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  She idly licked the blood from her hands and dreamed of torments to inflict on the Wolverines.

  9

  “You must feel bad,” Stryke said.

  Alfray touched his bare neck and nodded. “I took my first tooth at thirteen seasons. Haven’t been parted from the necklace since. Till now.”

  “Lost in the ambush?”

  “Had to be. So used to wearing it, I didn’t even notice. Coilla pointed it out today.”

  “But you won the trophies, Alfray. Nobody can take that away. You’ll replace them, given time.”

  “Time I haven’t got. Not enough to gain another three, anyway. Oldest in the band, Stryke. Besting snow leopards unarmed is a sport for young orcs.”

  Alfray fell into a brooding silence. Stryke let him be. He knew what a blow to his pride it was to lose the emblems of courage, the symbols that testified to full orchood.

  They rode on at the head of the convoy.

  None spoke of it, but what they had seen at the orc encampment, and their perilous situation, hung heavy on the entire band. Alfray’s melancholy chimed with the Wolverines’ generally gloomy mood.

  With horses for all, they made better progress, though Meklun, unable to ride and still on his litter, continued to slow them. Several hours earlier they had veered south-east, cutting across the Great Plains toward Black Rock. Before the day was out they should have reached a point midway between Scratch and Weaver’s Lea.

  Stryke’s hope was that they’d pass through the corridor without meeting trouble from either disputatious trolls to the north or zealous humans in the south.

  The terrain had begun to change. Plains were giving way to hilly country, with shallow valleys and winding trails. Scrub was more prevalent. Pastures shaded into heathlands. They were nearing an area dotted with human settlements. Stryke decided it was safer to treat them all as hostile, whether Uni or Mani.

  A commotion down the line broke his train of thought. He looked back. Haskeer and Jup were squabbling loudly.

  Stryke sighed. “Keep our heading,” he told Alfray, and swung his horse out.

  In the moment it took to gallop to them, the sergeants had come close to blows. They quietened on seeing him.

  “You two my joint seconds or spoilt hatchlings?”

  “It’s his fault,” Haskeer complained. “He—”

  “My fault?” Jup snapped. “You bastard! I should—”

  “Shut it!” Stryke ordered. “You’re supposed to be our chief scout, Jup; earn your keep. Prooq and Gleadeg need relieving. Take Calthmon, and leave your shares of crystal with Alfray.”

  Jup shot his antagonist a parting scowl and spurred off.

  Stryke turned his attention to Haskeer. “You’re pushing me,” he said. “Much more and I’ll have the skin off your back.”

  “Shouldn’t have his kind in the band,” Haskeer muttered.

  “This isn’t a debate, Sergeant. Work with him or make your own way home. Your choice.” He headed back to the column’s prow.

  Haskeer noticed that the grunts within hearing distance of the dressing-down were staring at him. “We wouldn’t be in this mess if we were properly led,” he grumbled sourly.

  The troopers looked away.

  When Stryke reached Alfray, Coilla came forward to join them.

  “On this bearing we’ll be passing nearer Weaver’s Lea than Scratch. What’s our plan if we meet trouble?” she asked.

  “Weaver’s Lea’s one of the older Uni settlements, and one of the most fanatical,” Stryke said. “That makes them unpredictable. Just bear that in mind.”

  “Uni, Mani, who cares?” Alfray put in. “They’re all humans, aren’t they?”

  “We’re supposed to be helping the Manis,” Coilla reminded him.

  “Only because we’ve no choice. What choice did we ever have?”

  “All we wanted, once,” Stryke told him. “Anyway, it makes sense to support the Manis. They’re less hostile to the elder races. More important, it helps us to have the humans divided. Think how much worse it’d be if they were united.”

  “Or if one side won,” Coilla added.

  Ahead of the column, and out of its sight, Jup and Calthmon took over as pathfinders. Jup watched as the pair of troopers they had relieved, Prooq and Gleadeg, rode back towards the main party.

  Only now was he beginning to calm down from his latest tangle with Haskeer. He goaded his mount, a mite harder than necessary, and concentrated on trail-blazing.

