The Orc's Tale (3 page)

"Then I will tell the others of your crimes," said Kharlacht. "I survived your blood quest, and I am now a warrior of the tribe. I will denounce you in assembly."

"They will not believe you," said Narrakhan. It was horrid to see Lujena's face contort with the old shaman's familiar sneer. 

"Will they?" said Kharlacht. "Will they not find it suspicious that you proclaimed yourself shaman the very day that Narrakhan died? Even though Lujena hated her father and never used magic? And when I tell them of the trap you set in the Tower of Bones, how you lured the others there to die because they threatened you...I think they will believe me."

For a moment no one said anything.

Narrakhan sighed. "Too clever, indeed. I suppose I will just have to kill you." 

Kharlacht lifted his sword. "Try."

Narrakhan grinned. "Certainly." 

He made a throwing, pushing motion with Lujena's hand. A cold wind blew through the cottage, setting the candles to dancing.

And invisible force crashed into Kharlacht, throwing him backwards. The door smashed into kindling beneath him, and he fell hard to the ground outside the cottage, barely keeping his grip on the sword. 

He saw Narrakhan stoop over the body on the table, snatch something from its chest. 

"You know," said Narrakhan, Lujena's black hair blowing in the cold wind as he stepped outside. "I have a confession to make. That urvuul in the Tower of Bones? The sorcerers of the dark elves didn't summon it. I did. I bound it to that chamber, and used to dispose of young fools bold enough to challenge me."

He lifted the thing he had taken from the corpse. A golden chain, a vial of blood dangling from its length.

Identical to the one Kharlacht had seen around the urvuul's neck. He struggled to his feet with a growl of rage.

Narrakhan gestured, invisible force again driving Kharlacht to the ground.

"The urvuul will be upset that you escaped," said Narrakhan, "and I would hate to disappoint such a useful servant." He lifted the vial, his voice rising to a shout. "Slave! I, Narrakhan, your master, call to you! Come to my side and rend my enemies! Come and slay!" 

A terrible cry rang from the mountains. Kharlacht clawed his way to his knees as he saw a dark shape speeding out of the hills. The urvuul dropped out of the sky, its great leathery wings folding, and landed next to Narrakhan.

"Clever little mortal," purred the urvuul, its burning eyes fixed upon Kharlacht. "I told you that we would meet again."

"Silence!" said Narrakhan, pointing. "Kill him!" 

Again the urvuul loosed its horrible cry, and sprang forward with blurring speed. Kharlacht leapt to meet the urvuul, sword clanging against the creature's talons. Again the blade sheared through the serrated claws, and again the urvuul reared back in pain. Kharlacht saw his opening and surged forward, both hands around his sword's hilt, and stabbed. The blade crunched into one of the urvuul's eyes, driving into its skull. But the urvuul wrenched free, shaking its head, and Kharlacht saw the shattered claw growing anew, saw the eye repairing itself.

His greatsword had the power to wound the urvuul, but not to kill it. 

"Kill him!" bellowed Narrakhan, brandishing the vial on its chain. "Kill him now!"

The urvuul glared at Narrakhan, but its head rotated back to face Kharlacht. Clearly it had no more liking for Narrakhan than for any other mortal, but Narrakhan had the power to control it. 

The vial. 

Kharlacht had to get that vial of blood away from Narrakhan. 

Again the urvuul drove at him, and Kharlacht backed away, swinging his blade in high parries. The urvuul might be immortal, but Kharlacht suspected it had no desire to feel his blade. Kharlacht let it drive him towards the cottage, then he sprang to the right, darted beneath a swinging claw, and threw himself at Narrakhan. 

The old shaman shouted, and Kharlacht knocked Lujena's body to the ground. He tore the vial free from its chain. The urvuul surged at him, and Kharlacht threw the vial against the cottage wall.

It shattered, the blood within bursting into flame. The vial against the urvuul's neck likewise shattered, the crimson flames licking against the black armor of the urvuul's hide. 

The creature went motionless. 

"Fool!" shrieked Narrakhan, getting off the ground. 

"Release Lujena’s body," said Kharlacht, "now, or..."

He never had time to finish the threat.

