The Eighth God
Page 1
Contents
Copyright
Dedication
Cast of Characters
Nursery Rhyme
Wise words
Prologue
A Forging of Heroes
PART ONE: BEGINNINGS
1: The Spy
2: The Chief of Lies
3: Into the South
4: Ashen Falls
PART TWO: ORCSLAYER
5: Paying the Piper
6: Homecoming
7: The Watcher
8: The Battle Mage
9: The Commander
10: Ellowe
11: The New Captain
12: High on the Rooftops
13: The Shadow
14: A Silent Vigil
15: The Fight
16: Healing
17: Rescued
18: The Knight of Luck
19: Another Brush with Death
20: Pock and Cock
21: To the Borderlands
22: The Knight of...
23: …Coins
24: A History Lesson
25: On the Road
26: Alone
27: Into the Fortress
28: Morning
29: Look No Wings
30: Restitution
31: The Farmer’s Daughter
32: Ellowe and the Lady
33: To Find Orcs
34: The Road Less Travelled
35: Fresh Troops
36: The Ambush
37: The Living and the Dead
38: Hardstone
39: The Walking, Talking Dead
40: The Road Back
41: The Dancing Death
42: The Battle of Hardstone
43: Concangis and Epiacum
44: The Eighth God’s Avatar
45: Whole Again
46: A New Day
47: The Loving Dead
48: Meeting the Commander
PART THREE: KNIGHT’S PERCH
49: Arrivals
50: In the Hands of the Enemy
51: Hate
52: Family Meeting
53: Brothers
54: The Army at the Gates
55: The Golem’s Secret
56: An Unexpected Revelation
57: The Second Spy
58: Killing Your Own
59: Simon Versus the Creature
60: The Good and the Bad
61: A Nasty Way to Go
62: The Battle of Knights Perch Begins
63: Melress and the Golem
64: Erasnus
65: Holding the Tower
66: Death and Destruction
67: The Weight of Dead Names
68: Death comes for us all
69: Meeting
70: Another Army Approaches
71: The Female is More Deadly
72: Cold as Ice
73: New Decisions
Epilogue
An Excerpt from Book 2 Of The Orcslayer
1: Foremost
2: Assassin
Author's Notes
About the Author
Copyright by the author of this book. The book author retains sole copyright to his or her contributions to this book.
All the characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Cover Art by Betibup33 and more can be found at http//thebookcoverdesigner.com/designers/betibup33/
For Sam, my long-suffering wife who puts up with me every day because she loves me, and for Ryan, our son, who I hope one day will read this book and think – Yeah, my dad wrote this!
Without one person, this book would never have even started, so if you want to blame anyone blame David Humphrey, author of Knight of Coins. He pushed a button that read ‘DO NOT PUSH’ and made me get off my bottom and get on with it.
Cast of Characters
ORCS
Bazak-Kul - A half-orc Spy
Grash-Kul - An orc chieftain
Trush-Kul - An orc war leader
Erasnus-Tuk - A hand picked orc
ELVES / HALF-ELVES
Ashalone / Tierra - A battle mage / An orcslayer
Arande - A battle mage commander
Saethryth - An orcslayer
Melress - A half-elven battle mage
Goyler- The eighth god’s avatar
Nillean - Ambassador to the orcs
Beatrice - Princess, wife, warrior
HUMANS
Ellowe - A battle mage
Erekose - Knight of Battle
Clip - A thief
Snapper - Another thief
Lucy - Farmers daughter
Quinn - Squad sergeant
Simon Kepler - Army captain
Maximilian Kepler - Commander at Knight’s Perch
Humphrey - His steward
Pock - A bouncer
Cock - Another bouncer
Allen Royce - A farmer
Jillian Royce - Allen’s wife, the boss
OTHERS
The Black Empress - Gang leader
Ekkanas - Messenger
The farmer grows the crops,
The miller grinds the corn,
The baker bakes the bread,
By the soldier, their lives are torn.
The tailor makes the clothes,
The tinker brings their goods,
The musician brings the music,
The soldier deals in blood.
The enemies at your door,
Your death is here for sure,
The soldier wields his blade,
To rescue you from your fate.
Nursery Rhyme Circa 612 B.W
...It is perceived as common knowledge that the orcs have only one god because they are too stupid to have more.
The elves have seven gods, which wouldn’t make them much cleverer.
Humans on the other hand, now they have more gods than worshippers. Therefore humans must be really clever. Then you find out they have a god called Clod, who is the god of wet earth. The god of dried earth is called Divot...
Illethen Astorius - Of Religion
...Their power was corrupt, and in their arrogance, were the aitu made, and became the enemy of all they had wrought. And the elven gods wept, and accused, and cursed Octarion, the...
Carving found in the ruined city of Helokose
Origin Unknown
The first law of magic is that you can work the elements, but not flesh, for the flesh is the domain of priests, but priests cannot create life from death, for that is the domain of the gods.
