The Bone Orcs (3 page)

On the third blow he got the
head off in a spurt of more vile-smelling black slime. The head
rolled away, bouncing through the ferns, and came to a stop at the
base of a tree. The corpse collapsed in a limp heap to the
ground.

Ridmark let out a long
breath, trying to ignore the stench flooding his nostrils.

“The knee,” said Peter,
shaking his head. “That’s clever. Didn’t think of that myself. But
I’m a blacksmith, not a soldier.”

“Someone has to make the
swords,” said Ridmark, frowning at the corpse. “That explains why
we haven’t seen any animals. That smell would scare them all
off.”

“The bone orcs use these
things as sentries,” said Peter. His mouth twisted. “They’ve got
all kinds of undead. Some they use as laborers, others as
guards.”

“If this one is a guard,”
said Ridmark, “then it must be guarding something.” He picked up
his staff and looked at Peter. “The captives must be near.”

Peter nodded, and they headed
deeper into the Forest.

###

A short time later, Ridmark
and Peter found the barrow.

This section of the Forest
was hillier, though the trees remained as enormous as ever. Ridmark
crouched behind a boulder atop a hill and looked into a small
hollow below them, Peter crouching next to him.

The barrow rose within the
hollow, a mound of piled boulders standing about twenty yards high.
The centuries had deposited earth upon the barrow, along with a
coat of grass and small trees, but it was still unmistakably a
tomb. The barrow must have housed a burial chamber, because Ridmark
saw a massive stone door set into a stone arch at the base of the
barrow, its front scrawled with a variety of odd symbols.

The survivors of Toricus had
been herded into the valley between the barrow and the hill, over
two hundred of them. The orcs had done a thorough job of binding
their captives, securing them with iron collars around their necks,
the collars linked by chains. Many of the women and children wept,
and already Ridmark smelled the odor of excrement rising from the
captives. If the orcs did not tend to their captives soon, they
would start dying of disease and thirst in short order.

Ridmark suspected the
Qazaluuskan orcs did not intend to leave their captives alive long
enough for that to pose a problem.

There were nearly seventy of
the Qazaluuskan orcs standing guard, clubs and axes in hand, all of
them wearing the same kind of war paint Ridmark had seen earlier.
Some of them carried grisly totems – mummified hands, the skulls of
foes reworked into helmets, shrunken heads hanging from their
belts, or necklaces of ears. The bone orcs stood in a loose ring
around their prisoners, weapons in hand.

Ridmark did not see an
obvious way to get the captives past the orcs.

“What are we going to do?”
hissed Peter.

Ridmark understood his
urgency – Peter’s children were down there somewhere. Yet rash
action now would be disastrous. At best, they would alert the orcs
that someone was watching. At worst, it would get them killed.
Ridmark raised a hand for silence, and Peter scowled, but subsided
again.

A tall Qazaluuskan orc strode
past the others. Despite his height, he was gaunt, almost
withered-looking, and was one of the oldest orcs that Ridmark had
ever seen. Unlike most of the bone orcs, he had a beard, a ragged
white thing that hung to his chest, and it made his head look like
a skull draped in icicles. A staff waited in his right hand, and
three human skulls hung from its head, rattling and tapping against
each other as he walked.

The shaman stopped before the
stone door to the barrow, and a hush fell over the orcs, a silence
that spread to their captives. Ridmark suspected the barrow was a
sacred place to the orcs of a Qazaluuskan Forest, like a priest
approaching the altar in the churches of Andomhaim. The shaman
stepped before the door and turned to face the captives and the
orcish warriors.

“Behold!” said the shaman.
His voice was surprisingly deep and resonant when coming from such
a gaunt, wasted form. “Behold, my brothers! The omens have favored
us, and the auguries are bright. The Lord of Bones, great Qazalask,
gathers all to his kingdom in time, and bestows his gift of
undeath. But I, Hhrolazur, have seen a great omen!”

The orcs leaned closer.
Evidently visions were an event of great importance among the orcs
of the Qazaluuskan Forest.

