ORCS: Army of Shadows

by Stan Nicholls

  “His female,” Spurral told him, “is quite capable of speaking for herself; and yes, I’m sure.”

  Haskeer grunted but otherwise kept quiet.

  They all stood motionless for several silent minutes, surveying the plain. Stryke wasn’t alone in starting to think it was some kind of mistake.

  It was Pepperdyne who pointed and said, “What’s that?”

  Stryke strained his eyes. “Can’t see anything.”

  Coilla chimed in with, “I can! Look, just to the right of that stand of trees.”

  Something was coming out of the murk. As it got nearer they realised it was someone mounted on a white horse. A slight figure, lean and straight-backed.

  It came near enough for them to make out what kind of being it was.

  “What the fuck?” Haskeer exclaimed, voicing the amazement they all felt.

  The rider was unmistakably of a race that didn’t exist on Acurial.

  Halting just short of the band, the rider lifted her hand in a gesture of greeting. “I’m here in peace. I intend you no harm.”

  Stryke found his tongue. “Who are you?”

  “My name is Pelli Madayar.”

  “You’re an elf.”

  “Very observant of you, Captain Stryke.”

  “How do you know my name? What the hell is —”

  “There are some things you’ll have to take on trust.”

  “Like a member of the elfin race turning up here?” Coilla said. “We need more than trust to take that in our stride. Where are you from?”

  “That’s not important.”

  “Is there a tribe of elves living in Acurial we didn’t know about?” Stryke persisted.

  “As I said, that’s not important.”

  “If you’re not from this land you must have come from… elsewhere.”

  “As you did.”

  Stryke was taken aback by that, as they all were. “You seem to know a hell of a lot about us.”

  “Perhaps. But I repeat: it’s not my intention to do you harm.”

  Jup said, “You wouldn’t have come from Maras-Dantia, would you?”

  “No. My kind are not confined to any one world. No more than orcs are, as you have found.”

  “You with Jennesta?” Stryke wanted to know.

  “No. My allegiance lies elsewhere and shouldn’t concern you.”

  “Helpful, ain’t she?” Haskeer muttered.

  “There are some things it’s better you should not know.”

  “Is that so? So how about we beat it out of you?”

  The elf was unruffled. “I wouldn’t advise you trying that. We don’t want to hurt you.”

  Haskeer laughed derisively. “Hurt us? You and whose army?”

  No sooner had he spoken than some of the grunts started shouting and pointing along the plain. A group of riders, about equal in number to the Wolverines, were emerging from the shadows. Many in the band went for their swords.

  As the newcomers slowly advanced, their nature could be seen. There were goblins, trolls and harpies in their ranks, along with centaurs, gremlins, gnomes, satyrs, kobolds, were-beasts, changelings and individuals from many other races, including some the orcs hadn’t seen before.

  “This just gets creepier,” Jup remarked, clutching his staff with rapidly whitening knuckles.

  “Who the hell are you, Madayar, and what do you want?” Stryke demanded.

  “We’ve come to parley.”

  “About what?”

  “You have certain things that don’t rightfully belong to you. Our duty is to retrieve them.”

  “What things?”

  “She means the stars, Stryke,” Coilla reckoned.

  “Yes,” the elf confirmed. “The artefacts more properly known as instrumentalities. They cannot stay in your possession.”

  “They’re ours by right!” Stryke thundered. “We fought and bled for them. Some of us died on the way.”

  “Yeah,” Haskeer added, “you want ’em, you rip ’em from our corpses.”

  “You have no understanding of their power.”

  “We’ve got a pretty good idea,” Stryke said.

  “No, you haven’t. Not their real power, and what they represent. What you’ve seen so far is just a fraction of their true potential.”

  “All the more reason not to hand them over to the first bunch of strangers who come begging.”

  “We’re not begging, we’re asking.”

  “The answer’s no,” Haskeer told her. “Now fuck off.”

  She ignored that. “The instrumentalities pose a terrible threat. Our task is to make sure they don’t fall into the wrong hands.”

