Orcs (34 page)

She lifted a hand as they sighted their goal. The troopers let go of the radiant brands, showering the seabed with an emerald cascade. Then they glided in to gather around her.

Ahead of them, where the reef’s spine widened, was a stony bluff, riddled with hollows and caves, both natural and artificial. From this distance there was no sign of occupants. She signalled her orders. A dozen warriors separated and made for the enemy cluster, low and stealthy. The rest, with her leading, slowly brought up the rear.

As they neared the redoubt they spotted their first merz, a scattered handful of sentries, ignorant of the approaching advance party. She regarded them with loathing. Their resemblance to humans was only partial, yet she was disgusted by it. To her mind, this, as much as any dispute over territory or food supplies, justified making war. Halting the column, she watched as her scouts moved in.

Two or three warriors targeted each guard. The one closest was male. His bearing was careless, and it seemed he was mindful only of the odd predator rather than the threat of a sneak attack. He drifted, half turning, and confirmed her repugnance.

The merzmale’s upper body and head were much like a human’s, except for razor thin gills on either side of its torso. Compared to a human’s, its nose was more broad and flattened, and the eyes were covered with a filmy membrane. There was no hair on the creature’s chest or arms. But it did sport a head of rust-coloured locks and a short curly beard.

Below the waist it differed radically from the human form and was closer in appearance to the nyadds. Here the milky flesh gave way to shiny overlapping scales covering a long, slender tail that ended in a large, fan-shaped fin.

The merz was armed with its race’s traditional weapon, a spear-length three-pronged trident with arrowhead points.

Two warriors closed in on him. They advanced from the back and side, exploiting the sentry’s blind spots, swimming at speed. The merzmale stood little chance. Levelling its barbed pike, the nyadd from the right struck hard, piercing the merz just above his waistline. The shallow blow wasn’t fatal, but it served as a painful distraction. As the astonished merz turned to face his attacker, the second nyadd arrived at his back. He held a saw-toothed dagger. Snaking his hand around the enemy’s neck, he slashed the merz’s throat.

The sentry thrashed wildly for a moment, a crimson cloud billowing from the gaping wound. Then his lifeless body began sinking toward the seabed, trailing red streamers like scarlet ribbons.

Holding back with the main force, she looked on as her forward scouts tackled the rest of the guards.

Similarly taken unawares, a merz was being held by one nyadd as another used a dagger to puncture his chest. A female of the species, a merzmaid, spiralled to the bottom with a spear jutting from between her bare breasts. She fell silently mouthing her pain. Lashing out in panic, a merzmale swiped at a nyadd with his knife, forgetting that jabbing is more effective than slashing movements underwater. He paid for the lapse with a pike thrust to his innards.

Swiftly, brutally, the sentinels were efficiently murdered. When the last was overcome, the killers signed word to her through water tinted with a pink haze.

It was time to deploy the entire swarm. At her direction they advanced, filling their hands with weapons and spreading out. The silence was total. All that moved apart from the nyadd warriors was the guards’ floating corpses.

The force had almost reached its goal when there was a flurry of activity at the honeycombed stronghold. Suddenly the edifice disgorged a horde of heavily armed merz. They made a strange sound as they poured out, a high-pitched oscillating wail that served as their language, a noise made more bizarre as it was distorted by travelling through water.

That was something else she hated about them. Now her loathing found a purpose.

At the prow, she led her corps to meet the unorganised defenders. In seconds, invaders and protectors were flowing into each other, the two sides instantly fragmenting into a myriad of lethal skirmishes.

Merz magic, like the nyadds’ own, was of the descry variety, and most often employed to hunt food or navigate the deep. It had little martial importance. This was a battle to be fought with brawn and skill, blade and spear.

Giving off its keening song, a merzmale swooped in from above bearing a trident. The triple spikes drove deep into the chest of the warrior beside her. Mortally wounded, the nyadd writhed and twisted so much that he tore the trident from the merz’s grasp. He sank from view clutching the spear and leaving a red trail.

