by Rosie Scott
The orc paid little attention to his wounded arm, his mind already set on ridding himself of the zombie defender. He lifted the corpse up in the air by its cranium before slamming it into the forest floor headfirst. The skull exploded like a grape, unleashing a geyser of corroding brains. Bits of bone ricocheted off the surrounding trees like pebbles of marrow.
Weaponless, the orc spun to me and threw a punch. I managed to hold my ground as it shattered my shield. I situated my scythe on my belt and summoned magic in both palms. Using the excess life force running through my veins, I refreshed protections for me and the nearest minions. Then, since this orc had been such a nuisance, I raised the corpse he'd just defeated to piss him off.
Tendrils slithered over moist mosses to do my bidding, finding the bits of shattered skull and encapsulating them in a cool hug. Pieces of bone rolled over blood splattered plant-life to reunite. The mercenary corpse rose, leaving its unnecessary brain matter on the forest floor and shambling forth with a skull that now appeared made of as much black magic as it was bone.
An angered huff burst from the orc's nostrils as he saw his victory was short-lived. I smirked in response.
The orc flew at me with a flurry of punches. I continually backed away, leeching from him with both hands, satisfaction filling me as I watched his movements slow. Minions chased after him like scavenger animals, drawing blood from multiple new wounds. I directed the dead to target his legs, and they loyally complied. With one dramatic sweep of a scimitar, a Naharan corpse dealt the incapacitating blow across the back of the orc's knee, just between shredded leather armor. The brute fell face-first to the forest floor, still heaving enraged breaths.
I dispelled my magic and grabbed my scythe once more. I walked up to the orc's right side, avoiding his only good arm as he tried to snatch my boot with it. With a cry of adrenaline and effort, I brought the scythe down in a curved arc, swinging the blade between his vulnerable throat and the ground. Blood audibly drained with the cut, but he only gurgled on it. I put a boot to his upper back and jerked the blade upward, cutting through the trachea. Wheezing joined the bubbling blood until the orc finally went still.
Still jittery with a high, I scanned my surroundings. At this point, the cabin was utterly destroyed. Scorching flames reached toward the canopies like lost souls surrounded by the black smoke of hellish misery. Blackened logs glowed with neon embers, pieces flaking off like burnt snowfall. A cloud of smoke so dense it appeared tangible rolled out of the door and windows, much of it getting trapped under the canopies and billowing out like smog.
The cabin was beyond repair, but if I finished the orcs off I could at least save the remnants of my army. While the corpses I raised outnumbered the orcs three to one, the brutes proved stronger. Some orcs lie dead or dying, but many more defeated minions surrounded them. This didn't concern me; as long as I had foes, I had power. I released a new bout of necromantic tendrils at my boots and defeated corpses and recent orc casualties rose to fight together. As the living orcs noticed their kin rising as foes, some went into berserker rages. It seemed different orcs had different triggers for it.
Only one orc remained an hour later. His blood-red irises scanned over me and my approaching minions. As willing as he was to fight despite impossible odds, he seemed to consider retreat.
“You think you win,” he barked, pointing at the walking corpses of his kin. “But this just pittance. You think forest yours?” He laughed. “We bring army. And friends.” He pointed east. “Friends from mountain, friends from cave. We squash you like bug.”
I huffed. “So why didn't you?”
The orc snorted and backed away another few steps. “We not prepared. When we prepared, you lose. You not respect orc strength? We make you.”
I raised an eyebrow. “If retreating from battle deserves respect, consider me your greatest admirer.”
An absolutely bewildered look distorted his features like he hadn't understood the logic of the insult. Clearly, intelligence was uncommon among orcs.
I watched the orc run off through the forest, noting his eastern direction before turning to the cabin. The home that had been mine for a year and a half was in shambles. The timber of its roof caved in, making the structure look more like a gigantic campfire. I collapsed lazily on the forest floor with a huff and dug into my satchel for dried fish. With one hundred corpses gathered behind me, we watched the cabin burn together while I ate a meal. Morning turned to afternoon, then afternoon turned to an evening cloudy with smoke. The cabin burned throughout all of it until it was little more than a smear of char.
