The Iron Wolves (21 page)

Kiki and Narnok stood shoulder to shoulder as the splice bounded up the wide stairs; but it was too narrow for them to fight. “Behind me!” bellowed Narnok, and Kiki stepped back, twirling her short sword to loosen her wrist as Narnok tensed and hoisted his axe, hammering it down. It glanced from the shoulder of the beast, bouncing from thick hide as jaws snapped an inch from Narnok’s face. The second splice, accelerating close behind, leapt left, claws digging into the plaster of the wall and launching past Narnok. Kiki ducked a swipe from a knife-sharp split hoof and rammed her sword up into the beast’s belly. It screeched, landing next to Kiki on the landing. The first splice took Narnok’s axe in its flank, roared, and hit him with a back-hand blow that sent Narnok flying through the banister spindles, cracking the wood, to topple to the hall below.

Kiki withdrew her blade, ducked another sweep of claws and thrust it higher this time. And Dek was there, his own longsword smashing overhead and cutting the creature down the middle of its skull. Still it came on, fangs gnashing, and with a twitch wrenched Dek’s sword from his grip. Jaws clashed a thumb’s breadth from Kiki’s face and she wriggled right, sword trapped in the splice’s chest.

“There’s no room!” bellowed Dek. The third splice, halfway up the stairs, turned and leapt at Narnok, who was sitting, shaking his head, stunned. As it bore down on the dazed axeman, Dek leapt through the gap in the banister, both boots slamming into the creature’s head and knocking it to the floor, Dek atop. But it reared suddenly, and he clung on as its head twisted round, snapping at him in an attempt to remove his face.

“Dek!” screamed Ragorek, and threw his sword. Dek caught the weapon in both hands, rearing up as if riding a horse, and plunging the blade down through the top of the beast’s head. Narnok came from below, a knife in each fist, stabbing them forward into its belly and cutting upwards, opening it like a gutted fish. Bowels slithered out like an overturned barrel of eels, and the beast wailed, making a high-pitched keening sound, then slammed a hoof into Narnok’s face sending him bouncing hard from the wall and down a long black well into unconsciousness.

Kiki was fighting a rearward retreat from the splice with her sword in its chest. She held two long knives; its claws slashed left, right, then diagonally, trying to open her from shoulder to hip. Dalgoran stepped alongside her, cool like no man had a right to be, and as the beast slashed for Kiki’s face Dalgoran’s sword slammed down, cutting the twisted appendage free with a crack of cut bone. Blood spewed out, drenching Kiki. Dalgoran drew back his blade, and rammed it hard through the creature’s eye, leaning his full weight against his sword and driving it deep into the brain beyond. The splice hit the ground twitching, leaving just one creature standing on the landing.

It eyed Kiki and Dalgoran, who had his boot on the slain beast’s head as he pulled free his blade. Ragorek was weaponless behind them, grim faced through his bushy beard, his fists clenched and ready. Below, Dek hacked his sword through the wounded splice’s throat until its thick twisted head came free. Narnok was groaning in a heap.

The final beast screeched and leapt up the stairs towards Kiki and Dalgoran, taking his sword across one bent horseshoe with a shower of sparks, long equine teeth snapping for his face as claws raked across Kiki’s armour and both were pushed back by the creature’s sheer size and weight.

“Dek!” screamed Kiki, slamming her sword into rancid horse flesh. That great head swung towards her, teeth gnashing to chew through the skin of her shoulder like the gears of some ancient machine. She screamed as pain hit her like a hammer, twisting away, and shoved a knife into its eye. Dalgoran hacked at its neck two-handed, but its head dropped and slammed upwards with a snort of blood, ramming Dalgoran against the wall where the back of his head slammed stone, and he toppled to the side, stunned.

Ragorek ran forward, stooping to grab Dalgoran’s blade, and together with Kiki he hacked and slashed as claws tried to cut their faces from their skulls and open their bowels and arteries. Kiki leapt over a slashing claw, slammed a left hook to the beast’s face snapping a fang, and as Ragorek skewered its throat, holding its thrashing head in place, Kiki took her blade double-handed and hacked again and again and again, as blood and bits of brain and chunks of skull fell to the wooden floorboards. Eventually, the great moaning gnashing creature sank to the boards and was still, and Kiki stood, legs apart, still holding the sword with both hands. It was embedded in the dead splice’s head.

“A bad business,” muttered Ragorek.

Kiki nodded, and tugged free the blade with a crunch. She moved to Dalgoran, who was sat up, a trickle of blood at his temple. “How do you feel?”

