Rift in the Races (15 page)

Altin was still screaming, apparently had been throughout. She looked up and saw him on his hands and knees, leaning out into the courtyard from where he’d fallen, watching in horror, his strength stolen by the fear that he was witnessing her being burned to death.

When he saw her move and then look up, he stopped yelling. She thought she saw his body move as if by a great sob. But he shook himself, then fixed her with a long, narrow-eyed stare and the shake of his head. Then he grinned, a short, grim thing, but bespeaking immense relief. He went back to work. The next fireball did seem inordinately large, even for one of his.

A thunderous crash against the gates stole her attention, and she saw that the orc battering ram had finally broken through. The sharpened end of a giant tree had just thrust itself an arm’s length through the shattered wood.

This place would be flooded with orcs in a matter of moments.

“Come on, girls,” said Kettle, pleading. “We ha’ ta get the master inta the keep.”

The three of them picked up the still-unresponsive Tytamon and lugged him toward the double doors. Despite the frailty of his great age, he was still cumbersome as dead weight.

Carrying his legs this time, Orli couldn’t help wonder what had happened to him as she tried to find the location of his injury. There were no arrows in him, no spears. He wasn’t bleeding anywhere, though the ends of his beard were definitely singed.

As they jostled him across the bailey, a long spear came whizzing by and clipped her across her right thigh, cutting through the tough fibers of her uniform and opening a long cut in her leg. Pain shot up and down the wounded limb, and she stumbled, falling to one knee. She dropped Tytamon.

“Get up, girl, get up,” Kettle yelled.

Pernie quickly whirled, reaching into her apron pocket for one of her few remaining stones. She whipped the sling around twice,
whoosh
whoosh
, and off went the rock with perfect accuracy. The orc that had thrown the spear tumbled off the stairs.

Seven more were coming down after it.

“Girls!” shouted Kettle. “Ya gots ta move!”

Ignoring the pain and the warm blood running out of the gash in her leg, Orli picked up Tytamon’s legs once more and struggled on toward the keep. Pernie fired two more stones.

“They’re coming,” Pernie shrieked, loading her next-to-last river rock. “They’re coming.”

She whirled her sling and Orli heard the sound of stone on bone. It sounded really close. She risked a quick glance over her shoulder.

“Shit.”

She was only twenty feet from the doors that would bring them into the safety of the outer hall.

Something about the shrill pitch of Pernie’s next wail made Orli drop and roll to the right. The
whoosh
of a huge double-bladed axe blew through the space where her head had just been. She felt the wind of it in her hair.

She rolled to her feet, yanking at her holstered blaster as she came up, but the first of the orcs was nearly upon her.

She hoped they were plumbed like human men as she feigned to punch it in the mouth and then kneed it in the groin when it moved to defend its face. It cried out and hesitated, giving Orli a chance to shove it back a step. She drew her laser and shot it in the chest. She shot two more of the orcs as they rushed Pernie, and Pernie dropped a third with her only remaining stone. The last orc charged on, and Kettle stepped up and bravely swung her pan.

The orc blocked it with a small buckler and took a swipe at the old matron with a large spiked club.

Orli was afraid to shoot with Pernie standing where she was.

Kettle took the brunt of the blow with an upraised forearm. There was a grotesque cracking sound on impact, but the sturdy woman swung the pan again with her right hand. It clanked heavily upon the orc’s helmet, which flew off and skittered across the ground. Pernie stabbed it just above the knee with her little knife.

Three more orcs ran at them as Kettle fought.

A host of others charged across the courtyard toward the gate, bent on opening it, no doubt.

“Altin,” Orli screamed, shooting at the orcs coming at them, aiming desperately and missing them all. Two more dropped off the battlements down into the courtyard from the east wall.

Clang
, went Kettle’s pan. The orc with the club went down. Orli saw bone sticking through Kettle’s left sleeve and a blood stain spreading rapidly across the fabric.

