“Fornicate your mother, Crusher!” He roared, and forgetting all about the plan he had with Fleshripper and forgetting all about Balls, he raised his great two-handed hammer and charged. Fleshripper was half a step behind him with his own stone hammer, and all nine of Skullbuster’s crew strung out behind.
Gutcrusher didn’t wait. With his new round shield on his left arm and his blacksteel mace gripped tightly in his right fist, he leaped forward to meet Skullbuster’s charge. Around him he knew that Wolf, One-eye and Balls had all leaped forward with him, and the small clearing filled with the sounds of ogres roaring, weapons smashing into flesh and titanic bodies colliding in explosions of blood and thunder.
Gutcrusher focused on Skullbuster, and as the huge hammer came down his shield came up, turning the blow and bringing him in nice and close. He punched his spiked mace into Skullbuster’s neck like an extension of his fist, and a cloud of blood misted the air around him. Skullbuster was dead, or as close to dead as Gutcrusher could want, so he shrugged the body aside and swung his mace at Fleshripper. Fleshripper was quick to parry, damned quick, but the spiked mace hit Fleshripper’s stone hammer square on, and chips of stone flew everywhere as the head of the inferior weapon shattered and broke free of its handle.
“Dung!” The weaponless Fleshripper cursed.
“Couldn’t stay with your mates, hey Ripper?” Gutcrusher taunted as Fleshripper tried to backstep away from him. “Thought you were too fornicating smart to take orders, didn’t you?” He stalked Fleshripper swiftly and relentlessly, his feet firmly planted as he walked forward. Others of Skullbuster’s nine threw hammers or spears at him, but they bounced harmlessly off of the armor and shield. Fleshripper’s face showed panic as he walked backward, not daring to turn his back on Gutcrusher.
“Eat dung, Gutcrusher!” Fleshripper yelled, his voice rising. “Kill him, boyos!”
Skullbuster’s nine tried, but none of them wanted to get within reach of Gutcrusher’s bloody mace, so they were reduced to hurling stones and weapons at the advancing ogre. He shrugged off the blows as they either harmlessly impacted on his marvelous armor or were knocked aside by his shield. In three steps Fleshripper tripped and fell backward, landing ass and elbows in the dirt. In an instant Gutcrusher’s mace came down, leaving a concave dent halfway through the Ripper’s skull and splashing blood and brains across the path.
His charge to kill Fleshripper had taken him right through Skullbuster’s nine, and he spun around to face them before they could get a spear in his back. Balls had killed three Hounds with his spear, Wolf and One-eye were standing back to back, with shields up and swords cutting a weave of death through the Hounds around them. Half a dozen ogres lay dead at their feet.
Selecting an opponent at random, Gutcrusher charged forward, smashing his mace through the haft of a spear and into the ogre’s chest. It was one of Skullbuster’s boyos, and he was standing dead. The rest were all around him. A heavy hammer blow fell on his back, causing him to hunch over, but he spun his mace around and caught the attacker’s shoulder, the spikes in the mace ripping into flesh and sowing poisonous seeds of death into an arm gone suddenly useless.
The rest of Skullbuster’s boyos leaped backward, leaving Gutcrusher standing among the bodies of their companions. For a moment none of the ogres spoke, or moved.
Sharpfang had come with Skullbuster to put down Gutcrusher. He’d seen the Crusher before, a fierce and bloody bastard who was known for his temper, but he’d been confident that the larger and more experienced Skullbuster would make short work of him. With numbers being their nine plus, well, at least more than ten Hounds, he’d been supremely confident before charging into this clearing, no matter that Gutcrusher now had a shield and armor. He’d been shocked to see Skullbuster go down so swiftly, his massive stone hammer swatted aside like a bug and his neck ripped open. It had been a further shock to watch Fleshripper smashed into the ground and to see Blade and Bloodskin fall mere seconds later. Holding his stone hammer before him, he watched with a kind of dread-filled awe as Gutcrusher turned and looked his way.
He saw death in Gutcrusher’s eyes, and he didn’t want any part of it. He wasn’t the smartest of ogres, but like all of them he could tell which way the wind was blowing. Backing away, he threw down his stone hammer and stammered “Gutcrusher is my chief!” The Crusher nodded and turned his terrible eyes toward Hammers, a wide-shouldered ogre known for wielding two stone hammers at once, and Hammers dropped them both.
