Orcs Read online

  “We’re in a mess. What do you expect, a song and a dance?”

  “I just thought that if you’re —”

  “Why the touching concern for my state of health, Corporal?”

  “You’re our commander, it’s in my interests. All our interests.”

  “I’m not going to crack, if that’s what you think. I’ll get us through this.”

  She didn’t reply.

  He took a different tack. “Heard about Darig?”

  “Yes. It stinks. What are we going to do about the kobolds?”

  Stryke was grateful that she wanted to talk about tactics. It made him feel more comfortable. “Hit them when they least expect it, of course. That might be in what’s left of the night, it might be at daybreak.”

  “Then I want to get up there with the scouts and check the layout for myself.”

  “Right. We’ll go together.”

  “Black Rock’s big, Stryke. Suppose the kobolds we’re after are right in the middle of it?”

  “From what I’ve heard, the raiding parties camp around the main settlement. They keep the females and young at the core. The raiders can come and go more easily like that, as well as guard the place.”

  “That sounds a dangerous set-up. If we’re walking into some kind of defensive ring—”

  “We just have to be careful how we do it.”

  She regarded him with troubled eyes. “You know this is insane, don’t you?”

  “Can you think of another way?”

  For the briefest instant, he hoped she was going to say yes.

  An hour flew by while the Wolverines busied themselves with the countless tasks needed to make a fighting unit combat-ready.

  With everything in hand, Stryke went to the makeshift bender used as a medical tent. He found Alfray tending an oblivious Meklun, stretched at the far end of the shelter, a damp cloth resting on his forehead. Most of the remaining space was taken up by Darig, also lying but somewhat more animated. A vacant grin on his face, eyes glazed, he rolled his head from side to side, mumbling incessantly. In the flickering candlelight, Stryke saw that the blanket covering him was twisted and blotched with sweat.

  “Just in time,” Alfray said. “I need some help.”

  “He’s ready?”

  Alfray looked down at Darig. He was giggling.

  “I’ve given him enough crystal to poleaxe a regiment. If he’s not ready now he never will be.”

  “Mahogany elbows bushels of songbirds tied with string,” Darig announced.

  “Take your point,” Stryke said. “What do you want me to do?”

  “Get somebody else in here. It’ll take two to hold him down.”

  “Pretty string,” Darig added. “Pretty . . . smitty . . . pring.”

  Alfray crouched next to the patient. “Take it easy,” he soothed.

  Stryke peered out of the tent and saw Jup nearby. He beckoned him. The dwarf jogged over and sidled in.

  “You’re in luck,” Stryke told him drily. “You get to hold one of the bits that’s coming off.” He nodded at the grunt’s legs.

  The tent was about as crowded as it could get. Jup edged gingerly to the end of the trooper’s bed. “Wouldn’t do to step on him,” he explained.

  “Don’t think he’d notice,” Alfray said.

  “There’s a weasel in the river,” Darig confided knowingly.

  “He’s been given some crystal as a painkiller,” Stryke explained.

  Jup raised an eyebrow. “Some? To use an old dwarf expression, I’d say he’s ripped out of his crust.”

  “And it won’t last forever,” Alfray reminded them, a mite testily. “Let’s get on with it, shall we?”

  “The river, the river,” Darig chanted, saucer-eyed.

  “Take hold of his ankles, Jup,” Alfray instructed. “Stryke, bear down on his arms. I don’t want him moving when I start.”

  They did as they were told. Alfray pulled aside the blanket, revealing the infected leg. The angry wound was drenched in pus.

  “Gods,” Jup muttered.

  Alfray dabbed gently with a cloth. “Not too pretty, is it?”

  Stryke wrinkled his nose. “Or very sweet-smelling. Where are you going to cut?”

  “Here, across the thigh, well above the knee. And the trick is to do it fast.” He finished cleaning the affected area and wrung the cloth in a wooden bowl. “Hang on and I’ll get what I need.”

  He ducked out of the tent. A small fire was burning in a pit a couple of paces away. “You!” he snapped at a passing grunt. “Stand here and hand me what I want when I tell you.” The trooper nodded and padded over.

