“Am I glad to see you, Captain,” Wheam panted.
“I’m going to get you out of here. Stay close.”
Before they could move, Coilla arrived.
“I thought I told you —”
“You need me,” she said. “Look around. Somebody’s got to cover your back.”
“All right. Let’s go.”
It was getting harder to steer a way that didn’t have troops in it. So they were compelled to carve a path. But still the increasing opposition made them take a different route back. It took them past a large outcropping of rock.
It was only very shortly after what happened next that Stryke started to think they’d been deliberately herded that way.
Jennesta stepped out from behind the rock.
The trio stopped in their tracks.
“Run, Wheam!” Coilla pleaded. “Get out of here!”
The youth fled.
Jennesta laughed, disturbingly. “It seems not all orcs are courageous.”
Stryke and Coilla rushed her as one, their blades levelled.
She made a swift hand gesture. The pair instantly froze in their tracks, rigid as statues.
Strangely, the fighting seemed to have frozen too. Or at least the sound and sight of it had. It was either more of Jennesta’s magic, or her followers had fallen back, reinforcing the suspicion that it had been a setup.
“Now that I’ve got you nicely calmed,” Jennesta said, “we can have a civilised conversation.”
Stryke and Coilla were helpless. They struggled to move or make a sound but couldn’t.
“When I say conversation, of course, that doesn’t imply that you’ll be taking part in it. Actually, Stryke, I’ve got someone here who knows you. Or did.” She snapped her fingers loudly.
Two zombies lumbered into sight. They walked on either side of somebody.
It was Thirzarr.
Stryke’s mate showed no sign of recognising him. She looked healthy enough, apart from a few bruises, but seemed to be in a light trance or coma.
“Surprised?” Jennesta mocked. “I thought you might be. She isn’t fully undead, like my servants here. She’s… let us say she’s in the stage before that, and could go either way. A zombie or back to how she was. You can decide which.”
For all his torment, Stryke couldn’t break through her enchantment.
“My proposition is straightforward,” she informed him. “I’ll free your mate if you and your band surrender yourselves to me. Just the orcs; I’ve no need for the other types you have hanging on. Do that, Stryke, and you’ll not only free Thirzarr, you’ll also be part of a wonderful enterprise. The Wolverines will form the nucleus of my zombie orc army. Quite a combination, yes? Unquestioning obedience coupled with your peerless fighting skills and robust fitness. A great improvement on the present sort.” She indicated her zombie slaves with a casual flick of the hand. “Think of it, Stryke. You’ll be able to fight and conquer to your black heart’s content. Not just in one world, but many. All of them. With the instrumentalities turned out on a mass scale… Oh, yes. That’s how I come to be here. I copied yours. And now I know I have the means perfected, I can start to build an army of totally compliant orcs to conquer… well, everywhere really. Anyway, that’s the proposition. I’m going to sever the bonds holding you now so you can give your answer. One move and you’ll go back to helplessness.” She gestured with her hands again.
Stryke thawed. Despite his rage and anguish he fought back the urge to leap for her throat. He knew it would be futile, and he needed to bide his time. If he had any. He kept his bile for words. “You stinking bitch! What have you done to Thirzarr? And what about our hatchlings? Where are they?”
“You don’t expect me to tell you, do you? Your brats are not the issue. Your mate or your band. What’s your answer?”
“I can’t agree, not on behalf of the others. They fought hard for their freedom. I can’t be the one to make them forfeit it.”
“Then your mate becomes a mindless slave. Perhaps you’d like a mindless slave for a mate. I could see it might have some advantages. Is that it, Stryke?”
“If you’d only face me one to one, in a fair —”
She burst out laughing. “Oh, please. As if I’m going to do that. But perhaps there’s another way of resolving this.”
“How?”
“If you won’t capitulate, then settle it in a way more to your liking. In combat. If my champion wins, you succumb. Well, you’ll be dead actually, but you would have conceded defeat. You win, you have your mate back, good as new.”
Coilla struggled against her invisible bonds futilely.
“Who’s your champion?” Stryke said.
“She’s standing right next to me.”
“Thirzarr? I won’t do it. She wouldn’t either.”
“Really?” Jennesta waved a hand at Thirzarr.
She seemed to come alive, yet not quite.
“Fight him,” Jennesta ordered, “to the death.” She handed Thirzarr a sword.
She snatched it and immediately made for Stryke. He stood stupefied for a second, not believing his eyes. Then he had to move fast to evade her singing blade.
Stryke twisted and turned to avoid the rain of blows she sent his way. He only reluctantly raised his own sword when he had no other way of fending her off. Every move he made was defensive. Her every stroke was calculated to kill.
It was getting desperate. Stryke was being driven to up the ante in the face of her inexhaustible attack. He dreaded his instincts taking over and, Thirzarr or not, his striking back in kind.
Suddenly Wheam reappeared. He popped from behind the outcropping. Of all the things he might have done next, Stryke would never have guessed the one he chose.
