01 - The Tainted Sword

by D. J. Heinrich - (ebook by Undead)

  “Do you think that’s the reason?” Jo pressed.

  “Orcs are a lazy lot. They wouldn’t go to war in the dead of winter without good cause,” Flinn answered back. “The winter’s been a tough one so far, and maybe they’re just joining up to gather food.”

  “Why did you turn us north instead of going back to Bywater?” Jo asked.

  “I’ll tell you my reasons when we have a chance to stop. Let’s just hope I made the right choice,” Flinn said. “Right now, it’s time to move—and no more talking.” He tapped Ariac’s flanks with his heels, and the griffon responded with a surge of speed. Flinn could still hear, albeit faintly, the drums that the orcs used to convey messages as the tribes converged. Yet what the chieftains had planned, Flinn couldn’t guess.

  The warrior watched an orc run north along the line of hills to Flinn’s west. The runner kept the trio in sight until he met up with another orc. The second orc took up the post until he met a third runner. Flinn wondered how long the orcs would keep up their surveillance. He suspected the Rooster’s tribe was moving south somewhere through the hills to their west, while he, Jo, and Dayin rode north. He also suspected the perimeter guard set up by the runners wouldn’t cease until the tribe had passed south of the former knight and his two comrades. Before that happened, however, the orcs would surely send out a patrol to hunt them down. Flinn grimaced. He was surprised they had held j off this long.

  The hours wore on, and still Flinn maintained the grueling pace he had set in the beginning. Ariac’s feathered chest was wet with sweat, despite the cold, and the bird-lion’s breath came in sharp whistles. The griffon wasn’t suited for cantering, and certainly not for a pace that required both speed and endurance. Flinn glanced back and saw that Jo’s horse was in good shape and that Fernlover, though laboring, was also keeping up. A game creature, Ariac was nevertheless unaccustomed to such prolonged speed. Flinn spurred the lagging griffon forward.

  Suddenly, the cloud-laden sky let loose the snow Flinn had predicted the night before. Wave after wave of white flakes fell, dropping from the sky with silent fury. Then the wind picked up, especially along the unprotected riverbanks, hurling the snow horizontally across their path. It whipped through the fur cape Flinn wore and took away his breath, and it smothered sound with its dull roar. Shielding his eyes, Flinn looked at the sides of the river. The rugged bottomland was giving way to steeper hills. Ahead, the Castellan sluiced fast and wild. The river’s embankments would be too treacherous to follow in the growing storm.

  Soon Flinn, Jo, and Dayin would be forced into the surrounding Wulfholdes.

  Flinn eyed the few orcs he could still see off to the west. Trees, rocks, and snow blurred his view. He had hoped to have reached the end of the orcs’ exodus by now. But the current runner was the seventeenth. “Do these orcs stretch all the way to Duke’s Road Keep?” he asked himself.

  Although Ariac strained to maintain the pace, his strength was clearly flagging. The riverbank was growing too steep to negotiate; Flinn turned Ariac toward the hills and slowed the party to a walk. Inland, the winds grew even stronger than at the river. “Certain death on the sheer bank and certain death with the orc tribe,” Flinn said, shaking his head. He wondered briefly just how far north he would have to travel before striking west to find Braddoc Briarblood’s house. He knew that to turn west now with the orcs at hand was suicidal. If the orcs forced him past the Broken Arch, he would simply have to double back after shaking them.

  The warrior slowed their pace still further. The stony, snow-covered ground and the obscured vision made any faster pace impossible. Flinn lost sight of the orc runners in the blowing snow. Certain they remained, he didn’t dare relax his guard. Keeping an uneasy watch to the west, Flinn stretched in the saddle.

  Then, just above the roar of the wind, Flinn heard the sharp, extended blast of a horn some distance west. Immediately he halted Ariac, and Jo pulled up beside him. Her eyes hung wide as she caught her breath. Flinn held up his hand for silence, then cocked his ears for the response he was sure would come. A single shrill bleat answered back. The echoing hills and muffling snowfall distorted the sound’s origin; Flinn couldn’t discern its direction. But the origin was near.

  Too close, in fact. The orcs had gained ground on them and were closer than Flinn had feared.

  “Does that mean what I think it means?” Jo asked just above the sound of the storm. “They’re coming after us?”