“In my vision I walked among
a field freshly plowed,” said Hhrolazur, “and I carried a jar of
blood in my right hand. With my left I reached into the jar and
drew forth seeds, and I scattered them in the furrows, watering
them with blood as the Moon of Blood and the Moon of Souls rose
overhead. From my seeds rose blossoms the color of blood, and when
they opened within I saw the pale white skull of the Lord of Bones
grinning at me.”

A murmur of appreciation went
up from the orcs.

“The interpretation is
plain,” said Hhrolazur. “Tonight Saginus and Shardus, the Moon of
Blood and the Moon of Souls, shall rise to their apex, and the Moon
of Gates and the Moon of Spells shall be in the lesser position.
The omens are clear, and the meaning of the vision is plain. The
portents are good to awaken an Old One and seek his blessing!”

The orcs cheered.

An Old One? Ridmark knew the
Qazaluuskan orcs had Elder Shamans, learned elders deep in the dark
lore of Qazalask’s necromantic secrets. Did the bone orcs
themselves call their Elder Shamans the Old Ones?

Or was an Old One something
else entirely?

Hhrolazur turned to face the
stone door and began casting a spell, ghostly blue fire dancing up
and down his arms. Blue flames burned in the eyes of the skulls
bouncing from the end of his staff. The shaman threw back his arms
and screamed the final words of his spell, and a pulse of blue fire
washed out from him and sank into the stone door, making the carved
symbols glow.

The door swung open with a
rasping growl, and the Qazaluuskan orcs threw themselves to the
ground, bowing in the direction of the barrow. Ridmark wondered if
this presented an opportunity. Yet the captives were too well
secured, and none of them could break free. Ridmark was also
certain the bone orcs would respond to any interruption of their
ceremony with murderous fury.

Something moved in the
darkness within the stone door.

A towering figure stepped
out, a withered orcish corpse in corroded black plate armor. A
crowned helm of black metal rested upon the dead orc’s skull, and
in its right hand it carried a metal staff topped with three orcish
skulls. Blue fire burned in the undead orc’s eyes, and symbols of
blue fire flickered upon its armor.

This withered creature had to
be the Old One.

The Qazaluuskan orcs
practiced necromancy, and perhaps when one of the Elder Shamans
died, the Elder Shaman rose in undeath as an Old One, lurking
forever in his own tomb. The orcs sworn to the Warden of Urd
Morlemoch, the Devout, did something similar, taking their dead to
the silent halls of Urd Morlemoch to rise as the Warden’s undead
servants.

The helmed head of the Old
One turned back and forth, considering both the bone orcs and the
captive humans. Some of the children started to wail as the cold
blue gaze turned over them, while a few men began feverishly
reciting the Lord’s Prayer. At last the Old One’s gaze turned to
Hhrolazur, and the shaman went to his knees.

“You have dared to summon
me?” said the Old One. Its lips had rotted away long ago, and its
jaws remained motionless, but its hideous, deep voice boomed forth
anyway. Ridmark was not sure if he heard the voice with his ears or
with his mind.

“I am Hhrolazur, a servant of
the Lord of Bones, Old One,” said the kneeling shaman.

“All serve Qazalask,” said
the Old One. “All pass into his silent kingdom in the end. Explain
why you have summoned me, or else you shall return with me to
Qazalask’s kingdom this very moment.”

“Old One, hear me,” said
Hhrolazur. “The omens are propitious, and the Lord of Bones looks
upon us with favor. Saginus and Shardus shall rise in apex this
very night, and I have seen a vision of the dead rising from the
earth. Grant me your wisdom and knowledge that I might proceed.” He
gestured at the captives behind him. “I have brought tribute. All
this blood might be spilled to grow your power, and their shells
can be raised to serve you forevermore in your dark halls.”

The Old One said nothing, and
a horrible silence stretched over the crowd.

“You have spoken with wisdom,
Hhrolazur servant of the Lord of Bones,” said the Old One. “Your
words have pleased me, and your vision shows that Qazalask grants
you his favor. I shall teach you the highest secrets of Qazalask’s
power, but first you must perform a rite of power. Gather from your
captives seven virgins, and when the Moon of Blood and the Moon of
Souls reach their apex, slay them all in a circle of power and
harvest their lives. This offering shall please me, and I shall
grant you the knowledge you seek.”

“It will be done, Old One,”
said Hhrolazur, bowing his head. “All shall be done as you
command.”

