The Iron Wolves

by Andy Remic

  That’s it. That’s what she reminded him of.

  A snake. A big, white, albino snake – in the shell of a woman.

  And the best way to kill a snake was to remove its head.

  He eased forward in total silence, the sword lifting a little as he readied himself for the killing stroke.

  “Better leave this one to us, Zorkai,” came a low, husky voice from the gloom at the back of the tent, just behind him.

  Zorkai blinked, as his eyes adjusted, and he saw… four soldiers, and yet they were not soldiers. Even as he watched they were changing, their skin darkening, hairs like iron bristles starting to ease across their skin.

  Orlana suddenly rolled from her sheets, completely naked, crouched on all fours, and her mouth folded back open until her whole head was nothing more than one huge fang-rimmed hole. She screamed at Zorkai, and the blast picked him up, stripped fat streamers of skin from his flesh, and blasted him backwards through the wall of the tent.

  She turned on the Iron Wolves, face rolling back to a rough approximation of a woman like melted wax down the soft flanks of a candle; and she grinned at them. Slowly, she unfolded from the crouch and looked down her nose.

  “Welcome. I’ve been expecting you.”

  “Didn’t look that way to me,” growled Dek. “Looked like you were asleep, snoring and having dreams of happy slaughter.” His voice was thick, rolling slowly around his gradually emerging fangs. His face, also, was changing, as progressively a muzzle pushed its way from the lower portion of his face. And when he spoke, his teeth were no longer white, but the silver grey of polished iron. “Easy meat for the swords of the Iron Wolves.”

  “I have been expecting you, because my splice failed to neutralise your threat. And after that dead fool Dalgoran revealed your existence to me through the lines, and illustrated exactly what you did to Morkagoth… Well. I have been awaiting this time. This meeting. With some relish, in fact.” She smiled, showing perfect teeth.

  “I like it when a murdering bitch acknowledges her impending time for death,” said Zastarte. His curls were no longer curls, but a great dark mane. His eyes were larger, had shifted more around the sides of his skull, and were the gleaming colour of iron. His arms were longer, and thicker, and his fingers had turned into claws.

  “You carry the old magick in your bones,” said Orlana, words almost a whisper. “Which is impressive. Eain doam shalsoar. The Art of the Shapeshifter. And yet you are not as dangerous as you think… You are merely kittens, mewling helplessly for their mother. You are newborns, without true control of your power. Indeed, without any understanding of the power you possess. You think the shapeshifter is simply about becoming another creature?” She laughed, a short cruel bark as the Iron Wolves tensed for battle. “But then, this is no time for debate. Or education.” Her eyes gleamed and her voice accelerated in volume. “TUBODA!”

  The huge splice was there in an instant, appearing through the silk tent flaps to loom over Orlana protectively, like a mighty lion over its cub. Compared to the others, he was truly huge, his muzzle bent, fangs and claws twisted and broken, rippling with huge muscles and a jaw and bite bigger than any puny lion.

  “This is Tuboda, my Prime,” said Orlana sweetly. “He will explain things to you. He will… educate you.”

  Tuboda roared, head lowering and moving from left to right and back, a massive scream of air flowing back through the thick fur of the Iron Wolves. Now they dropped their weapons as slowly their bodies completed the transformation, as they shapeshifted from human to… not wolves, exactly, but some nightmare artist’s impression of a cross between wolf and demon. The curse was complete.

  “Dek,” said Kiki through a muzzle thick with fangs.

  Dek and Tuboda leapt at the same time, hammering together above Orlana’s bed sheets with a mighty smack of impacting flesh and muscle and bone. Amidst savage snarling fangs they snapped and slashed at one another, great limbs wrapping around like two big cats wrestling. Tuboda’s claws slashed, cutting a long line down Dek’s flank and he howled, ducking a swipe of twisted paw as his own claws raked Tuboda’s mighty chest. Claws flashed and slashed, and Dek stepped back, lowered a shoulder and charged Tuboda, but the splice saw the move, side-stepped and grabbed Dek by the scruff as he charged past. With toss of his head, he threw Dek from the tent and charged suddenly at Kiki, Zastarte and Trista, his fangs snapping, claws slashing, and for a moment everything became a chaos of razor fangs and flailing limbs, lethal claws and powerful thudding blows. Tuboda was fearsome indeed, smashing Trista aside, then Zastarte, and aiming himself straight for Kiki’s throat, huge expanded lion’s muzzle chewing and straining… Kiki leapt at him, her own head smashing Tuboda’s aside as Dek appeared back in the tent, grabbed the brazier between both claws, lifted it and hurled it at Tuboda. A raft of glowing coals hit the splice, igniting its fur, which went up in a sudden blaze, setting fire to the tent, which itself went up within a heartbeat. Flames screamed through the tent and the Iron Wolves rolled from the blaze, out into the cold night, and waited… Tuboda came charging out, fur on fire, roaring an attack straight for Kiki’s throat. They slammed together, going down in a snarling hammering smashing ball of violence. And then Orlana strode from the flames, naked, unmarked, head held high, a smile on her lips. Dek launched at her, claws slashing for her throat, but she shifted with a subtle movement, and punched him in the heart sending him accelerating across the rough ground to roll over twenty or thirty times before coming to a halt in the dust.