  The landscape grew more cluttered. Hillocks and clumps of trees were increasingly common, taller grass made the track less certain.

  “Know these parts, Sergeant?” Calthmon asked. He spoke quietly, as though a raised voice might betray their presence, despite the wilderness in all directions.

  “A little. From here on we can expect the terrain to alter quite a bit.”

  As though on cue, the track they followed dipped and started to curve. The undergrowth on either side thickened. They began to round a blind bend.

  “But if the band keeps to its present path,” Jup continued, “we shouldn’t have anything . . .”

  A roadblock stretched across the trail.

  “. . . to worry about.”

  The barricade was made up of a side-on farm wagon and a wall of sturdy tree trunks. It was guarded by humans dressed uniformly in black. They numbered at least a score and were heavily armed.

  Jup and Calthmon pulled back on their reins just as the humans spotted them.

  “Oh shit,” Jup groaned.

  A great yell went up from the roadblock. Waving swords, axes and clubs, all but a handful of the humans rushed to mount their horses. Dwarf and orc fought to turn their own steeds.

  Then they were racing away, pursued by a howling posse baying for blood.

  “One day a member of the United Expeditionary Force, the next bartered into Jennesta’s service,” Stryke recalled. “You know how it was.”

  “I do,” Coilla replied, “and I expect you felt the same way I did.”

  “How so?”

  “Weren’t you angry at having no say in the matter?”

  Again, he was confounded by her frankness. And by her accurate reading of his feelings. “Perhaps,” he conceded.

  “You’re at war with your upbringing, Stryke. You can’t bring yourself to admit it was an injustice.”

  The way she had of gauging his innermost thoughts was discomforting for Stryke. He answered in a roundabout fashion. “It was hardest on the likes of Alfray.” A jab of his thumb indicated their field surgeon, down the line, riding next to Meklun’s litter. “Change isn’t easy at his age.”

  “It’s you we were talking about.”

  His response was deferred by the sight of Prooq and Gleadeg appearing on the trail ahead. They galloped to him.

  “Advance scouts reporting, sir,” Prooq recited crisply. “Sergeant Jup’s taken over.”

  “Anything we should look out for?”

  “No, sir. The way forward seemed clear.”

  “All right. Join the column.”

  The troopers left.

  “You were saying,” Coilla prompted. “About the change.”

  Are you just naturally single-minded, Stryke thought, or is there a reason for all these questions? “Well, things didn’t change that much for me under our new mistress,” he said. “Not at first. I kept my rank, and I could still fight the real enemy, if only one faction of them.”

  “And you were given command of the Wolverines.”

  “Eventually. Though not everybody liked it.”

  “What did you think about finding yourself serving a part-human ruler?”

  “It was . . . unusual,” he responded cautiously.

  “You resented it, you mean. Like the rest of us.”

  “I wasn’t happy,” he admitted. “As you said yourself, we’re in a tough spot. Victory for either Manis or Unis can only strengthen the human side.” He shrugged. “But it’s an orc’s lot to obey orders.”
/>   She looked at him long and hard. “Yes. That’s what it’s come to.” There was no misreading her bitterness.

  He felt an affinity, and wanted to take the conversation further.

  A nearby grunt shouted something. Stryke couldn’t make it out. The rest of the band started yelling.

  Jup and Calthmon were returning, riding all-out.

  Stryke raised himself in his stirrups. “What the —?”

  Then he saw the mob of humans chasing them. They were black-garbed, in long frock coats and breeches of coarsely woven cloth, with high leather boots. He reckoned their number matched the Wolverines’. There was no time to charge.

  “Close ranks!” he roared. “To me! Close up!”

  The band surged forward, rallying to their commander. Swiftly the horses were formed into a defensive semicircle facing the enemy, with Meklun’s litter behind them. The company drew their weapons.

  Jup and Calthmon’s pursuers slowed on seeing the band, allowing the pair to increase their lead. But they still kept coming, spreading out from a bunch to a line.

  “Hold fast!” Stryke ordered. “No quarter and no retreat!”