  Alfray tore the damp cloth into two pieces and gave him one. He used the other to grasp the hilt of a long-bladed knife protruding from the fire. Its blade glowed cherry-red. A hatchet he left in the flames. With his foot, he nudged the business end of a shovel in beside it.

  Back in the tent, he knelt again, pulling from his jerkin pocket a scrap of thick, sturdy rope, about equal to a hand’s span.

  Darig smiled beatifically. “Pig’s riding the horse, pig’s ridin-mumph.”

  “Bite!” Alfray ordered, jamming the chunk of rope into the trooper’s open mouth.

  “Now?” Stryke said.

  “Now. Hold him tight!”

  He brought the scalding blade into play. Darig’s eyes widened and he began struggling. Jup and Stryke strained against his writhing limbs.

  With several rapid, skilful strokes, Alfray excavated the wound. He folded aside flaps of skin and began digging through the flesh beneath. Darig struggled the harder, and spat out the rope. His agonised yelling had Meklun stirring restlessly, but was short-lived; Alfray rammed the restraint back in. Holding it in place with the heel of his palm, he carried on working one-handed. In short order he had the bone exposed.

  Darig groaned and passed out.

  Tossing the knife aside, Alfray bellowed, “Hatchet!”

  It was passed in over Stryke’s head, stock wrapped against the blistering, near-white heat of its cleaving end.

  Alfray grasped it two-handed and raised it high. He aimed, took a breath and brought it down with all his might. The blow landed with a muffled thunk, dead on target. Stryke and Jup felt the grunt’s body buck under the impact. But the leg was only half severed.

  Darig snapped back into consciousness, a wild expression on his face, and resumed thrashing. He spat out the gag again and commenced shrieking. No one had a hand free to stop him.

  “Hurry!” Stryke urged.

  “Hold him still!” Alfray demanded. He disengaged the axe and lined up another swing.

  The second blow also struck true, and if anything had greater force behind it. This almost finished the job, save the last remaining threads of sinew and skin. A third weighty chop parted them, carrying the cleaver through the horse blanket Darig lay on and into the hardened earth below.

  The screaming continued. Stryke ended it by landing a smart punch to the side of Darig’s head, knocking him cold.

  “We’ve got to stem the flow of blood,” Alfray told them, pulling away the amputated leg. “Get me that shovel.”

  The spade was carefully delivered. Its flat was crimson-coloured, and when Alfray blew on it, a patch shone sparkly yellow-white for an instant. “Should be hot enough,” he decided. “Keep holding him. This is going to be another rude awakening.”

  He laid the shovel against the stump. The tangy odour of burnt flesh filled the air as the heat did its work and cauterised. Darig was dragged into wakefulness once more, and emptied his lungs in protest, but the shock and blood loss had taken their toll. The clamour he sent up was faint compared to the noise he’d made moments before.

  Jup and Stryke kept pressing down as Alfray sprinkled alcohol over his handiwork, then applied dressings smeared with healing balms.

  Darig fell to low, repetitious muttering, and his breath took on a regular, if shallow, rhythm.

  “His breathing’s even,” Alfray pronounced. “That�
�s something.”

  “Will he pull through?” Jup wondered.

  “I’d give him a fifty-fifty chance.” He bent to the amputated leg and rolled it in a square of fabric. “What he needs now,” he said, lifting his load, “is rest and good nourishment to help rebuild his strength.” He tucked the bloody bundle under his arm.

  “That’s a tall order,” Stryke told him. “We’re only carrying iron rations, remember, and I can’t spare anybody to hunt.”

  “Leave that to me,” Alfray said. “I’ll take care of it. Now get out, the pair of you. You’re disturbing my patients.” He shoved at them.

  Stryke and Jup found themselves outside the tent, staring at the lowered flap.

  The last of the night would soon give way to dawn.

  Stryke had mustered a group of twenty for the raid, including the scouts already positioned on the outskirts of Black Rock. A skeleton crew would be left to guard the camp and the wounded. Needing to talk to Alfray about this, he made his way to the medical tent.

