Hostiles (The Galactic Mage series) (26 page)

This tiny iris through which he peeked could be opened at his command. He could open this and let them out of that valley, let them climb up through the tunnel and out upon Kurr, all of them, that valley filled with them like the dung swamps made by the lightning bats in the northern caves, waist-deep rivers of fecal ooze teeming with flesh-eating worms of numbers too huge for considering. The demons were such as those worms, heaped upon one another in a seething mass that lapped like black water up the edges of the valley. He could not help but wonder what kept them from getting out, from cresting their confines and devouring the island they infested so horribly.

Something flashed on the mountainside then, as if calling him, as if reading his thoughts and guiding him to the place, and he focused there long enough to see the misshapen head and elongated, twisted limbs of the rocky-faced creature, the face of God that he’d seen in Kazuk-Hal-Mandik’s pond. God grew before him then, laughing, and Gromf could see in that wide, lichen-encrusted face the awareness of his growing fear, Gromf’s fear, of which even he was only barely aware.

He quickly cut that vision off, stomped it out like the last embers of an old fire. He looked away from God and sought a lesser demon to bring out. There were so many, crawling over each other like a great bowl of misshapen maggots, it was hard to pick. So he chose just any one. He shaped a spear of mana, straight and with a hard, barbed point, an idea, and flung it down at the first demon that caught his eye. Then he hauled it out as if it were a fish on a line.

With one great yank, he pulled it free of the mana, pulled it free of the island and out through the center of the world. Into the Chamber of Discipline.

The demon stood three times taller than Warlord when it appeared, a thick hulk of ambiguous body and a mass of spindly limbs. It was so black that even the firelight did nothing to illuminate it, though the light did glimmer off its twenty or so insect eyes, red bulbs protruding from what served it for a face, each moving independently as it evaluated its enemies. It blinked at them, regarding them in a wave that moved across all of those glowing orbs, or only some, it was impossible to be sure, and then it leapt into the darkness high above with a roar that sent a rain of dust and pebbles falling down.

Both Gromf and the old warlock conjured bolts of ice as a whisk of arrows from the warriors followed the creature up into the obscurity high above.

“Save that, fools,” snarled Warlord. “See it first. Discipline.” Then, tilting his huge head backward, he roared up at the demon, calling out the challenge in the private language of the northern clan. “Come and fight, god-spawned coward. Come face death.”

Whether by coincidence or by invitation, the enormous black beast dropped down upon Warlord, who only avoided being crushed by the magnitude of his combat prowess and reflexes so bestowed. As it was, he was still struck hard, and he hit the floor as if he’d been flung there from five times his height. The demon fell upon him, mandibles like moose antlers opening wide then slamming shut like things drawn apart by siege craft springs, the clacking of their closing echoing throughout the room like lightning strikes.

Warlord smashed each bite away with the flat of his axe, roaring challenges all the while. Both Gromf and Kazuk-Hal-Mandik sent forth their spears of ice, but the magic rolled off of the creature like raindrops off rocks.

The ten warriors sprinted from their places around the room and leapt upon the creature then, their spears and swords and axes raining down blows that were as furious as their war cries. The demon answered back, and the chamber filled with such sound as no orc had ever heard before, a warped and discordant symphony of a hundred thousand brass horns blown all at once.

The demon spun then and leapt shivering into the air, trying to fling them off, spearing one warrior as it came down, thrusting straight through his body with all nine points of an awful claw, which it then spread wide, ripping the warrior apart as easily as Gromf might open his hand.

One of the warriors, maintaining his purchase on the demon’s head, if it could be said to have such a thing, got a spear down in through one of its eyes and drove it deep into its skull, while another orc hacked off the bottom portion of one of its legs with a mighty swing of a bastard sword.

The demon reached back and peeled another orc away, one who was jamming a short sword into a joint in the black armor plating along its spine. It flung him across the chamber with such power that when he hit the wall, he burst like a soft fruit, striking with such force that hardly any meat of him fell wetly to the ground. He became a stain that the chamber would wear for centuries to come.

The demon pinned yet another warrior down beneath one of its several legs. Gromf could hear the warrior’s bones crack, but he could not focus on such things. He cast another spear of ice. This spell, like the first, glanced off the demon as if it were little more than a clod of dirt thrown by a youngling at play.

