by K L Reinhart
Flights of what looked to be vultures and other birds swooped and flared around the island in a constant whirl of movement. Terak could even now hear the distant thumping of what had to be drums. War drums, he thought.
“I never knew the orcs were such a magical race,” Terak murmured to himself. This was even eerier than the Second Family of elves.
“Hmm.” Vorg gave another of his noncommittal grunts. “You humans and elves never bothered to find out.” And then Vorg rolled his shoulders to create a resounding cracking sound of grating bone. He sat heavily on the edge of the ridge, looking at the slow-moving War Burg and the human city of Araxia that it approached.
“We wait for the battle. Sneak in. Kill the Hexan,” Vorg said with a contented sigh.
“What!?” Terak burst out, looking from the approaching War Burg and the city of Araxia below. “Hundreds of people are going to die!”
“Thousands,” Vorg said pragmatically, not taking his good eye off the city below. “But more will die if the Ungol armies are unleashed on the world.”
He’s right, Terak knew. But the elf also knew that to sit here and wait had to be wrong, didn’t it? For a moment, the elf was caught in a confused bind. These are the hard choices that Father Jacques was telling me about, he knew. The sorts of choices that the Brothers and Sisters of the secretive Enclave-External, the hidden arm of the Enclave, were schooled in making. If the Path of Pain was about learning to stand stronger than any other, than the Enclave-External put that strength to use in the world.
We choose who lives and dies. Terak could now see the Enclave wisdom clearer from this distance.
Terak looked again at the looming War Burg and the city before it, looking flat and unprepared for what was about to happen next.
And Terak made his choice. “I’m sorry, Vorg,” Terak said, stepping down off the ridge to where the ground started to slope toward the estuary valley below. “I can’t wait for a battle. I’m going to kill the Hexan now.”
“You’ll never reach him!” Vorg rose from his perch, shouting down at the elf starting to pick up his pace. “You are just one little elf! The Hexan might be the most powerful sorcerer Midhara has ever known!”
“I have to try,” Terak called back, gritting his teeth against the aches and pains of his body and breathing through them just as a good Enclave novitiate should do.
“Fool,” Vorg grunted as he dismissed Terak, but not before pulling from his belt a large-bladed dagger. “Here.” The unwanted Champion threw it for the elf to catch easily. “You’re going to need it,” he grumbled, turning back to look expectantly at the doomed city of Araxia.
“Thanks,” Terak muttered, stuffing the orc’s dagger into his belt. He let his own aches and pains settle deep into the marrow of his soul, turning it into a substance as hard and as determined as iron.
And the elf moved down the slope alone—in the direction of the city.
4
Defender of Araxia
There is only the path ahead of you, and there is always the choice: the right way or the wrong way. Terak repeated one of the many mantras of the Book of Corrections as he jogged lightly down the ridge of land, weaving between trees and jumping from boulder to boulder. Over his right shoulder, the War Burg was now clearly visible, moving at a sedate but steady pace toward Araxia.
I’ll never get there in time, Terak thought, increasing his pace as he ran. The elf didn’t know how he was going to navigate his way through an entire city to where the High Chancellor—the Hexan—would be, but he knew that he had to at least try.
Just then, there was a snarl from between the trees, and Terak skidded to a halt, his elvish grace allowing him to pause on a boulder with utmost precision.
But the shouts and snarls weren’t coming for him, but ahead of him. And then he heard a scream. A human scream.
Dammit! Terak flung himself forward, taking out the heavy, cumbersome dagger that Vorg had given him and wishing that he had his much finer, curving dagger.
At the bottom of the ridge, the trees straggled to a halt into meadowlands and the edges of overgrown farmsteads. Tracks for woodcutters or hunters, presumably, wound up onto the ridge here and there. It was on one of these tracks that a warband of orcs had apparently ambushed a human patrol.