Where in the fuck are Roberto and Captain Asad?

Taot flew up over the wall, the wind beneath his wings stirring up dust in a nearly blinding cloud. He swooped across the courtyard and sprayed fire into the cluster of orcs running for the gate, but he had to pull up and abort the fire stream quickly lest he incinerate Gimmel and Nipper still fighting on the wall. One orc survived the blast, but Nipper shot him in the neck with a quarrel from his crossbow.

Huge bits of wood exploded into the courtyard from the gate just then, and a wave of black smoke blew in, obscuring Gimmel and Nipper from Orli’s view.

The gate was gone anyway.

The chants and howls of the orc host outside were louder now, unrestrained and energized. They waited only briefly for the smoke to clear.

Altin suddenly appeared beside her. A quickly summoned fireball, barely larger than his fist, leapt out and caught the orc closest to Kettle and Pernie in the crotch. The oily remnants of its trousers burst into flames, and it fell writhing at Pernie’s feet. A smile flit across Pernie’s face as she watched it burn.

Orli regained herself and shot the one furthest behind, the safest shot for her to make, as the middle orc turned, spotting the source of the small fireball. It came straight at Altin at an angle Orli didn’t dare risk shooting into, and it held a huge axe raised above its head, poised to cleave the again-chanting wizard from head to groin. It howled its savage war cry as it ran. Orli simply didn’t have time to move, and she knew instinctively Altin had no chance to get the spell cast. In that instant she knew he was going to die.

But then a little blur of white-gold hair and tattered skirts suddenly appeared on the orc’s broad back. In less time than it took to blink, Pernie was climbing up the orc’s leather armor, reaching up, clawing at its face and finally tearing its helmet from its head. The unexpected arrival of the little girl and the sudden yanking at its helmet knocked the orc’s charge off course. It stumbled sideways under Pernie’s weight as she climbed to its shoulders like a squirrel in a tree. She climbed halfway onto its head and wrapped herself around its face in a frenzied swarm of one small child, screeching at the top of her lungs as flashes of silver marked the path of her knife plunging rapid-fire into the side of the monster’s neck, the swarm stinging over and over again. So rapidly did each blow fall that none were visible but for the glint of light from the blade.

The orc howled and groped at her, trying to tear her free, but it was too late. Blood sprayed out of its neck from every one of at least thirty wounds, and the savage child rode the orc to the ground like some twisted carnival ride, her knife never stopping until the brute’s last breath had gone. She got up from the body and looked up at Altin with a mildly bewildered expression on her face.

“Jesus,” Orli couldn’t help but say.

Altin finished his spell and sent the fireball at the nearest orc coming down the stairs instead.

“Come on,” he said, echoing Kettle who had run to collect Pernie and was shouting for them to get inside. “Nipper, Gimmel,” he cried as loud as he could. He waved at Gimmel and Nipper to hurry, the two of them coming but the old man slow, exhausted and holding an arm with an arrow shot clean through the bicep.

Altin took the time to cast another of the huge white fireballs, but didn’t throw it this time. He conjured it and held it crackling in the gate, not quite finishing the spell and readying it for release—an effective makeshift gate. Nothing would run through that.

Two more orcs had made it over the wall since Taot’s last pass. One of them was charging around the heaped carnage of the dragon’s previous sweep, intent on catching Nipper and Gimmel from behind.

Orli took careful aim and shot. The first shot went wide, but the second got it in the stomach about three steps from the two retreating men.

Several more came over the wall.

Others were coming over the south wall as well, now that Altin was gone. Lots of them.

“Fuck. We’re not going to make it,” she cried. “Altin. Can’t you get us out of here?”

He was too busy with the effort of maintaining the fireball at the gate, likely holding back at least fifty more.

“Tytamon,” Kettle yelled. At first Orli thought something unspeakable had happened, but this time there was hope in the woman’s cry. “Tytamon. Thank the gods yer with us again.”

