today, and likely not tomorrow, but soon, within his lifetime. The Warden had warned him about the omen of blue fire, a day when blue fire would fill the sky from horizon to horizon. On that day, the ancient wizard had said, the way would be open for the Frostborn to return. Ridmark had tried to warn the nobles and the Swordbearers and the Magistri, but to no avail. No one believed him, so he needed proof.
The Qazaluuskan Forest might well hide that proof.
It was a dangerous place. The pagan orcs of the Qazaluuskan Forest were aloof and remote, but nonetheless unremittingly hostile to the men of Andomhaim. Outsiders who ventured into the Forest tended to never return. Whenever the Forest’s tribes launched raids on the nearby lands, seeking captives and loot, the Duxi of the Northerland and Caertigris launched punitive expeditions, sacking a few villages and burning a few forts, but every attempt to conquer the vast lands of the Forest had ended in catastrophe.
Going there was madness.
Yet the Qazaluuskan shamans knew secrets, whispers wrung from the dead by their necromantic spells. They knew secrets lost everywhere else in the world, and sometimes bold Magistri went in search of those secrets. They, too, usually did not return.
But Ridmark thought it was worth the risk. If he could find proof of how the Frostborn would return, perhaps the realm could prepare itself. If he was killed in the process…well, that would be no great loss for anyone. He had once been a Swordbearer, a knight of the realm, and a husband, and now he was none of those things.
As if to remind him of his failures, the scar upon his left cheek and jaw, the brand of a broken sword, still felt tight, even after a year.
Not that he needed it to remind him of his failures. He saw them every time he closed his eyes.
So Ridmark made his way through the wild hills of the Northerland, making for the western borders of the Qazaluuskan Forest. He moved with silent haste, his staff in his right hand and his dagger at his belt. A quiver of arrows hung from his hip, his short hunting bow slung over his shoulder. He had been a miserable shot with a bow, but a year of living alone in the wilderness had improved his skills, and he was now a decent enough shot that he didn’t have to worry about starvation.
Hunger was a marvelous teacher.
The rocky hills of the Northerland grew fewer, the pine trees thinner. The ground sloped downward, moving towards the flatter lands of the Qazaluuskan Forest, and Ridmark followed the course of a stream as it flowed south. Not many people lived in the hills of the northeastern Northerland. This part of the Northerland was too dangerous. The hills were riddled with entrances to the Deeps, and the dvargir and the kobolds and the deep orcs often came forth in search of slaves. More dangerous creatures emerged from the Wilderland to the north, and over everything hung the threat of the secretive Qazaluuskan orcs, who issued forth from the Forest on a whim of their strange rituals and vanished again just as quickly.
The hills were dangerous, but for now they were quiet. The air was heavy with the smell of pine needles and the wet mud of the stream, the wind rustling through the branches. The wind picked up a little, tugging at Ridmark’s gray cloak, and…
He stopped.
Smoke. He smelled a great deal of smoke.
He was almost to his destination, a village called Toricus at the very edge of the Forest. Most of its folk made their living digging silver from the hills, while the rest dared to lumber in the Forest itself. Ridmark was only a few miles away, enough to smell the smoke of the village’s fires.
Yet the smell should not have been that strong. Had a fire broken out? Ridmark hesitated for a moment, and then started forward.
As he did, a shape appeared from behind one of the pine trees.
Ridmark turned, taking his staff in both hands.
The figure was an orcish man, tall and strong, wearing leather boots and ragged trousers. His torso, arms, and face had all been smeared with white war paint. Behind his sharp tusks, his face had been marked with black paint, stark against his eyes and nose and mouth.
The war paint gave his face the appearance of a grinning white skull, while his arms and torso had a leprous look from the white paint. In his right hand he carried an axe with an iron blade, and he wore strange amulets of bones and black feathers and small polished stones.
The paint and the amulets marked him as an orc of the Qazaluuskan Forest. Of old the orcs had worshipped their cruel blood gods, and though many orcs had converted to the church of the Dominus Christus that Ridmark’s ancestors had brought with them from Old Earth, many still followed the old ways and the old gods. The orcs of the Forest worshipped Qazalask, the blood god of death and the dead, and in his name his shamans practiced necromancy, summoning shades and animating corpses.
Ridmark shifted his grip on his staff. The orc stared at him without blinking.
“We needn’t fight,” said Ridmark in the orcish tongue. “Let me pass and you can live.”
“The omens were propitious this day,” said the orc, hefting his axe. “The signs spoke of victory. A trophy I shall have, in honor to my house.” He spoke the orcish tongue with the rasping accents of the Qazaluuskan Forest. “Blood I shall spill, and I shall offer your heart and liver and lungs as tributes to the shaman, that he may offer them up to the Lord of Bones.”
His eyes glimmered crimson as the battle fury of his orcish blood came upon him, and then the Qazaluuskan orc charged forward with a howl, his axe snapping back for a blow.