The urvuul sprang forward with a howl of glee, shoving past Kharlacht, and plunged its pincers into Lujena's belly. 

Kharlacht heard himself scream. 

The urvuul leapt back, and Kharlacht saw a spirit caught in its pincers. Narrakhan's ghost, eyes wide, mouth open in silent screams, struggled against the urvuul's grip, but to no avail. 

"Come, Narrakhan," said the urvuul, its lovely voice smooth with pleasure. "Let us discuss how you shall repay my servitude!" 

The urvuul leapt into the sky and vanished, its laughter ringing out, Narrakhan's screaming spirit imprisoned in its grasp.

Kharlacht ran to Lujena's side and knelt by her. The urvuul's pincers had ripped her open from stomach to throat, her blood pooling into the dirt. Her eyes, cloudy and full of pain, met his, and her shaking hand curled about his own. 

She was Lujena again. 

"I always knew," she whispered.

"Knew what?" said Kharlacht, squeezing her hand. 

"That you would save me from him," she said, her eyes dimming. "And you did. You saved me from him."

Her grip slackened, and she slumped against the ground. 

Kharlacht bent over her, weeping. 

###

The next day Kharlacht watched the smoke rise from Lujena's roaring pyre.

He could not return to the village. They would think he had murdered Lujena, and he had no proof otherwise. And he could not leave Lujena's body to lie in the dirt, to be buried besides her murderous, treacherous father. 

So he stood in the woods five miles from the village and watched his beloved's pyre.

Narrakhan had taken her from him, just as he had taken his mother, and now his home. 

He could not go back again.

###

Later that day, Kharlacht returned to the vault below the Tower of Bones. 

He did not take much from the treasure hoard. Only a cuirass of blue dark elven steel, and some coins and jewels to pay his way. Kharlacht donned the armor, strapped the sword to his back, and left the Tower, making his way into the mountains. 

Towards the lands beyond. 

His home was lost to him, but with a good sword, he could find his fortune elsewhere. 

THE END

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. Turn the page for a bonus chapter from the first book in the FROSTBORN series, 
Frostborn: The Gray Knight
.

Bonus Chapter from FROSTBORN: THE GRAY KNIGHT

A letter to the surviving kings, counts, and knights of Britain:

I am Malahan Pendragon, the bastard son of Mordred, himself the bastard son of Arthur Pendragon, the High King of all Britain.

You know the grievous disasters that have befallen our fair isle. My father betrayed my grandfather, and perished upon the bloody field of Camlann, alongside many of the mightiest knights and kings of Britain. Before that came the war of Sir Lancelot’s treachery and the High Queen’s adultery, a war that slew many noble and valiant knights.

Now there is no High King in Britain, Camelot lies waste, and the pagan Saxons ravage our shores. Every day the Saxons advance further and further, laying waste to our fields and flocks, butchering our fighting men, making slaves of our womenfolk, and desecrating holy churches and monasteries. Soon all of Britain shall lie under their tyranny, just as the barbarians overthrew the Emperor of Rome.

My lords, I write not to claim the High Kingship of Britain – for Britain is lost to the Saxons – but to offer hope. My grandfather the High King is slain, and his true heir Galahad fell seeking the grail, so therefore this burden has fallen to me, for there is no one else to bear it. 

Britain is lost, but we may yet escape with our lives.

For I have spoken with the last Keepers of Avalon, and by their secret arts they have fashioned a gate wrought of magic leading to a far distant realm beyond the circles of this world, certainly beyond the reach of the heathen Saxons. Here we may settle anew, and build homes and lives free from the specter of war.

I urge you to gather all your people, and join me at the stronghold of Caerleon. We shall celebrate the feast of Easter one final time, and then march to the plain of Salisbury, to the standing stones raised by the wizard Merlin. 

The gate awaits, and from there we shall march to a new home.

Sealed in the name of Malahan Pendragon, in the Year of Our Lord 538.

###

The day it all began, the day in the Year of Our Lord 1478 when the blue fire filled the sky from horizon to horizon, Ridmark Arban returned to the town of Dun Licinia.