Terak saw human figures on horseback, wearing short flaring orange capes and with small rounded metal caps. There were only a few of them, and they appeared evenly matched in number by running orcs like the ones that had been hunting Vorg.
Scouts, Terak assumed almost immediately. The War Burg must have sent these orcish scouts ahead to prepare the way for the approaching, titanic battle.
And that means I have to fight my way through them if I am to get to Araxia. He growled, and ran faster.
Even though the two forces were evenly numbered, that did not mean that they were evenly matched, Terak saw immediately. The orcs were stronger and almost as tall as the mounted humans. As Terak ran past the last few trees, he saw one of the orcs raise a hand and throw something like a metal harpoon over its head, catching and catapulting one of the Araxian border guards straight from the saddle.
The orcs were between him and the border guards and closing fast. Terak selected the closest one—the harpoon thrower—as his first target as he pounced.
The elf kept his body low, slashing out with his blade against the back of the orc’s legs as he was drawing a mace from his belt to replace the thrown weapon.
“Grargh!” He found a sudden resistance. An intense shriek of pain came from the orc as he crashed to one side.
And suddenly Terak was in the middle of a band of fighting orcs, surrounded on all sides by fangs and blood and blades.
“Aii!” A scream from one of the Araxians as his horse was felled by the war-mallet of one of the orcs, killing the steed in a moment and sending it and its rider crashing to the ground. But the human was still alive, despite his trapped legs, Terak’s quick eyes registered.
A snarl signaled one of the orcs, as he lashed out at Terak with a giant, cleaver-like blade. Terak ducked under the whistling arc, jumping forward to slash at the horse-killing orc as he was about to smash the head of the trapped Araxian.
A surprised grunt of pain came from the war-mallet orc, but Terak’s blow wasn’t as precise or as damaging as his first strike had been. It scraped down the orc’s back and only bit flesh near the orc’s hip, as the creature had a patched and rusted half-chain shirt that was far too short for it, clearly stolen from one of his victims.
Terak had distracted it from its kill anyway. It turned with surprising speed.
Terak lashed out with a foot against the orc’s knee, earning a skidding blow against the creature’s thigh. This was the only way that Terak had found worked against creatures of their size. The elf was naturally much faster than they were, but he was also just a fraction of their bulk.
I have to fight clever. Don’t give in to fury or anger. Pick your points.
Terak’s side-swipe stumbled the war-mallet orc a little bit, but Terak still had the orc on his other side to deal with, too. He caught a shadow of movement out of the corner of one eye as the cleaver-wielding orc took another hacking attempt at him. Terak spun on his hip, allowing the blade to slash down past his nose—
“ELF!” The war-mallet orc was already swinging his heavy weapon in a blow that would crush his rib cage as Terak jumped, hitting the ground behind the cleaver-orc to hear an almighty crash. The war-mallet met the cleaver-orc’s weapon arm, obliterating it in moments.
The cleaver orc screamed in fury, but did not fall to his knees despite the fact that one arm was now a mangled mess of bone and gray flesh. Acting instinctively, the injured orc lashed out with its remaining clawed hand, striking the war-mallet orc around the face and leaving deep gouges in the green flesh across his cheek.
Terak continued to move. The enraged fight behind him would keep those two occupied for a short time, but would it be long enough to save the Araxian on th
e ground? Terak ducked between the knots of fighting orcs and people, racing around to where the human guard was still trapped.
“Ach!” the border guard was trying to heave his dead steed from his legs, but the beast was clearly too heavy for one man alone.
“Here!” Terak slid to his side, adding his own strength to the guard’s. With an anguished hiss of pain, the pair managed to lift the side of the dead creature up just enough for the man to wiggle and scrape his broken leg free.
“Thank you!” the man gasped as Terak seized his shoulders and started heaving him back from the fray. There were more screams of people, grunts from the fighting orcs—who appeared able to have entire limbs severed from their bodies and still stubbornly remain fighting—and whinnies from the panicking horses.