He threw a rock at Jennesta. It struck her on the shoulder and she cried out, more in injured pride than in hurt.
The unexpectedness of the attack broke her concentration and whatever mental power she exercised to maintain her enchantments.
Coilla unfroze. Thirzarr stopped, lowered her arms and dropped the sword. She seemed to have re-entered the state she had arrived in.
As Jennesta raged, and presumably struggled to re-establish her hold, Coilla grabbed Stryke and began pulling him away. He struggled at first, wanting to go to Thirzarr, but even in his frenzy he saw that was hopeless. He let Coilla and Wheam guide him.
They ran. Something like a thunderbolt followed them, but boomed harmlessly overhead.
The fighting had died down considerably, and although they faced opposition, which fell to Coilla to deal with, they got back to the others unscathed.
What had happened was quickly relayed to the band. Most took the news in dumb silence.
Coilla said, “Take us to Ceragan, Stryke. We’ll raise an army and come back here to kick Jennesta’s arse so hard —”
“We don’t know if the stars would get us there. But there’s worse.”
“How could it be worse?” She had an icy churning in the pit of her stomach.
“Don’t you see? Jennesta must have been there, to get Thirzarr. And Thirzarr wouldn’t have come willingly. No orc would. They would have fought. It wouldn’t be beyond Jennesta to wipe out every orc there if she could manage it. Coilla, we don’t even know if Ceragan still exists.”
THE ORCS’ ADVENTURE CONCLUDES IN:
Orcs: Inferno
Stan Nicholls
Coming in 2010
Available wherever good books are sold
acknowledgments
Of all the unsung heroes of publishing, translators play an especially important role. The success of a foreign edition of a book stands or falls on the expertise and sensitivity of its translator. So I’d like to take this opportunity to acknowledge my enormous debt to all the translators of the many editions of the Orcs series that have appeared around the world. In particular, my gratitude is due to Isabelle Troin in France, Juergen Langowski in Germany, and Lia Belt in Holland as peers of their profession.
; extras
meet the author
Peter Coleborn
STAN NICHOLLS is the author of more than two dozen books, most of them in the fantasy and science fiction genres, for both children and adults. His books have been published in over twenty countries. Before taking up writing full time in 1981, he co-owned and managed West London bookstore Bookends and managed the specialist SF bookshop Dark They Were and Golden Eyed. He was also Forbidden Planet’s first manager and helped establish and run the New York branch. A journalist for national and specialist publications and the Internet, he was the science fiction and fantasy book reviewer for London listings magazine Time Out for six years and subsequently reviewed popular science titles for the magazine. He received the Le Fantastique Lifetime Achievement Award for Contributions to Literature in April 2007.
introducing
If you enjoyed
ORCS: ARMY OF SHADOWS, look out for
THE LAST WISH
by Andrzej Sapkowski
Geralt de Rivia is a witcher.
A cunning sorcerer. A merciless assassin.
And a cold-blooded killer.
His sole purpose: to destroy the monsters that plague the world.
But not everything monstrous-looking is evil, and not everything fair is good… and in every fairy tale there is a grain of truth.
The mare flattened her ears against her skull and snorted, throwing up earth with her hooves; she didn’t want to go. Geralt didn’t calm her with the Sign; he jumped from the saddle and threw the reins over the horse’s head. He no longer had his old sword in its lizard-skin sheath on his back; its place was filled with a shining, beautiful weapon with a cruciform and slender, well-weighted hilt, ending in a spherical pommel made of white metal.
This time the gate didn’t open for him. It was already open, just as he had left it.
He heard singing. He didn’t understand the words; he couldn’t even identify the language. He didn’t need to —the witcher felt and understood the very nature, the essence, of this quiet, piercing song that flowed through the veins in a wave of nauseous, overpowering menace.
The singing broke off abruptly, and then he saw her.
She was clinging to the back of the dolphin in the dried-up fountain, embracing the moss-overgrown stone with her tiny hands, so pale they seemed transparent. Beneath her storm of tangled black hair shone huge, wide-open eyes the color of anthracite.
Geralt slowly drew closer, his step soft and springy, tracing a semicircle from the wall and blue rosebush. The creature glued to the dolphin’s back followed him with her eyes, turning her petite face with an expression of longing, and full of charm. He could still hear her song, even though her thin, pale lips were held tight and not the slightest sound emerged from them.
The witcher halted at a distance of ten paces. His sword, slowly drawn from its black enameled sheath, glistened and glowed above his head.
“It’s silver,” he said. “This blade is silver.”
The pale little face did not flinch; the anthracite eyes did not change expression.
“You’re so like a rusalka,” the witcher continued calmly, “that you could deceive anyone. All the more as you’re a rare bird, black-haired one. But horses are never mistaken. They recognize creatures like you instinctively and perfectly. What are you? I think you’re a moola, or an alpor. An ordinary vampire couldn’t come out in the sun.”
The corners of the pale lips quivered and turned up a little.
