Raising his sword, he made ready to block the animal and finish it. The lembarr wasn’t to be caught that easily. When only a couple of feet away it veered and shot past him. Stryke’s blade cut air.
“Mine!” he yelled, and dashed after it.
He wasn’t sure if the others heard him, absorbed as they were in slaughter.
The fleeing creature ran into a copse. He crashed in after it, ducking low and swatting branches away. A minute later they were out the other side and on level sward. Stryke began to gain. The lembarr swerved and headed for a series of hillocks. It climbed the first one like a goat, Stryke twenty paces behind. Then it was down into a dip and up the next incline.
It was hard work but Stryke was enjoying it.
He reached the next small plateau just a couple of feet behind his target. The creature went down the other, steeper side half running, half skidding, into a gully below. Stryke slid after it. The lembarr reached the bottom, spun to its right and flashed into some trees. Panting now, Stryke followed. He caught a glimpse of the white streaky fur a spear cast distant. Putting on a burst of speed, he dashed for it.
Then the world fell in on his head.
He went down, a searing pain hammering his temple, and rolled across the mushy leaf carpet. On his back, dizzy and hurting, he started to come out of the black maw that had nearly swallowed him.
Somebody was standing over him. He made that several somebodies as his vision cleared. One of them snatched away the sword he was still holding. They conversed with each other in a clipped, guttural and all too familiar tongue.
The goblins hauled him rudely to his feet. He groaned. They tore at his clothes, searching for other weapons. Satisfied he had none, they brandished maces at him, and one waved the club that had undoubtedly been used to bushwhack him. They had swords too, and their points jabbed and goaded him into motion. He lifted a hand to his head as he walked. One of the goblins roughly pulled it away and jabbered something he didn’t understand. But the threatening tone was unmistakable.
They marched him to the end of the gully and up yet another hillock. His bones ached and he limped a little, yet they allowed no slowing of pace. At the top he looked down the far side and saw a sizeable longhouse. As they urged him to descend he thought that they couldn’t have been too far from the rest of the hunting party. Trouble was, the chase had taken some unlikely twists and turns, and they might just as well have been half the land away. He couldn’t count on help from that source.
Breathing heavily, he arrived at the building, surrounded by his posse of belligerent captors.
The longhouse could have been built by any one of a dozen races; it had the all-purpose look of a lot of Maras-Dantia’s architecture. Simply but sturdily constructed from wood, with a thatched roof, it had a single door at one end. There had been a couple of windows at one time, which were now boarded over. The place had obviously been abandoned. It was decrepit. The thatch was badly weathered and wet rot had taken hold on some of the outer facing.
They bundled him through the door.
Razatt-Kheage was waiting for him.
The slaver grimaced hideously in what passed for a smile with goblins. His expression was redolent with triumph and vengeance. “Greetings, orc,” he hissed.
“Greetings yourself.” Stryke fought to regain his senses and rid his head of muddle. He defied the pain, pushing it away. “Couldn’t wait to say goodbye properly, eh?”
“We trailed you.”
“You don’t say. Not to thank me, I’d guess.”
“Oh, we want to . . . thank all of your band, personally. A plan that has the added advantage of money on your heads from Jennesta. And I’ve now seen a certain proclamation that indicates you have a relic of hers. I expect there’ll be a reward for that too.”
Stryke was glad he didn’t have the stars on him. He looked to the six or seven goblins present. “You’re going after my warband with this strength? Got a death wish or something?”
“I’m not doing it. I’ll send word to Jennesta.”
That sobered Stryke further. “And you think the band will stick around waiting for her army to get here?”
“As a matter of fact I was thinking of holding you hostage to make sure they do.”
“They won’t buy it, slaver. Not my band. You don’t know much about orcs, do you?”
“Perhaps it would be amusing to learn something now,” Razatt-Kheage replied mockingly. “Do feel free.”
