by T. O. Munro
“Of courssse not, little one. You forget. No-one isss to be trusssted, but the workingsss of Xander’sss petty greivancesss and predictable greed are asss transssparent as glassss. He may prosssper for now, but I can forssseee an end to hisss usefulnesss far sssooner than friend Xander would think.”
“Indeed Master,” Haselrig trembled, hoping that his own usefulness to Maelgrum was less clearly circumscribed.
“Now, all my plansss are complete. Passs the word, we march in two hoursss.”
“March? to Morsalve?”
“Yesss little one, the long wait is over. I am going to reclaim what isss mine.”
***
“What news, your Majesty?” Feyril enquired of the grim visaged king brooding on his throne.
Behind the elf Lord, Findil and Forven burst into the throne room, also summoned from their slumber to an extra-ordinary audience with the king.
Gregor met Feyril’s gaze with an expression of such cold wrath that it struck even at the conscience of the dutiful Elf Lord. “Have I in some way offended you, your majesty?”
The king’s expression softened a fraction and he dismissed his old friend’s concern. “Not you my Lord, but my treacherous brother has unleashed a tide of filth whose atrocities will condemn them to all the sulphurous pits in hell.”
“Sire?” The venerable Archbishop struggling not so much to keep up as to wake up, mumbled his own enquiry. ”What has befallen?”
“The villages South and West of here have been raided, burnt to the ground by a band of orcs.”
Forven’s hand flew to his mouth as though, in stopping his own words, he might unsay the dire tidings which Gregor had pronounced. The elves merely nodded.
“That accursed fog must have enabled them to work their way down the pass and skirt around the pickets of Marshal Bruntveld. Having got past the good Marshal they have fallen to the ways of their kind, raiding and pillaging the defenceless.”
“What is to be done sire?” The Archbishop flapped.
“We march at first light. There’s a dozen wagons I intend to fill with orcish heads for missiles when we take back Sturmcairn from my brother.”
“’Tis not the way of the Goddess to meet brutality with brutality,” Feyril said.
“Brutality!” Gregor screamed. “I will give these beasts a quick death and serve their kin notice of my intentions. That’s a greater mercy than they have shown my people. D’you know my Lord Feyril how I received this news? D’you know with what message and by what messenger I was summoned but an hour hence?”
“No, sire,” Feyril murmured.
“A boy! A boy too scared to say his own name, too scared to sleep for the nightmares that might come. He was tied to a horse and sent on his way here to bring a message to me, to me in particular.”
“What message, sire?” Forven asked.
“Two human skins, the boy’s parents’, detached whole from their living breathing bodies. He brought me two skins and a name. He told the boy to tell me Grundurg did this, Grundurg the orc.”
“By the Goddess.” The shaken prelate crescented himself.
“For Grundurg the orc I make no promise of mercy, my Lord Feyril. If… no when I get hold of him the vile creature will learn the meaning of suffering and the Goddess may avert her eyes.”
“We should wait for Prince Hetwith’s force, eight thousand horsemen from Nordsalve will double what you have here.”
“They are two days hard riding away. Grundurg is murdering my people now. I will not sit idly by.”
“And what if this is a trap, sire?” Feyril interjected.
“Then we will spring it in force. I have sent orders to Marshal Bruntveld to break camp and head East. I will leave Forven and the Militia here. As soon as Prince Hetwith arrives, the good Bishop can provide him with supplies and send him on after us. If the plague spawn orc is but the arrogant raiding fool he appears, then my force will drive him West back towards the mountains and catch him laden with booty between ourselves and Marshal Bruntveld’s guard.”
“And what if this orc is more than first appears, if some greater intelligence drives his actions.”
“’tis doubtful if my brother Xander’s intelligence outweighs an orc’s and certainly his skill at strategy was ever weak. But if it should transpire that Grundurg’s numbers are more than we can handle then we will fall back Westwards towards Bruntveld, drawing the denizens of filth after us. Combined with the Marshal we shall be strong enough to hold most any force, and just as Grundurg and his allies may come to blows with us, Prince Hetwith and his cavalry should be in time to ride into their rear. Either way we will drive or draw this raider to his doom between a hammer and an anvil of the soldiers of the Salved.”
