by A. J. Markam
I turned around. Out over the jungle, trails of white smoke had erupted from the treetops and were zigzagging crazily over the green canopy. I could see a bright gleam of light at the head of the projectile – like the sun reflecting off a metal hull.
“Put me down, put me down!” I said excitedly – then remembered who I was talking to. “Gently!”
Grung bent down and lowered his hand to the ground, and I jumped off.
The erratic rocket was getting closer. Sure enough, it was Alaria – although I never really had any doubt that it was.
Rather than try to attempt a landing near us – probably out of concern that she might misjudge and kill me accidentally – she just cut her engines. Which led to her tumbling head over heels through the grass.
I raced over to her as she wobbled unsteadily to her feet.
“Are you okay?!”
Rather than answer my question, she looked at me with a combination of anguish and joy, and leaned in desperately to kiss me.
Our mouths pressed together, and once more I felt the sleek, sensual pressure of her lips against my skin.
And I could smell her. In addition to the tang of grass and fresh dirt that still clung to her, I noticed the distinct scent of coconut oil.
She had been crying.
I broke off the kiss and cradled her face in my hands. “What’s wrong? Are you hurt?”
In answer, she held up her left arm. The hand was completely gone. Her forearm was scorched black like it had been in a fire, and her wrist was just jagged pieces of metal. Inside where bone and muscle should have been I could see wires and gears.
“Jesus,” I murmured as I gingerly held her arm and inspected the damage. “Oh my God, baby, I’m so sorry – how bad does it hurt?”
“It doesn’t.”
I looked at her face in shock. “Then why are you crying? Is it because you lost your hand?”
“No.” Her lips trembled and she looked ashamed, like a child convinced she’d done the worst thing in the world. “I… I left you…”
I laughed in relief and grabbed her tight to me. “I told you to!”
“But I left you to that – that THING,” she cried, and the tears rolled down her cheeks again. “You would never have left ME!”
I took her face in my hands. “I can’t die. Normally you can’t either, but you can right now, and I cannot risk losing you. I can’t. If that happened, I don’t know what I would do. So do NOT feel bad, because you protected the single most important thing in the world to me: you. Okay?”
She sobbed but nodded. “…okay.”
I kissed her again until she calmed down. Then I pulled away to see what we could do about the damage to her arm.
I tried for 10 minutes to use Self-Sacrifice on her, but it didn’t work. I even double-checked the spell by sending Health over to Stig. It worked, which meant that as long as Alaria was in her robot form, I couldn’t heal her.
I looked up at Grung. “Do you have any way of healing damage to yourself?”
“I THINK I RECOVER FROM THINGS LIKE ELECTRICAL SHOCKS OR VIOLENT BLOWS… BUT IF THERE IS PERMANENT PHYSICAL DAMAGE, THERE IS NOTHING I CAN DO ABOUT IT. ORLO HAS TO REPAIR ME BACK AT THE LABORATORY.”
“Well, that’s not an option,” I growled, and turned around to look at Alaria again. “Here’s the deal: you are not to engage in battle, ever, unless it’s absolutely necessary – got it?”
She didn’t like that. “But – ”
“No buts. You can’t heal yourself, and I can’t heal you, so stay out of harm’s way at all costs – understand?”
“I’m not wearing a collar,” she said sullenly. “You’re not my master.”
“No, but I love you, and I WILL NOT LOSE YOU. That would kill me. So DO NOT engage the enemy. EVER.”
I had never seen the look before that she gave me.
It was close to a romantic swoon.
“But you would give your life for me,” she protested. “I can’t just – ”
“I’ll resurrect, but we don’t know for sure that you will. Until we do, you stay safe. Got it?”
She stayed silent for a long moment. Finally she closed her eyes, resigned, and nodded.
“I need to hear you say it.”
“I’ll stay out of harm’s way,” she murmured.
“I think I’m gonna need to hear a Hell Oath to make sure.”
“Ian!” she complained. “If we do that, that binds me totally and completely, and there might be a situation where I need to attack! Do you REALLY want to risk everyone and everything for one succubus?”
“Yes.”
“Hey!” Stig shouted nearby.