“Well,” I announced, standing up and wiping my hands together to clear them of crumbs, “having a house was nice while it lasted, I guess.”
The corpses turned their hollowed gazes to me, waiting for orders. Many of them were barely held together by black magic; the brutality of the orcs tore them apart.
“You've seen better days,” I commented. The ruined corpses didn't look amused at my awful jest. “Guess we'll clean up here and relocate.”
We. Who am I kidding? I'll be the only one working. I chuckled dryly at my internal musings and dispelled the corpses. They returned to their eternal rest as I sifted through the ashes of everything I once owned.
Twenty-three
79th of Red Moon, 415
The whole world was against me, and my only response was to survive.
The assassins seemed limitless, like the underground placed little value on the lives of its people. I killed many assassins per season, and sometimes they came one right after the other within the span of a fortnight. Did this mean multiple people hired them? Perhaps many Icilic hired the Alderi to come after me because a lethal combination of overwhelming gold and racism were common in their people. Maybe Sirius or even Kenady turned to the Alderi since other options weren't working, just to find the assassins weren't working either.
Not that the Alderi were a weak threat—quite the opposite. Mercenaries were predictable, and because Sera officially commissioned them they only used legal options of warfare. Contrarily, the Alderi were unpredictable, utilized the mysterious lesser magics at ease, and each assassin had her own method of assassinating that differed from the last. Some attacked during the day, but most at night. Some could turn invisible—others couldn't. Some didn't use magic at all.
The assassin who came closest to killing me wielded a small black crossbow and shot me in the temporal bone of my skull. She meant to shoot my eye socket and would have succeeded if it weren't for me turning my head unknowingly. Still, the wound nearly killed me simply because it was distracting. With the bone cracked, I had to fight her with an ear-shattering headache while worrying my brain would swell. While I stumbled around drunkenly, I'd managed to surround her with corpses. Though the bone healed fine, the injury stayed swollen for a fortnight, and I had an unexplained bout of fever. In further battles, the undead assassin wielded her crossbow like a melee weapon. All archers did upon death; it seemed necromancy did not allow the dead enough intelligence to aim and shoot.
Because assassins constantly pursued me, my sleep suffered. No time was safe to rest, especially now that I had no home. The cabin fire destroyed all the belongings I hadn't kept on my person, so I lost even my tent and bed. I became accustomed to scattering noisy debris around myself in the hopes I would wake from a snapping twig, but the Alderi were extraordinarily stealthy. As an extra precaution, I left two corpses reanimated while I slept. Twice I jolted awake because the corpses sensed a pursuer and made enough noise. The Alderi made the best minions for such a job; their natural agility during life carried over in death.
The mercenary threat lessened at the same time the orc menace grew heavier. Now that orcs swarmed out of the woodwork due to their random declaration of war against me, the two groups likely clashed unwittingly throughout the forest while searching for the same target. I noted this fact for one reason in particular: if I ever needed more corpses to collect, I would head northwest. Since
the mercenaries came from Sera, I'd likely find their bodies in that direction. The orcs didn't tend to leave survivors, after all, and some didn't even leave bodies. One orcish war party I bested had been dragging mercenary bodies east to their tribe to butcher for meat.
The orcs loathed me simply for being powerful and existing in a forest they considered theirs. During our battles I heard them mention their “war” with me that they'd evidently declared after I had the gall to survive their first attack. If they wanted to treat our spat like a war, so would I. I figured the orcs came from somewhere with a resemblance to society. Like in a true war, I could stop staying on the defensive and prepare an assault. I could attack and seize the location of an orcish tribe if I found it. With an undead army that always teetered around five hundred strong considering destroyed skeletons and new 'recruits,' I had the resources to succeed. I wanted a sturdy location to defend that was already built since I knew little about construction.