  As Kiki fought for her life against Tuboda, their claws raking at one another, heads smashing together, fangs seeking to get a hold on the other’s throat to deliver that killing blow, so Zastarte and Trista, working as a team, attacked Orlana. Hardly seeming to move, she punched them from the air, one then the other, massive blows of energy that sent them flailing across the dry earth in ploughed furrows of mud.

  With a roar Dek charged Tuboda’s side, knocking him from his dominant position above Kiki, and Dek’s muzzle drove deep into Tuboda’s flesh, snapping ribs and chewing through meat in search of the beating heart within. Tuboda screamed, great mouth lifting to roar at the velvet heavens, and Dek pulled out, snarling chewing muzzle dragging free muscle and tendons and splinters of bone. Tuboda spun around, but Kiki leapt on his back, jaws fastening over his head and biting down with all the might of her iron fangs. A huge chunk of Tuboda’s head came away with a crunch, and Kiki spat out a rock-sized lump of fur and skull and brain. Tuboda hit the ground with a thud, and lay there, panting, great tawny eyes watching them. Dek’s claws slashed Tuboda’s throat, ripping it free trailing skin and muscle. Blood pumped out, staining the soil. In a great shuddering spasm, Tuboda died.

  The Iron Wolves padded to stand together, facing Orlana. She was smiling at them. “You cannot stand against me,” she said, simply.

  “We will try,” growled Kiki.

  “The prophecy said ‘Wolves unite’. You are not united. There is one missing. One buried beneath the fortress.”

  “This is true.” Kiki’s iron eyes fixed on Orlana. “What do you want here, Orlana? Why attack our people? Why invade our land?”

  Orlana laughed, a rich peal. “I don’t want your pathetic country. I want to take my army through the Pass of Splintered Bones and… beyond. I have my own agenda. One that does not concern you.”

  “But on the route, you will slaughter thousands?”

  “The Mud-Pits need to be fed if I want more mud-orcs. And I will always need more mud-orcs. They serve my purpose, Kiki. You are powerful indeed, Iron Wolves. If you joined with me, if you helped me with my cause, you would be very well rewarded.”

  “I do not think so,” said Kiki, head lowering.

  “Dalgoran cursed you well, with the magick of the Equiem.”

  “It is a curse we will lift. When we have killed you.”

  Orlana laughed again, that beautiful, tinkling sound that cut through the grind of savage battle like a diamond blade cutting glass.
“I am a denizen of the Furnace,” she said, the smile falling from her face and her dark eyes fixing on Kiki. “I cannot be killed.”

  “Let’s find out,” said Kiki.

  Kiki, Dek, Zastarte and Trista spread out, growling. Each was bigger than any wolf, their fur like iron bristles, their teeth silver iron, their claws razor daggers, their huge shaggy heads towering above heavily muscled bodies. Moonlight glinted from their metallic fur, and their saliva drooled like mercury spools.

  They charged, as one, but Orlana lifted both hands and her eyes closed for a moment. There was no sound, no bright fire, no explosions or sparks or screams. Just a silent pulse of energy, of Equiem magick funnelled up from the bedrock of the mountains and channelled at the Iron Wolves. They were picked up and sent spinning away, end over end, to hit the ground hard, rolling over in the dust and the mud, stunned and bruised. They leapt up, snarling, and widened their circle, charging in at Orlana from different directions. Orlana spun like a ballerina, both hands outstretched, and again the Iron Wolves were blasted away to lie in heaps, battered and stunned. If they had been human, they would have been broken and crushed into an easy death.

