A Sea of Skulls (Arts of Dark and Light Book 2)

by Vox Day

  Nor were they the only females. There were also two pretty young gob’agh, and unexpectedly, a female troll as well. It appeared the Great Orc was considerably less limited in his appetites than Lugbol would ever have imagined. The troll was smaller than the few trolls Lugbol had seen, mostly at a distance, but she was still sizable. She was leaning back on a knee-stool gnawing on a bone that was very nearly the size of Lugbol’s leg. Except for a delicate iron chain about her waist, she was also stark naked, and Lugbol couldn’t help noticing that not only were her breasts larger than his head, but her neck was thicker than his thighs.

  For once, his imagination failed him entirely. With some effort, he managed to stop staring at the she-troll and direct his attention toward the large orc sitting sprawled upon a makeshift wooden throne.

  The galvebel saluted, then bowed. “The shugaba of the returned gungiyar, Great Orc, as ordered.”

  “Very good, galvebel. You can go now.”

  “Great Orc!”

  Lugbol stood straight and tried his best not to cringe as the Great Orc sat up on his throne and looked him over with a disturbing level of interest. Azzakhar was even bigger than the Slayers, and he dressed as if he was one of them, in fighting leathers, with only a black iron crown and gilded tusks to denote his royal status. His face was flat and brutish, but intelligent, his nostrils were bigger and his tusks were smaller than Lugbol would have expected. His scabbarded cleaver was hung carelessly off the back of the throne, and he didn’t even wear a dagger on his belt, although the height of his blue trollskin boots indicated that one might be concealed there.

  But his claws were tipped with sharpened iron, and no orc with powerful hands the size of his could ever be considered weaponless. One white scar ran the length of his left bicep, while a somewhat newer one, healed but dark green, marred the left side of his face. This was no token king held up by his kin of sept and clan, but a true orc king who ruled by the strength of his fist and the force of his will.

  Behind him was a curtain that partially obscured the movement of someone, or something, concealed behind it. Whatever it was, it was moving, but it wasn’t until Lugbol heard a squeal in response to a rhythmic grunting that he realized what was happening there. He must have betrayed his surprise, because the Great Orc sat up and laughed.

  “Never mind them. Your name is Lugbol,” he declared unexpectedly. “I’m told you survived the battle that destroyed Zlatagh and the army I gave him.”

  “I did, Great Orc. As did most of my kors. Gog Black Fists. Light infantry.”

  “I heard you brought some stragglers with you too. That’s good. Now, how in the name of Gor-Gor’s giant vank did twenty-five thousand kors manage to get themselves killed?”

  “I don’t know exactly, Great Orc. We were attacked in our camp at night. No one expected it. They weren’t szavon’ugh. They wore iron and carried great shields. And they had strange war machines that threw terrible balls of fire. Like a shaman, only not magic. Most of the gungiyars were taken by surprise and routed in a panic.”

  “Panic!” Azzakhar snarled. “How many of them attacked?”

  “I don’t know, Great Orc. It was very dark, with the trees blocking the moonslight. I was walking the rounds, checking on the guard posts when the attack came. I think that is why I was able to keep my kors together. We fought our way past them and then we returned here after gathering up the others. None of them could tell me much; some of them never even saw any enemy.”

  “They fled north, where they were destroyed by the szavon’ugh.” The Great Orc nodded and ran a clawed finger up and down one of his golden tusks in a thoughtful manner. He seemed to come to some sort of decision then, because he looked back over his shoulder and roared at someone behind the curtain.

  “Tain! Get your horny damned hide out here!”

  Both the movement and the grunting came to a sudden stop. “Just give me a little while–”

  “Stow your damned vank and get your arse out here now or I’ll cut it off and feed it to you!”

  “All right, all right,” a sullen voice grumbled.

  “He doesn’t actually think with his bollocks, even though you might think so,” the Great Orc confided. Lugbol nodded mutely, knowing he was entirely out of his element. He’d felt safer in the forest fleeing from the Iron Men.

