'What are you waiting for?' Tannar rumbled. 'Taste my steel and wake in Hades, overlander.'
Stryke laughed derisively. 'You talk a good fight, windbag. Now put your blade where your mouth is.'
They circled, each seeking a flaw in the other's guard.
Tannar eyed the combat going on all around. 'You'll pay for this with your life,' he vowed.
'So you said.' Stryke kept his tone insolent.
The goading had its effect. Tannar roared in with a swinging blow. Stryke checked it, the jarring impact he absorbed bearing witness to the strength of his opponent. He sent in a quick counterblow. The king blocked it. Now that their blades had met, the pair flowed into a regular exchange, attacking and defending by turn.
Tannar's style was all power and little subtlety, though that made him no less dangerous a foe. Stryke's technique was not dissimilar, but he had the advantage of much more experience, and was certainly nimbler. He also lacked Tannar's bluster, which showed itself in excessive feigning. Stryke laid on some extra provocation.
'You're soft,' he taunted, swatting aside a pass. 'Lording it over this rabble's spoilt you, Tannar. It's made you mushy as tallow.'
Bellowing, the troll charged at him, knife slashing the air, sword raking. Stryke braced himself and swiped, targeting the point where hilt met blade. He struck true. The sword flew from Tannar's hand, clattering beyond reach. He hung on to the dagger with its precious ornament and brought it to bear. But the shock of losing his sword had turned him leaden-footed. He hadn't a hope of besting Stryke with the knife and every move now was defensive.
The orc crowded him. Tannar began to back off. What he didn't know, but Stryke could see, was that Jup and a couple of grunts had got themselves behind him. Stryke hurried the pace of Tannar's retreat with a torrent of blows.
Jup seized his opportunity. He leapt on to the monarch's back and threw an arm around his neck. With his other hand he pressed a knife to Tannar's jugular. The dwarf's legs were clear of the ground and kicking. One of the grunts moved in and pointed his sword at the king's heart. Tannar thundered his impotent anger. Stryke stepped forward and prised the sacrificial dagger from his hand.
One or two trolls saw what was happening. Most were unaware and continued fighting.
'Tell them to stop,' Stryke demanded, 'on pain of your life.'
Tannar said nothing, eyes blazing defiance.
'Stop them or die,' Stryke repeated.
Jup applied pressure with his knife.
Reluctantly, Tannar shouted, 'Throw down your arms!'
Some of the trolls disengaged. Others kept on.
'Drop your weapons!' Tannar barked.
This time, all obeyed. Jup withdrew, but they kept the king well covered.
Stryke placed the ceremonial dagger at Tannar's throat. 'We're leaving. You're coming with us. If anybody gets in our way, you're dead. Tell them.'
The king nodded slowly. 'Do as they say!' he yelled.
'You won't need this stuff.' Stryke said, 'it'll slow us.' He snatched Tannar's crown and threw it to one side.
The impiety brought intakes of breath from many of the watching trolls. Stryke inspired more when he ripped off the king's elaborate robe and abandoned that in the dirt too.
He returned the dagger to Tannar's throat. 'Let's go.'
They began to move across the cavern, a knot of orcs and a dwarf surrounding the towering figure of their hostage. Dazed trolls stood by and let them pass. As the procession made its way to the main tunnel, stepping over enemy corpses, the rest of the band joined it. Several were lightly wounded. It seemed to Stryke that all the fallen were trolls.
At the tunnel mouth he yelled, 'Follow and he dies!'
Hurriedly they backed out of the chamber.
They made as good a pace as they could through the maze of unlit tunnels, their torches throwing huge, grotesque shadows on the walls.
'Nice timing,' Stryke told Jup. 'Tight, but nice.'
The dwarf smiled.
'How the hell did you get through the roof fall?' Alfray asked.
'We found another way,' Jup said. 'You'll see.'
They became aware of soft sounds behind them. Turning his head to squint into the darkness, Stryke could make out dim, grey shapes in the distance.
'They'll hunt you down,' Tannar promised. 'You'll die before reaching the overland.'