Illethen Astorius - Of Religion
Prologue
A Forging of Heroes
There couldn’t have been any more than two hundred of them left alive now, Ashatera mused. Still, they had given a fair account of themselves.
Orc corpses lay everywhere, far more numerous than the elven corpses of the Golden Orb Battalion. The problem was there being far more of the bastards still alive.
Thousands of them stood not fifty feet away their savage faces snarling and growling at the remnants of the Battalion.
Ashatera turned to one of his soldiers, a young archer by the name of Elloine. The woman was panting with the exertions of the last few days, a bloodied bandage was wrapped around her left arm, and her bow sat on her back, her quiver empty.
‘How’s the woman?’ Ashatera asked as he wiped a mix of sweat and rain off his face.
Elloine looked at the Commander, ‘Scared shitless, but apart from that still alive.’
Ashatera cursed the woman inwardly; if it hadn’t been for her stupidity, they wouldn’t be here now. She had had to make the journey to Helokose in the middle of a fucking war. She had to unlock its secrets and bring the cursed war to a
quick end. Well, it looked like their war was going to come to a quick end right enough.
They had all sworn an oath to keep the woman alive, sworn it on the Seven, and so they found themselves on a small hill in a circle with the woman in the middle. They would keep the orcs off the woman for as long as they could, the woman had a dagger on her belt; he hoped she used it before the orcs could…could…best not to think on that.
The woman, Helen, however, had been the lover of Ossiande, who just happened to be the overall Commander of the elvish forces. What he had seen in the human woman was obvious, she was stunning, but it took a brave elf to walk down the road Ossiande had now trodden upon.
He looked at the remnants of the five thousand Elven men and women who had started the long march to Helokose.
Helokose the city of wonder, where knowledge and magic lay for the taking...if you could get past the traps and the monsters that littered the ruins. Helokose the city of death.
The men and women that were left all bore some small wound here and there, they were all exhausted, puffing and panting, waiting for the orcs to begin their assault again.
What were they waiting for anyway?
Why don’t they finish us off?
As if sensing the Commander’s thoughts, the wave of orcs surged forward, and the two sides came together with a mighty clash.
While the orcs were more numerous, the elves were more disciplined. Each man and woman knew their place and what to do. They protected each other with their shields and thrust forward with their long swords,orcs went down left and right as they thrust and sliced, but they were tired and showed it, a blow that would have killed an orc just left a shallow cut as there was not enough strength behind the blow.
Ashatera saw an elf have his shield grabbed and be pulled into the press of orcs, he didn’t see the elf go down, but he heard the screams. The elves to either side of the gap closed up, it was happening everywhere, the circle was getting smaller and smaller.
Then suddenly there were the sounds of horns and the thunder of hooves. Looking over the sea of orcs before him, he saw three battalions of elves coming over a ridge. A battalion of cavalry raced in front to crash into the rear of the orcs, like a mailed fist hitting tissue paper, the orcs began to tear apart.
Ashatera smiled grimly to himself. It looked as if they were going to survive. The nearest orcs looked to the rear and saw the armies approaching, then turned back to the front and attacked the small knot of elves with renewed vigour.
Elves fell as orcish cutters, and gutters found their targets. Elation quickly turned to panic for the small knot of elves, but there was nowhere for them to go, all they could do was make the circle smaller and smaller, and suddenly there were only seven of them left.
Ashatera, Elloine, Tallada, Osii, Balleo, Asterperata, Jio and of course Helen, still in the centre of the seven elves. The orcs had stopped for a breather, they knew they would win, the four battalions couldn’t get through in time. It would take centuries for the elves to rebuild a Battalion because of the slow rate of elven births.
That was when the miracle happened, when the last seven elves were about to be annihilated, the clouds parted and a ray of sunshine so powerful it knocked the orcs down for a hundred feet and more. In the bright light that bathed the eight figures brighter star like lights danced and whispered. Ashatera stood in the light as the voices spoke and charged the seven elves with protecting Helen, and as they acquiesced their armour and weapons changed, and they found themselves re-energised.
By the time the orcs had recovered their feet the seven elves before them had changed, gone was the army issue armour and weapons to be replaced with new equipment, different types of armour, some wore leather, chain or plate, wielding swords, a warhammer, knives, even a net.
The orcs were confused, and in that confusion, and against all the odds, the seven Elves took a step forward and started killing orcs.
Balleo wielding his two-handed sword, a sword he had, as far as Ashatera knew, never been trained to use, but the elf was using it like he was born to the blade, and orc blood ran down the front of his armour, black plate in which amethysts shone.
Osii, lithe osii, the one man in the Battalion who could get you what you wanted – no questions asked, was wearing black leather with black onyx plates, he was dancing around the orcs, two black onyx daggers darting here and there.