Orli looked down at the powerful ancient sorcerer. Sure enough, he had begun to move. He shook his head and sat up, his hands immediately going to his head.

His mouth moved as if he were going to speak, but no sound came out. He looked puzzled, but then shook his head. He mouthed a word to them. Orli tried to make it out, but her enchanted com badge didn’t work for reading lips—that or her newfound language skills were not quite up to the task. Or something. She shot another orc.

“What’s he saying?” she practically hissed at Kettle.

“Silence,” said Kettle. “He says he’s been silenced.”

“What the fuck does that mean?” She could hardly control the hysteria that was beginning to set in. She shot two more orcs. A small red light on the grip of her blaster began to blink, telling her the battery was running out. She shot two more orcs and switched to conventional rounds.

“It means he cann’a cast a thing,” Kettle replied.

“Shit.”

Pernie shrieked.

Altin let the giant fireball go, shot it through the gates like a great cannonball. It cut a path through the meadow and through the orcs in its path for at least a hundred and twenty paces beyond.

Orli could see by the light of it that there were still hundreds more, however. Possibly thousands. She watched Taot spin out of the way of a huge glowing spear and then dive down to wash away another huge swath of them in dragon fire.

It still wouldn’t be enough.

The orcs on the south wall were leaping down from the ramparts.

“Get inside,” Altin called, before beginning to cast another spell.

Suddenly, mid-chant, he, like Tytamon had earlier, let go something of a bark. Then a blast of fire blew them all backwards several steps.

Orli beat at her hair and clothes, putting out flames, and then, once her head cleared, ran to help Altin while Pernie stomped out the fire that caught in Kettle’s skirts.

“What the hell was that?” she asked, to anyone or no one. It didn’t really matter now. The answer wasn’t going to change anything. Orcs were pouring over all the walls.

A huge explosion killed twenty of them just as they hit the ground at the bottom of the west wall stairs. Two more explosions rocked the keep to its very foundations, and out of the corner of her eye, Orli saw red bars of laser light streaking out and sweeping orcs from the parapets. A moment later she could hear the sound of gravity engines and thruster fire.

“About goddamn time,” she shouted into the noise.

Two more air-to-ground missiles cleared out a cluster of orcs coming in the front gates. More explosions were taking place outside.

The entire courtyard filled with choking smoke.

Orli spotted the landing lights of a small Earth ship through the haze, and she could feel the wind of its descent as it came down and prepared to settle on the ground.

“Let’s go,” she shouted into the sea of sound. “Everyone get on the ship.”

For the barest moment there was a pall of indecision amongst her companions as they clearly debated whether the keep or the ship was the better choice.

“Now!” she shouted at them. “Go!”

Gimmel and Nipper, the old man looking ready to collapse himself, nodded and stooped to help her carry Altin, while Kettle and Tytamon made their way with Pernie helping both of them as best one child could.

They ran through the smoke and dust toward the ship’s lights, carefully going around the back, avoiding the crisscross of so much laser fire.

As they came up the ship’s lowered loading ramp, they could hear Roberto cursing their slow progress almost as much as he was cursing the orcs, his hands a blur of movement, targeting orcs manually with the lasers, launching missiles, and preparing to take off again all at once.

“Good God!” he said as they scrambled in. “What the hell did you guys do to piss them all off?”

“Close it, close it,” Orli cried, shooting an orc that had already made it to the bottom of the ramp. She winced at the sound and the recoil of the shot, sure she’d missed, but the orc fell backward, most of its left shoulder gone.

Orli kept shooting orcs as the hydraulics slowly raised the hatch, the metallic clatter of the casings falling loudly and tumbling down after her victims in a cascade of spinning brass. Finally the ship began to rise. Two orcs tried to leap for the bottom of the ramp from the wall but missed. She watched them fall into the milling sea of their fellows.