“Okay, not Stig,” I grumbled, then looked up at the giant war golem. “And if I could save you, Grung, I definitely would.”
“I UNDERSTAND,” he said placidly. “WE HAVE ONLY JUST MET.”
“Cool – glad you understand.” I was about to turn back to Alaria –
“I WOULD NOT SAVE YOU, EITHER,” the robot continued.
I looked at him out of the corner of my eye. “Uh… okay… good to know – ”
“AFTER ALL, YOU DID NOT SAVE ME WHEN I FELL IN THE QUICKSAND.”
“I thought you were dead!” I protested. “And I was kind of getting my ass handed to me by a vicious psychopath!”
“SO YOU WOULD HAVE SAVED ME?”
“If I was able to beat that guy, and I thought you were still alive, yes, I would have tried!”
“OH,” the robot said, and seemed to reconsider. “WELL, IN THAT CASE, I WILL DO WHAT I CAN TO SAVE YOU IN THE FUTURE.”
“Thanks,” I said sarcastically, then turned back to Alaria. “The point is, you’re more important to me than anybody else in the world, and I’m not sure I trust you to look out for your own self-interest, so I want to hear the Hell Oath.”
“I’m sorry,” she said as she shook her head, “but I’m not going to do it.”
I started to get angry. “Alaria – ”
“I don’t want my hands tied in case I need to save you. So stop asking.”
“Listen – ”
“No, YOU listen. You freed me, and part of that is allowing me to make my own choices. Please respect my decision.”
I stood there looking at her for a long time. Then I sighed. “I love you.”
The corner of her mouth turned up in a little half-grin. “I know.”
I laughed, and we kissed again.
“All right,” I said, “let’s go find that midget son of a bitch who can put you back in your body.”
Excuse me – ‘little person.’
Ahhh, fuck it, and fuck that guy. Fuckin’ midget asshole.
25
We continued across the grassy plains, following the flattened path the war golems had left behind. Along the way, Alaria – chastened by her previous close call with Shyvock – practiced flying.
At first it was pretty rough going. Her trajectories were zigzags back and forth, her take-offs were abrupt and explosive, and basically the only way she knew how to land was to completely cut her engines and somersault across the plains going 50 miles an hour.
Every time she face-planted, Stig would cackle and clap. “Do it again! Do it again!”
After about the fifth time, she fired a violet bolt over his head as a warning shot.
He hunkered down flat against Grung’s shoulder and didn’t say squat after that.
But over the course of the morning she vastly improved. She learned to take off smoothly from either standing or running. She could fly in straight paths for extended periods of time, and make both curving turns and hard pivots mid-air. And she finally reached the point where she could land, although she had to hit the ground running, and half the time she stumbled and fell.
“I hate this,” she grumbled.
“You’re doing great,” I assured her. “And if you want to save me, it might include swooping into battle, picking me up, and flying me out of there.”
She would just sigh dramatically, the
n go back to practicing.
About three hours after we left the jungle ravine, she came back from a high-altitude flight with an uneasy look on her face.
“I think I see them.”
“What’s wrong?”
“There’s a lot of them.”
“War golems?”
“And somebody else.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know – I was too far away to see the banners, and I didn’t want to get any closer in case they spot me. But it looks like there’s an army of at least 10,000 out on the plains.”
I stared at her in shock. “Are you sure?”
“Just a guess, but I don’t think I’m exaggerating.”
“How far away?”
“Maybe 15 miles from here. This plain we’re on now drops off abruptly, and there’s a new field below. That’s where they are.”
“All right,” I said, trying to sound more confident than I felt. “Let’s go see what we’re up against.”
I sent Stig out ahead of us as point man. I didn’t want Grung getting too close to whomever was the hell was out there; he was tall enough that he might attract attention from far away. Alaria also stayed on the ground, just in case – neither of us wanted any war golem surface-to-air missiles chasing her.
Nothing happened for the next dozen miles, which we covered pretty quickly thanks to Grung’s giant steps. But soon after that, Stig came racing back croaking, “Boss, boss, I see them!”
Grung got down on his belly and started crawling across the plains. The rest of us just went slower until we reached the edge, where we dropped to our stomachs, too.