  “Yes,” Flinn nodded. “The tribe to our west is led by an orc named the Rooster. His people are safely south of us by now, and he’s sending out a patrol after us.” Dayin pulled up beside them, the child all but hidden by the supplies and Flinn’s shaggy fur vest.

  “Flinn, can we take much more of this?” Jo gestured at the storm overhead and then pointed to the griffon. “Ariac’s about to burst from the strain.”

  The griffon dripped with frothy sweat, and his footing had grown less sure with each passing hour. Ariac was trembling with fatigue. Flinn considered his options. The orc patrol would be actively hunting them now, and the storm was fast turning into a blizzard. Night would fall in less than two hours, and they would be unable to see anything then. They had to make a stand or they would never survive.

  “The orcs are too close for us to outrun them, at least not in the condition Ariac’s in. Follow me closely, and be prepared for whatever happens,” the warrior said suddenly. Jo drew her sword and rested it on her lap. Flinn nodded his approval. “Jo, don’t use your blink dog’s tail to attack; use it only if you have to retreat. You’ve said the magic is beginning to fade, and I’d rather you learn to trust only yourself and your sword in a fight.”

  Jo nodded and then asked, “Do you think they’ll find us in this storm?” Her voice trembled a little but her gaze was determined.

  Flinn smiled grimly. “Not if we find them first.” He gave her and the boy a quick nod of reassurance, then dismounted.

  Flinn took the griffon’s lead and turned Ariac around. He headed back across the hill the way they had come. In silence, Jo and Dayin followed him.

  The warrior drew his sword silently. He patted Ariac’s neck and hoped the griffon’s strength wouldn’t give way. Then Flinn prayed to Tarastia for the opportunity to avenge himself against the orcs who followed him. As a knight in the Order of the Three Suns, he and his men had tangled often with both the Rooster’s tribe and Greasetongue’s. He could right a few wrongs today if the Immortal Tarastia was so inclined.

  Though his sense of time was hampered by the ceaseless snowstorm and the incessant roar of the wind, Flinn came upon the orcs far sooner than he had thought he might. Barely twenty minutes after they had turned around, Ariac nibbled his master’s shoulder. Instantly, Flinn spun about and gestured for Jo and Dayin to dismount. He gave Ariac’s rein to the boy and pointed for Dayin to lead the animals off the hill and out of the way. Without a word the child disappeared into the snow. Flinn stepped off the trail, pulling Jo down beside him near a rocky outcropping. If Ariac’s senses were right, they would soon see the orc patrol following their trail in the storm.

  Flinn whispered in Jo’s ear, “Wait for them to get by us before we attack. We will surprise them from behind, and with any luck we’ll get most of them right away. There shouldn’t be more than five or six of them. Make your strokes count, and remember what I said about not losing your sword.”

  The young woman nodded. Flinn saw that she was shaking, but her eyes were bright and clear. Good—that’s the way to feel, Flinn thought just before one orc, then a second and a third came into view through the swirling snow. They were humanlike—as tall as Flinn, though considerably broader of girth, and clad in misshapen armor. They wore boiled leather helmets, from which their flattened jowls protruded. Stained tusks and beady eyes lay in the shadow of the helmets. The orcs appeared completely oblivious to anything but the trail they followed. The snow and wind were fast obscuring the tracks Flinn’s animals had made only a short time ago, and the three orcs
bent over the trail and argued which way to continue.

  The largest orc sniffed the snow. Flinn stiffened. This beast was a tracker, an orc who could follow a trail by scent alone. Some trackers could pick up a trail even through rain or snow, or after days or weeks had passed. Flinn bit the inside of his cheek. Here was his first target.

  Jo tensed beside the warrior, and Flinn put his hand on her shoulder. Two more orcs came into view. They stopped by the first three orcs, who were kneeling and bickering loudly. Flinn caught the gist of their words: the orcs had come upon the place where he and Jo had parted from Dayin.

  Flinn whispered, “The ones on the right are mine; the others are yours.” He tightened his hand upon the hilt of his sword, waiting until the orcs’ argument reached its peak.

  “Now!” the warrior hissed, springing forward. His sword sang to the right, and he heard Jo’s on the left connect with orc armor. Flinn’s blow came arcing down on the back of the tracker’s neck. The monster never knew what cleaved his spine. The orc crumpled where he stood, blood staining the snow beneath him.