  Across the battlefield, where the mud-orcs marched and the units of splice waited for their chance to rend and tear and murder, something was happening under the light of the full moon. There was a disturbance, as something slammed through their lines with an unstoppable force. The mud-orcs seemed to notice little, as they were advancing on an enemy fortress and not expecting the enemy to be coming the other way; and, as events became clear, it was obvious the creature appeared – superficially at least – like that of a advancing splice.

  Narnok, now changed to an Iron Wolf, charged between the ranks of advancing mud-orcs, his muzzle low to the ground, his powerful legs pumping, his iron-dark eyes seeing everything with a ghostly aura. He spied the mud-orcs, the splice, the war tents with the central one still roaring with flames – and there was Orlana and there were the other Wolves and a connection rioted through him, and he accelerated yet more, claws pounded across frozen grass and soil, for he had the message and he had to get the message to Kiki…

  Splice seemed suddenly aware of him, and charged at Narnok. Snarling, with eyes full of rage, he shouldered them out of the way, sending them squealing and wailing into fires and one another. Closer he came, closer and closer. He watched Orlana spinning, sending out pulses of raw energy and he felt them and absorbed them for he carried the power of the Equiem. He carried the magick of Desekra.

  “KIKI!” he bellowed, as the Iron Wolves gathered for another charge.

  “Join with us!”

  “No, that is not the way! I was trapped under the tunnel and Desekra joined with me; filled me with her Knowledge! You are our captain because you are shamathe, you are in tune with Nature and the elements and the Old Magick! You must use the power of your youth, of your childhood… think back, travel back, regress… you are not like us, because for you this is not some magick imposed curse. You were born like this. You are shamathe, one of the Old Shaman, and you command the power of the World Tree!”

  Orlana screamed, the pitch so high it could not be heard by human ears and then dropping fast so it instantly rendered anything within a league’s radius temporarily deaf. Kiki’s mouth had dropped open, and for a moment everything seemed to click into place. It was like finding the final piece of a puzzle.

  Desekra, Dalgoran and the Equiem had not cursed her.

  No.

  She had been born this way. It was part of her bloodline. Part of her descendancy.

  She was a shamathe.

  One of the Old Protectors.

  With the power of Nature in the palms of her hands… She did not have cancer, she did not have a tumour expanding alongside her heart. No. That growth was her second heart. The heart of the magicker. The heart of the Old Shaman.

  Orlana’s scream was blasting out, and the Iron Wolves were cowering; in fact, the battle had halted with the suddenness of a lightning strike. Mud-orcs had covered their ears, which were bleeding, slammed dead in their tracks; the splice were writhing in the dirt with blood pouring from every orifice; and every living organism on the vast plain before Desekra Fortress was disabled and down and slammed to earth…

  Except for Kiki.

  She walked forward, slowly, cowed a little by the power that flowed through every atom of her body, and the vast and profound understanding which surged through her, like blood in veins, sap in trees, spirits in the wind… like magick through the heart of the leylines that criss-crossed the world.

  The whole of creation and its energy opened up to her.

  And she finally understood the true nature of Desekra Fortress.

  It lived. It breathed. She lived. She breathed. She needed to be saved, before this savage horde born of evil and sacrifice and murder and death took her and spilt so much blood it would stain her stones for an eternity; she would never be clean again. Not because of death on her walls, but because of the nature of the enemy. Because of the way they had been summoned, created through genocide, born through an act of pure evil.

  “I stand before you,” said Kiki, looking up defiantly at Orlana, the Horse Lady.

  “Kill her!” screamed Orlana, pointing, but the splice and mud-orcs stayed down, and she was alone on the plain of battle. She was alone in the world, as she had been alone in the Furnace and the Halls of Chaos.

  “You cannot kill me,” said Kiki, softly, and slowly the magick of the shapeshift began to regress; the fur shrunk, her limbs returned to human proportions, her muzzle retracted, the claws and fangs of iron disappeared. Kiki was a woman again. Kike was a girl again, with the strong, rhythmic beat of two hearts in her chest. The beat of the human, and the beat of the mystic.

  “Then we have a stalemate,” said Orlana.

  Kiki tilted her head. “You think so?”