“I’ll live,” he grumbled, and let Kiki help him to his feet.

Dek and Narnok moved up the stairs. Their faces were grim.

“I think we should leave now,” said Dek, voice gruff. “There could be more of them.”

“Yes. Get your shit together and meet me out front in five minutes,” said Dalgoran, wiping his blade clean. He stared down at the headless body of Ralph, and the torn cadaver of Beth, his wife. “It shames me to leave them like this, but Dek is right. We are trapped here like rats.”

“Do you think they’re hunting us?” said Kiki, softly.

“I didn’t. Now I do,” said Dalgoran.

The wind was a harsh, cold, biting mistress. She snapped and whined, whistled and howled, slapping faces and bare exposed skin, chilling armour to torturous levels, and making the members of the group squirm uncomfortably in saddles, tugging at bits of clothing and cloaks and wrapping thick scarves around faces.

A thin layer of snow covered the undulating, rocky ground. Now, to their left as they travelled south from Kantarok, then angling southeast, stood the massive, vicious, daunting White Lion Mountains. They passed through the lower foothills, with thousands of hidden gulleys and valleys, towering stacks of rounded rock and huge angular boulders, which must have once been a part of these mountains. It was a dangerous journey, for there were many hidden opportunities for a horse to break an ankle, or stumble and throw a rider; the wind made it hard to see and so their progress was slow. Added to this, the recent battle at the tavern left none in the mood for idle banter.

That evening, huddled around a camp fire in the lee of a group of boulders, Dalgoran and Dek fought to secure some tarpaulins from boulders to ground to give shelter from the still falling snow. The snowfall was thin and sporadic, whipped about by the wind, but the promise of a heavy fall was imminent.

Narnok sat warming his hands, then returned to the flat rock on his knee where he sliced onions for the stew. Kiki was shredding dried beef into the bubbling pan, and glanced up as Ragorek returned, arms stacked with blackened wood from a nearby lightning-struck oak.

“Smells good,” he grunted.

Kiki nodded, as Ragorek settled by the fire.

“Why don’t we head west out of this broken ground? I’m constantly worried my horse will break a knee and throw me head first onto a tooth of the White Lions.”

Kiki shook her head. “The Rokroth Marshes spread like a bad disease, right up to the rocky ground we now find ourselves trapped in. I’ve tried sneaking through many times before with various units, during my soldiering days. Always bit me on the backside. You either end up lost in the stinking mist when it inevitably descends, or find yourselves trapped in some bottle-necked gulley and have to back-track for half a day. This way is best, trust me. I’ve ridden it before.”

“But man, this is good ground for an ambush,” observed Narnok, and stood up, scraping the chopped onions into the stew. He placed his flat rock chopping board down, and grabbed his axe, as if the great weapon afforded him some comfort. It certainly gave him the same great protection afforded by any razor-sharp double-headed axe. He grinned at Ragorek.

“Who would want to ambush us?” asked Ragorek, softly.

Narnok shrugged. “I’m just saying, that thing back at Ralph’s tavern. That killing. Was it just a random chance meeting? Seems funny to me, is all.”

“How funny?” said Ragorek.

“Well, Dalgoran’s off on some personal crusade to reunite us old bastards, no matter what our scars. He says the mud-orcs are coming back. Now, I’m a cynic. Only have to take one look at my face to see why. But things don’t feel right. I know Dek described these beasts from his fight in Heroes’ Square, but seeing them in the flesh…” Narnok shuddered. “They was not what I expected.”

“No, I suppose not,” said Ragorek, and rubbed the bristles on his chin. The bruises on his face from his fight with Dek had pretty much healed, but his nose was still buckled. He touched it tenderly and Kiki saw the movement.

“How’s things with you and Dek?”

“Calm,” said Ragorek, eyes fixed on Kiki. “Can I ask you something?”

“Depends what it is.” She smiled to take the sting from her words.

“You and Dek. You were together, once, weren’t you? At Desekra? During the War of Zakora?”

Kiki gave a short nod, averting her eyes. “We thought we faced certain death. At times like that, people can find…
unlikely
company. Not that I’m saying Dek is unlikely; he was certainly ruggedly handsome back in his day.”

“Just as you were wildly pretty?” butted in Narnok, grinning a broad grin.

“I like to think majestically beautiful,” smiled Kiki. “But it fades. It all fades. Things change. We were young and doomed to die. It drove us together seeking warmth and comfort in the lonely night hours of downtime, when there was no killing to be done.”