“Gutcrusher is my chief.” Hammers said.
“Aye, Gutcrusher is my chief.” Said Moonhunter, dropping his spear.
Butthead threw down the stone he’d been about to hurl at Gutcrusher and joined the chorus. After a moment Splitnose and Foesmasher agreed, and all the remnants of Skullbuster’s nine were accounted for.
Among the Hounds things went a bit differently. Between them, One-eye, Wolf and Balls had accounted for eleven hounds, and not one of them had suffered so much as a scratch. Only four of the Hounds dropped weapons, however, and none of them acknowledged Gutcrusher as their chief. Instead they bolted, running into the woods and away from the battle, followed by the taunts and jeers of their vanquishers. In a few moments the fighting was over, and Wolf looked in shared wonder with his companions at the scene.
Fifteen ogres lay on the ground, either dead or dying, six had surrendered, and the rest had fled. The clearing was splattered with blood, and there would be a lot of new bones for the crows to pick over here in this land of ogre bones. The four of them stood, untouched among the dead.
Wolf looked over at Gutcrusher and grinned. “Fornicate your luck, Crusher.” He said in envy and admiration.
“Gutcrusher ain’t your chief.” Balls told the six new members of their band. “He’s the king. Say it.”
Under the none-too-gentle tutelage of Balls, Wolf and One-eye the six dropped to one knee and acknowledged Gutcrusher as the king of ogres.
Gutcrusher took it with something less than the grace expected from a monarch among men, howling and cursing at the sky in exultation as he stomped Fleshripper’s corpse into the dirt. Broken on the ground next his massive hammer, Skullbuster was still breathing hoarsely, but Balls soon put an end to that.
Chapter 40: Lanae: The Freehold of Nevermind, Nevermind City
The City of Nevermind wasn’t really a city. With a population of merely five thousand people, it was more of a large town than anything, but because it was the principle population center of an independent Freehold with a commission issued directly from the King, everyone called it Nevermind City. A Lord Mayor ruled here, and his principle contribution to the crown was his excellent management of Nevermind’s important deep water port and regular large payments into the Mortentian treasury. His castle and his three warships provided excellent protection for the merchants of Nevermind, and it had been years since the last Thimenian raid. Some of those warships were suspected of doing some reaving of their own, and the sailors of Nevermind were known to be a hard and stubborn lot.
All of this Lanae knew from her instruction as a king’s eye, but Nevermind was not one of the cities she had visited. Even so, she had memorized many maps in connection with her job, and she recognized the town as she approached it on Sentinel’s back.
For months she had dreamed of getting to ride on the eagle again, but she had not imagined that it would be so cold, or that she would be naked, with broken chains on her wrists and the marks of a whip on her back. How foolish she had been, not to take Jahaksi’s warning about the Brizaki ship’s captain to heart!
In her mind’s eye she saw again the leer in Kartash’s face when he had ordered her stripped, chained and whipped in the hold, for no reason other than that he could. Well, that and the knife he’d found strapped to her thigh. She felt again the sudden stinging, burning pain as the lash stripped her flesh, leaving bloody lines in her back. The horror of knowing that she could have avoided it, merely by taking Jahaksi’s advice and fleeing, haunted her.
Never
in her life had she felt so helpless and humiliated, unable to do anything for Sentinel or even for herself. She didn’t want to think about what he’d done to her after he had stripped her but before she’d been whipped, but the degradation of his alien and strangely girlish hands stroking her most intimate self refused to go away.
Kartash spoke passable Mortentian.He had not raped her, but he had promised that he would, and all of his crew, and that she would be well broken in before she was sold in Selden Kharn Chihizak, wherever that was.
That her months of captivity in Jahaksi’s band would end so horribly had left her feeling sick and helpless and terribly afraid, right up until the Thimenian ram had smashed into the side of the vessel and water had begun pouring into the hold. Even then she had thought she was going to drown alongside of Sentinel, but then, like a miracle in a church story, she had heard a Mortentian’s voice.