“Don’t thank me yet,” Terak hissed, as the fight that was just a few meters ahead of them appeared to be resolving itself.
The human defenders of Araxia had clearly and completely lost. There were three dead orcs on the field, but as Terak continued to pull the guard before him, he saw that this guard was the only human left alive.
And even he is only barely alive, Terak thought grimly.
There were four orcs rising from their recent kills—one of them the war-mallet orc with the scratched face, another the limping harpoon orc that Terak had hamstrung, and two more.
“You can’t run, elf!” The war-mallet orc paused for a brief moment of victory, pointing his blood and gristle-matted iron mallet straight at Terak.
Terak hissed, “I’m sorry,” he said, dropping the injured human to the ground and slowly rising from his crouch. All he had was the one orcish blade, as he stepped in front of the injured Araxian to face four well-armed and much larger orcs.
“Come and get me,” Terak hissed—
Thock! Thock-thock!
Just as the war-mallet orc stumbled and wavered where he stood. He looked down in confusion at the pinions of black feathers that now sprouted from his neck.
“Wha-?” the war-mallet orc managed to say before there was a sudden ripping sound in the air. More crossbow bolts slammed home, throwing him to the ground with a heavy thud. There are people behind me! Terak crouched to his knees as he heard the canter of hooves, and the release of more crossbows. Another squad of human guards had arrived, firing their short crossbows at the orcs in tight volleys, until not one of the orc scouts remained standing or breathing.
Ugh. Terak took a deep, shuddering breath and thanked whatever stars or deities were looking after him.
“You! Elf!” He heard one of the human Araxians shout—clearly some sort of captain of this little troop. “Drop that weapon. You’re coming with us!”
5
Imposter
The border guards rode fast and hard back to their capital city. Both Terak and the guard that he had saved were put on the back of one of the surviving (and terrified) steeds of the previous patrol. The horse appeared glad to follow the other horses as quickly as possible away from the recent bloodshed.
The border guards had no time to speak anything other than terse and taut commands and suggestions to each other on their flight back to the city.
“West Gate?”
“Already closed. Fisherman’s Gate.” They selected their point of entry.
Around them, the scrubby, wilding meadows gave way to farmlands—open fields of rippling corn and orchards of short, ancient trees, studded with warehouses and cottages. Everywhere that Terak looked, he could see the signs of people fleeing these unprotected places. Wagons raced down farm lanes toward the city, kicking up plumes of dust behind them as farmhands and herdsman clung on for dear life.
“They’re bringing in what they can save,” croaked the injured guard behind Terak, who appeared more communicative than his compatriots. Near death experiences do that for you. Terak considered his recent, fleeting friendship with Vorg.
But the guard was right. The wagons and work horses were laden not only with people, but with sacks and barrels as well, as the outliers of Araxia raced to stock the city with the supplies it would need before everything fell under the attention of the approaching War Burg. Terak could even see gaggles of geese being hastily driven toward the arching city gates that remained open, as well as small herds of sheep.
They’ll need the food if there’s a long siege, Terak considered, looking back up at the War Burg that hung over the estuary valley. It was moving closer, but so far it hadn’t started any direct attack against either the farms beneath it or anything else.
What do I know of orcish battles? Terak considered. The Chief Martial of the Enclave had a healthy respect for their warlike nature—riven by a hatred for the entirety of orc kind, which included goblins and trolls.
He said they were good at fighting, Terak remembered. Which I kinda gathered by now . . . he added to himself.
But the Chief Martial had gone to some lengths to explain that while the orcs were strong, savage, and cunning, their greatest strength lay in the highly militarized tribal society that they came from. Death matches and duels were commonplace, and every orc, male or female, was expected to be a warrior. They attacked in groups, whether as a warband or as several warbands. Whatever they might lack in regimental order, they made up for in sheer excellence in the arts of separating life from bodies.