“Wasn’t that a court martial offence?”

“Ha, yes, but when there’s tens of thousands of mud-orcs snarling and drooling and screaming curses, waving their swords and axes and spears and trying to remove your head; well, then you tend not to bother about such things. Neither do your officers, especially those newly baptised in war.” She gave a little shudder. “It’s something no person should have to go through.”

“And what about now?” asked Ragorek, eyes still fixed on Kiki.

“Well, if you were asking me about
now,
I’d tell you to mind your own fucking business, or I might just pour this stew over your damned head. Understand?”

“Oh I understand all right,” smiled Ragorek, and suddenly Kiki realised how much like his brother he really was. It wasn’t in their build or colouring, or even facial structure; they looked modestly different. But it was in the
set
of their features, the way they occasionally smiled, the subtle gap between their middle lower teeth. It was a hint, nothing more.

“What I want to know,” said Narnok, resting back, his axe on his lap like some long lost son, “is Dalgoran reckons these thousands of mud-orcs are on their way back, to invade Vagandrak or whatever, which seems mighty improbable to me; especially just based on the word of some mad old woman probably high on the honey-leaf.” He rubbed idly at one facial scar with his thumb. “Ach, but this bastard itches. Listen, I just don’t understand it. So some twisted horse creatures have been attacking people, and maybe we aren’t targeted, maybe we are; but that doesn’t mean there’s a link. These beasts could be from the Plague Lands; have you ever visited the Plague Lands? A barren, evil place, everything twisted and dead, and all the trees are black. Poisoned. Broken.”

“You went there?” said Kiki, aghast.

“When I was younger, and wilder,” nodded Narnok. “Nobody tells Narnok that he can’t do something. You know what a stubborn mule I was. Am. You know what I mean.” He grinned again, a quite horrific vision.

“You’re insane,” said Kiki.

“Just insanely curious.”

Kiki shrugged. “Well I don’t give a bucket of horse shit what you think; I trust Dalgoran with more than my life. And his intuition, in all the years I’ve known him, has always,
always,
been right. His skill, and knowledge, damn, his
sixth sense
got us out of more trouble than you could believe possible. You know this, Narnok. You were there, man! With the Kultakka Raids, with the Zorkai Princes, and that time we nearly all died on the West Salt Plains. He saved us. Every time. And you all know what happened with Morkagoth…”

“I agree, Dalgoran seemed like a damn mystic when it came to Morkagoth. And he helped invoke the cur…” Narnok suddenly shut his mouth, glancing at Ragorek.

“What is it?”

“Balls. I speak too much for a man without a face.”

Kiki stood, and moved to Narnok, reaching out to gently place her hand against his cheek. “Stop it,” she said.

Narnok pulled away, eyes narrowed, then stood and stretched. “I’m going for a walk before that smell drives me insane with hunger. I’m a big lad, I am. I needs my food.”

Narnok ambled off, axe still in one large fist. After the beasts back at the tavern, Kiki could hardly blame him.

Kiki went back to the pot and stirred the contents with a wooden spoon.

“What did he mean?” asked Ragorek. “About
invoking
something?”

Kiki glanced up, iron eyes dark and gleaming. Ragorek recoiled from the anger there.

Forcing herself to remain calm, Kiki said, “Some things are best forgotten, Rag. Some things are better left dead,” and she moved off to her horse to unpack her saddle-bags.

Snow was falling heavy. Kiki dreamed of a life where there was no war, no horror, no thrusting a sword into a mud-orc’s guts and watching its bowels spill out over your blade as it writhed and screamed and clawed its way up the sharp iron, pulling your blade more and more into itself as its claws grappled for your throat… she dreamed of being young, and healthy, and pretty, training at the new recruit training ground west of the capital city, Vagan; so proud to have been picked for her fitness, strength, agility, swordplay… and there was Dek, a wrestler, a pugilist, broad-chested and athletic; expert with sword and spear, powerful, handsome, with booming laugh and infectious smile. But to fall in love was forbidden, and the soldiers were worked damned hard to drive away any such carnal desires. Later, much later, they stood on the battlements. The mud-orcs were coming, so the scouts said. “We might die here,” said Dek, and he touched her shoulder, a light movement for one so big, so heavy, so brutal. “Yes, I know,” she said, and gazed up into his eyes and fell into them. Their sex back in the barracks had been gentle at first, then hot and hard and filled with need not want. But then the mud-orcs arrived, and the killing began, and there was little thought of romance…