The traveler in her had identified Levin’s accent as lower Dunwater, maybe Elderest, with a touch of the sailor about him. The name he’d given, Askelyne, tugged at some memory, and she thought it was a minor house, maybe in Kundrell. To find him among the gigantic and barbaric Thimenians as if he were one of them seemed bizarre and wonderful. There had been something of the miraculous in hearing that voice.
Ten desperate minutes getting free and then freeing Sentinel, and she’d been aloft again, something she had despaired of experiencing again. And now, after less than an hour of bitter cold flight without her riding leathers, Nevermind lay before her. It was as if she had been pulled suddenly from the deep, long after she’d believed herself drowned. She shivered and began her descent.
All of the worries that had plagued her at the beginning of her captivity returned to her. She feared what her punishment would be for having let Sentinel be captured in the first place, for it had been her negligence in not seeing that the security flag was the wrong color and landing that had resulted in the capture of the king’s greatest eagle. Had she escaped from the Brizaki and the reavers only to face the headsman?
To the west she saw the southern edge of the Whitewood Forest where it met with the broad plains of the Dunwater River Valley, beneath her was the dark and misty East Forest, and to her east was the sea. She was flying low over the forest, and Sentinel was restless beneath her, half-wild with his sudden return to flight. He seemed no weaker for his time in the cage.
Normally the slightest pressure of Lanae’s knees would result in an almost instant change of direction from the great eagle, but today Sentinel seemed rebellious, ignoring the finer touches in her riding and forcing her to lean hard to left or right to make him change direction. She spoke soothingly to the eagle, but this only seemed to make him more difficult. The two of them had been through a lot, she reasoned, and little wonder that he was upset.
Nevertheless, it came as a complete surprise to Lanae when the eagle suddenly dove for the ground, at least two leagues short of the city walls, and she held on for her life as he plummeted earthward. When his claws sank into the back of some farmer’s prize sheep, breaking its neck instantly, the jolt nearly knocked her loose and broke her neck, too. With the bloody prize gripped in his talons, Sentinel launched himself skyward, forcing Lanae to throw her arms around his neck and again cling for her life. She berated the eagle in a loud angry voice that seemed to surprise them both.
The eagle did not bother to wait for Lanae to direct it to an authorized landing, but instead flew to a nearby hill, thankfully devoid of any buildings or people, and tore into the large sheep as if he was famished, which Lanae supposed he was. None of Lanae’s efforts to make Sentinel change course had any effect, so she dismounted and allowed him to eat his fill. She sat in the grass beside him with her arms around her knees, uncomfortably aware of her nakedness and the itching welts on her back.
Perhaps half a league away she could see a farmhouse, a white walled and comfortable looking building with two stories and a thatched roof. Beside it was a separate barn, which was unusual anywhere in southern Mortentia, and spoke of some wealth. Most farmers shared their houses with their livestock, with the people sleeping upstairs and the animals below. A number of half-panicked horses ran nervously in a nearby corral, and she could hear sheep bleating in terror somewhere nearby. While she watched a solid looking man with a broad-brimmed Flanesi style hat came out of the house’s door, walked to the corral and began saddling a thin, brown slab-sided gelding.
With dread, Lanae knew the farmer was saddling the horse to come and see about the giant eagle that had just stolen one of his sheep. Sentinel seemed content to eat that sheep, and he did so greedily, tearing the flesh from the bones and raising his neck high to gulp down great gobs of it. Lanae was afraid to test the eagle’s willingness to obey so soon after he had so completely defied her. She would have to wait and see if a full belly made him more tractable.
The farmer seemed in no hurry as he mounted his horse and attempted to ride over toward her, but the horse was having none of it. As soon as the panicked animal discovered that the farmer wanted to move toward the eagle rather than away from it, it began to rear and whinny, until finally the farmer was forced to dismount, return the terrified animal to the corral, and approach her on foot. He bore no weapons, but he had a bundle on his arm and seemed rather more curious than threatening. Brown hair speckled with gray framed his solid, meaty face, and his hands looked very weatherworn, but clean. His clothes were freshly laundered and he was clean shaven. He came within perhaps sixty paces of her and called out. Lanae looked at him warily.
“Allo?” He began, in the broad and slow speech of east Dunwater. “Are you by any chance a king’s eye?”
“Yes.” She replied. “I’m Lanae.”