  “And yours are the right hands, are they?” Stryke came back. “I don’t buy that.”

  “In the name of reason, consider what I’m telling you. If you knew what you were meddling in —”

  “So tell us.”

  Pelli faltered. “As I said, some things must rest on trust.”

  “Not good enough. You want something from orcs, you’ve got to take it. If you can.”

  Her tone became more conciliatory. “The ferocity of the orcs, and their bravery, are well known, for all that so many malign you. I know of your tenacity and of your valour. But you can’t hope to prevail against us.”

  Stryke looked to the rest of her group, now at a standstill a short arrow’s flight away. “In our time we’ve killed many from just about all the races in your ranks. Nothing I see makes me think you’d be any different.”

  “Don’t judge us by your past experience, Stryke. Your instinct is to fight, I understand that. It’s your birthright. But you don’t have to surrender to that impulse this time. Rather than lift your blades against us, try thinking instead.”

  “You saying we can’t think?” Haskeer rumbled.

  “I’m saying that in the end you have no choice but to surrender the instrumentalities.”

  “Surrender’s a word we don’t grant,” Stryke replied icily.

  “Don’t see it as surrender, but rather as a triumph of good sense.”

  “And if we don’t?”

  “Then I have to demand that you turn over the artefacts. Now.”

  “We don’t take demands either.”

  “This is pissing me off,” Haskeer fumed. “You’re pissing me off, elf!”

  “That’s your final word?” Pelli asked.

  Stryke nodded. “Any other parleying gets done with blades.”

  “I’m sorry we couldn’t reach an agreement.”

  “What you going to do about it?”

  “Reflect, and consult with my companions.” She turned her mount and began to leave.

  “You reflect away!” Haskeer shouted after her. “And all the fucking good it’ll do you!”

  In common with others in the band, several of the new intake had nocked arrows when the strange group appeared. Now one of them, raw and jumpy, accidentally let loose his string. The arrow shot past the retreating elf’s head so close she felt the air it displaced.

  Pelli Madayar swung about to look their way.

  Stryke started to shout. He wanted to say that it was an accident. That the band would fight to the last drop of blood and without mercy, but had no need to put an arrow in the back of anybody under a truce. He didn’t get the chance.

  The elf pointed her hand their way, then swept it left to right, rapidly. A wave of energy, red-tinged, flew at the band as fast as thought. It hit them with the force of a tempest. All of them. The entire company went down, knocked off their feet as surely as if they’d been struck with mallets. With it, the wave brought pain that coursed through their bodies for a good couple of seconds.

  “Gods,” Coilla groaned as she struggled to get up.

  “Stay low!” Stryke hissed. “All of you: head for the tree line. But keep down!”

  They scurried for the trees, bent double, trying to zigzag and make themselves harder targets. Halfway there, the air above them lit up with intense, multicoloured beams of light
. Rays crackling all around them, they put on a burst of speed and made it into the tiny wood.

  “Anybody hit?” Stryke panted.

  Miraculously, it seemed no one had been.

  “Who the fuck are this bunch?” Haskeer said.

  “Doesn’t matter. Main thing is getting out of the way of their magic.”

  “A frontal assault’s not on then?” Coilla ventured.

  “What do you think? Magic that strong, we’d be lucky to get ten paces.”

  “They’re coming!” Dallog warned.

  The bizarre multispecies company was approaching, riding in a line, steadily.

  “We’ll get to safer ground and figure out how to fight this,” Stryke decided.

  Jup, who with a couple of scouts had penetrated the wood farther than the others, came dashing back. He was breathing heavily. “Not that way. Jennesta’s troops.”

  “Shit,” Coilla cursed. “They must have picked up on the racket.”

  “Great,” Haskeer grumbled. “Jennesta and a couple of hundred humans that way, the freak circus over here, and us in the middle.”

  “What do we do, Stryke?” Pepperdyne badgered.

  “Depends how you want to die.”

  Coilla shook her head. “No, Stryke. There’s one other course.”