“Do not fail,” said the Old
One. “Do not fail in the slightest detail. Failure to observe the
rite exactly shall offend Qazalask…and then I shall exact a
terrible price upon you.”

The undead creature turned
and glided back into the darkness of the barrow, though the stone
door did not close.

Hhrolazur rose to his feet
and began giving commands, and the warriors pushed the captives
back from the barrow. Likely they were clearing a space for the
ritual Hhrolazur intended to perform.

Ridmark beckoned to Peter.
The blacksmith gave one more hard look to the gathering below, but
nodded and then followed Ridmark down the slope.

“This should be far enough,”
said Ridmark, looking around the Forest. “We’re within the circle
of their undead guards, and I doubt the orcs themselves will leave
the barrow until their ceremony is complete.”

“Then what are we going to
do?” said Peter. “You heard that demon the shaman called up.
Hhrolazur is going to sacrifice seven virgins. That means children.
He’s going to murder children to power his damned spell.”

“He is,” said Ridmark.

“We have to do something, but
I don’t know what,” said Peter. “We can’t stop him. If we try to
interfere, he’ll just kill us and continue on.”

“We have to interfere at the
right time,” said Ridmark.

“What the devil does that
mean?” said Peter.

“Listen to me,” said Ridmark.
“You heard the Old One. The spell has to take place when Saginus
and Shardus reach their apex. That will be a little after
midnight.”

“What does that have to do
with anything?” said Peter.

“I don’t properly understand
it,” said Ridmark, “but from what the Magistri have told me, each
of the thirteen moons influences the use of magic in some way or
another. So certain spells are more powerful when one moon or
another is in its apex, or when the thirteen moons are in a precise
configuration.”

“So this spell will only work
when those two moons are at their apex?” said Peter.

“Aye,” said Ridmark. “That
must be why Hhrolazur attacked Toricus. He knew that Saginus and
Shardus would be in their apex tonight, so he knew he could summon
that Old One out of the barrow…”

“And the Old One would tell
him what to do,” said Peter. “So what good does that do us?”

“Because I think the spell
has to work precisely as the Old One said,” said Ridmark. “If the
slightest thing goes wrong, the spell will fail…”

“And the Old One will be
furious with Hhrolazur,” said Peter.

“Or, worse for the
Qazaluuskan orcs,” said Ridmark, “they will interpret it as an
unfavorable omen.”

“Ah!” said Peter. “That would
be better. If they think an ill omen has befallen them, they shall
abandon everything and return to their homes. Their superstitions
rule them with a rod of iron.” He grunted. “That’s clever.”

“My old sword master said the
best path to victory was to make allies of your foe’s weaknesses,”
said Ridmark.

“Just how are we going to do
that?” said Peter.

“I have a few ideas,” said
Ridmark. “Follow me.”

###

As the day vanished and slid
into night, Ridmark and Peter worked.

At first Ridmark feared that
the bone orcs would discover them, but that fear proved groundless.
The orcs remained occupied with the preparations for Hhrolazur’s
ritual, and while they had set their undead servants to guard them,
the mindless things kept to a perimeter and did not venture within
it. If Ridmark and Peter tried to escape, the undead would swarm
them, but so long as they stayed near the barrow, the undead would
leave them alone.

Ridmark alternated between
helping Peter with the work and keeping an eye on the orcs. The
bone orcs moved their prisoners away from the open entrance to the
barrow to create a clear space. In that clear space Hhrolazur and
some of the other bone orcs labored, casting spells. They had
written a massive double circle of ghostly blue fire upon the
ground, and the double circle intersected seven smaller circles
around its circumference.

Ridmark suspected that the
seven victims of the spell would stand within those circles.

The captives were restless,
but the bone orcs kept watch over them. Twice some of the men tried
to break free, and the Qazaluuskan orcs responded by killing them.
After that, the captives remained quiescent, though their fear and
tension was obvious.

Night fell, but Ridmark had
no trouble seeing. Nine of the thirteen moons were out tonight,
following the complex patterns of their risings and settings. Of
the nine moons visible, Saginus and Shardus were the brightest. The
Old One had indeed been right. Around midnight, Ridmark judged, the
moons would reach their apex.