  It didn’t make him feel any less uneasy when the biggest orc Lugbol had ever seen pushed his way passed the curtain. General Tain was immense, wearing nothing but a sort of leather loincloth that did little to hide the monstrous vank that was threatening to burst it. His skin was a greenish blue, and his tusks were short, thick, blunt, and unadorned. Lugbol had seen him at a distance before, but never up close, and now that he did, he realized the general was at least one-quarter troll.

  “This better be damned important, Azza.”

  “It is. Lugbol, describe those Men that attacked you.”

  As Lugbol dutifully described them again, and did his best to answer the general’s pointed questions about their armor, he could see that both the Great Orc and the half-orc were excited about something.

  “How did they fight?” General Tain demanded. “Not how well, we know they did for Zlatagh.”

  “They stand in close formation. They must drill a lot, because they stay tight. Their swords are very short, more like long daggers than proper swords. They don’t use them to chop either. They hide behind large shields and then the short swords flick out like a snake’s tongue. They’re not very big, maybe between our size and a goblin, they’re smaller than the szavon’ugh. But a small group of them chopped us up pretty bad. I lost my first galvebel to them.”

  “They all wear the same sort o’ helms, with metal covering their faces?” General Tain raised both hands to his face, covering his cheeks beyond his tusks. “Open in the middle. Some o’ them got plumes like a rooster.”

  “Like that, yes.”

  “Amor’agh,” the general told the Great Orc. “It’s got to be. No other men wear pots on their head and fight on foot with little swords.”

  “Then we can finally march! The witch said if they come north, then the Stone ain’t in the south. So she’ll want to head west.”

  “So we march west.”

  “No, the main body will go south first. The elves must be destroyed; I dasn’t leave them at my back to chew on my arse. They’ve had their damned birds flying over us morning and night, so they’ll know if we move on the Szavon’agh.”

  “Maybe they’ll leave us go?”

  The Great Orc shook his head. “Maybe, but the alv’agh are weak. Only three cities remain to them now. Merithaim and Elebrion we can smash. The city on the sea could be tough. We got no boats.”

  “Don’t need no boats. We smash the two cities and kill all their wizzies at the wizzy tower, they’ll be too busy hiding on their island and pissing themselves to get in the way of anything we do after. They’ll just be glad we’re gone.”

  “How long?”

  “Ten days for Glaislael. Four weeks for Elebrion.”

  “So long?”

  “We gots to drag the war machines up the mountain. That takes time, especially with elven sky riders dropping rocks and magic on our heads.”

  “There is that.” He indicated Lugbol. “You got any use for this one? Might make for an officer. He was the only shugaba out of eighty-three to bring back his gungiyar intact. In fact, I’m told he come back with more kors than he left with.”

  Tain looked over Lugbol, a faint scowl on his face. It was an intimidating sight, but Lugbol remembered the Slayer’s instructions and did his best to stand tall and show no fear.

  “He’s too small to make a regular. Where’s he from, Gog? He’d end up squagged, if not potted, the first day. He’d need a pair of enforcers to babysit him, and if we’re going to march soon, he won’t have time for them to kick his kors into shape.”

  The Great Orc nodded. “What do you think, Lugbol-shuga? You want in the real army?”

  “
With no disrespect to the general, Great Orc, I think it would be best to stay with the Black Fists. We took a real licking out there and the kors are just starting to get their spirit back. If I can, I’d just ask to keep the kors we picked up from the other gungiyar, at least those as want to stay on. A lot of them don’t got no unit no more, and they got nowhere to go.”

  The two bigger orcs looked at each other. The general snorted. “Sounds like a right grun-kor to me. He’s right, he’ll do better with his own orcs, but a proper rank would be useful. That way he won’t have to take any murdu from some damned regular with rocks for brains.”

  The Great Orc concurred, nodding. “You can keep your kors, Lugbol. All of them, if you want. Kick out the whiners and the slackers as you see fit. But the general says you sound like a proper grun-kor and I can’t see he’s wrong. So, what will it be, the ink or the fire?”