“Sire, you seem to have all eventualities planned for. I will happily play my humble part,” Forven gushed.
“We risk much, my lords, in moving on the attack before all our forces are combined,” Findil countered the prelate’s enthusiasm.
“Maybe, but I would rather give this Grundurg something to think on other than torturing and looting my people. Now my lord Feyril, can I count on your three thousand.”
“We did not march in such haste to sit idle in Morwencairn, sire. We will be at your side in this venture. Much as I would we had Hetwith’s horsemen in this business, there is another way to augment our strength.” The elf Lord’s gaze strayed upwards to the vanquisher’s helm atop its plinth.
“No.” Gregor’s stifled Feyril’s half-voiced suggestion. “Cold morsalve steel will suffice for Grundurg and my brother too if he has been foolish enough to stray within my reach. The Northern Prince and his cavalry will simply be the guarantor of the traitor’s destruction.”
***
Kimbolt tripped over a horse’s leg and was pulled roughly to his feet by his outlander escort. All around men and animals groaned. Some waved a limb or struggled to rise, others just moaned or drew horrible rattling breaths through arrow punctured lungs. All those who drew such attention to themselves quickly regretted it as an orc or outlander swiftly closed in. Their blades or clubs added another corpse to the hundreds littering the field and from whom already a stench was beginning to rise.
Concentrating on his footing, across earth slippery with blood and gore and his hands still tightly bound, it was by her mail clad foot that Kimbolt first recognised Dema. His gaze travelled cautiously up her body. In places her cloak was rent to reveal the glint of chainmail beneath. The sword on which she rested was red from point to hilt. The Captain was careful to look no higher than her mouth, unsure whether the Medusa had remained masked throughout the heat of battle.
“Well Captain, what say you? Is this not the finest victory ever won in the land of the Salved?”
“Fine?” Kimbolt dully echoed the word. “A victory is made great by the chivalry shown to the dead dying, and injured,” he said, wincing at the short lived scream of another wounded man hastened into the afterlife.
“A victory is made great by the completeness of the triumph and the odds that have been overcome,” Dema snapped. A sibilant hiss from her serpents attested her displeasure at Kimbolt’s answer. “By those yardsticks alone I judge my success. My force has travelled a hundred leagues across hostile territory to attack an army ten times its size and rout them. I say again, is this not the finest victory you ever beheld?”
Slowly Kimbolt looked up across the battlefield. The carpet of bodies covered the hundred yard swathe between the forest and the edge of the Derrach gorge. The stub of the broken bridge poked a few feet out over the cascading waters of the Derrach river, its supports hacked away by Dema’s orcish axemen barely two hours earlier, the key act in the unfolding carnage of which the Medusa was the proud architect. The advancing army had only had its vanguard across the chasm when Dema had launched her attack, with a hail of arrows and a fast and furious charge from the trees. Hurriedly the opposing cavalry had tried to form up at the gorge’s edge while, from the far side a press of riders had cr
owded onto the narrow bridge eager to be at the impudent raiders. The bridge had been full when the axeman, concealed beneath the roadway, went to work. The neighing of terrified horses and their rider’s screams still echoed in Kimbolt’s ears as vividly as the moment the bridge had collapsed, taking hundreds to their doom. Even as those unfortunates tumbled into the rock strewn rapids of the Derrach, almost a third of the enemy found themselves trapped without retreat on Dema’s side of the gorge. The greater part of the army could do no more than watch helplessly from beyond arrow shot on the other side of the gorge.
Even so it had still been in the balance. Dema had allowed two, maybe three times her number, to cross the bridge unhindered before launching her attack. But the ferocity and surprise of her charge had shaken the enemy’s morale as they were driven with their backs to a sheer drop into the rapids of the river Derrach. Three times Kimbolt had heard their leader’s famed war horn sounding his rallying call, but then no more. With their general gone, the battle was over. While a few hardy knights tried to make a stand behind the bulwark of their fallen horses, they could only delay the Medusa’s great victory.