  Meklun was as far gone as ever. Darig was sitting up. His eyes were bleary and his skin was pale; otherwise he seemed to be doing well after such a short time. And the effects of the pellucid had all but worn off. Alfray was serving him a platter of stew from a black iron cauldron.

  “Got to keep your strength up,” he ordered, handing over the steaming dish.

  Darig spooned a tentative mouthful. His uncertain expression vanished at the first bite and he tucked in with relish. “Hmmm, meat. Tasty. What is it?”

  “Er, don’t worry about that now,” Alfray told him. “Just eat your fill.”

  Stryke caught his eye. “Needs must,” Alfray mouthed, then looked away, uncharacteristically sheepish. They sat in slightly awkward silence as Darig cleared his plate.

  Then Haskeer stuck his head into the tent and provided a distraction. “Something smells good,” he said, staring hopefully at the cauldron.

  “It’s for Darig,” Alfray replied hurriedly. “It’s . . . special.”

  Haskeer looked disappointed. “Pity.”

  “What do you want?” Stryke asked pointedly.

  “We’re waiting for the order to move, chief.”

  “Then wait a bit longer. I’ll be out soon.”

  The sergeant shrugged, gave the cooking pot a last, hankering glance and left.

  “If the stew’s special in the way I think it is,” Stryke remarked, “you should have given him some.”

  Alfray smiled.

  Darig looked from one to the other, baffled.

  “Rest now,” Alfray said, taking his shoulders and easing him back to a recumbent position.

  “It might be a good idea if you stayed to look after him and Meklun,” Stryke suggested.

  “There are grunts who can do that. Vobe or Jad, for instance. Or Hystykk. They’re capable.”

  “Just thought you’d prefer to be here with them.”

  “I’d rather be in on the action.” Alfray’s furrowed chin jutted stubbornly. “Unless you think I’m getting too old for that kind of —”

  “Whoa! Age is nothing to do with it. Only giving you the choice, that’s all. Come. Glad to have you.”

  “All right. I will.”

  Stryke made a note to tread carefully with Alfray when it came to the question of age. He was getting damn prickly about it.

  “I’ll finish here and follow on,” Alfray added.

  As Stryke went out, Darig stirred. “Sir?” he ventured. “Is there any more of that stew?”

  The band had gathered fifty paces distant. By the time Stryke reached them, Alfray had caught up with him.

  “Report, Coilla,” Stryke ordered briskly.

  “According to our scouts, the group we’re after seem to be at the western edge of Black Rock. Direct heading from here, in other words.”

  “How can we be sure it’s them?”

  “We can’t. But it looks that way. I’ve been up there, and I saw a bunch of kobolds corralling war lizards. Seemed to me they were a raiding party, not long back.”

  Stryke frowned. “Doesn’t prove it’s the same one.”

  “No,” she agreed. “But unless you can come up with a better way of knowing, that’s all we’ve got.”

  “Even if it ain’t them, I say we get in there and kick arse anyway,” Haskeer offered.

  Some of the band muttered agreement.

  “If they are the ones we’re looking for,” Jup said, “it’s a bit of luck to find ’em camped outside Black Rock proper.”

  “Though we’ll still have the whole population down on our necks if we put a foot wrong,” Alfray cautioned. He turned to their commander. “Well? Do we go in?”

  “We go in,” Stryke decided.

  12

  They left the horses behind and set out for the forward observation point on foot.

  The blades of their weapons had been blackened with damp charcoal lest they catch a glint from the waning moon. Senses alert for sight or sound of trouble, the band moved stealthily.

  A change took place in the terrain. It became pulpy underfoot as the margins of the plains gave way to marshland.

  Dawn was breaking as they arrived, the sun a bloody-red harbinger of another overcast, rain-sodden day.

  The silent rendezvous with the scouts took place on the crest of a small hill, crowned with a modest copse, from which they could see but not be seen. As the sun climbed they watched Black Rock emerge from the clinging mist.

