Lord Of The Clans

by Christie Golden

  He pressed on, feet steadily moving forward. The road curved, and then Durnholde in all its proud, stony glory loomed up before them. Thrall sensed a change in his group.

  “Hold up the flag of truce,” he said. “We will observe the proprieties, and it may prevent them from opening fire too soon. Before, we have stormed the encampments with ease,” he acknowledged. “Now we must face something more difficult. Durnholde is a fortress, and will not be taken easily. But mark me, if negotiations fail, then fall Durnholde will.”

  He hoped it would not come to that, but he expected the worst. It was unlikely that Blackmoore would be reasonable.

  Even as he and his companions moved forward, Thrall could see movement on the parapets and walkways. Looking more closely, he saw the mouths of cannons opening toward him. Archers took their positions, and several dozen mounted knights came cantering around the sides of the fortress to line up in front of it. They carried lances and spears, and halted their horses. They were waiting.

  Still Thrall came. There was more movement atop the walls directly above the huge wooden door, and his heart sped up a little. It was Aedelas Blackmoore. Thrall halted. They were close enough to shout. He would approach no farther.

  “Well, well,” came a slurred voice that Thrall remembered all too well. “If it isn’t my lil’ pet orc, all grown up.”

  Thrall did not rise to the bait. “Greetings, Lieutenant General,” he said. “I come not as a pet, but as a leader of an army. An army that has defeated your men soundly in the past. But I will make no move against them this day, unless you force my hand.”

  Langston stood beside his lord on the walkway. He couldn’t believe it. Blackmoore was rip-roaring drunk. Langston, who had helped Tammis carry his lord to bed more times than he cared to admit, had never seen Blackmoore so drunk and still be able to stand. What had he been thinking?

  Blackmoore had had the girl followed, of course. A scout, a master of stealth and sharp of eye, had unbarred the door in the courier’s stable so she would be able to emerge from the tunnel. He had watched her greet Thrall and a few other orcs. He had seen her give them a sack of food, seen her embrace the monster, by the Light, and then return via the no-longer-secret tunnel. Blackmoore had feigned his drunkenness last evening, and had been quite sober when the shocked girl had walked back into his bedchamber to be greeted by Blackmoore, Langston, and the others.

  Taretha had not wanted to talk, but once she learned that she had been spied upon, she made great haste to assure Blackmoore that Thrall had come to talk peace. The very notion had offended Blackmoore deeply. He dismissed Langston and the other guards, and for many paces outside his door Langston could still hear Blackmoore cursing and even the sound of a hand striking flesh.

  He hadn’t seen Blackmoore again until this moment, though Tammis had reported to him. Blackmoore had sent out his fastest riders, to get reinforcements, but they were still at least four hours away. The logical thing to do would be to keep the orc, who had after all raised the flag of truce, talking until help arrived. In fact, etiquette demanded that Blackmoore send out a small party of his own to talk with the orcs. Surely Blackmoore would give the order any moment. Yes, it was the logical thing to do. If the count was right, and Langston thought it was, the orcish army numbered over two thousand.

  There were five hundred and forty men in Durnholde, of whom fewer than four hundred were trained warriors who had seen combat.

  As he watched uneasily, Langston saw movement on the horizon. They were too far away for him to detect individuals, but he clearly saw a huge green sea begin to move slowly over the rise, and heard the steady, unnerving sound of drums.

  Thrall’s army.

  Though the morning was cool, Langston felt sweat break out under his arms.

  “Tha’s nice, Thrall,” Blackmoore was saying. As Thrall watched, disgusted, the former war hero swayed and caught himself on the wall. “What did you have in mind?”

  Once again, pity warred with hatred in his heart. “We have no desire to fight humans anymore, unless you force us to defend ourselves. But you hold many hundreds of orcs prisoners, Blackmoore, in your vile encampments. They will be freed, one way or another. We can do it without more unnecessary bloodshed. Willingly release all the orcs held prisoner in the encampments, and we will return to the wilds and leave humans alone.”