His main weapon lost, the merzmale drew a knife, a miniature version of the trident, and turned his attention to her. He lashed out. She avoided the blow. The force of the merz’s action had its reaction, propelling him to one side and putting him into a half-spin. But he recovered quickly and returned to face her.

She swiftly seized the wrist of his knife hand. Then he saw that her knuckles were wrapped in leather thongs dotted with sharpened metal dowels. He made a desperate grab for her free wrist. Too late. Still holding on to him with one hand, she made a fist of the other and set to pummelling his midriff. At the precise instant she delivered the third punch, she released her grip. The power of the blow impelled him away from her. He looked down at his flowing lacerations, face wreathed in agony, and was swallowed by the chaos.

There were shreds of fishy tissue on her knuckle studs.

A movement at the corner of her vision made her turn. A merzmaid was swimming at her, pointing a trident. With a powerful surge of her muscular tail the nyadd shot upwards, narrowly escaping the charge. Unstoppable, the merzmaid sailed into a knot of the nyadd’s followers. They speared and slashed the life from her.

All around, fights raged; one on one, group against group. Everywhere, pairs of antagonists were locked in the outlandish spiral dance, hands clamped to wrists, arms straining to plunge home a dagger. Grievously wounded dyed the water; the dead were elbowed aside.

The nyadd vanguard was fighting on the redoubt itself. Some were battling their way into its entrances. She made to join them.

A merzmale with blazing eyes darted in to block her. He held a toothed blade the length of a broadsword, with a two-handed hilt. To counter the weapon’s reach, she produced her own blade, shorter but acute as a scalpel. They circled each other, oblivious to the mêlée on every side.

He lunged forward, intent on running her through. She dodged, batting his blade with her own, hoping to knock it free. He held on to the weapon, quickly rallied and plunged it at her again. A pirouette movement turned her from the blade’s path. His outstretched arm was exposed. She struck out at it with a studded knuckle, managing only a glancing blow but still slicing deep into flesh. Her foe was preoccupied enough to let her follow through with the blade. It found his heart. There was an eruption of gore. Pulling loose the blade, she released a gush of ruby-coloured globs. Open-mouthed, the merz died.

She kicked away the corpse and returned her attention to the storming of the redoubt.

By now her swarm was all over it. Many had entered to complete the slaughter. In obedience to her orders, the remaining merz were being brutally despatched and the enemy nest was being cleared. She swam past one of her warriors strangling a thrashing merzmale with a chain while another nyadd stabbed at the victim with a spear.

Few merz remained alive. One or two survivors had fled and were swimming away, but she was content with that. They would spread the word that colonising anywhere near her domain was a bad idea. As she looked on, the young of the merz race were dragged from the redoubt and put to death, according to her instructions. She saw no point in letting trouble brew for the future.

When the deed was done, and she was satisfied that the mission had been accomplished successfully, she ordered the swarm to withdraw.

While heading away, accompanied by her minions, a warrior beside her pointed back to the redoubt. A pack of shony were moving in to feast. These were long and sleek, with skins that glistened silvery blue. Their mouths were impossibly long gashes which in side view parodied a smile. When opened, endless rows of sharp white teeth were exposed. Their eyes were dead.

The creatures didn’t unduly bother her. Why should they attack the swarm when they had an abundant supply of ready-butchered meat available?

Maddened with greed, the shony set to downing chunks of bloody flesh in great gulps. They stirred up fusty clouds on the seabed as they thrashed and snapped at each other. Several fought for the same morsel, teeth fastened, tugging at it from opposite sides. More scavengers swept in.

The swarm left the feeding frenzy behind, and in due course began to travel upward, towards a distant ring of light. As they ascended she allowed herself a moment’s gratification at the fate of the merz. A little more decisive action and any threat they posed to her sovereignty would be nipped in the bud.

If only the same could be said of other races, especially the human pestilence.

They reached the mouth of a spacious underwater cave, its interior lit by nuggets of the phosphorescent rock. She entered at the head of the swarm. Ignoring the obeisance of the detachment of guards inside, she rose to a large vertical shaft in the cave’s ceiling, which was also illuminated. The shaft came to a junction and branched into twin channels, like vast flues. Accompanied by two lieutenants, she swam up into the right-hand passage. The rest of the swarm took the left, to their billet.