Just four years in to my pledge to rise as a powerful necromancer, I'd already made myself a force to be reckoned with. Once more I looked to my inspiration of Valerius the Undying, and I realized how in some respects I'd surpassed him. Though I stayed in the forest, it certainly wasn't as safe from attack as the Island of Valerius had been. The attacks came in waves for both of us, but Valerius likely had advance notice from his tower. Given how slow navies traveled he surely didn't face foes as often as I had to. That I'd survived even this long on my own and against ever-evolving odds was impressive.
The day a regiment of the Seran Army launched an assault on me would be the day I considered myself a success whether or not I lived through the battle. Though I wished for nothing more than to see Kenady Urien dead before my own demise, I hadn't seen the coward since he fled after mistakenly thinking he'd killed me two years earlier. I evolved past the sentimentalism of youth due to his incessant cruelty, for his destruction of everything I once held dear caused me to lose faith in humanity. If my ever-pondering mind stopped to think about it, I hated those changes about myself. The bitterness and distrust I held toward people that subsequently corroded otherwise wonderful memories of my parents and Kai was not only a heavy burden to bear, it felt like an awful flaw. A necessary one since it was birthed from deep scars left by the cuts of experience and cruelty, but a flaw nonetheless.
Thus, denial became my favorite companion. Denial felt like a luxurious and familiar bed; I'd visited it often and it was always so comfortable to dwell in, but my greatest fear was having to wake up.
Staying focused on one goal at a time helped to keep my mind off such philosophical musings. For now, that goal was just ahead in the form of an orcish fort.
It'd taken long enough to find. The cabin collapsed a year and a half ago, yet the orc stronghold was the first structure I'd come across since. Finding it was hard enough; the orcs didn't seem to rely on fortifications to live. Following them through the forest often got me nowhere, for they could smell the meat of my corpses from a distance. Even if I did successfully trail them, they never seemed to have a destination picked out. Orcish war parties would often roam just looking for a fight. By this point, I'd killed countless orcs simply because I'd followed them in meandering circles until finally growing impatient enough to instigate a fight. Then I'd have to start from scratch, searching the forest for signs of an orc settlement while taking the time to bring my corpses with me. The only positive out of the ordeal was that far fewer civilians wandered the forest compared to two years ago, so I didn't have to be as careful when traveling with my minions.
In either case, finding this fort was happenstance. I'd started coming across multiple orcish war parties per day, which seemed a lot even considering their agitated state. As I surmised, there was a reason for it. In the darkness of nightfall, I studied the fort with the intention on seizing it while crouched in the shadow of a large pine.
Moonlight spilled over the needled canopy, glowing over the orc stronghold like a beacon. The sharpened points of a wooden palisade were a collection of incisors around the open mouth of the fort, where grunts and segmented sentences echoed roughly. The shadows of raised, haphazardly built guard towers rose above the wall in four places, where human and goblin slaves watched over the fort with bows, their heavy collars connected to chains that secured them to their posts. Firelight flickered off the smoke haze that rose over the palisade from a cooking spit. A deep grumble sounded out to the right before a rumbling expulsion of gas.
“He need horse!” shouted an orc through the wall.
“No horse here!” another yelled back, just as angry. The simple-minded natures of the orcs would have amused me if they weren't such magnificently challenging foes in battle.
“Smell bad,” one barked.
“He fart,” another replied. “He need horse. Human meat stale.”
“Maybe he sick. Smells really bad.”
I wasn't sure whether to smile or mourn my dying brain cells.
“You smell bad and you not sick.”
There was a hesitation. “Maybe I'm sick and not know it.”
“Oh,” the other replied, impressed, as if he'd never thought of a second option.
Another rumbling expulsion of gas echoed through the fort. It sounded like it came from a giant creature, so concern filled me. Every time I fought them, the orcs were either alone or handled human, Celdic, and goblin slaves. I'd never fought something larger than the orcs themselves.