It was just as Alaria had said: a steep escarpment with a drop-off of at least 300 feet. Below that, there was another vast savanna of wild grass that extended in every direction as far as the eye could see.
And gathered out in the middle of the plains was an army.
If anything, Alaria had probably underestimated their numbers. There were dozens of tents made of animal skins, thousands upon thousands of tiny figures milling about or engaging in sparring – and several rows of war golems standing at attention along the periphery. We were so far away that the robots looked like action figures, and all the soldiers looked like ants.
But the banners flying over the tent were visible, and the blood-red colors gave them away.
“Orcs,” I muttered. “Several different tribes, too.”
You could tell because even though the flags were all red, they had different Orcish symbols on them. I had no idea what the hell they said, but they were noticeably different.
“They must be joining together for a common cause,” Alaria said.
“What?”
“What orcs always do – invade, pillage, kill, and conquer.”
“But what the hell is there to invade out here?”
“THERE IS ACTUALLY A LARGE HUMAN CITY CALLED WISTROSS 50 MILES SOUTH OF THE PLAINS OF MOR-EL,” Grung offered helpfully.
“How the hell did you know that?” I asked. “Did you log onto the Internet or something?”
“WHAT IS THE INTERNET? IS IT AN EXPRESSION?”
“No, it’s – never mind. How do you know about Wistross?”
“WHILE I WAS STILL IN MY DEMON BODY, SOME OF MY FONDEST MOMENTS WERE READING THROUGH BOOKS IN ORLO’S LIBRARY,” the war golem said wistfully. “I PARTICULARLY LIKED READING ABOUT THE REGIONS AROUND US – IN CASE I EVER GOT TO THE CHANCE TO GO OUTSIDE.”
“So the little bugger is going to team up with the orcs and invade Wistross…”
“I DO NOT BELIEVE THAT IS ENTIRELY CORRECT.”
“Which part?”
“THE PART ABOUT ORLO PARTICIPATING IN THE INVASION. HE IS MERELY SUPPLYING THE WAR GOLEMS.”
“Seriously? How do you know that?”
“I OVERHEARD HIM NEGOTIATING WITH AN ORC MESSENGER. HE SAID THAT THE GOLEMS WOULD FUNCTION PERFECTLY EVEN THOUGH HE WOULD NOT BE THERE.”
A lightbulb went off in my head, and I laughed bitterly. “Motherfucker’s Tony Stark before he turned into Iron Man!”
“Who’s Tony Stark?” Alaria asked.
“Isn’t HE an iron man?” Stig said as he pointed at Grung.
“WHAT IS A MOTHER… FUCKER?” the war golem asked.
I ignored all their questions. “Orlo’s an arms merchant! He’s making weapons and selling them to the orcs!”
“THAT IS NOT ENTIRELY CORRECT, EITHER.”
“What now?” I asked in irritation.
“THE MESSENGER WAS NOT ENTIRELY PERSUADED THAT THEY NEED THE WAR GOLEMS. THE MESSENGER SAID THE ORCS HAVE SOMEONE CALLED THE BLUE PRIEST WHO IS CAPABLE OF SUMMONING HORRIFIC GODS, BEFORE WHICH ALL OTHERS WILL BOW IN TERROR.”
Great. We were up against 10,000 orcs, a couple dozen war golems, a powerful Warlock, and maybe some priest who could summon nightmarish deities.
Yeah, those odds were great.
“What are we going to do?” Alaria asked.
“Well… if we wait for Orlo to make the sale, then he’ll probably leave and go back home, in which case we could try to pick him off.”
“Sounds good.”
“But if we do that, the orcs are going to use the war golems to invade a kingdom and kill or enslave tens of thousands of people.”
“SO WE SHOULD WAIT UNTIL HE SELLS THEM THE WAR GOLEMS AND LEAVES, YES?” Grung asked.
I stared back at him. “NO! No, we’re not going to do that!”
“WHY NOT? WON’T IT BE EASIER TO CAPTURE HIM IF HE DOESN’T HAVE THE WAR GOLEMS?”
“Yes, but then tens of thousands of people might die or become slaves!”
Grung shrugged. “I DON’T KNOW ANY OF THOSE PEOPLE.”