  He didn’t have to be told what that was. But he hesitated.

  They could hear Jennesta’s army now, tramping through the wood and making no effort at furtiveness. The riders were much nearer, too.

  “Hurry up, Stryke!” Coilla pleaded.

  He reached for the pouch where he kept the stars.

  Standeven stared, open-mouthed. “Surely you’re not going to —”

  “Shut it,” Stryke told him as he began pulling out the artefacts. His other hand went to the amulet at his throat.

  “There’s no time!” Coilla yelled.

  The Gateway Corps had reached the tree line. In the other direction, the foremost of Jennesta’s troops could be seen moving through the wood, a spit away.

  Stryke let go of the amulet and concentrated on the stars, quickly slotting them together in a random pattern.

  The whole band instinctively gathered about him.

  Standeven started to shout. The words were unintelligible and slick with panic. It almost drowned out the noise Wheam was making.

  Stryke took one last look at the comet through the branches overhead. It shone like a nighttime sun.

  Then he clicked the final instrumentality into place.

  13

  The bottom had dropped out of the universe.

  They were living sparks, sucked through an endless, serpentine tunnel of light. On its supple walls flashed endless images of other realities, moving so fast they were almost a blur. And beyond, outside that terrible shaft, an even more breathtaking actuality: a limitless canopy smothered in countless billions of stars.

  The band’s only sensation was of helplessly falling. A ceaseless and unremitting plunge into the black maw of the unknown.

  Then, after an eternity, they dropped towards a particular chasm, a whirlpool of sallow, churning light.

  It swallowed them.

  They landed hard. The collision with what seemed to be solid ground was bone-shaking. But they had no leisure to recover from the impact. Wherever they had fetched up was hostile. Murderously so.

  The place was in the grip of a violent sandstorm. Trillions of grains of sand lashed them like shards of glass or tiny diamonds, bathing them in pain. The sand not only pummelled them, it all but blinded them: they could see practically nothing. It was hard to stand, let alone walk. The heat was terrific, and in no way mitigated by the never-ending, roaring wind. Even for a group of warriors as toughened as the Wolverines, it was intolerable.

  Coilla was vaguely aware of other figures clustered about her. She happened to be standing next to Stryke when he slotted the instrumentalities together. If she hadn’t, she probably wouldn’t have been able to find him now. But by luck, when she stretched out her hand she brushed his arm. She took it in an iron grip.

  Thrusting her mouth to his ear, she bellowed, “Get us out of here!”

  Coilla had no way of knowing that was exactly what he was trying to do. The cluster of stars was still in his hands, and hampered by being unable to see what he was doing, he was battling to rearrange them.

  After what seemed an agonisingly long time, choking with the sand filling his mouth and nose, he managed to slot them into another random assembly.

  The void snatched them again. They were back in the swirling, never-ending spillway, taking a stomach-churning tumble to another unknown goal.

  The band was pitched into a blizzard, having exchanged insufferable heat for unspeakable cold. All they could see was white. Stinging snow pricked them like innumerable needles. The temperature was so low they found it difficult to breathe. Stryke’s fingers froze instantly, and it was all he could do to manipulate the stars. Teeth chattering, hands shaking uncontrollably, he finally altered them.

  Once more, the cosmic trapdoor flipped open.

  They were standing in torrential rain in a landscape that seemed to consist solely of mud that was nearly liquid itself. The air was uncomfortably humid. In seconds they realised that the rain was corrosive. It nipped at their flesh and singed their clothing as though it was vitriol. Stryke manipulated the stars.

  A jungle embraced them. At first it seemed endurable. Then gigantic swarms of flying insects appeared, tenacious and hungry. They covered the band, fibrous wings beating, stingers seeking unprotected skin. Stryke manoeuvred the stars into another configuration.

  They were deposited on a vast, featureless plain, the only variation being a distant range of blue-black mountains. Three Suns beat down, one of them bloody red. Of more immediate import were the two armies the Wolverines found themselves between. One consisted of creatures resembling giant lizards, with purple hides and flicking, barbed tongues. The other was made up of beasts that seemed to be a cross between bears and apes, only with four arms. Each horde numbered in the hundreds of thousands, and they were moving rapidly forward, with the warband squarely in their path, like a nut in a vice. Stryke fiddled with the instrumentalities.