Asterperata, the one the men all called Lady Killer because she stole their hearts, and when she took one to bed practically sucked all the energy from. Like Osii, she wore black leather, but hers had amber plates, and she would cast a net over the orcs and where it landed the screams were the loudest.
Tallada, last of the battalion’s mages stood in robes of green and in his hand, was a staff that must have been seven feet long, and where he pointed the orc simply exploded, blood and offal coating those around him.
Jio, a recruit who had hidden behind his shield often in training. Jio was behind a shield now, but he was using it as a weapon, as he hit orcs with the face of the shield they would be knocked twenty feet into the air, to land with sickening crunches as bones broke.
Elloine, sweet Elloine who had thrice tried to bed her Commander, but she was half his age and anyway his bed had been filled by another. He had died days ago as the host of orcs had started their attacks. Elloine was wearing a white silk dress from which diamonds looped off the sleeves.
Entirely inappropriate he thought to himself, unlike the huge warhammer she was swinging around, the diamonds on the head covered in orc brains, skull fragments, hair and blood. And yet her dress was as clean as if it had just been washed.
And lastly himself, plate mail with rubies, and two longswords, both black with red veins. Their names Concangis and Epiacum, names whispered into his mind, to be replaced with the names of the orcs he cut down. Names that the twin swords started to howl out into the ranks of the orcs that remained, the effect acting like a physical force and pushing them away. Seven elves against an army, only they weren’t seven elves anymore.
As he looked at the destruction they had wrought the name sprang into his head.
They were orcslayers.
PART ONE: BEGINNINGS
5,000 Years later
1: The Spy
Bazak-Kul was a half-orc cursed at birth to be the ugliest bastard Grash-Kul had fathered on the hundreds of slaves he raped every year, slaves that the orcs paid in gold for from the South Island slavers.
Grash was well renowned for insatiable lusts, and the women who weren’t picked were always relieved to have been lucky this time around.
Grash was also the smartest chief that the Kul clan had had in some time, and so instead of giving the baby to his blood-guard to eat, he had seen the bigger picture and let the ugly brat live, or that’s how he told it, anyway.
That is not to say Bazak had had it easy in life, far from it, he had received many a beating because of his looks. Several of the older brood had tried to rape him, but each time Bazak had managed to flee.
Then he had become old enough for his rite of the elders - his blooding. He had killed an old human that had been captured and left half starved, exactly for this purpose. Once Bazak had killed him, he cut him open and ate into his still warm heart. Bazak was now a Kul proper and was untouchable.
His father had one of the shaman teach him how to use his mind and body, to become a spy for the Kul clan. He found he was good at it, he also found as he matured, the same sexual appetite for women, often taking three to bed at a time. However, unlike his father, he never committed unnecessary acts of brutality on them.
The women slaves loved him for it; they would come back and tell Bazak everything that the orcs they had bedded had told them. So, began Bazak’s first taste of life as a full-fledged spy.
Soon he knew more than his father about what was going on in the clan, a clan that was growing tired of peace with each passing year, a clan that wanted, no, needed war. A clan that wanted to be strong again
, to take what it wanted and all it would need was a little nudge here and there. It didn’t take long for him to be summoned to his father’s clan chamber.
The chamber was basically just a larger version of the wooden huts that all the orcs lived in, this one also boasted an extra thick layer of mixed up mud and shit for walls.
Draped across the inside of the roof had been hung coloured swatches of silk. They had cost one of the Kul Chieftain’s a small fortune. Now they were starting to lose their colour and were coated in dust.
His father was sat, brooding on the Kul throne of skulls, in this stinking hovel he called a warlord’s palace.
He didn’t seem to notice Barak at first. Only once Bazak had bowed low, did his father look at him.
‘Bazak,’ his father’s voice was deep and hoarse. ‘It is time for you to earn your keep. I command you to go to Ashen Falls, to the lair of the battle mages. Find out all you can, learn plans, secrets, everything.’
‘My Chief, how am I to get past Knight’s Perch. The elves and humans have the pass well watched.’
‘You do not know everything, my son. I am sending a small war band through the pass led by your cousin, Trush. He knows the situation at Knight’s Perch and will get you onto the Borderlands. You will have a small chest of gold, enough to begin your spying enterprise. Shatak will aid you I am sure in your endeavours.’
‘Shatak has not aided me much so far! ‘Bazak spoke with vehemence
‘Beware bringing the gods wrath upon yourself, Bazak-Kul. On that fateful night, when you were born, Shatak spoke to me, and he told me to let you live! Although why he would want a mewling, ugly fucker as yourself eludes me still. Now go! Leave me.’
Bazak turned and left. As he did so, he thought to himself, ‘Yes I’ll go, I’ll be glad to get away from these stinking hovels, but when I come back, I will become Chief of the Kul tribe!’