  Lugbol couldn’t stop the smile that came to his face. He stood taller and he knew what the answer had to be, although he didn’t relish the pain that would inevitably ensue. “If it’s your hand that’ll do it, Great Orc, I’ll take the fire.”

  “If it’s his hand you want, then it’ll have to be the fire. He does the ink, no one will know if you’re a slave or a damn general!” General Tain laughed and then bellowed out some orders. It wasn’t long before a brazier was produced, hot and smoking, and protruding from it was a metal rod with a wooden handle.

  “You want something to bite down on, Lugbol-shuga?”

  “No, Great Orc.”

  “Ain’t no shame in the ink, you know. Most of my officers wear the tattoo.”

  Lugbol nodded. The general was telling the truth, but not all of it. There wasn’t a single officer in the Red Claw Slayers, or in the other elite units, who didn’t wear his rank burned into his flesh. The arms of both General Tain and the Great Orc were scarred with the brands of rank, among them, the sigil presently heating up in the brazier.

  “I’ll take the fire all the same, general.”

  “Ahr!” The general smote Lugbol approvingly on the shoulder with his meaty hand, nearly knocking him over. “Maybe we’ll see you in the regulars yet, little Goghu!”

  The Great Orc rose from his wooden throne, walked over to the brazier, and withdrew the branding iron from the flame. The end was glowing and radiating heat that Lugbol could feel on his face; the nearly molten iron pulled his eyes to it and mesmerized him. He could barely hear what Azzakhar was telling him, but he stood as straight as he could, tensed his left arm, and grabbed his left wrist with his right hand. He felt, rather than saw, the general move behind him, then one powerful hand grabbed his right shoulder while the other one supported his left elbow, leaving his left bicep exposed.

  The Great Orc stepped in front of him, and for a moment, Azzakhar’s yellow eyes met his own. Azzakhar nodded once, and then pain unlike any Lugbol had ever known erupted in his upper arm. The searing agony seemed to tear through his flesh and deep into the bone, but he growled low in his throat and resisted the instinctive urge to pull away. He tried to count, but the pain was too intense. It seemed as if the moment would last forever, that he was trapped in a fragment of a fiery Hell. And then suddenly the pressure was gone, the intensity of the pain receded, and he could smell the stink of his own burned flesh. Sweat poured down from his brow and trickled down his sides, and he found himself breathing hard, as if he’d just sprinted across a field.

  “Damn good, Grun-kor!” A big hand swatted his backside. “Taken like a true kor indeed!”

  The Great Orc merely nodded, then slipped the branding iron back in the brazier. But when he turned around again, Lugbol could see a satisfied look in the bigger orc’s eyes.

  “Thank you, Great Orc!” He stood up straight and saluted.

  “Grun-kor.” The Great Orc returned the salute. “You are hereby ordered to return to your unit, which I am raising to regimental status. Have a banner made accordingly. But before you go, is there anything more you’d like than a scar on your arm?”

  “The honor is more than this kor deserves, Great Orc!” Lugbol barked in his best imitation of the Slayers he’d seen. But he couldn’t help a sidelong glance at some of the nearby kir’agh, the more curious of whom had been watching his promotion.

  General Tain burst out laughing. “The lad’s been in the field for months, Azza! Can’t you see the poor bastard is starving for ghash?”

  Lugbol felt mortified, but he couldn’t deny that the general was right. Even so, he couldn’t bring himself to ask. No orc worth his sweat begged for kwee; not even here where there was none to be found except by permission of the Great Orc. A proper kor took, he did not ask. He said nothing.

  But his silence did not fool Azzakhar. The big orc winked and spread his hand at the kir’agh behind him. “Take your choice with you. You can have her for three days and share her with your galvebels, but not more than two per day. Return her in the same shape you found her or I’ll rip off that arm I just branded and rape you with it. And if you’ll take my advice, don’t pick the half-troll unless you want your bloody vank ripped out by the roots.”