  Blackmoore threw back his head and laughed. “Oh,” he gasped, wiping tears of mirth from his eyes, “oh, you are better than the king’s jester, Thrall. Slave. I swear, it is more entertaining to watch you now than it was when you fought in the gladiator ring. Listen to you! Using complete sentences, by the Light! Think you understand mercy, do you?”

  Langston felt a tug on his sleeve. He jumped, and turned to behold Sergeant. “I’ve no great love for you, Langston,” the man growled, his eyes fierce, “but at least you’re sober. You’ve got to shut Blackmoore up! Get him down from there! You’ve seen what the orcs can do.”

  “We can’t possibly surrender!” gasped Langston, though in his heart he wanted to.

  “Nay,” said Sergeant, “but we should at least send out men to talk to them, buy some time for our allies to get here. He did send for reinforcements, didn’t he?”

  “Of course he did,” Langston hissed. Their conversation had been overheard and Blackmoore turned bloodshot eyes in their direction. There was a small sack at his feet and he nearly stumbled over it.

  “Ah, Sergeant!” he boomed, lurching over toward him. “Thrall! Here’s an old friend!”

  Thrall sighed. Langston thought he looked the most composed of all of them. “I am sorry that you are still here, Sergeant.”

  “As am I,” Langston heard the Sergeant mutter. Louder, Sergeant said, “You’ve been too long away, Thrall.”

  “Convince Blackmoore to release the orcs, and I swear on the honor that you taught me and I possess, none within these walls shall come to harm.”

  “My lord,” said Langston nervously, “You recall what powers I saw displayed in the last conflict. Thrall had me, and he let me go. He kept his word. I know he’s only an orc, but —”

  “Y’hear that, Thrall?” bellowed Blackmoore. “You’re only an orc! Even that idiot Langston says so! What kin’ of human surrenders to an orc?” He rushed forward and leaned over the wall.

  “Why’d you do it, Thrall?” he cried brokenly. “I gave you everything! You and me, we’d have led those greenskins of yours against th’ Alliance and had all the food and wine and gold we could want!”

  Langston stared, horrified. Blackmoore was now screaming his treachery to all within earshot. At least he hadn’t implicated Langston . . . yet. Langston wished he had the guts to just shove Blackmoore over the wall and surrender the fortress to Thrall right now.

  Thrall didn’t waste the opportunity. “Do you hear that, men of Durnholde!” he bellowed. “Your lord and master would betray all of you! Rise up against him, take him away, yield to us, and at the end of the day you will still have your lives and your fortress!”

  But there was no sudden stirring of rebellion, and Thrall supposed he couldn’t blame them. “I ask you once more, Blackmoore. Negotiate, or die.”

  Blackmoore stood up to his full height. Thrall now saw that he held something in his right hand. It was a sack.

  “Here’s my answer, Thrall!”

  He reached into the sack and pulled something out. Thrall couldn’t see what it was, but he saw Sergeant and Langston recoil. Then the object came hurtling toward him and struck the ground, rolling to a stop at Thrall’s feet.

  Taretha’s blue eyes stared sightlessly up at him from her severed head.

  “That’s what I do with traitors!” screamed Blackmoore, dancing madly on the walkway. “That’s what we do with people we love who betray us . . . who take everything and give nothing . . . who sympathize with double-damned orcs!”

  Thrall didn’t hear him. Thunder was rolling in his ears. His knees went weak and he fell to the earth. Gorge rose in his
throat and his vision swam.

  It couldn’t be. Not Tari. Surely not even Blackmoore could do such an abominable thing to an innocent.

  But blessed unconsciousness would not come. He remained stubbornly awake, staring at long blond hair, blue eyes, and a bloody severed neck. Then the horrible image blurred. Wetness poured down his face. His chest heaving with agony, Thrall recalled Tari’s words to him, so long ago: These are called tears. They come when we are so sad, so soul sick, it’s as if our hearts are so full of pain there’s no place else for it to go.

  But there was a place for the pain to go. Into action, into revenge. Red flooded Thrall’s vision now, and he threw back his head and screamed with rage such as he had never before experienced. The cry burned his throat with its raw fury.

  The sky boiled. Dozens of lightning strikes split the clouds, dazzling the eye for a moment. The furious peals of crashing thunder that followed nearly deafened the men at the fortress. Many of them dropped their weapons and fell to their knees, gibbering terror at the celestial display of fury that so clearly echoed the wrenching pain of the orc leader.