Minutes later her party emerged from the water. They surfaced in an immense space flooded almost waist deep, permanently and deliberately so, to meet the needs of an amphibious race requiring constant access to water. The half-submerged structure was part coral, part crumbling rock. Overhead, stalactites had formed. To an untutored eye it might appear a ruin, with a portion of one wall absent and the others covered in slime and patterned with lichen. The smell of rotting vegetation hung in the air. But in nyadd terms it was an antechamber to a palace.

The missing section of wall afforded a view of marshlands, and beyond that the grey ocean, dotted with sinister, craggy islands. An angry sky met the horizon.

Nyadds were perfectly suited to their environment. If a slug had grown to the size of a small horse, developed a carapace like armour and learned to stand upright on a brawny, muscle-lined tail; if it had sprouted back-fins and arms with wickedly clawed hands; if its yellow-green hide dripped with tendrils and it had a head like a reptile’s, with thrusting jaw, mandible mouth, needle teeth and sunken beady eyes, it would have been something like a nyadd.

But it wouldn’t have been like her.

Contrary to the nyadds she ruled, she was not pure bred. Her mixed-race origins had given her a unique physiognomy. She was a symbiote, in her case a blend of nyadd and human, though the nyadd strain was primary. Or at least she chose to think it so. Her human ancestry was abhorrent to her, and none who valued their lives would dare remind her of it.

In common with her subjects, she possessed a sturdy tail, and back-fins, though the latter more closely resembled flaps of skin than the hardier, toughened membranes of her subjects. Her upper body and mammary glands, which were bare, combined skin with scales, the scales being much smaller than the nyadd norm and faintly rainbow-hued. Gill slashes patterned both sides of her trunk.

Her head, while unmistakably reptilian in aspect, was where her human heritage was most obvious. As distinct from the pure bred, she had hair. Her face had a faintly bluish tint, but her ears and nose were nearer human than nyadd shape, and her mouth could pass for a woman’s.

She had eyes that were much rounder, and lashed, though their vivid green orbs had no comparison.

Only in her nature was she typical nyadd. Of all the sea-dwelling races, theirs was the most obstinate, vindictive and warlike. If anything, she had these traits to a greater degree than her subjects, and perhaps owed that to her human legacy too.

Wading to the breach in the wall, she surveyed the bleak landscape. Aware of her lieutenants hovering nearby, anticipating any need she might express, she sensed how tense they were. She liked tense.

“Our losses were meagre, Queen Adpar,” one of her lieutenants ventured to report. His voice was deep, and had a gritty quality.

“Whatever the number it’s a small price to pay,” she replied, pulling off her studded knuckle straps. “Are our forces ready to occupy the liberated sector?”

“They should be on their way now, ma’am,” the other lackey told her.

“They’d better be,” Adpar retorted, casually tossing the knuckle straps his way. He caught them awkwardly. It wouldn’t have gone well with him if he hadn’t. “Not that they’ll get much trouble from the merz,” she went on. “It’d take more than peace-loving vermin to prevail against an enemy like the nyadd.”

“Yes, Majesty,” said the first lieutenant.

“I don’t look kindly on those who take what is mine,” she added darkly, and unnecessarily as far as her minions were concerned.

She glanced at a niche carved in one of the coral walls. It housed a fluted stone pedestal obviously intended to display something. But whatever it was had gone.

“Your leadership assures our victory,” the second lieutenant fawned.

Unlike one of her siblings, who cared nothing about what others thought but expected absolute obedience, Adpar demanded both submission
and
praise. “Of course,” she agreed. “Merciless supremacy, backed with violence; it runs in my side of the family.”

Her attendants wore looks of incomprehension.

“It’s a female thing,” she said.

2

Coilla was in pain.

Her entire body ached. She was on her knees in muddy grass, dazed and winded. Shaking her throbbing head to clear it, she tried to make sense of what had happened.

One minute she was chasing that fool Haskeer. The next, she was thrown from her horse when three humans came out of nowhere.

Humans
.