After a third gaseous release rumbled from over the wall, one orc asked, “How we get horse?”
“City.”
“We far from city.”
“That's why we have no horse.”
“Sometimes horses come through forest,” another explained. “Traveler. Not soldier. Soldiers don't use horse in forest.”
“How about boar?”
“Boar comes from east. Far east, with the little people.”
“Dwarves,” another clarified.
“You been there?”
“Yes. Boar is delicious. So is dwarf. Meat the same, just as hairy.”
Another gaseous rumble. Then, “Why don't we get boar?”
Silence. Then came a crack in the air like someone was punched. “I said they were in east! Are we east?”
“Yes!” came the shouted retort. “The sun rises in east, and it rise every morning!”
A lengthy exhale blew through my nostrils as I listened to the resulting fistfight. When the unknown creature released gas so loud it overrode the violent fight, one orc announced, “I leave for fresh air. Don't like smell.”
Finally. The orc's reasoning for leaving the area didn't make much sense since the fort wasn't enclosed, but I had waited hours for someone to pass through the gate so I could see inside. I wouldn't complain about his illogic.
The gate had a smooth top and bottom unlike the rest of the palisade, so it was easily discernible even at night. A bright orange vertical light shone through the crack between it and the wall. Wood scraping wood echoed out like the gate had a primitive door bar. Finally, the gate shoved forth and the orc wandered out alone, just a bulky shadow against the fort's well-lit interior.
I stayed quiet in a crouch beside the tree. I couldn't kill silently so I had no plans to take the lone brute out as much as I wanted to. I simply developed a plan from what little I could see.
A large fire served as the centerpiece of the fort, surrounded by a disorderly mishmash of orcs and supplies. Weapons piled with little rhyme or reason beneath the roof of a lean-to left of the gate. Instead of sturdy structures, the orcs relied on tents and other easily assembled forms of domicile. The most complex buildings in the entire fort were the guard towers that allowed the slaves to keep watch over the wall, but even those were unimpressive. The towers were made entirely out of wood crisscrossed in a rudimentary pattern, and their most redeeming quality was that they had a wrapping staircase leading up to their tops rather than ladders. I assumed that was a necessity given the slaves had to be led to their post
s.
Though the palisade surrounded everything the orcs owned, trees still grew within its grasp, many relieved of their branches. Tall pines stretched toward the skies, adorned with macabre decorations. Meat hooks hung from low branches and metal rings were installed in trunks. Suspended from them were fresh but decomposing nude mercenary corpses. The orcs hung the corpses by inserting the hook up under the lower mandible, allowing the bodies to hang for days while the brutes cut the most delectable pieces of meat off them. Many of the corpses were old and surrounded by clouds of buzzing insects attracted to the messy butchery.
Human meat stale, I mused, thinking back to the orc's words. It was little wonder the brutes could live at all on such offerings. I still couldn't see the creature with the gastrointestinal problem, but knowing what it was wouldn't affect my plan.
Times like these were when I longed to have access to Kai's strategic intelligence. Many times she'd gushed about particular military leaders and how they outsmarted a foe despite seemingly impossible odds to win a battle or seize land. While I had always listened to her, my interest in the subject at the time was solely due to finding her obsession endearing. I didn't have a mind for strategy like Kai did, but I recalled some of her words to me on the subject.
“Strategy is simple, Cerin,” she'd told me amid a ramble while tapping on battle plans she recreated on parchment revolving around a war event long ago. “Use your army's strengths, limit weaknesses. Do the opposite with the enemy. The tricky part is identifying your weaknesses. Do that, and you can anticipate the moves of your foe because they will mean to exploit them.”
“You say this like you think I would ever be a general of an army,” I had replied with a smirk. “Not many people like me to agree to follow me to begin with. Certainly not enough of them to make army a correct definition.”
