Orcs:Bad blood o-1 Read online

  Orcs:Bad blood

  ( Orcs - 1 )

  Stan Nicholls

  Stan Nicholls

  Orcs: Bad blood

  How the Wolverines won their freedom

  Maras-Dantia abounded with a diversity of lifeforms. There were inevitable conflicts between these elder races, but mutual respect and tolerance maintained the social fabric.

  Until a new race arrived.

  They called themselves humans, and braved unfriendly wastelands to enter Maras-Dantia from the far south. Small in number at first, over the years they grew to a torrent. They claimed the land as their own, renamed it Centrasia, and set about exploiting its resources. Rivers were polluted, forests stripped and elder race settlements destroyed. They showed contempt for the cultures they encountered, demeaning and corrupting the native inhabitants.

  But their greatest crime was to defile Maras-Dantia's magic.

  Their greed and disregard for the natural order of things began to drain away the land's vital energies, diminishing the magic elder races depended upon. This in turn warped the climate. Before long, an ice field was advancing from the north.

  So it came to war between the elder races and the humans.

  The conflict was far from clear cut. Both sides were disunited. Old divisions within the elder races resurfaced, and some even threw in their lot with the incomers. The humans themselves suffered from a religious schism. Some were Followers of the Manifold Path, commonly known as Manis, and observed pagan ways. Others adhered to the precepts of Unity. Dubbed Unis, they supported the newer sect of monotheism. There was as much animosity between Unis and Manis as between elder races and humans.

  One of the only native races without magical powers, orcs made up for the deficiency with their superior martial skills and a savage lust for combat.

  Stryke captained a thirty-strong orc warband called the Wolverines. His fellow officers were Sergeants Haskeer and Jup, the latter the band's only dwarf member, and Corporals Alfray and Coilla, the group's sole female. The balance of the command consisted of twenty-five common grunts. The Wolverines were part of a greater horde serving despotic Queen Jennesta, a powerful sorceress who supported the Mani cause. The offspring of human and nyadd parents, Jennesta's taste for sadism and sexual depravity were legendary.

  Jennesta sent the band on a perilous mission to seize an ancient artefact from a Uni stronghold. The Wolverines gained the artefact, which proved to be a sealed message cylinder, along with a cache of an hallucinogenic drug called pellucid. But Stryke made the mistake of letting his band celebrate by sampling the drug. The following dawn, returning late to Jennesta and fearing her wrath, they were ambushed by kobold bandits who stole the artefact. Knowing they would pay a terrible price for their negligence, Stryke decided to pursue the raiders.

  Assuming treachery by the Wolverines, Jennesta declared them outlaws and ordered their capture, dead or alive. She also established contact with her brood sisters, Adpar and Sanara, with whom she was linked telepathically. But bad blood between the siblings prevented Jennesta discovering if either knew the whereabouts of the band or the precious artefact.

  During the search for the kobolds, Stryke began to experience lucid visions. They showed a world consisting solely of orcs, living in harmony with nature and in control of their own destiny. Orcs who knew nothing of humans or the other elder races.

  He feared that he was going insane.

  Locating the kobolds, the Wolverines exacted bloody revenge and regained the artefact. They also liberated an aged gremlin scholar called Mobbs, who thought the cylinder might contain something that had a direct bearing on the origin of the elder races. He believed the cylinder was connected with Vermegram and Tentarr Arngrim, two fabled figures from Maras-Dantia's past. Vermegram was a sorceress, and the nyadd mother of Jennesta, Adpar and Sanara. She was thought to have been slain by Arngrim, a human whose magical abilities equalled hers.

  Mobbs' words brought out a latent spirit of rebellion in the band, and Stryke successfully argued that the cylinder be opened. Inside was an object fashioned from an unknown material, consisting of a central sphere with seven tiny radiating spikes of variable length. To the orcs it resembled a stylised star, similar to a hatchling's toy. Mobbs explained that it was an instrumentality, a totem of great magical power long considered mythical. When united with its four fellows it would reveal a profound truth about the elder races, a truth which the legends implied could set them free. At Stryke's urging, the Wolverines abandoned their allegiance to Jennesta and struck out to seek the other stars, reasoning that even a fruitless search was better than the servitude they knew.