  Icy salt spray splashed their faces. They were on a tiny rock in the middle of a turbulent ocean, battered by winds and towering waves, beneath an angry sky. The rock was jagged and slippery, and the band clung to each other for fear of falling and being swept away. Stryke acted.

  He kept on readjusting the stars as they were transported from world to world in search of somewhere bearable.

  In dizzying succession they flashed in and out of lands of startling diversity, including some they found incomprehensible as well as hostile. In one they were attacked by carnivorous birds; another was an environment with a noxious gas for its atmosphere that they were lucky to escape in time. They witnessed abundant orc-sized fish emerging from a huge lake, revealing legs, and jaws bristling with fangs; sentient snakes as big as elephants, devouring each other; a land of perpetual earthquakes where enormous fissures opened and closed with frightening rapidity; a world stifled by sulphur and riddled with blue lava flows; a mighty river inhabited by multi-tentacled beasts with the faces of rodents; gigantic flies that supped on struggling spiders in sticky webs that spanned valleys; a place where great prides of felines waged war amongst themselves; rampaging worms as large as mature oaks; dominions ruled by plagues of rats, and on and on.

  Eventually they materialised somewhere that didn’t seem immediately threatening. It was a dead world. They couldn’t tell if the desolation was the result of war or natural disaster, but it seemed complete. Not far away stood acres of debris and twisted uprights, just recognisable as the ruins of a city. There was no sign of life anywhere, not even vegetation, which the soil looked incapable of supporting in any event. Everything was grey and spent.

  The Wolverines stood wordlessly for several minutes, in anticipation of something unfriendly happening. When it didn’t,
they did more than relax. They collapsed exhaustedly. They were in a sorry state: drenched, tattered, bruised and bleeding. The tyros were near unhinged, and Standeven was a wreck. Some of the band were vomiting. Others nursed wounds or crouched with their heads in their hands.

  “That was… one… hell of a… ride,” Coilla said when she stopped fighting for breath.

  “Couldn’t… set the… stars… properly,” Stryke gasped back. “No… chance to.”

  She started to pull herself together, as most of the others were doing. “I… know. Who would… have thought… so many… of the worlds were… so shitty?”

  “Least it looks safe here.”

  “Maybe.” She surveyed the barren landscape suspiciously.

  “We’ll rest for a bit, tend wounds. Then I’ll fit the stars for Ceragan.”

  She nodded and perched herself on a half-melted rock, head down, arms dangling.

  As soon as he could, Stryke got some of the recovering grunts to mount guard. He had Dallog look at injuries, fortunately none of which called for major treatment, and ordered iron rations to be broken out.

  They spent the next hour or more recuperating and getting their heads straight, during which time Jup came to Stryke with a question.

  “What do we do about the humans?”

  “Do?”

  “Yeah. You planning on taking them back to Ceragan with you? Come to that, what about me and Spurral?”

  “I’ve not been thinking straight,” Stryke confessed. “That’s a problem I hadn’t weighed.”

  “Can’t be blamed for that. But what are you going to do with us non-orcs?”

  “You and Spurral are welcome to join us in Ceragan. You’d be the only dwarfs, but you wouldn’t be without comrades.”

  “That’s a generous offer, Stryke, and I thank you for it. But I’m guessing it’s not one you’d be happy making to Pepperdyne and Standeven.”

  “No, there’d be no place there for them. But suppose we took them back to Maras-Dantia?”

  “That I hadn’t thought of. Seems right, seeing as it’s where you picked them up in the first place.”

  “We could do the same for you. Get you back to your own kind.”

  Jup sighed. “I dunno, Stryke. We had good reasons for leaving. I’m not sure either of us would relish going back, for all that we were born there. Maras-Dantia’s fit only to break hearts these days.”