  “As if we would,” Coilla remarked in a gallows-humour tone. She swiped the air with her blade, limbering for a fight.

  Cheered on by their comrades, Jup and Calthmon reached the Wolverines, their steeds lathering.

  Two heartbeats later the humans came in like a storm tide.

  Many of the horses of both groups wheeled round at the last moment, their riders engaging side-on.

  Stryke faced a heavily bearded, weather-beaten attacker, eyes flaming with bloodlust. He brandished a hatchet and was swinging it wildly, but the weapon was being used with more energy than precision.

  Blocking a pass, Stryke delivered a thrust of his own. His opponent’s horse bucked and the sword plunged harmlessly over the human’s shoulder. Stryke quickly returned the blade and parried another swing. They exchanged half a dozen ringing blows. The human overreached himself. Stryke chopped down hard on his exposed arm, severing hand from wrist. It fell away, still clutching the axe.

  Gushing blood and bellowing, the human took a death stroke to the chest and went down.

  Stryke turned to a second assailant as Coilla despatched her first. She wrenched free her blade just in time to throw up a guard. It stopped a swipe from a dumpy, muscular individual armed with a broadsword. Batting off several more lunges, she sent a whistling slash at the human’s head. He ducked and avoided it.

  Without pause, Coilla went in again, ramming her sword low. Unexpectedly dextrous, the human twisted in his saddle and the blade pierced only air. He went on the offensive again. While she held him at bay with the sword, Coilla’s other hand found her belt and plucked a knife. She flung it underarm and punctured his heart.

  Off to the left, Haskeer held his sword two-handed, flapping reins forgotten, as he laid about the enemy. He split skulls, caved chests, hacked deep into limbs. Pink flesh was lacerated, bones cracked, ruby showers soaked all in range. Far gone in berserk frenzy, Haskeer took no account of human or animal, his blade carving horses and riders alike.

  In the screaming, trampling chaos, a handful of the attackers flowed around the defensive barrier to strike at the Wolverines’ vulnerable rear. Alfray and a couple of grunts turned to deal with the threat. Battle raged about Meklun’s litter, crashing hooves and plummeting bodies failing to stir the insensible form.

  Almost toppled from his mount by a club’s glancing blow, in righting himself Alfray slashed his foe’s saddle straps. The human pitched to one side and hit the ground. As he struggled to his feet, a riderless horse flattened him.

  Joining the defence of the band’s rump, Jup sideswiped one of two raiders who had Alfray boxed in. Dwarf and human crossed swords. Jup laid open the man’s arm and followed through by planting cold steel in his ribcage.

  A human’s sword connected with Stryke’s and bounced off. Stryke’s response was a grievous blow to the other’s neck, hewing flesh to the bone. The next to take the victim’s place got equally short shrift. He managed to conjoin with Stryke’s blade twice before a raking sword tip ribboned his face and sent him howling.

  Fighting with sword and dagger, Coilla held off a pair of aggressors employing a crude pincer movement. One caught the long blade’s edge across his throat. A second later the other halted the short blade’s flight with his chest.

  There being no other opponent to deal with, she turned her attention to Stryke. He was locked in combat with a scrawny, long-limbed antagonist, sandy-haired and blotchy-skinned. She judged it an adolescent of the species, and its artless movements betrayed a life unsullied by warfare. The youth’s fear was palpable.

  Stryke put an end to it with a swinging blow to the thorax. A smartly administered follow-through to the neck brought clean decapitation. Coilla’s face was speckled with red drizzle from the spray.

  She wiped the back of a hand across her eyes and spat to clear her mouth. It was a purely reflex action, undertaken with no more distaste than if the liquid had been rainwater. “They’re finished, Stryke,” she stated flatly.

  He didn’t need her confirmation. Human corpses littered the area. Only two or three remained alive to engage the band, and all were getting the worst of it. Haskeer was beating one over the head repeatedly with what looked like a cudgel. Closer examination showed it to be a human arm, white bone protruding from its sticky end.