'Then you'll be joining us.' Stryke realised he was practically whispering. To the rest of the band, he ordered, 'Stay together, keep alert. Particularly the rearguard.'
'Don't think they need telling, chief,' Jup said.
A minute or two later they entered the tunnel where the fall took place. Twenty paces ahead it was shut off by weighty boulders and rubble. Before they got to the blockage they came to a crudely cut hole in the wall on their right. The wall was thin, of shale-like material, and another tunnel ran behind it. They began to clamber through. Tannar needed prodding.
'How did this come about, Jup?' Stryke asked.
'Funny what you can do when needs must. This is that dead-end tunnel running from the entrance. Had the band sound the walls with hatchets. We got lucky.'
The new passageway took them to another chamber, not unlike a pit, that lay below the shaft to the surface. There was weak light above. A couple of tense grunts were waiting by a brace of dangling ropes. Peering up the shaft, Stryke saw the heads of two more.
'Move it!' he ordered.
The first band members started to climb. Tannar was stubborn. They lashed a rope around him and hauled him up hand over hand. He cursed all the way. Stryke was the last to leave, the blade of the ceremonial dagger clamped in his teeth.
A small cave housed the shaft. Morning light flooded through its entrance. Stryke and the others came out of it blinking.
Tannar covered his eyes with a hand. 'This is pain to me!' he complained loudly.
'Put this on him,' Alfray suggested, passing over a cloth.
As the king was blindfolded and led off stumbling, Stryke held back and examined the sacrificial dagger. The star was attached to its hilt with a tight winding of twine. He took his own knife, cut through this and discarded the dagger.
The star was recognisable as such but differed from the other two, as they differed from each other. In the light he could see that it was dark blue in colour, whereas the first one they found was yellow, the second green. Like the others it consisted of a round central ball with spikes radiating from it, apparently randomly. It had four spikes; they had seven and five respectively. The same incredibly tough but unknown material had been used to make it. 'Come on, Stryke!' Alfray called.
He crammed the star into his belt pouch and jogged after them. The band headed for their base camp at speed, or at least as fast as they could with Tannar slowing them. They were greeted by Bhose and Nep, and neither grunt tried to disguise his relief.
'We have to get out of here, fast,' Stryke told them all. 'It might be day but I wouldn't put it past them to venture out for him.' He nodded at Tannar.
'Wait, Stryke,' Jup said.
'Wait? What do you mean, wait?'
'I've got to tell you something about Coilla and Haskeer.'
Stryke looked around. 'Where are they?'
'This isn't easy, Captain.'
'Whatever it is, just make it quick!'
'All right, short version. Haskeer went berserk, battered Reafdaw here and made off with the stars.'
'What?' Stryke felt as though he'd been poleaxed.
'Coilla went after him,' Jup continued. 'We haven't seen either since.'
'Went . . . went where?'
'North, far as we know.'
'As far as you know?'
'I had to make a decision, Stryke. It was either search for Coilla and Haskeer or try to get you and Alfray out of that warren. We couldn't do both. Rescuing you seemed the best use of resources.'
Stryke was absorbing the news. 'No . . . no, you're right.' His face darkened. 'Haskeer! That stupid, crazy bastard!'<
br />
'That illness, fever, whatever it was,' Alfray said, 'it had him acting oddly for days.'
'I never should have left him,' Stryke decided. 'That or taken the stars with me.'
'You're being too hard on yourself,' Jup ventured. 'Nobody knew he'd do something so lunatic.'
'I ought to have seen it coming. The way he behaved when I let him look at the stars, it was . . . deranged.'
'There's no point in breast-beating,' Alfray told him. 'What do we do about it?'
'We go after them, of course. I want us ready to leave here in two minutes.'
'What about him?' Jup asked, indicating Tannar.
'He stays with us for now. Collateral.'
The grunts broke camp at speed and the horses were readied. Tannar was manhandled on to one and his hands lashed to the pommel on its saddle. The cache of pellucid was divided up among the band members, as it had been before the underground sortie. Alfray found the Wolverines' banner and reclaimed it.