  Blackmoore laughed, obviously mistaking Thrall’s rage for helpless grief. When the last peals of thunder died down, he yelled, “They said you couldn’t be broken! Well, I broke you, Thrall. I broke you!”

  Thrall’s cry died away, and he stared at Blackmoore. Even across this distance, he could see the blood drain from Blackmoore’s face as his enemy now, finally, began to understand what he had roused with his brutal murder.

  Thrall had come hoping to end this peacefully. Blackmoore’s actions had destroyed that chance utterly. Blackmoore would not live to see another sunrise, and his keep would shatter like fragile glass before the orcish attack.

  “Thrall. . . .” It was Hellscream, uncertain as to Thrall’s state of mind. Thrall, his chest still raw with grief and tears still streaming down his broad green face, impaled him with his glance. Mingled sympathy and approval showed in Hellscream’s expression.

  Slowly, harnessing his powerful self-control, Thrall raised the great warhammer. He began to stamp his feet, one right after the other, in a powerful, steady rhythm. The others joined him at once, and very faintly, the earth trembled.

  Langston stared, sickened and appalled, at the girl’s head on the ground thirty feet below. He had known Blackmoore had a streak of cruelty, but he had never imagined. . . .

  “What have you done!” The words exploded from Sergeant, who grabbed Blackmoore and spun him around to face him.

  Blackmoore began laughing hysterically.

  Sergeant went cold inside as he heard the screams, and then felt the slight tremble in the stone. “My lord, he makes the earth shake . . . we must fire!”

  “Two thousand orcs all stomping their feet, ’course the earth’s going to shake!” snarled Blackmoore. He veered back toward the wall, apparently intent upon verbally tormenting the orc still further.

  They were lost, Langston thought. It was too late to surrender now. Thrall was going to use his demonic magic, and destroy the fortress and everyone in it as retaliation for the girl. His mouth worked, but nothing came out. He felt Sergeant staring at him.

  “Damn the lot of you noble-born, heartless bastards,” Sergeant hissed, then bellowed, “Fire!”

  Thrall did not even twitch when the cannons went off. Behind him he heard screams of torment, but he was untouched. He called on the Spirit of Earth, pouring out his pain, and Earth responded. In a clean, precise, direct line, the earth heaved and buckled. It went straight from Thrall’s feet to the mammoth door like the burrowing of some giant underground creature. The door shuddered. The surrounding stone trembled and a few small stones fell, but it was more soundly built than the slapped-together walls of the encampments, and held.

  Blackmoore shrieked. His world took on a very sharp focus, and for the first time since he had gotten himself drunk enough to order Taretha Foxton’s execution he was thinking clearly.

  Langston hadn’t exaggerated. Thrall’s powers were immense and his tactic to break the orc had failed. In fact, it had roused him to an even greater fury, and as Blackmoore watched, panicked and sick, hundreds . . . no, thousands . . . of huge, green forms flowed down the road in a river of death.

  He had to get out. Thrall was going to kill him. He just knew it. Somehow, Thrall was going to find him and kill him, for what he’d done to Taretha. . . .

  Tari, Tari, I loved you, why did you do this to me?

  Someone was shouting. Langston was yapping in one ear, his pretty face purple and eyes bulging with fear, and Sergeant’s voice was in the other, screaming nonsensical noises. He stared at them helplessly. Sergeant spat some more words, then turned to the men. They continued to load and fire the cannons, and below Blackmoore the mounted knights charged the ranks of orcs. He heard battle cries and the clash of steel. The black armor of his men milled with the ugly green skin of the orcs, and here and there was a flash of white fur as . . . by the Light, had Thrall really managed to call white wolves to his army?

  “Too many,” he whispered. “There are too many. So many of them. . . .”

  Again, the very walls of the fortress shook. Fear such as Blackmoore had never known shuddered through him, and he fell to his knees. It was in this position, crawling like a dog, that he made his way down the steps and into the courtyard.