It suited Stryke to buy a little time and try to think of a stratagem. “All orcs know that the cost of war is death. We grow up with the creed that you do your best to save a comrade in danger, but if that fails you don’t go on risking everybody else’s life for one individual. That’s why using me as a hostage won’t work. They’ll walk away.”
“Yet you did the exact opposite when you rescued your female comrade.” He leered unpleasantly. “Perhaps some individuals are worth more than others. By which marker, the commander should be worth most of all. We shall see.”
To keep him talking, Stryke changed the subject. “I don’t see your human friends around.”
“Business associates. They have gone their own way. It was a disagreeable parting. They seemed to blame me for being in some way responsible for you orcs escaping. I believe it might have come to blows if one of them hadn’t been in need of a healer’s assistance. Fortunately I was able to sell them a name.”
“I bet they were grateful.” He scanned the lengthy room. “So what now?”
“You’ll be our guest while I draft a message for the Queen’s agents.” The slaver nodded at his henchlins.
They herded Stryke to the far end of the room. Like the rest of the hut there wasn’t much there, save a brazier of glowing coals that took some of the chill out of the air. He was left near it while the guards conversed in their own tongue. Razatt-Kheage stayed near the door, standing at a rickety table. He had parchment and a quill.
Stryke glanced at the brazier. An insane idea formed. Something that would affect him as well as them, but he’d have the advantage of knowing it. Checking that nobody was watching, he slipped his hand into his belt pouch and scooped out a fistful of pellucid. He tossed it on to the fire. Then he dipped for some more and did it again. The massive quantity of pinkish crystals began discharging plumes of creamy white smoke.
No one noticed anything for a good half-minute as the smoke grew more copious. Stryke tried holding his breath. Then one of the goblins left his comrades and came over. He gawped at the smoking brazier. Stryke sneaked a quick look at the others. They hadn’t realised anything was wrong yet. Time to act.
He didn’t know very much about goblin biology. But he figured they shared one thing in common with most of the elder races. When he directed a sturdy kick at the goblin’s crotch he found he was right. The henchlin emitted a keening squeak of pure agony and began to double up. So Stryke did it again.
The others were moving in. Stryke grasped the wheezing goblin’s sword arm and brought it down hard on his upraised knee. The weapon was dislodged. Taking it and flipping his wrist, he drove the blade into the henchlin’s back.
He made ready to face the others. They moved in warily, a semicircle of five heavily armed, determined assassins.
“You really do make a habit of this kind of thing, don’t you?” Razatt-Kheage raged from behind them. “Every time you kill one of my servants you cost me coin! I think you’d be safer dead.”
The henchlins levelled their weapons and kept coming. Stryke was still holding his breath.
More and more smoke billowed from the brazier. It began filling the enclosed longhouse. Milky tendrils started drifting across the floor. A thickening cloud formed in the rafters above.
One of the goblins moved in, hefting his mace.
Unable to hold his breath any longer, Stryke expelled it. By instinct he took another. He felt a familiar light-headedness and battled to hang on to his concentration.
Swinging his mace, the go
blin charged.
Stryke side-stepped and slashed at him. The rolling waves of an immense ocean. He shook his head to clear it of the image. His swing had missed. He aimed another. That was avoided too. The henchlin sent in a blow of his own that came near to connecting with Stryke’s shoulder. A faultlessly blue sky. Stryke backed off, desperately trying to focus on reality.
What worried him was that the goblin he was fighting didn’t seem affected by the crystal. He couldn’t tell if the others were or not.
Stryke went on the attack.
When he swung his blade it appeared to him to be many blades, each one birthing the next; a blade for every degree of space it passed through. So that at the end of its arc a shimmering multi-coloured fan hung in the air. The goblin’s mace shattered it, imploding the chimera like a soap bubble.
That made Stryke mad. He powered forward, swiping at the henchlin, driving him back under a deluge of blows. As he did so, he thought he saw, through the kaleidoscopic pageant flashing in his mind’s eye, that the goblin swayed unsteadily and wore a glassy expression.