  “No weapons of iron or steel or wood or fire can harm me. You have neither the power nor the understanding of the magick that flows through your veins to be able to do anything worthwhile; and we stand here facing one another. Join me, Kiki! Join me, and together we shall rule not just this world, but we shall conquer the Furnace. We shall rule the tombworld together as well. Together, we will be unstoppable. Like no force this universe has ever seen. Liken nothing since the creation of the stars!” Orlana’s face was wide and open and totally beautiful; perfectly fired porcelain. Perfectly created flesh.

  Kiki stared at her. “No, Orlana. For you are born of pain and hatred and bitterness and despair. I have felt those emotions, yes, but ultimately I was born of pleasure and love and honour and kindness. I could never be like you. I could never rule alongside you.”

  “Wretched child!” hissed Orlana, stooping a little, eyes flashing with lightning, hands with their long perfect white fingers curling into claws. “I will cast you into oblivion! We shall see how your magick serves you there!” and her arms came back and she seemed to grow, to stretch upwards towards the heavens, her whole body elongating, her arms and legs stretching out as her eyes flashed silver with stored lightning and her fingers became long jagged silver swords.

  Kiki stood her ground, staring up, as Orlana mouthed the most powerful incantation ever seen on the face of the world. The skies grew dark, huge towering black clouds scudding across the sky as lightning flickered and the mountains groaned and rumbled and clashed like titans at war.

  Orlana screamed, and fire erupted from her mouth, smoke from nostrils and eyes and ears and quim. She screamed, and both arms came together with a thunderous smash, both fists joining into one meld of flesh and bone and sinew as dark power and dark magick poured from her, channelled from the roots of the world; from the Beginning. From the Equiem.

  Kiki turned, looking down at her frozen, pain-riddled friends: the Iron Wolves.

  Then she glanced back at Orlana as the magick hit her, and she opened her mouth and swallowed the pulse. Her teeth clacked shut.

  Orlana blinked.

>   Kiki smiled.

  “Now it’s my turn,” she said. And she lifted her head and stared at the sky, where red streaks smashed through the black of night. Then she stared at the towering vast range, the Mountains of Skarandos. And then her eyes came to rest on Desekra Fortress, the creation of a Great Mage: Esekra. She reached out a hand towards the fortress and felt the magick stored there, as if in a great battery. This was a Well of the Elder Shamathe. A Well of the Equiem.

  Words would not do it.

  Nor screams, nor tears, nor blood, nor sacrifice.

  Slowly, Kiki lifted her hand. And she smiled. No. Kiki did not lift her hand. Kikellya Mandasayard Dalgorana du Tebija lifted her hand, and she summoned the mountains and the roots of the world, she summoned the lightning and the power of the storm, she summoned the forests of Vagandrak and the spirits of the dead. The world gave a sigh. The mountains groaned and trembled. Desekra Fortress shook.

  Orlana stared at her in disbelief. “No,” she said, holding out a hand. “No, it cannot be! You cannot do this!”

  “But I can,” said Kiki, and her clenched fists came together, and then came apart again, and it was like the dying of worlds. The earth began to violently shake and she felt both hearts beating as one, and power surged through her, she became a channel, she became a portal, and yet she controlled the portal and the ground and mountains shook and a roaring grew from out of nowhere, vast and titanic and overwhelming. The whole world and the mountains groaned and moved. An earthquake took the Pass of Splintered Bones, and the Desekra Fortress, and the Mountains of Skarandos, and the Plains of Zakora, and began to hammer them in a clenched fist, hard and fast, and it built and built and built until the world was buzzing, humming, a mammoth charge of non-discharged power. And Kiki stared at Orlana, and she screamed, and her mouth became a vast white hole, blinding and searing like white fire which radiated out as the earthquake increased and built and roared and the whole world was shaking, wailing, dying. And the plain before the Desekra Fortress started to collapse with mammoth roars and a grinding of rock and a smashing of mountains collapsing, and suddenly a huge pit opened up and swallowed a thousand mud-orcs screaming down into the fire and churning rocks and wrath. More pits opened up, and jagged lines ran from the Sanderlek wall of Desekra right up to the war tents of Orlana the Changer, and Kiki stood with arms above her head, foaming at the mouth, her eyes rolled back in her head showing nothing but fresh new-forged silver iron. The earthquake smashed across the plain, eating the army of mud-orcs with a feral mouth of collapsing rock and dirt and fire. The splice were taken dragging screaming and clawing into the bowels of the opened world. Fire billowed up in high columns as tall as the mountains. The sky went blacker than black. The stars were put out.