  A jumble of single-storey buildings, crude wooden huts of various shapes and sizes, stretched as far as they could see in the unclear air. The scouts indicated a pair of huts almost directly below their viewing point, set some way apart from the settlement proper. One was small, the other much larger and similar in dimensions, if not in ornamentation, to an orc longhouse. Between and beyond them was a corral in which a herd of kirgizils was penned, recumbent and motionless in the way of lizards. They looked sluggish, no doubt suffering from the relentless drop in temperature that all parts of the land were enduring. Stryke wondered how much longer the kobolds could continue using them.

  He leaned to one of the scouts and whispered, “What’s been happening, Orbon?”

  “There were a few bandits around until about an hour ago. Most went into the big hut. One went into the smaller building. We’ve seen no movement since.”

  Stryke motioned Coilla and Haskeer over. “Take four grunts and get down there. Orbon, you’re one of them. I want to know the lie of the land and the kobolds’ deployment. If there are guards, deal with ’em.”

  “What if we’re spotted?” Coilla asked.

  “Be damn sure you’re not! Otherwise, it’s every orc for himself.”

  She nodded, attention half on selecting a pair of knives from her arm sheath.

  “And you behave yourself,” Stryke warned Haskeer darkly.

  The sergeant’s face was a picture of offended innocence.

  Coilla quickly picked the other troopers to go with them and the group made its way down the incline.

  They progressed from tree to tree. When there were no more to shelter behind they headed for a line of bushes, the last hiding place before the level clearing. Crouching low, they scrutinised the way ahead.

  From this angle they could see four kobold guards. They wore furs against the night’s chill. Two of the wiry creatures were at the side of the big hut, two beside the smaller. None was moving.

  Swiftly deciding a strategy, Coilla conveyed it to the others via sign language. Her plan was that she would go to the right with two grunts, toward the small hut, Haskeer and his grunts to the large hut on the left. The gesticulations ended with her drawing a finger across her throat.

  Tensely, they awaited their opportunity, and the open ground to be crossed meant that when it came they would have to move fast. Several minutes went by. Then in conjunction both sets of guards were vulnerable. One pair engaged in conversation, half turned away from the hill. Their fellows at the large hut began a patrol, backs to
the orcs.

  Haskeer and Coilla broke cover and ran. The grunts fanned out behind them.

  A knife gripped between her teeth, the other in her hand, Coilla moved as lightly and swiftly as she could. She was little more than halfway across the clearing when the guards finished talking and parted.

  Coilla froze, signalling the others to do the same.

  Without looking their way, one guard went to the end of the hut and turned its corner. The other still faced away from Coilla, but was slowly turning as he scanned his turf.

  She glanced at the larger hut. The guards there were oblivious to what was happening. Haskeer’s group must have been further back; she didn’t see them.

  A fraction of a second had gone by. There were perhaps thirty paces between her and the turning guard. It was now or never. She drew back her arm and hurled the knife with all her force. The momentum bent her forward at the waist and expelled the breath she held.

  The throw was true, catching her target squarely between its shoulder blades. A muffled thock marked the impact. The kobold went down without a sound.

  Coilla dashed forward, the grunts at her side. They arrived just as the second guard came back round the corner. The grunts piled into the startled creature, denying it time to draw a weapon. It was dealt with quietly and brutally.

  The bodies were dragged out of sight. Coilla and the others hid themselves as best they could and looked to the big hut. They saw Haskeer’s group creeping up on their prey.

  Around the larger building the ground had been more thoroughly trampled by kirgizils and the going was muddier. Never the most graceful of orcs, but often the most overconfident, Haskeer managed to get one of his boots stuck in the slime. In pulling it free, with a loud sucking sound, he lost balance and pitched headlong. His sword went flying.

  The kobold he was sneaking toward spun around. Its jaws gaped. Haskeer scrabbled for his sword. It was out of reach, so he grabbed a rock and pitched it. The missile struck the creature’s mouth, bringing a spray of blood and broken fangs. Then the grunts rushed in and finished the job with daggers.

  Haskeer snatched his sword, tumbling forward. He skidded as much as sprinted at the remaining sentry. The kobold had its own weapon drawn, and fended off the first blow. Knocking the scimitar aside with his second, Haskeer drove his blade deep into the guard’s chest.