Stryke took hold of his sword two-handed, as much to have something to hang on to as anything else, and dashed the mace from his opponent’s hands. Then he lunged forward and skewered his chest.
It had never occurred to him before what a fetching colour blood was.
He snapped out of it, taking deep breaths to steady himself. Then realised that was a mistake.
A pair of goblins sleepwalked into view, moving in ponderous slow motion.
Crystalline droplets of rain on the petals of a yellow flower. He squared off with the nearest and engaged his sword. They fenced, though it felt more like wading through the depths of a peat bog. One of Stryke’s passes opened his foe’s arm, drawing fascinating, luminous crimson. He followed that with a gash to the goblin’s stomach that exposed another palette of colours. As the dying henchlin fell for ever, Stryke spun, casually, to face his comrade.
The second goblin had a spear he could have better employed as a walking stick. His legs seemed fit to fold under him as he poked the weapon feebly in Stryke’s direction. He struck out at the spear like a searing bolt of lightning against a velvet blue sky and succeeded in severing it. The goblin stood stupidly with half a spear in each hand, his pinprick eyes blinking at the wonder of it.
Stryke pierced his heart and revelled in the beautiful scarlet spray.
Riding on horseback through a forest of towering trees. No, that wasn’t what he was doing. He focused blearily on the two remaining guards. They wanted to play a strange game with lives as wagers. He’d half forgotten the rules. All he could remember was that the object was to stop them moving. So he set about it.
The first of them, eyes dilated, was practically staggering. He had a sword in his hand and he swung it repeatedly. But mostly not in Stryke’s direction. For his part, Stryke returned the swings, though he had to advance a step or two before their blades connected. Moonlight on a river with trailing weeping willows. That wasn’t it either. He had to keep his mind on the game.
Something dazzling passed in front of his face. Turning, he realised it was the second guard’s flailing sword. He thought that was unfriendly. To pay him back, he flashed his own sword towards the goblin’s face. It struck deep and soft, inspiring a surprisingly musical wail that faded as the vanquished unhurriedly fell from sight.
That left one henchlin and Razatt-Kheage. The slaver still held back, his mouth twisted and working, disgorging silent words. A ruined cliff-top fortress, white in the sun. Stryke shook that one off and went for the guard. He took some finding in the pellucid fog.
Once located he bartered blows almost politely. For his part, Stryke stepped up the force and quantity of passes, doing his best to break the other’s guard. Though in truth it was a guard that took little breaking. A waterfall plunging down a granite precipice. Pushing that back from him, he leapt forward, floating like a feather, and tried carving his initial on the henchlin’s chest. Half an S and he was deprived of his canvas. Verdant meadows, dotted with herds of grazing game.
Stryke was finding it hard to stay on his feet. But he had to, the game wasn’t over yet. There was one more player. He looked around for him. Razatt-Kheage was near the door but making no attempt to leave. Stryke swam toward him through a long, long tunnel filled with honey.
When he finally got there, the goblin hadn’t moved. He couldn’t, he was petrified. As Stryke faced him, the slaver went down on his knees, as though curtseying. The mouth was still working and Stryke still couldn’t make out the words, or indeed hear a sound except a kind of faint sibilant whining. He supposed the goblin was pleading. That was something players did sometimes. The sun blazing on an endless beach. Only this creature wasn’t playing. He was refusing to, and it had to be against the rules. Stryke didn’t like that.
He drew back his sword. Walking along an endless beach. Razatt-Kheage, dirty little rule-breaker, carried on opening and closing his mouth. Rolling green hills and exalted frosty clouds.
Stryke’s sword travelled home. The slaver’s mouth stayed open, wide, in a silent scream. The smiling face of the female orc of his dreams.
The sword cleaved Razatt-Kheage’s neck. His head leapt from his shoulders, flew upward and back. The body gushed and slumped. Stryke’s gaze followed the spiralling head, a dumpy bird without wings, and fancied he saw it laugh.