“Where lies Prince Hetwith?” Kimbolt still evaded Dema’s question.
The Medusa thought a moment and then waved a hand towards the gorge. “Mostly over there, though I think you are standing on one of his legs.”
Kimbolt shifted his footing and retched. “Still,” the Medusa went on. “This is intact it seems.” She dangled Prince Hetwith’s ivory war horn infront of the shivering captive. “Not that it did him much good. Now, tell me Captain, tell me true, as a military man d’you know of any in your service could have conjured a triumph such as mine from such limited raw materials.”
“’twas an ambush, not a battle, and the better part of his army stands unscathed on the far side of the gorge.”
She seized his hair at this pusillanimous verdict on her generalship. “Unscathed eh? I think seeing and hearing a third of their army, and their great Prince, ripped to pieces by a handful of orcs and outlanders will scar their courage as deeply as any sword. See how they drift away, leaderless and forlorn. As you well know, the next place to ford the Derrach is two days ride to the East, and I fancy no host of Nordsalve will be in a hurry to try the crossing, for fear of what may lie on the other side.”
“If you are so certain of the greatness of your victory, Lady, then what need have you of my endorsement?”
Her bloodied sword was at his throat even as she twisted the hair on his head with her other hand. “What need have I of you at all, Captain?”
***
Glafeld joined the crowd by the jetty surveying the unexpected vessel as it lay at its moorings. Its sails were shredded and its foremast splintered. The sailors grey with fatigue worked at splicing frayed rigging while the ship’s master harrangued the onlookers for assistance. “I’ll pay well,” he said. “I’m due at Oostsalve in five days, a shipment for the Eastern lands awaits me for a fine price. Customer asked for me in especial seeing’ as how my ship’s the fastest on the ocean.”
“Don’t look so fast now,” a wag in the crowd called out to the amusement of those around him.
“Hit by a storm ‘n had to make for here. But help set me up right and I’ll pay upfront and a bonus sent from Oostsalve if I make it in time for my shipment.”
They laughed at that. “Yeah, you’ll really be sending money to this dive once you’re well clear. If there’s a bonus then pay that upfront too.”
The harbour master struck in with the economic realities. “Going rate is two crowns for an hour’s work round here. You going to add a bonus to that?”
The master paled at the cost of labour. “I’m a man of honour,” he pleaded. “My credit is good but I’ll not fix my ship without help.”
“Hard cash talks surer and straighter than honour and credit.”
“Would you offer a passage to the Eastern lands?” The voice of the red headed thief so rarely heard made Glafeld start. She was there in the crowd, a few yards to the innkeeper’s left.
“Mine’s a cargo operation, miss not passenger, and my ship is no place for a woman.” The master hastily replied. Those of his crew alert enough to note the thief’s question scowled their displeasure.
“I’ll take my chances with your boat,” the thief replied. Then, more to the master’s liking, she added, “And I’ll pay half of the fare in advance. You need cash to get your boat repaired. I want a boat. Surely we can do business.”
“All of it upfront.”
“When do you sail?”
“I leave here in three days, or else I lose my commission.”
“Aye then, half the fare now, the rest when I board in three days time.”
The master glanced around the hard unsmiling and unhelpful faces of the Dwarfport crowd and came to a swift decision. “Deal.” He stretched out a hand to seal the bargain and Glafeld breathed a sigh of relief as the thief took it. She was bad news and the sooner she was gone, the happier he would be.
***
Travel stained and weary the elven Lord and human King exchanged greetings in the hastily erected royal tent. “This orc is a slippery customer, he has led us a merry dance these past three days,” Gregor exclaimed as he surveyed the map on which the track of their perambulating hunt had been marked out.
“This is no ordinary orc, sire.”