Ridmark waited until the last moment and dodged, sweeping his staff around. He caught the orc across the shins with a loud crack, and the orc stumbled, but he recovered his balance and attacked once more. Ridmark dodged again, staff ready in both hands. In the year since he had been stripped of his soulblade, he had found that most men, whether human or orcish or dvargir, were contemptuous of the staff, considering it a weapon for peasants and farmers. They assumed that wooden stick was no match for a blade.
They were wrong. Ridmark had learned that the hard way himself. It was time to teach this orc the same lesson.
The Qazaluuskan orc spun, roaring as he went on the attack. Ridmark dodged yet again, but this time he snapped the staff forward, bringing the weapon down upon the orc’s wrists. The impact staggered the orc, who struggled to keep his grip upon the axe’s haft. That moment of imbalance gave Ridmark the time he needed to spin the
staff, its end slamming into the side of the orc’s head.
The Qazaluuskan stumbled, and Ridmark hit him three times across the temple in rapid succession.
After the third blow, the orc fell dead to the ground, blood leading from his nostrils and mouth.
Ridmark took a step back, raising his staff to guard position on reflex. Yet no one else stirred in the pine trees or upon the slopes of the hills. The Qazaluuskan orc had been alone.
But for a Qazaluuskan orc to have been alone near the village of Toricus…
The smell of wood smoke grew sharper.
Ridmark broke into a jog, leaving the dead orc behind, and soon came to Toricus.
Or, at least, what was left of it.
Toricus was a rough place inhabited by rough men, and the village stood in a little valley at the edge of the Forest. The villagers had built a thick wooden stockade around the village, strengthening their defenses further with a ditch lined with sharpened stakes, but that hadn’t been enough to save them. The gate had been torn down, and lay in shattered pieces across the ditch. Inside the stockade the houses had been built of fieldstone and thatch, but all of them now burned, flames billowing from their interiors. Ridmark saw no sign of any corpses, but that did not surprise him. Vhaluuskan orcs or dvargir warriors would have left the corpses to rot where they had fallen.
The orcs of the Forest would have taken the dead back as offerings to Qazalask.
Ridmark crossed the little wooden bridge into the village, the scent of smoke filling his nostrils, and made his way to the village square. A stone church stood on the other end of the square, likely the first building ever raised in Toricus, flames billowing from its roof. He thought the fires had been set no more than two or three hours ago. Certainly it could not have been very long, not if the orc he had killed outside the walls had been any indication. Likely the Qazaluuskan orcs had attacked the village and carried its people into captivity, and the orc that Ridmark had killed had been waiting to catch any stragglers…
“You!”
Ridmark whirled.
A man staggered from one of the smoldering buildings. He was about forty, with rough features and the thick arms and callused palms of a blacksmith. He wore a leather apron over his tunic, a graying beard shading his jaw and chin.
The man carried a massive iron hammer.
“It was you, wasn’t it?” said the blacksmith, pointing the hammer. “You brought the orcs here!”
Ridmark shook his head. “I haven’t visited Toricus for years.” The last time he had been a Swordbearer, riding a splendid horse and wearing fine armor, the soulblade Heartwarden at his belt. He supposed that he looked different now.
“I see the brand,” said the blacksmith. There was dried blood on his left temple. Ridmark suspected the man had taken a blow to the head and fallen unconscious, only to wake up to see his village in flames. “That’s the brand of a coward and an exile. I’ll wager you allied with the bone orcs to betray us!”
“No,” said Ridmark, raising his staff. “I just arrived. I will help you, if you wish, but I did not…”
“Die, traitor!” roared the blacksmith, raising his hammer over his head and rushing forward.
Ridmark tensed, preparing to dodge the blow. He would try to get the blacksmith off his feet, try to make him see reason. He didn’t want to kill the man…
The blacksmith went rigid, his eyes bulging, a strange flicker of ghostly blue flame snarling around him. For a moment Ridmark thought the blacksmith had caught fire, but the pale blue flame gave off no heat, and for that matter the blacksmith didn’t appear to be burning. Instead he seemed paralyzed, his muscles clenched, his teeth gritted, his eyes darting back and forth.
A pair of Qazaluuskan orcs appeared from between two burning houses. One looked a great deal like the orc Ridmark had killed outside of the village, adorned with the same war paint of white and black and carrying an axe. The second orc looked older, and wore more amulets. In his right hand he held a mummified human forearm, the fingers hooked into withered claws. Pale blue fire danced around the dead fingers.
The older Qazaluuskan orc was a wizard or a shaman, and the dead hand was a talisman of some kind. The stunned blacksmith had blocked their view of Ridmark, but that would only last another few seconds.
“Bind him,” said the older orc.
“He must have been hiding,” snarled the younger orc. “There may be others. We should…”
“Bind him,” snapped the older orc. “His blood and heart shall fuel our prayers to the Lord of Bones, and his body shall make a vessel for the god’s power…”
Ridmark stepped around the blacksmith, his staff in his right hand as he drew his dagger with his left hand.