  Their quest first led them to Trinity, a Uni settlement ruled by fanatical preacher Kimball Hobrow, where an instrumentality was revered as an object of worship. Seizing it, the band narrowly escaped and made for Scratch, the trolls' subterranean homeland, where they hoped a further star might be located.

  Impatient with her own minions, Jennesta employed the services of Micah Lekmann, Greever Aulay and Jabez Blaan. Ruthless human bounty hunters who specialised in tracking renegade orcs, they undertook to return with the Wolverines' heads.

  The band's expedition to Scratch was successful, and a third star was secured. But Haskeer, seized by a strange derangement, made off with them. Coilla, giving chase, fell into the hands of the bounty hunters, who negotiated to sell her to goblin slave traders. Haskeer himself, convinced that the stars were communicating with him in some way, was captured by Kimball Hobrow's zealous followers, the custodians.

  Having rescued Coilla and Haskeer, the band learned that an instrumentality could be in the possession of a centaur called Keppatawn and his clan in Drogan Forest.

  Jennesta stepped up the hunt for the Wolverines, including more dragon patrols under the direction of her mistress of dragons, Glozellan. She also maintained telepathic contact with her brood sisters, Adpar and Sanara, queens of their own domains in different parts of Maras-Dantia. Adpar, ruler of the underwater nyadd realm, was making war against a neighbouring race, the merz. Jennesta offered her an alliance to help find the stars, promising to share their power. Not trusting her sister, Adpar refused. Enraged, Jennesta used sorcery to cast a harmful glamour on her sibling.

  On their way to Drogan, the band several times encountered an enigmatic human called Serapheim, who warned them of approaching perils before disappearing, seemingly impossibly.

  Entering Drogan forest, the band made contact with the centaur Keppatawn. A renowned armourer hampered by lameness, Keppatawn had a star which he stole from Adpar when he was a youth. But a spell cast by her left him crippled, and only the application of one of her tears could right him. Keppatawn declared that if the Wolverines brought him this bizarre trophy he would trade the star for it. Stryke agreed.

  The orcs made their way to the nyadd's domain. Nyadds and merz were at war, and Adpar had slipped into a coma as a result of Jennesta's magical attack. Fighting their way to her private chambers, the Wolverines found the queen on her deathbed, abandoned by her courtiers. When the cause looked lost, she shed a single tear of self-pity, which Stryke caught in a phial. The tear healed Keppatawn's infirmity, and he gave up the instrumentality.

  Stryke's visions continued, and intensified, and he became preoccupied by the notion that the stars were singing to him.

  The final instrumentality was housed in a Mani settlement called Ruffetts View, where a fissure had opened in the earth and was expelling raw magical energy. Once there, the band became a rallying point for disaffected orcs, many of them deserters from Jennesta's horde. Learning that two armies, Jennesta's and Hobrow Kimball's, were heading towards Ruffetts View, Stryke reluctantly allowed the deserters to join him. A siege ensued, and in the chaos of its
aftermath the Wolverines made off with the last star.

  When connected, the five artefacts formed a device that magically transported the band to Ilex, an ice-bound region in the extreme north of Maras-Dantia. In a fantastical ice palace they discovered Sanara, who proved benevolent, unlike her tyrannical sisters. She was held captive by the Sluagh, a pitiless race of near immortal demons who had pursued the instrumentalities for centuries. Unable to defeat the Sluagh, the orcs were imprisoned by them.

  Their saviour appeared in the form of the mysterious Serapheim, revealed as the legendary sorcerer Tentarr Arngrim, father of Jennesta, Sanara and Adpar. Through him Stryke learnt that Maras-Dantia was never the orcs' world, or the natural world of any of the elder races. Arngrim's ex-lover turned enemy, the sorceress Vermegram, brought orcs into Maras-Dantia to create her personal slave army. But the magical portals she opened also swept in members of other races from their own dimensions. Ironically, Maras-Dantia was and always had been the home world of humans.