“So you keep telling me. Yet all this hide and seek has merely given time for Bruntveld to catch up with us. The Marshall cannot be but a league or two West of us. In the morning we will complete our rendezvous and together we will hunt down this elusive raider, another five thousand swords will make sure of the matter.” The king spoke with the certainty of one hoping to create fact through conviction alone.
Feyril’s reply went unsaid as Findil burst breathlessly into their presence. “We are trapped,” the elven Captain declared.
“What?”
“How?”
“I took the scouts West ‘ere the sun set. There is a great host but five miles from here.”
“Bruntveld?” Gregor’s hopeful suggestion carried a note of desperation.
Findil shook his head. “No. Well not as you would wish.”
“Do not speak in riddles,” Feyril commanded his captain.
“I reckon there would be at least fifteen thousand, too many for Bruntveld’s division and the smell of orc, wolf and something else too reeks upon the air. This is no force of the Salved. Tordil worked close enough to see their banner.” Findil hesitated a moment. “Sire, it is the Marshal’s body carried on crossed spears.”
“Fifteen thousand, by the Goddess!” Gregor murmured.
As King and Elf-lord digested these ill tidings, a lancer of the king’s guard made his entrance. “I bring news sire, of the orc?”
“Which orc?”
“Grundurg, my Lord Feyril,” the lancer elaborated, discipline over-riding his surprise at the Elf’s uncharacteristically bitter tone. “Our scouts have found him at last. His band is gathered four miles North East of here.”
“Between us and Morwencairn,” Gregor said.
“He has but five thousand, sire. We will have the measure of him, and Prince Hetwith must surely be with us by the morrow.”
“Unless he too has been turned into an orcish banner.”
Findil’s muttering brought a sharp rebuke from Feyril and further puzzled the lancer who had entered the tent in every expectation of congratulation on bringing the long awaited news that the raider had been run to ground.
“Thank you, soldier, wait outside a moment. You too Findil, the Lord Feyril and I have matters of import to discuss.”
“We cannot smash our way past Grundurg without this other host falling on our rear.” Feyril declared when they were alone again.
“We must buy time, Hetwith may yet join us.” When the elf Lord raised a sceptical eyebrow, Gregor hurried on. “It is but two days we have been expecting him. Who knows what may have delayed him. It may be that I
have underestimated the skill and numbers of my brother’s allies, Feyril, but I do not see in that a conspiracy of ancient evil on the scale you imagine.”
“Be that as it may, we are agreed that barely an hour’s march from our camp we have an enemy totalling two and a half times our strength.”
“Aye,” Gregor admitted. “It is not a force one should hurry to attack.”
“It seems that it is we who are between the hammer and the anvil, sire.”
“Then let us move out of the way, before the one can strike against the other.” Gregor let pass the elf’s gibe at his own foiled plan. “Tell me Feyril, did you note that escarpment, by the village we passed around noon today.”
“The village of Proginnot? Aye the ridge had a wood atop it. It lies perhaps ten miles South East of here.”
“There we will make a stand, our numbers may not be enough to go on the attack, but let them come to us and throw themselves on our spears. Old Matteus used to say that a good position is worth ten thousand men.”
Feyril nodded. “I trust the same exchange rate still serves, Sire.”
“Pass word, we break camp, immediately, but we leave the fires burning. I daresay they are watching us and I would that we were well on our way to Proginnot ‘ere Xander and Grundurg realise we have slipped the trap they set for us.”
***
“Surely you must know more of your half-brother Quin?” Eadran chided in ill concealed exasperation as he and Quintala rode easily along the great Eastway. The lancers, as had been their custom, hung back to allow Prince and Seneschal privacy in which to discuss matters of state and, in this case family.
“He is two hundred and fifty years older than I, Ead. He and I have lived entirely separate lives, each with our respective human families. We have barely met beyond the merest formalities when our orbits intersect at this court event or that.” She hesitated a moment, before releasing a crumb of insight for the weary Prince’s delectation. “You have to understand, both he and I were an affront to our grandfather’s dignity, hard evidence of his daughter’s disobedience. It is not just humans who despise the half-bred.”