Both Qazaluuskan orcs saw him.
“Take him!” roared the older orc, swinging his talisman towards Ridmark.
Ridmark sprinted forward and threw his dagger. He had never been a good shot with missile weapons, and his dagger missed the older orc entirely. Yet the orc ducked to avoid the dagger, and that kept the talisman’s power from reaching Ridmark. As the older orc straightened up, Ridmark swung his staff, all his strength and speed behind the blow. The staff hit the older orc in the face, his head snapping back with the sound of cracking bone, and Ridmark pivoted, whirling the staff to deflect the younger orc’s furious attack. The remaining orc went on the attack, axe pumping, and Ridmark retreated, jerking his staff back and forth to deflect the strikes. The orc had the momentum, and Ridmark had no choice but to retreat towards the burning church.
A bellow of fury filled his ears, and then the back of the Qazaluuskan orc’s head exploded in a spray of gore. The orc staggered, jerked to the right, and collapsed to the dusty ground.
The blacksmith stood over the corpse, breathing hard.
“Thanks,” said Ridmark, lowering his staff, though he kept his eyes on the massive hammer.
“Guess I was wrong about you,” said the blacksmith. “Suppose you weren’t working with the bone orcs after all.”
“Bone orcs?” said Ridmark.
“This lot.” He tapped the dead orc with his boot. “We always called them the bone orcs. Less of a mouthful than ‘Qazaluuskan’, or the Children of the Lord of Bones, which is what they call themselves. Plus, they like bones. Use them for their dark magic.”
“That one must have been a shaman or a wizard,” said Ridmark.
The blacksmith shook his head. “He wasn’t. Most of them know a little magic. The shamans are powerful, true, but they don’t hoard their spells the way the Mhorites do.” He offered a tight, mirthless grin behind his beard. “It’s what their Lord of Bones teaches. All come to his kingdom of death in the end, so they all may as well know magic.”
“Splendid,” said Ridmark. “Who are you?”
“Name’s Peter,” said the blacksmith. “I’m the village smith.” He looked at the burning ruins. “Suppose I was, anyway. Who are you?”
“Ridmark Arban,” said Ridmark. There was every chance that Peter would recognize the name. If he had been with the militia that had marched against the Mhalekites at Dun Licinia, he would almost certainly recognize Ridmark.
But if he did, he gave no sign of it.
“Suppose I ought to thank you for coming along when you did,” said Peter. “Else they would have marched me off to their barrow with everyone else.”
“What happened here?” said Ridmark.
Peter snorted. “What do you think? The bone orcs came. We’ve always known the bone orcs were in the Forest, but we kept out of their way. Then hundreds of them marched out of the Forest, saying the omens were correct…”
“Omens?” said Ridmark.
“They’re superstitious beyond belief,” said Peter. “Every single one of them checks the auguries before making any decision. They all these dice carved from bone, with all sorts of symbols on them. I guess their omens must have said it was time to attack Toricus. They killed anyone who fought back, rounded up the villagers, and herded t
hem into the Forest.” He rubbed his wounded temple. “I put up a fight, told my son and daughter to hide in the cellar. Took a blow to the head.” His face tightened into a grimace. “When I woke up, they were all gone. The bone orcs had taken them.”
“As slaves,” said Ridmark.
“Worse,” said Peter. A terrible despair set into his face. “As sacrifices. The bone orcs need blood and hearts and other organs for their necromancy. They will take the prisoners to the nearest barrow and kill them there.”
“I see,” said Ridmark. “What are you going to do now?”
Peter gave a weary shrug. “I will go to Castra Marcaine and ask Dux Gareth for help. Maybe he’ll send out Swordbearers and men-at-arms to teach the Qazaluuskan orcs a lesson. Maybe if I hasten, they can come in time to save my children.”
That was unlikely. It would take a week, maybe longer, for Peter to reach Castra Marcaine and return.
“How many Qazaluuskan orcs were there?” said Ridmark.
Peter shrugged. “At least fifty. Maybe more. They had a shaman with them, too. The bone orcs all know a little magic, but you can always tell the shamans. They carry these staffs topped with three skulls, and always smell of rotting flesh.” He shook his head. “I thank you for your aid, Ridmark Arban, but I must go. The sooner I get to Castra Marcaine, the sooner I can return.”
“Or,” said Ridmark, “we go after the captives right now.”
Peter snorted. “I’m one man with a hammer. That won’t do much good.”
“You won’t go alone,” said Ridmark. “I’ll help you.”
“You?” said Peter. “Why would you help me?”
“I have no wish to see anyone enslaved and slain by the Qazaluuskan orcs,” said Ridmark. In truth, he was not entirely sure why he was going to help Peter. Ridmark was no longer a knight of the realm or a Swordbearer, and so had no obligation to help anyone in Toricus. Yet he knew he could not turn away. It might well get him killed, but that would be no less than he deserved.
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