  Stryke's visions were not insanity but glimpses of his race's home world, brought on by contact with the powerful energy generated by the instrumentalities.

  Tentarr Arngrim, trying to make amends for what humans had done, created the instrumentalities as part of a plan to return the elder races to their home dimensions. But the scheme was dashed and the stars scattered.

  The sorcerer helped the Wolverines escape, and they managed to take the instrumentalities back from the Sluagh. A portal was located in the ice palace's cellars, and the sorcerer guided the band to it. But as he prepared to send them to the orcs' dimension Jennesta arrived with her army. A magical battle with Arngrim and Sanara on one side and Jennesta on the other ended with Jennesta consigned to the portal's fearsome vortex. The sorcerer queen was either torn apart by its titanic energy or flung into a parallel dimension.

  Jup, the dwarf member of the Wolverines, chose to stay in the world he knew rather than cross to his race's home dimension. He and Sanara went off in hope of escaping under cover of the anarchy that engulfed the ice palace. For his part, Tentarr Arngrim elected to stay in the crumbing fortress and hold the Sluagh at bay while the others got away. Thrusting the instrumentalities into Stryke's hands, he set the portal for the orcs' dimension.

  And the Wolverines stepped into the vortex…

  1

  Bilkers were the second most dangerous species in Ceragan. They had teeth like knife blades and hides as tough as seasoned leather. The only thing greater than their fearsome strength was their aggression.

  The bilker being stalked by two of the most dangerous of Ceragan's inhabitants reared on its massive hind legs. Its scabby head brushed the crest of a tree that a flick of its barbed tail would have been powerful enough to fell.

  "Think we can take it alone?" Haskeer whispered.

  Stryke nodded.

  "Looks like a mob-handed job to me."

  "Not if we're smart."

  " Shit's smarter than a bilker."

  "You should be all right then."

  Haskeer shot him a mystified glance.

  They were fine specimens of orc adulthood, with imposing shoulders, expansive chests and a muscular build. Their craggy faces bore proudly thrusting jaws, and there was flint in their eyes. Both had fading scars on their cheeks where the tattoos signifying their rank, the marks of enslavement, had been purged.

  The bilker thudded down on to four legs. It gave a watery growl and resumed lumbering. Trampling shrubbery, grating bark from trees it rubbed against, it began moving along the bottom of the valley.

  Stryke and Haskeer emerged from the undergrowth, spears in hand, and followed stealthily. They were downwind, catching the noxious odour the beast exuded.

  The orcs and their prey meandered for some distance. Occasionally, the bilker stopped and clumsily turned its head, as if suspecting their presence, but the orcs took care to stay out of sight. The creature gazed back along its wake, sniffed the air, then trudged on.

  Passing a small copse, the bilker waded a pebbly stream. On its far side was a broad rocky outcrop, dotted with caves. To carry on the pursuit, Stryke and Haskeer had to break cover. Keeping low, they dashed for the shelter of a lichen-covered boulder. They were within five paces of it when the bilker swung its head round.

  The orcs froze, mesmerised by the beast's merciless, fist-size eyes.

  Hunters and hunted stood transfixed for an age. Then a change came over the creature.

  " It's bilking! " Haskeer yelled.

  The colour of the animal's skin started to alter. It took on the hue and mottled appearance of the sandy granite wall behind it. All except its swaying tail, which aped the green and brown of an adjacent tree. With increasing rapidity the bilker was blending into the background.

  " Quick! " Stryke shouted. " Before we lose it! "

  They ran forward. Stryke lobbed his spear. It struck square in the creature's flank, drawing a thunderous bellow from the wounded beast.

  Camouflage was a bilker's principal defence, but far from all it relied on. Its fighting capacity was just as effective. Turning head on, it charged, the spear jutting from its bloodied side. As it splashed back across the stream, its cloaking ability, triggered by self-preservation and working overtime, continued to mirror the terrain. But with concealment giving way to attack, it functioned chaotically. The bilker's upper body still imitated the rock-face, while its bottom half mimicked the water. Charge gathering pace, its hide shimmering bizarrely, the creature's lower quarters seemed almost transparent.