Terak turned back to see that their group had taken a smaller path from the main roadway. They were not going toward the large oval gate with its heavy ironwork grill lowering in front of the closed mahogany doors, but toward a smaller gate set away from the main thoroughfare, already crowded with people, wagons, and horses.
The walls of Araxia were high and thick brickwork, but, as Terak cast a look over his shoulder once more at the War Burg, they seemed nothing but a nuisance against such a threat . . .
“Get that gate closed!”
As soon as the Araxian border guards had made their way into the city, Terak was surrounded by the press of shouting and hurrying people. The Fisherman’s Gate led into a small plaza surrounded by stone warehouses. Terak assumed it was a part of the trade districts of the city.
But how do I get from here to the High Chancellor? Terak’s mind was already racing, picking at the problem. Meanwhile, Araxian guards—all humans, as far as he could see—this time in stronger breastplates and with spears—were climbing the stone steps to the walls above.
“Healer! Healer!” one of Terak’s own group was calling. A woman jumped from her steed and stepped up to the one that Terak shared with the wounded man.
“We’ll get you fixed up,” the woman said, helping the guard with the smashed leg down to the flagstones before looking back up to Terak. She was a young woman with a square jaw and gray eyes. “But I don’t know how you’re mixed up in this,” she said seriously.
“He saved my life!” the injured guard said through clenched teeth. “He took on three orcs all by himself in order to save me!”
“He did?” The woman looked back at the slender form of the elf with obvious surprise. “You’re joking.” But the woman’s eyes were still hard as they examined Terak. “You’ve got to be one heck of a fighter, elf. Lord Yuliel should be proud.”
Oh Ixcht, Terak thought in alarm. Yuliel was an elvish name, and clearly this guard thought that Terak had something to do with them. Who were they? Were they here in Araxia?
When in doubt, stay silent. Terak remembered one of his essential teachings in the Enclave-External.
The guard responded just as Father Jacques would have said: she drew her own conclusions from his silence, nodding to herself. “Well, I don’t know what you were doing out there on the road and not at the Palace with the other delegates . . .”
She was fishing for information, Terak knew. This Lord Yuliel must be in the city. At the Palace. Where the High Chancellor was sure to be.
“I’m just a messenger,” Terak lied, adding a little uncertainty to his voice. It was an easy thing to do as he was pretty uncertain about everything at the m
oment. “I have to deliver a message to Lord Yuliel.”
The guard held Terak’s gaze for a longer moment before shrugging. “Well, I hope that it’s good news.”
Not really, Terak thought.
“Baris!” The guard hailed one of the younger guards, a boy really, no more than eighteen by Terak’s reckoning. “Get this elf up to the Palace! Then back to the barracks.”
Baris the youthful guard looked about as impressed as any young recruit does at being given another job to do. But with a rusty salute, the brown-haired border guard mounted his steed and nodded for Terak to follow on his.
The city was in uproar. Terak didn’t even have to see the hurrying people and the lines of marching soldiers to know it. He could feel the quiver of fear in the air itself. Every hoofbeat of his horse, eagerly following Baris’s own, felt like it was the beat of one of Father Jacques’s strange mechanical clocks, and it was counting down to some terrible nightmare.
Unfortunately for the city of Araxia in the kingdom of Ara, its time had just about run out.
There was a distant sound of a booming thud, instantly reminding Terak of the rockfalls that he would sometimes hear from the Tartaruk Mountains as those dismal peaks engaged in their own mysterious battles with the weather and each other.
“First Moon!” Baris pulled his horse up short, and Terak was forced to seize the reins of his own as he pulled alongside the youthful guard. The pair stood on a wide cobbled avenue that seemed to run through the city like an artery, walled in by tall stone houses on either side of them. Already, their avenue had met up with several others intersecting their path to form crossways and plazas. The city was functional and laid out clearly with old green-leafed trees standing in concrete bowls along the streets.