As Stryke moved off at the head of the band his head buzzed with possibilities. All of them bad.
4
Everything seemed so clear to Haskeer now, so obvious. The fog that clouded his mind had lifted and he knew exactly what needed to be done.
Spurring his horse, he entered another valley that would take him further north-east. Or at least he hoped it would. In truth his new clarity didn't extend to all his senses, and he was a little hazy about the precise direction in which Cairnbarrow lay. But he pushed on none the less.
For the hundredth time his hand went instinctively to his belt pouch, where he had the strange objects the warband called stars. Mobbs, the gremlin scholar who had told the Wolverines something about them, said their proper name was instrumentalities. Haskeer preferred stars. It was easier to remember.
He didn't know what the objects were or what they were supposed to do, any more than Stryke and the others did. But although he couldn't understand the stars' purpose, something had happened. Something that made him feel he had a kind of union with them.
They sang to him.
Sang wasn't the right word. It was the nearest he could come up with for what he heard in his head. He might have thought of it as whispering or chanting or the faint sound of an unknown musical instrument, and would have been just as inaccurate. So he settled for singing.
He could hear them doing it now, even while they were in his pouch and out of sight. The things that looked like a hatchling's idea of stars were vocalising at him. Their language, if that's what it was, meant nothing to Haskeer, yet he caught its gist. It told him everything would be all right once he got them to where they belonged. The balance would be restored. Things would go back to being the way they were before the Wolverines went renegade.
All he had to do was take the stars to Jennesta. He expected her to be so grateful she'd pardon the band. Perhaps even reward them. Then Stryke and the other Wolverines would appreciate what he'd had to do, and be grateful.
Leaving the valley, he came to a trail. It seemed to run the way he wanted to go, so he joined it. The track climbed to a rise and he urged his already lathering horse upward to the crest.
When he reached the top he saw a group of riders coming the other way. They were four in number. And they were humans.
They were all dressed in black, and each was more than adequately armed. One of them had the disgusting facial growth their kind called a beard.
Haskeer was too close to avoid being seen, or to turn back without them easily catching him. But in his present mood he didn't care about being seen. His only thought was that it was bad enough them being humans, worse that they were in his path. He wasn't going to tolerate anything that delayed him.
The humans looked taken aback at running into a lone orc in the middle of nowhere. They glanced around suspiciously for sign of others as they galloped towards him. Haskeer kept to the trail and didn't slacken pace. He only stopped when they blocked him, their mounts in a semicircle not much more than a sword's length away.
They took in his weather-beaten, craggy features, the crescent-shaped sergeant's tattoos on his cheeks, the string of snow leopard teeth at his throat.
He stared back, evenly, hard-faced.
The bearded human seemed to be their leader. He said, 'He's one of them all right.' His companions nodded.
'Ugly bastard, ain't he?' a clean-shaven one opined.
They laughed.
Haskeer heard them over the stars' beguiling song. Its urgency couldn't be denied.
'Are there more of your band around, orc?' the bearded one demanded.
'Just me. Now move.'
That set them laughing again.
Another clean-shaven had his say. 'It's you that's moving, back to our master. Dead or alive.'
'Don't think so.'
The bearded rider leaned in to Haskeer. 'You sub-humans are lower than swine when it comes to head work. Try and understand this, stupid. In that saddle or over it, you're coming with us.'
'Stand aside. I'm in a hurry.'
The leader's expression turned flint-like. 'I'm not telling you again.' His hand went to his sword.
'Your horse is better than mine,' Haskeer decided. 'I'll be taking it.'
This time there was a pause before they laughed, and it sounded less assured.
Haskeer gently tugged the reins of his mount, turning it slightly. He slipped his feet from the stirrups. A warm feeling began radiating from the pit of his stomach. He recognised the sign of an imminent frenzy and welcomed it like an old friend.
The bearded human glared. 'I'm going to cut your tongue out, you freak.' He started to draw his sword.