  The remaining orcs cried in anger and surprise. Flinn caught sight of one of them leaping toward Jo, but he had no time to call out. The other three orcs rushed him with their spears. Deftly he dodged their attack and swung his heavy blade, managing to break one spear as he parried the other two. The orc with the broken spear whirled in his charge and jumped on Flinn, a jagged knife in the creature’s gnarled hands.

  Flinn tumbled backward. He and the orc rolled into the snow. Flinn grabbed the orc’s dagger hand. He twisted the rubbery wrist until the blade sunk into the monster’s back. The orc cried out in pain. With a roar the other two orcs charged again with their spears. Flinn rolled onto his back, pulling the orc on top of him as he did so. The other orcs’ spearheads sank into the chest of their comrade. Flinn scurried from beneath the dead orc, barely escaping the spears pulled from the new-fallen body. The warrior sprang backward, his sword held before him.

  Jo backed up to him. He was glad to see she hadn’t been injured. “There’re two more lurking in the shadows,” she shouted.

  Flinn grunted. “They’ll attack, don’t worry.” The rest of his words were cut short, however, because one of the spear-bearing orcs charged Jo. She ducked beneath the thrust and came up with her own attack. Just then, another orc charged Flinn. He leaped forward, grabbing the orc’s spear handle and pulling. The beast stumbled forward into Flinn’s waiting sword. With one quick thrust Flinn dispatched the monster.

  From out of the swirling snow, two more orcs leaped toward him. They wielded battle axes, and their heavy blows rained down on Flinn. He parried them, straining to meet the weight of the axes. Jo was busy with her own orc, and Flinn couldn’t expect any help from her. The two who attacked had obviously fought together before, for they timed their attacks well. One swung his blow, and the other would immediately follow that blow with his own. Flinn gritted his teeth and smiled. The fight warmed his blood. He parried both axes and tried to snake his way past the orcs’ defenses.

  A ball of bright orange light suddenly burst in the space between Flinn and the two axe-wielding orcs. The monsters’ tiny eyes opened wide at the sudden light. The orcs stammered in fear. The fiery ball hung in the air for a few moments, and then collapsed in on itself, changing into three white doves. The birds dived at the orcs, befuddling the monsters. Dayin! Flinn thought, and from the corner of his eye, he caught sight of the boy with his hands spread toward the orcs. The warrior jumped forward, swinging his blade in a shining horizontal arc. One orc fell instantly, his head almost severed from his body. Flinn continued his sword’s swing, but twisted the blade so that the flat hit the second orc. The monster dropped his axe and then collapsed into the snow.

  Flinn turned to help Jo with the remaining orc, only to see her draw her sword from her opponent’s belly. A brutal smile hung on her face, a smile uncommon to so inexperienced a squire. The girl had enjoyed this bout. Jo wiped her blade on the orc’s padded leather armor and approached Flinn, her step sure and sound. The young woman had killed two orcs and not been injured. Flinn was pleased. Dayin, too, joined Flinn by the fallen orc.

  “Why didn’t you kill him?” Jo poked the orc with her foot when she saw the monster move his head.

  “I want to question him as to why the orcs are on the move,” Flinn answered. “Dayin, get some rope, will you? And bring the animals back with you; we’re going to have to find shelter soon. I don’t want to chance questioning him here in the open at the risk of our not finding shelter.” The boy nodded and disappeared into the falling snow.

  “But after we question him, he’ll know where our camp is,” Jo protested. “Or will we just have to kill him after questioning him?”

  “No, we’ll tie him up and keep watch over him. In the morning we’ll leave him tied to a tree. He’ll escape by next sundown, but we’ll be long gone.” Flinn turned toward the orc. “Jo, watch him—if he looks like he’s coming to, hit him on the head with your sword’s pommel.”

  “Where are you going?” Jo asked as Flinn moved away.

  “I’m going to hide the dead. My guess is that these orcs won’t be missed, but if they are, I don’t want them found. We’ll have to trust the storm to cover our tracks.” Flinn finished, dragging the first dead orc off the hill. He deposited the body in a deep gully and returned for the next ones. Meanwhile, Dayin brought the animals to the hilltop. When Flinn finished hiding the dead, he returned to Jo. She was holding her blade to the orc’s chest, and she had bound and gagged the now-conscious monster.