Then it hit the floor a dozen feet away with a noise like a dropped ripe melon, bounced twice and was still.
Stryke leaned against the wall, exhausted. But elated too. He had done a good thing. He moved himself. Coughing and heaving, head full of sights and sounds and smells and music, he tottered to the door. A few seconds’ fumbling with the bolts got it open.
He reeled out, wreathed in heady white smoke, and stumbled off into the dazzling landscape.
19
“Drink this,” Alfray said, offering Stryke another cup of steaming green potion.
Head in hands, Stryke groaned, “Gods, not more.”
“You took in a massive dose of crystal. If you want to clear your system of it, you need this, food, and plenty of water, to make you piss it out.”
Stryke lifted his head and sighed. His eyes were puffy and red. “All right, give it here.” He accepted the cup, downed the noisome brew in one draft and pulled a face.
“Good.” Alfray took back the cup. Bending to the cauldron over the fire he scooped another ration. “This one you can sip until the food’s ready.” He pushed it into Stryke’s hand. “I’m going to check on the preparations.” He walked off to supervise the grunts loading their horses.
When he was sure Alfray wasn’t looking, Stryke turned and poured the cup’s contents into the grass.
It had been a couple of hours since he came out of the longhouse. He’d wandered for a while, uncertain of his bearings, before running into the hunting party. They were dragging half a dozen dead lembarrs. Lurching erratically and mouthing gibberish, he had to be practically carried back to camp, where his faltering account of what had happened proved a jaw-dropper.
Now lembarr carcasses roasted on spits, giving off a delicious smell. Appetite sharpened by the pellucid, Stryke’s mouth watered in anticipation.
Coilla arrived with two platters of meat and sat beside him. He wolfed his as if starving.
“I’m really grateful, you know,” she said. “For killing Razatt-Kheage that is. Though I would have preferred doing it myself.”
“My pleasure,” he replied, mouth full.
She stared at him intently. “Are you sure he didn’t say anything about where Lekmann and the others might have gone?”
Stryke was still coming down from the crystal. Right now, he didn’t want to be nagged. “I’ve told you all I know. They’ve gone.” He was a little testy.
Dissatisfied, Coilla frowned.
“I reckon you won’t see them bounty hunters again,” he added placatingly. “Cowards like that wouldn’t tangle with a warband.”
“I know, and we’re going to help any way we can. But we can’t go looking for them, not now. If our paths ever cross again—”
“Fuck that. It’s time somebody hunted them.”
“Don’t you think this is getting to be a bit of an obsession?” He chewed as he talked.
“I want it to be an obsession! You’d feel the same way if you’d been humiliated and offered for sale like cattle.”
“Yes, I would. Only there’s nothing we can do about it at the moment. Let’s talk about this later, shall we? My head, you know?”
She nodded, dropped her plate by the fire and walked off.
In the background, several grunts were stitching fur jerkins. There had been just enough pelts to go round.
Stryke was finishing his food when Alfray reported back.
“Well, we’re ready for Drogan. Any time you are.”
“I’m fine. Or I will be soon. I wouldn’t say my head was exactly clear, but the ride will fix it.”
Haskeer came over holding a pile of the fur jackets. Jup drifted after him.
“They ain’t exactly refined,” Haskeer opined as he sorted sizes.
“Wouldn’t have thought that would have bothered you,” the dwarf remarked.
Haskeer ignored him and started handing out the garments. “Let’s see. Captain.” He tossed a fur. “Alfray. And here’s yours, Jup.” He held it up for them to see. “Look at the size of that. Like a hatchling’s. Wouldn’t cover my arse!”
Jup snatched it. “You should use your head for that. It’d be an improvement.”
Simmering, Haskeer strode off.
Stryke stood, ever so slightly unsteady on his feet, put on the fur jacket and wandered over to Alfray.
“How you feeling?” the corporal asked.
“Not too bad. Don’t want to see any more crystal for a while, though.”
Orcs Page 45