“Nivellen attracted you with that shape of his, didn’t he? You evoked his dreams. I can guess what sort of dreams they were, and I pity him.”
The creature didn’t move.
“You like birds,” continued the witcher. “But that doesn’t stop you biting the necks of people of both sexes, does it? You and Nivellen, indeed! A beautiful couple you’d make, a monster and a vampire, rulers of a forest castle. You’d dominate the whole area in a flash. You, eternally thirsty for blood, and he, your guardian, a murderer at your service, a blind tool. But first he had to become a true monster, not a human being in a monster’s mask.”
The huge black eyes narrowed.
“Where is he, black-haired one? You were singing, so you’ve drunk some blood. You’ve taken the ultimate measure, which means you haven’t managed to enslave his mind. Am I right?”
The black-tressed head nodded slightly, almost imperceptibly, and the corners of the mouth turned up even more. The tiny little face took on an eerie expression.
“No doubt you consider yourself the lady of this manor now?”
A nod, this time clearer.
“Are you a moola?”
A slow shake of the head. The hiss that reverberated through his bones could only have come from the pale, ghastly, smiling lips, although the witcher didn’t see them move.
“Alpor?”
Denial.
The witcher backed away and clasped the hilt of his sword tighter. “That means you’re —”
The corners of the lips started to turn up higher and higher; the lips flew open…
“A bruxa!” the witcher shouted, throwing himself toward the fountain.
From behind the pale lips glistened white, spiky fangs. The vampire jumped up, arched her back like a leopard and screamed.
The wave of sound hit the witcher like a battering ram, depriving him of breath, crushing his ribs, piercing his ears and brain with thorns of pain. Flying backward, he just managed to cross his wrists in the Sign of Heliotrop. The spell cushioned some of his impact with the wall but even so, the world grew dark and the remainder of his breath burst from his lungs in a groan.
On the dolphin’s back, in the stone circle of the dried-up fountain where a dainty girl in a white dress had sat just a moment ago, an enormous black bat flattened its glossy body, opening its long, narrow jaws wide, revealing rows of needle-like white teeth. The membranous wings spread and flapped silently, and the creature charged at the witcher like an arrow fired from a crossbow.
Geralt, with the metallic taste of blood in his mouth, shouted a spell and threw his hand, fingers spread in the Sign of Quen, out in front of him. The bat, hissing, turned abruptly, then chuckled and veered up into the air before diving down vertically, straight at the nape of the witcher’s neck. Geralt jumped aside, slashed, and missed. The bat smoothly, gracefully drew in a wing, circled around him and attacked anew, opening its eyeless, toothed snout wide. Geralt waited, sword held with both hands, always pointed in the creature’s direction. At the last moment, he jumped —not to the side but forward, dealing a swinging cut which made the air howl.
He missed. It was so unexpected that he lost his rhythm and dodged a fraction of a second too late. He felt the beast’s talons tear his cheek, and a damp velvety wing slapped against his neck. He curled up on the spot, transferred the weight of his body to his right leg and slashed backward sharply, missing the amazingly agile creature again.
The bat beat its wings, soared up and glided toward the fountain. As the crooked claws scraped against the stone casing, the monstrous, slobbering snout was already blurring, morphing, disappearing, although the pale little lips that were taking its place couldn’t quite hide the murderous fangs.
The bruxa howled piercingly, modulating her voice into a macabre tune, glared at the witcher with eyes full of hatred, and screamed again.
The sound wave was so powerful it broke through the Sign. Black and red circles spun in Geralt’s eyes; his temples and the crown of his head throbbed. Through the pain drilling in his ears, he began to hear voices wailing and moaning, the sound of flute and oboe, the rustle of a gale. The skin on his face grew numb and cold. He fell to one knee and shook his head.
The black bat floated toward him silently, opening its toothy jaws. Geralt, still stunned by the scream, reacted instinctively. He jumped up and, in a flash, matching the tempo of his movements to the speed of the monster’s flight, took three steps forward, dodged, turned a semicircle and then, quick as a thought, delivered a t
wo-handed blow. The blade met with no resistance… almost no resistance. He heard a scream, but this time it was a scream of pain, caused by the touch of silver.
The wailing bruxa was morphing on the dolphin’s back. On her white dress, slightly above her left breast, a red stain was visible beneath a slash no longer than a little finger. The witcher ground his teeth —the cut, which should have sundered the beast in two, had been nothing but a scratch.
“Shout, vampire,” he growled, wiping the blood from his cheek. “Scream your guts out. Lose your strength. And then I’ll slash your pretty little head off!”
You. You will be the first to grow weak, Sorcerer. I will kill you.
The bruxa’s lips didn’t move, but the witcher heard the words clearly: they resounded in his mind, echoing and reverberating as if underwater.
“We shall see,” he muttered through his teeth as he walked, bent over, in the direction of the fountain.
I will kill you. I’ll kill you. I’ll kill you.
“We shall see.”
ORCS: Army of Shadows Page 25