“Aye, I thought so.” He said in a voice that said he knew all about her. “You be the one that’s gone missing, yeah?”
“Yes. I suppose you’ve heard about it?”
“Oh, Aye. Me and everybody else around heah. May I come closer? That thing won’t bite me or nothing will he?”
“He won’t bite unless he thinks you are a threat, master farmer.” She replied. “He’s just rather hungry right now. I’m sorry about your sheep.”
“Twas a ram, not a sheep.” The farmer corrected absently, walking warily with his eyes glued on the bird despite the fact that Sentinel was ignoring him completely. “I reckon I can spare a ram or two for the king. On top of that, there’s a reward for them as finds you, and I reckon that’s me. I can buy a few rams with what they’ve offered. If you will pardon my boldness, I couldn’t help but notice when you brung the bird down, you don’t seem to have no clothes on.”
She blushed, humiliated, and her eyes brimmed with unshed tears. “They were taken from me, sir.”
“Well, that’s all right, Madam King’s Eye.” He replied gently. “I figured as much. It’s lucky for you I have daughters, and Ellana is about your size. I won’t ask you no questions, but if you would like, I can bring you this here dress, if that’s all right, and if your eagle don’t mind, of course. Otherwise I can set it on the ground here and you can fetch it, and I won’t look in your direction at all, you don’t need to worry about that. Like I said, I have daughters, and I wouldn’t want no strangers looking at them, and what I like for my daughters, well, that’s the way I expect I would treat anybody else, you know.”
“Thank you so very much.” She replied. “You can just throw them toward me and I will come get them.”
The farmer did so, then turned his head away while she gathered up the dress. To her dismay, she found that she couldn’t put it on over the chains on her wrists. When she explained, the farmer gallantly offered her his own shirt, which he removed and then threw to her with his eyes downcast. She draped it over her shoulders. He was a large man, and the shirt covered her to below her knees.
“Well, then.” He said, looking up after a safe time had passed. “I don’t know if you need to stay by your eagle or if you want to come up to the house, your choice, of course, but I’ve
a good axe, and I can get those chains off of your wrists either way. We’ve plenty of food, we’ve had a good spring harvest, I’ve plenty of apricots and the first corn is in. I’d be happy to feed you, seeing as you are a king’s eye and all. And no disrespect intended of course, you are the first king’s eye I’ve seen up close like, although there’ve been lots about, what with looking for you and with the war. Never had one land in my sheep pasture, I promise you that’s for true.”
“Thank you, master farmer.”
“Naw, you needn’t call me that, now, Madam King’s Eye. It’s just plain Arrol Felder that I’m called. Now I don’t know what’s happened to you, and I expect you don’t need to tell me nothing, seeing as how I’m just a plain farmer and it’s nothing to me, but I expect as how you’ve had a bad time of it, seeing how you’re fixed, begging your pardon, and you don’t need to be walking into no stranger’s house. I reckon that might be frightful for you, what with people being the way they are sometimes.
“I reckon if you were one of my girls, here’s the way I’d want things to happen. I’ll have Dana, that’s my Missus, mind, well, I’ll have her fix up a nice picnic basket, and I’ll fetch it and bring it back here with my axe, and we can get you dressed up nice and proper like, and get those chains off of you. Then I reckon we’d better go and see the Lord Mayor. He’ll know what to do, right enough. Does that seem like a fair way to manage it, madam?”
“Yes.” Lanae responded, trying to keep up with the farmer’s flood of words. “Yes, I would be very grateful to manage it that way.”
The farmer nodded, seeming oddly formal for a man without a shirt, and turned toward his house. “Aye, good, good. Then we’ll do just that. You just keep my shirt for the moment, I’ll go and get you somewhat to eat, I’ll come back with a block and an axe, and we’ll get you fixed up all right.”
In a few minutes the farmer was back, carrying in one hand a wooden chopping block that probably weighed half as much as Lanae did, and in the other a regular wicker basket hanging off of an axe handle. He was wearing a freshly creased sky blue shirt. While he had been gone, Sentinel had finished the ram and grown restive, eyeing the pasture sharply, but no more sheep were in sight. They had wisely made themselves invisible.
War of the Misread Augury: Book One of the Black Griffin Rising Trilogy Page 40