He gazed at the town huddled behind its walls of gray stone, his left hand gripped tight around a long wooden staff. He had not been here in over five years, not since the great battle against Mhalek and his horde of orcs, and then Dun Licinia had been little more than a square keep ringed by a wooden wall, an outpost named in honor of the Dux of the Northerland. 

Now it was a prosperous town of four thousand people, fortified by a wall of stone. Ridmark saw the towers of a small keep within the town, alongside the twin bell towers of a stone church and the round tower of a Magistrius. Cultivated fields and pastures ringed the town on three sides, and the River Marcaine flowed south past its western wall, making its way through the wooded hills of the Northerland to the River Moradel in the south. 

Ridmark’s father had always said there was good mining and logging to be had on the edges of the Northerland, if men were bold enough to live within reach of the orc tribes and dark creatures that lurked in the Wilderland.

And in the shadow of the black mountain that rose behind Ridmark. 

He walked for the town’s northern gate, swinging his staff in his left hand, his gray cloak hanging loose around him. When he had last stood in this valley, the slain orcs of Mhalek’s horde had carpeted the ground as far as he could see, the stench of blood and death filling his nostrils. It pleased him to see that something had grown here, a place of prosperity and plenty. 

Perhaps no one would recognize him. 

Freeholders and the freeholders’ sons toiled in the fields, breaking up the soil in preparation for the spring planting. The men cast him wary looks, looks that lingered long after he had passed. He could not blame them. A man wrapped in a gray cloak and hood, a wooden staff in his left hand and a bow slung over his shoulder, made for a dangerous-looking figure. 

Especially since he kept his hood up. 

But if he kept his hood up, they would not see the brand that marred the left side of his face.

He came to Dun Licinia’s northern gate. The wall itself stood fifteen feet high, and two octagonal towers of thirty feet stood on either side of the gate itself. A pair of men-at-arms in chain mail stood at the gate, keeping watch on the road and the wooded hills ringing the valley. He recognized the colors upon their tabards. They belonged to Sir Joram Agramore, a knight Ridmark had known. They had been friends, once.

Before Mhalek and his horde.

“Hold,” said one of the men-at-arms, a middle-aged man with the hard-bitten look of a veteran. “State your business.”

Ridmark met the man’s gaze. “I wish to enter the town, purchase supplies, and depart before sundown.”

“Aye?” said the man-at-arms, eyes narrowing. “Sleep in the hills, do you?”

“I do,” said Ridmark. “It’s comfortable, if you know how.” 

“Who are you, then?” said the man-at-arms. He jerked his head at the other soldier, and the man disappeared into the gatehouse. “Robber? Outlaw?”

“Perhaps I’m an anchorite,” said Ridmark.

The man-at-arms snorted. “Holy hermits don’t carry weapons. They trust in the Dominus Christus to protect them from harm. You look like the sort to place his trust in steel.”

He wasn’t wrong about that.

Ridmark spread his arms. “Upon my oath, I simply wish to purchase supplies and leave without causing any harm. I will swear this upon the name of God and whatever saints you wish to invoke.” 

Three more men-at-arms emerged from the gatehouse. 

“What’s your name?” said the first man-at-arms.

“Some call me the Gray Knight,” said Ridmark.

The first man frowned, but the youngest of the men-at-arms stepped forward.

“I’ve heard of you!” said the younger man. “When my mother journeyed south on pilgrimage to Tarlion, beastmen attacked her caravan. You drove them off! I…”

“Hold,” said the first man, scowling. “Show your face. Honest men have no reason to hide their faces.”

“Very well,” said Ridmark. He would not lie. Not even about this.

He drew back his cowl, exposing the brand of the broken sword upon his left cheek and jaw.

A ripple of surprise went through the men.

“You’re…” said the first man. He lifted his spear. “What is your name?”

“My name,” said Ridmark, “is Ridmark Arban.”

The men-at-arms looked at each other, and Ridmark rebuked himself. Coming here had been foolish. Better to have purchased supplies from the outlying farms or a smaller village, rather than coming to Dun Licinia. 

But he had not expected the town to grow so large. 

“Ridmark Arban,” said the older man-at-arms. He looked at one of the other men. “You. Go to the castle, and find Sir Joram.” One of the men ran off, chain mail flashing in the sunlight.