“That’s not the point!”
“WHY WOULD YOU RISK YOUR LIFE FOR PEOPLE YOU DO NOT KNOW?”
“That’s a good question,” Alaria said drily. She was always dinging me for do-gooder causes, and I’m sure her opinion now was no different.
“Because it’s the right thing to do!” I insisted.
“TO RISK YOUR LIFE FOR HUMANS YOU DO NOT KNOW?”
“Not just humans!”
“WOULD YOU RISK YOUR LIVES FOR ORCS?” Grung asked – not in a smartass way, just with a note of curiosity in his voice.
“If they were peaceful.”
“ORCS AREN’T PEACEFUL,” Grung pointed out.
“If there were a bunch of women and children orcs not bothering anybody,” I said, irritated, “then yes, I would.”
“WHAT ABOUT TROLLS?”
“Same thing. Peaceable trolls, women and children, yes.”
“GOBLINS?”
“Yes.”
“OH,” Grung said. He paused, then asked, “HOW HAVE YOU MANAGED TO STAY ALIVE UP TO NOW?”
Alaria snorted with laughter. “That’s a good question, too.”
I shot her a look.
“Well, it IS,” she said with a barely suppressed grin.
“Are you saying we shouldn’t stop them?” I snapped.
“No,” she said in a gently mocking voice, “I’m saying I wouldn’t expect any less from the Emancipator of Abaddon.”
“THAT WAS YOU?!” Grung asked, surprised.
“Yeah,” I admitted with a bit of pride.
“OH. ORLO HATES YOU FOR THAT.”
“Yeah, well, Orlo can bite me.”
“WHY WOULD HE BITE YOU? DO YOU TASTE GOOD?”
“Parts of him do,” Alaria said, then turned to me. “How are we going to do this?”
I looked down at the camp. We hadn’t been able to beat Orlo alone – how the hell were we going to beat him combined with two dozen war golems and 10,000 orcs, and maybe with a god thrown into the mix?
As I was sitting there stewing in despair, something began to happen down on the plains.
There was a sound of horns – the ugly blat of Orcish war trumpets – and the thousands of ants out on the field began to scurry around and form into groups.
“What’s going on?” Alaria asked.
; “I don’t know – maybe they’re going to move out.”
If that was the case, we – and tens of thousands innocent men, women, children – were screwed.
A few tiny figures emerged from the tents and stood in front of the thousands of troops. One of them began to speak. I could hear the faint rumble of his voice, deep and angry, but it was so far away that it sounded like a tuba version of Charlie Brown’s teachers: waah wah wah waah wah waaaaah.
After only a few moments of that, though, something absolutely fucking insane happened.
There was a shimmer in the air, and a figure materialized in the camp.
It had to have been at least 100 feet tall, because it dwarfed the war golems assembled behind it.
It was a gigantic orc – green and muscular and ugly, like all the rest. Just 15 times taller.
“Holy shit,” I realized, “that’s the god! The Blue Priest must be summoning the god!”
And then it spoke.
Its voice rolled out like thunder across the plain. Its words were intelligible even at this distance, though I still didn’t know what it was saying, because it was all in Orcish.
“KRAST VOK NAR KRIK THOK! VAKAROKNIK MOK VAROK!”
“OH MY,” Grung said, and I could hear metal parts rattle against each other as he began to quake.
“Goddess fuck me,” Alaria whispered in terror.
They weren’t the only ones who were scared. Down on the plains, most of the orcs fell to their knees in terror or prostrated themselves before the massive deity.
I couldn’t blame them for their reactions. I almost shat my pants when he spoke –
Until Stig said something odd.
He cocked his head to the side and muttered, “That guy looks familiar.”
I looked at my imp like What the fuck are you talking about?
Then I took a long, hard look at the giant and realized Stig was right.
This orc god was definitely memorable, because he was different from most orcs (aside from his size). For one, he didn’t wear the plate armor or chain mail of a warrior. He was dressed in tattered animal skins.
And half of his body was fucked up. There were boils and blisters and sores covering the left side of his face, kind of like an especially disgusting version of Two-Face.
He didn’t carry the traditional orc scimitar or war hammer, but a scythe.