  The newly appointed grun-kor of the Black Fist light infantry regiment looked at the kir’agh standing, or in some cases, seductively lying, before him. They looked back at him, their interest clearly piqued by the favor the Great Orc had shown him. One of them, one of the smaller kir, had short, powerful legs, a long mane dyed blue, and a challenging stare that he found particularly appealing. He indicated her, and she rose, shooting a triumphant sneer at the rest of the harem.

  Grun-kor Lugbol exited the tent, burning pain on one arm and the most beautiful kir he’d ever seen on the other. It wasn’t until three nights later, when he lay in his new tent sniffing happily at the fading scent of kwee in the air, that he realized why the Great Orc had given the kir to him for three days. Judging by the increasingly urgent orders being shouted in the camp around him, it would not be long before the Great Orc ordered his sprawling army to take the field at last.

  Steinthor

  The mood in the entry hall was surprisingly cheerful, Steinthor thought as he limped painfully into it. He was sorry that Horse-Bjorn hadn’t lived to see the fey scene; it would have warmed his black heart to see so many men spitting contemptuously into the face of death. The Grævling saw him and quickly made his way over to him and clapped him on the shoulder. A rare smile lit up his grey-bearded face.

  “Strongbow! You made it! I heard both you and Horse-Bjorn fell.”

  “He fell all right,” Steinthor said regretfully. “Stood over me when a wolf knocked me down, and a moment later, got himself thrown from the tower.”

  “I’ll wager he died happy if he landed on one.”

  “I don’t know about that. He was cursing hellfire the last I heard him. Probably didn’t think it was proper heroic, getting tossed like that. Poor bastards just trying to enjoy the feast’ll be getting an earful about that for a long time!”

  They both laughed at the thought of the Horse-Bjorn bitching and complaining to anyone in Valhalla who would listen to him about the manner of his dying.

  “You held them off longer than I thought. For a while, I was thinking we went to all this trouble for nothing. I was afraid we’d have to do it all over again tomorrow night!”

  “No fear of that.” Steinthor sighed and looked around at the exhausted, bloody men surrounding him. They were doing their best to keep their spirits up, each man bragging about how many wolves he had killed or how bravely one of his companions died. The ale didn’t hurt, of course, and he gladly took a big horn from which the ale was sloshing forth from a grinning man whose bleeding face had been badly raked by four claws from cheek to jaw.

  The cold ale was like a godsend to his battle-parched throat. It might be the last beer he’d ever drink, but damned if it wasn’t the best he’d ever tasted! It seemed life was like love, always sweetest at the end.

  And the end was nigh. He drained the horn to its dregs, then tossed it to the
floor. The Grævling looked at him inquisitively and he nodded. It was time for one final draught.

  “Drink deeply, men,” he called as the Grævling’s men dragged out the bottom two-thirds of a cask that had been filled with mead. “We’ll sour their bellies, we will, damn them if we don’t!”

  The men looked at him expectantly. Then Egil the Wyrm started stomping his feet. The others picked it up, and then the chanting began. “Død! Død! Død!” Death! Death! Death!

  Steinthor knew what they wanted. The mead was laced with hellebore and whatever other evils the Grævling had seen fit to add. Skollvaldr alone knew what the concoction contained, or what it would taste like, and for all that the men were ready to die in battle, it was a hard thing to hold your own death in the palm of your hand, to taste it, and to drink it down.

  “Someone give me a damned sword!” he bellowed, and in a heartbeat there were ten or more blades being offered to him. He took the one that looked to have retained the most edge and raised it high in his right hand as he approached the cask and its tainted mead. A wooden cup was bobbing in the weirdly clouded liquid and Steinthor pushed it down into the mead before pulling it back up again, full and spilling over his left hand.

  “Død for ulvene!” he shouted.

  “Death to the wolves!” they shouted back.

  “Død til os!”

  “Death to us!” they echoed.

  It was now or never, he thought to himself. He raised the cup of death to all of them, to each of them, to every doomed man there and every dead man who had fallen bravely in battle, and he realized, somewhat to his surprise, that he was thirsty.