  The knights were all outside fighting, and, Blackmoore presumed, dying. Inside, the men who were left were shrieking and gathering what they could to defend themselves — scythes, pitchforks, even the wooden training weapons with which a much younger Thrall had honed his fighting skills. A peculiar, yet familiar smell filled Blackmoore’s nostrils. Fear, that was it. He’d reeked of the stench in battles past, had smelled it on dead men’s corpses. He’d forgotten how it had churned his stomach.

  It wasn’t supposed to be this way. The orcs on the other side of the now-shuddering gates were supposed to be his army. Their leader, out there screaming Blackmoore’s name over and over again, was supposed to be his docile, obedient slave. Tari was supposed to be here . . . where was she, anyway . . . and then he remembered, he remembered, his own lips forming around the order that had taken her life, and he was sick, right in front of his men, sick in body, sick in soul.

  “He’s lost control!” bellowed Langston inches from Sergeant’s ear, shouting to be heard over the sounds of cannon, sword impacting shield, and cries of pain. Yet again, the walls shuddered.

  “He lost control long ago!” Sergeant shouted back. “You’re in command, Lord Langston! What would you have us do?”

  “Surrender!” Langston shrieked, without hesitation. Sergeant, his eyes on the battle thirty feet below, shook his head.

  “Too late for that! Blackmoore’s done us all in. We’ve got to fight for it now until Thrall decides he wants to talk peace again . . . if he ever does. What would you have us do?” Sergeant demanded again.

  “I . . . I . . .” Anything resembling logical thought had fled from Langston’s brain. This thing called battle, he was not made for it — twice now he had crumbled in the face of it. He knew himself for a coward, and despised himself for it, but the fact remained.

  “Would you like me to take command of the defense of Durnholde, sir?” asked Sergeant.

  Langston turned wet, grateful eyes to the older man and nodded.

  “Right, then,” said Sergeant, who turned to face the men in the courtyard and began screaming orders.

  At that moment, the door shattered, and a wave of orcs crashed into the courtyard of one of the most powerfully constructed fortresses in the land.

  TWENTY

  The skies seemed to open and a sheet of rain poured down, plastering Blackmoore’s dark hair to his skull and making him slip in the suddenly slick mud of the courtyard. He fell hard, and the wind was knocked out him. He forced himself to scramble to his feet and continue. There was only one way out of this bloody, noisy hell.

  He reached his quarters and dove for his desk. W
ith trembling fingers, he searched for the key. He dropped it twice before he was able to stumble to the tapestry beside his bed, tear the weaving down, and insert the key into the lock.

  Blackmoore plunged forward, forgetting about the steps, and hurtled down them. He was so inebriated that his body was limp as a rag doll’s, however, and suffered only a few bruises. The light shining in the door from his quarters reached only a few yards, and up ahead yawned utter darkness. He should have brought a lamp, but it was too late now. Too late for so many things.

  He began to run as fast as his legs would carry him. The door on the other side would still be unbolted. He could escape, could flee into the forest, and return later, when the killing was over, and feign . . . he didn’t know. Something.

  The earth trembled again, and Blackmoore was knocked off his feet. He felt small bits of stone and earth dust him, and when the quake ceased, he eased himself up and moved forward, arms extended. Dust flew thickly, and he coughed violently.

  A few feet ahead, his fingers encountered a huge pile of stone. The tunnel had collapsed in front of him. For a few wild moments, Blackmoore tried to claw his way out. Then, sobbing, he fell to the ground. What now? What was to become of Aedelas Blackmoore now?

  Again the earth shook, and Blackmoore sprang to his feet and began to race back the way he had come. Guilt and fear were strong, but the instinct to survive was stronger. A terrible noise rent the air, and Blackmoore realized with a jolt of horror that the tunnel was again collapsing right behind him. Terror lent him speed and he sprinted back toward his quarters, the roof of the tunnel missing him by a foot or two, as if it was following his path a mere step behind.

  He stumbled up the stairs and hurled himself forward, just as the rest of the tunnel came down with a mighty crash. Blackmoore clutched the rushes on the floor as if they could offer some solidity in this suddenly mad world. The terrible shaking of the earth seemed to go on and on.

  Finally, it ended. He didn’t move, just lay with his face to the stone floor, gasping.