  A handful of the enemy were fleeing on horseback. About a third of the Wolverine grunts, whooping triumphantly, started after them. Stryke bawled and they abandoned the chase, though returning reluctantly. The human survivors disappeared from view.

  Alfray knelt by Meklun’s litter. The band began gathering discarded weapons and binding their wounds. Haskeer and Jup made their separate ways to Stryke and Coilla’s side.

  “Seems the injuries we took weren’t too serious,” Jup related.

  “No wonder,” Haskeer sneered. “They fought like pixies.”

  “They were farmers, not fighters. Uni zealots, by the look of them, probably out of Weaver’s Lea. Hardly a true warrior among ’em.”

  “But you didn’t know that,” Haskeer growled accusingly.

  “What you getting at?” Jup demanded.

  “You brought them straight to us. What kind of idiot does something like that? You put the whole band in danger.”

  “What did you expect me to do, meathead?”

  “You should have led them away from here, taken them somewhere else.”

  “Then what? Were Calthmon and me supposed to have lost ourselves out there?” He swept a hand at the wilderness. “Or let ’em take us to protect you?”

  Haskeer glared at him. “That would’ve been no great loss.”

  “Well, fuck you, pisspot! This is a warband, remember? We stick together!”

  “They’re gonna have to stick you together when I’m finished, you little snot!”

  “Hey!” Coilla snapped. “How about you two shutting your mouths long enough for us to get out of here?”

  “She’s right,” Stryke said. “We don’t know how many more humans might be heading for us. And farmers or not, if there’s enough of them, we’ve got a problem. Where did you run into them, Jup?”

  “Roadblock,” he replied sullenly. “Up the trail.”

  “So we have to find another way forward.”

  “More time wasted,” Haskeer grumbled.

  The shadows were lengthening. Another couple of hours and they’d be travelling in the dark, a prospect Stryke didn’t welcome if there were rampaging mobs of humans on the loose. “I’m doubling the number of scouts riding ahead,” he decided, “and I want four covering our rear. You’re in charge of that, Haskeer. I’ll organise the advance scouts myself. Get on and pick your detail.”

  Glowering, the sergeant moved away.

  “I’m going to check on Meklun,” Stryke told Coilla and Jup. “You two get the column moving, but keep it slow until the outrid
ers have left.”

  He trotted off.

  The dwarf gave Coilla a rueful look.

  “Spit it out,” she told him.

  “This all seemed so simple when it started; now things are getting complicated,” he complained. “And more dangerous than I counted on.”

  “What’s the matter, you want to live forever?”

  Jup thought about it.

  “Yes,” he said.

  10

  Jennesta had made the woman’s end swift compared to her normal practice. Not through any sense of mercy, but rather a mixture of boredom and the need to attend to more pressing matters.

  She climbed down from the altar and unstrapped the bloodied unicorn horn she used as a dildo. With the deft skill of experience she quickly disembowelled the human’s corpse, so speedily that the heart was still throbbing as she raised it to her mouth.

  The repast was no more than adequate. Her tastes were growing either more refined or more jaded.

  Physically and magically refreshed, but hardly better tempered, she sucked the juices from her fingers and brooded about the cylinder. The deadline she’d imposed on the hunting party was nearly up. Whether they’d succeeded or not, the time had come to hedge her bets and increase pressure in the search for the Wolverines.

  It felt cold. The chill penetrated even here, in her inner sanctum. A log fire had been laid in the huge hearth but remained unlit. Jennesta stretched a hand. A pulsing bolt of luminescence, straight as a die, stabbed the air silently. The fire ignited with a roar. Basking in its warmth, she remonstrated with herself for needlessly wasting the energy just obtained. But, as ever, her delight at manipulating physicality was the stronger emotion.

  Reaching out, she tugged a bell pull. Two orc guards entered. One had a bolt of sacking under his arm.

  “You know what to do,” she told them. Her tone was offhand and she didn’t bother looking their way.

  They set about cleaning up the mess. The sacking was shaken out and placed on the floor. Taking the body by its wrists and ankles, the guards lowered and covered it.

  Uninterested, Jennesta pulled the cord again, twice this time.