  Stryke and Haskeer stood their ground. Haskeer had held on to his spear, preferring to use it as a close range weapon. Stryke drew his sword.

  They stayed put until the last possible second. When the bilker got close enough for them to feel a gust of its rank breath they dived clear; Haskeer to the left, Stryke to the right. Immediately they commenced harrying the animal from either side. Haskeer repeatedly thrust his spear, puncturing flesh. Stryke slashed with the blade, his strokes deep and wide.

  Roaring, the bilker lashed out at them, spinning from one to the other, its great jaws snapping loudly. It raked the air with its claws, coming perilously close to shredding orc heads. And it brought its tail into play.

  Haskeer felt the brunt. Whipping round shockingly fast, the tail struck him a glancing but potent blow. It knocked him flat and almost senseless, and parted him from his spear. The bilker moved in to finish the chore.

  Stryke darted in and scooped up the spear. With a heave he drove it into one of the animal's hind legs. That proved enough of a distraction for Haskeer to be forgotten. The bilker turned about, its drooling jaws wide open, looking to tear its antagonist apart. Stryke had hastily sheathed his sword before reaching for the spear. Now he groped for it.

  A throwing knife zinged into the side of the bilker's snout and the beast recoiled. It was enough of a sting to hinder the advance on Stryke. Haskeer was on his knees, plucking another knife. Stryke wrenched his sword free. The bilker came at him again. He saw inky black orbs floating in jaundice-yellow.

  Stryke plunged his blade into the beast's eye. There was an eruption of viscous liquid and an unholy stink. The bilker mouthed a piercing shriek and pulled back, writhing in agony.

  Haskeer and Stryke moved in and set to hacking at the animal's neck. They struck alternately, as though hewing the sturdy trunk of a fallen oak. The bilker thrashed and howled, its hide transmuting through a succession of colours and patterns. One moment it faked the blueness of the summer sky, the next it copied the grass and earth of its deathbed. It briefly wore the image of Stryke and Haskeer as they laboured to stifle its life with their blades.

  Just before they parted its head it settled for a coat of crimson.

  Stryke and Haskeer backed off, panting. The bilker twitched, blood pumping from the stump of its neck.

  The orcs slumped on a downed tree trunk and regarded their kill. They breathed the pure air of victory, and relished the way life seemed brighter, more immediate, after
a kill.

  They sat silently for some time before Stryke became fully alert to where they were. A stone's throw away stood the gaping mouth of the largest cave. Not for the first time he reflected on how often he was drawn to the spot.

  Haskeer noticed too, and looked uncomfortable. "This place gives me the creeps," he confessed.

  "I thought nothing spooked you."

  "Tell anybody and I'll tear your lungs out. But don't you feel it? Like a foul taste. Or the smell of carrion. And I don't mean the bilker."

  "Yet we still come here."

  " You do."

  "It reminds me of the Wolverine's last mission."

  "All it reminds me of is the way we arrived. I'd like to forget that."

  "Granted it was… troubling." Stryke flashed the memory of their crossing, as he thought of it, and suppressed a shudder.

  Haskeer's eyes were fixed on the cave's black maw. "I know we came to this land through there. I don't understand how."

  "Nor me. Except for what Serapheim said about it being like doors. Not to billets, but worlds."

  "How can that be?"

  "That's a question for his sort, for sorcerers."

  " Magic." From Haskeer, it was an expression of contempt. He all but spat the word.

  "It got us here. That's all the proof we need." Stryke indicated their surroundings with a sweep of his hand. "Unless all this is a dream. Or the realm of death."

  "You don't think…?"

  "No." He reached down and yanked a fistful of grass. Grinding it in his palm, he blew the chaff from his stained fingers. "This is real enough, isn't it?"

  "Well, I don't like not knowing. It makes me… uneasy."

  "How we came here is a mystery beyond an orc's grasp. Accept it."

  Haskeer seemed less than pleased with that. "How do we know that thing's safe? What's to stop it happening again?"

  "It'd need the stars to work. Like a key. It was the stars that did it, not this place."