Haskeer leapt at him. He struck square, slamming into the human's chest. Locked together, they plunged from the horse's other side and hit the ground, Haskeer on top. Taking the brunt of the fall, the human was knocked senseless. Haskeer rained punches on him, quickly rendering his face a bloody, pulpy mess.
The other riders were yelling. One jumped down from his mount and rushed in with sword drawn. Haskeer rolled aside from his lifeless victim, scrambling to his feet just as the swordsman launched an attack. Backing off fast from the slashing blade, Haskeer wrenched free his own sword, levelling it to deflect the blows.
As they duelled, the two mounted riders jockeyed to take swipes at him. Dodging their blows, and the careening horses, Haskeer concentrated on the nearest threat. He drove forward, bombarding the human with a relentless series of hefty strikes. Soon he had his opponent in defensive mode, all his energy directed to fending off Haskeer's onslaught.
Ten seconds later Haskeer went into a feint, skirted an ill-judged swing and brought his blade down on the human's forearm. Still gripping the sword, the severed limb portion fell away. His stump pumping blood, the screaming human pitched headlong beneath the hooves of a rearing horse.
While its rider fought to disentangle his mount, Haskeer went for the other horseman. His method was straightforward. Snatching the reins he pulled down with all his strength, as though tugging a bell rope to warn of invasion. The rider was hurled from his saddle and smashed into the earth. Delivering a hearty kick to his head, Haskeer vaulted on to the animal's back. Bringing the horse about, he faced the last opponent.
Spurs biting into his mount's flanks to impel it forward, the black-garbed human met him. Haskeer engaged his whipping sword. They hacked at each other savagely, chopping, bludgeoning, trying to find a way through to flesh, all the while fighting to control their wheeling horses.
At length, Haskeer's stamina proved the greater. His continuous battering found less and less resistance. Then his strikes began to evade the human's guard. One scored, raking the man's arm and bringing a pained cry. Haskeer kept on with new-found vigour, dealing unstoppable passes, hacking like a crazed thing. The human's guard vanished. A well-aimed slash hewed inches deep into chest tissue. He toppled.
Haskeer steadied his new horse and surveyed the corpses. He felt no particular triumph at overcoming the odds;
he was more irritated at having been held up. Wiping the gory blade on his sleeve, he returned it to its sheath. Yet again his hand unconsciously went to the belt pouch.
He was reorienting himself, figuring which way to go now, when his attention was caught by movement at the corner of his eye. Looking west, he saw another party of humans, also dressed in black, galloping in his direction. He reckoned there were thirty or forty of them.
Even in his battle-crazed state he knew he couldn't fight a mob of that size single-handed. He urged the horse forward and fled.
The stars filled his mind with their singing.
On a hilltop a quarter of a mile away, another group of humans watched the tiny figure riding across the plains, and a band of their fellows pursuing it.
Foremost of the watchers was a lofty, slender individual, dressed like his Uni companions in head-to-toe black. Unlike them, he wore a tall, round, black hat. The garment was a sign of his authority, though none present would have questioned his leadership whether he wore it or not.
His face was best described as resolute, and showed no hint of ever having been burdened with a smile. Greying whiskers adorned an acute chin, the mouth was a bloodless slit, his eyes were dark and brooding.
Kimball Hobrow's mood, not unusually, was apocalyptic.
'Why do You forsake me, Lord?' he ranted skyward. 'Why let the ungodly, inhuman vermin go unpunished for defying Your servant?'
He turned to his followers, his inner elite known as custodians, and berated them. 'Even the simple task of hunting down the heathen monsters is beyond you! You have the Creator's blessing through me, His worldly disciple, yet still you fail!'
They avoided his gaze, sheepishly.
'Be certain that I can take back what I have bestowed in His exalted name!' he threatened. 'Return what is rightfully the Lord's, and mine! Go forth now and smite the depraved sub-humans! Let them feel the wrath!'
His followers ran for their horses.
Down on the plain, the orc renegade and the humans chasing him were almost lost from sight.
Hobrow sank to his knees. 'Lord, why am I cursed with such fools?' he implored.
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