  “Goodjob, Jo.” Flinn nodded. “We’ve got to find shelter quickly, but we also have to put as much distance as possible between us and this place. I don’t know if any more orcs remain in the hills, and I doubt this one would tell us one way or the other—” Flinn glowered at the orc “—so we’ve got to get out of here. We’ll question him later when we’re in a safer place. Jo, lead Ariac. I’ll walk. You and Dayin follow close. Night’s falling, and we could lose each other easily otherwise.”

  Flinn pulled the orc to his feet and held onto the length of rope left over from binding the creature’s arms. He pushed the orc toward what he believed to be north and mumbled “Go!” in orcish. After Jo mounted the horse and Dayin the mule, they both followed Flinn as he led the way. A short distance after they set out, Flinn directed them off the hilltop to escape the snow and wind. His arms, which once tingled with the heat of battle, were now cold and numb.

  The landscape of snowdrifts and frozen trees seemed something from a dream. In the vale curving between the hills, the wind didn’t whistle so strongly—didn’t wrap them in violent noise and motion. Snow still fell, but less heavily, and the winds bore it in a billowing arc overhead. Flinn felt as though he were leading the party through a dim cave of snow and ice. Light filtered meekly through the storm that raged above the protecting hillsides. Flinn hoped the light would see them to shelter.

  As the group wound its way through the gully, the snow grew deeper and footing became treacherous. The blizzard might protect them from the orcs, but it might kill them in the process. Flinn’s lungs began to ache with the cold air, and his eyes grew weary from squinting. They needed shelter to survive. The orc also appeared to sense their danger, for it moved along with little prodding.

  Just as night was beginning to fall, Flinn happened upon a deep, narrow ravine. The roaring wind and falling snow relented in this sheltered area. All noise faded away, and the silence left their ears ringing. The cold, too, seemed not quite so biting. Jo and Dayin both sat up; they had been lying on their mounts for additional warmth. Flinn led the group farther into the ravine, seeking a suitable outcropping of rocks for shelter. When he found such a spot, he halted the orc and tied him quickly to a short, stubby tree. Jo and Dayin gratefully slid off their animals and stretched their legs.

  Flinn turned to the young woman and the boy. Snow and ice clung to the long strands of his hair, his moustache, and the fur cape h
e wore. “I think it’s safe enough to have a small fire here,” he said. “We’ve traveled quite a distance away from the orcs—or at least I think we have—and the ravine should hide the flames from view in this storm. We’ll set up the shelter, warm ourselves, and eat a bit of food. Then I want to ask the orc some questions.”

  “Like why the orcs are gathering?” Jo asked between teeth that chattered.

  “Exactly,” Flinn answered. “Dayin, you gather some firewood. I’m trusting to your woods’ sense not to get lost. Jo, you take care of the animals, and I’ll set up the shelter. Nobody get too close to the orc. I don’t want him to escape.” Jo and Dayin moved away, eager to finish their tasks and warm themselves. Flinn, too, hurried. None of them had eaten that day, and suddenly Flinn was famished.

  Flinn poked the orc once with his foot. The orc’s eyes shone at him, but it did not respond. It was gagged and bound tightly to the tree. As Flinn began setting up the tent, he hoped the creature would be able to answer his questions. If the orc responded well, he’d live until the sunrise. If not, a quick, merciful death was the best Flinn could offer.

  * * *

  Jo sat warming her hands before the small but hot fire. Dayin had gathered elm, a wood that gave off a strong, steady heat with minimal flame. She, Flinn, and Dayin had just finished their meal. Jo wanted nothing more than to curl up and sleep, but she knew she should wait. Flinn was holding a strip of heated dried meat before the orc, trying to tempt him. The monster’s gag had been removed, but not the bindings.

  “Do you speak Common?” Flinn asked slowly in a clear voice. He held up the piece of meat again. “I will give you this if you can speak Common.”

  The orc looked from Flinn to the meat and back again. His eyes were bright and tiny and almost obliterated by the folds of fat wrinkling his face. His nose was flattened and pushed back, the bridge of it ridged. Two long, lower canines jutted from his bottom jaw and rested against his upper lip. He had pasty white skin, unlike the ruddy orc captives Jo had seen in Specularum. This particular orc wore rough furs and padded leather armor. Flinn had searched him earlier and piled his belongings to the side. The warrior had found three knives, an assortment of crude orc coins, a bag containing bright pebbles, and a chunk of stale bread.