The demon roared as the orc upon its head worked the spear like a plunger through its eye, churning and twisting it around, mangling the soft parts inside. It swiped a long, crooked arm up at the orc, but the orc leapt over the blow and came back neatly where he had been before, gloriously agile and aware in combat, and right back at it with his spear.

Warlord, on his feet again, came charging in as the demon swiped again at the warrior scrambling its brains. He ran in and brought a mighty two-handed swing of his axe upon the demon’s chest, the blade of his weapon biting in the full measure of Warlord’s extended arm. The demon roared and swiped at Warlord with another of its dexterous limbs, but the mighty orc rolled under the blow, came back and yanked his great axe free. He couldn’t duck the return swipe of the demon’s limb this time, however, so he dove with it instead, rolling with its momentum and coming right back up on his feet.

The demon took the time to try for the spear-thrusting orc upon its head again, and this time was able to knock him off. It spun round then and with a back-handed—or back-clawed—swat, sent another warrior who was attacking its hind legs into the wall, just as it had done the first. Another stain was born.

Warlord charged back and once again sunk the great axe into the monster’s chest, even deeper this time. He swung himself up then, hanging from the haft, and put his feet in the first rent that he had made. His powerful thighs, thick as most orcs’ whole bodies, pressed hard against their new purchase as Warlord hauled obliquely at his axe handle like a lever. And lever it was.

A grotesque wet cracking sound erupted like the breaking of a tree, and with a roar of effort, Warlord pried loose a huge chunk of the black carapace that protected the demon’s heart, if such a vile pump could be so named. Yellow blood like pus gushed out over Warlord even as the breaking loose of the armored piece sent him flying back and down upon the ground. He rolled to his feet in time to see Kazuk-Hal-Mandik’s ice lance fly into the monster’s chest cavity, a diseased fissure of yellow and reddish meat. The magician’s weapon was followed almost immediately by two arrows and a throwing axe from three of the still standing warriors.

The demon croaked its outrage at that, staggering from side to side and crushing by purest accident another warrior as it thrashed about and even once rebounded off the wall. Everyone still standing sent spears and arrows and ice bolts flying into that oozing yellow and red mess, until at last the demon fell, emitting a low rumble for a time that could be felt through the stone floor. Its limbs twitched for a while after, clacking like falling stones against the chamber floor, its eyes rolling madly in its head, but eventually they went still. A long hiss came from it, and finally the panting orcs knew that it was dead.

They all stared at it for a time, Gromf shaking his head, wondering how he had any chance of controlling such a thing as that, despite what the human writing said. He was certain that Warlord would forbid ever summoning another one.

He was wrong.

“Finally,” said Warlord, coming to where Gromf and the old warlock were. “This is magic I respect. Set these creatures loose upon the humans and the golden queen’s rule will end.” He clapped Kazuk-Hal-Mandik so brutally on the shoulder, Gromf had to catch the aged orc lest Warlord’s enthusiasm knock him to the ground. “It will be different this time,” Warlord said. “It will be different, and I will finally take a name.”

Cries of victory and hope for the great global reign of the orcs rang out then from the surviving warriors, and for a time, Gromf could only watch and marvel at what he had seen. It was power to be sure, amazing power. But was it Discipline?

He also stared at the smudges of yellow dust on the floor where Kazuk-Hal-Mandik had poured out the sulfur meant to bind the thing. The circle was rubbed out in several places, and there ran like a foul river into it a pool of the demon’s pus-yellow blood. Gromf shook his head, but he said nothing until Warlord and the other warriors had gone.

Kazuk-Hal-Mandik followed them to the door, laughing with them, and shouting out promises of death to all of humanity, but when he turned back to Gromf, his grin vanished like sweaty fingerprints on a cold blade.

“You could not control it, could you?” the old warlock asked unnecessarily.

“I could not. I would not know how to try.”

“Nor I,” replied the withered old shaman. “But perhaps we can with the God Stone.”

“Perhaps,” said Gromf, uncertain if even the yellow stones would help. “And if we can’t?”

Kazuk-Hal-Mandik straightened himself and looked resigned. “Then it will be as it was with the dwarves. And we will be with God.”

Gromf was sure that was not in keeping with Discipline, but he kept the thought to himself. Before they tried this spell tomorrow, out on the plains beyond the golden queen’s gleaming city, he thought he’d better find the woman and listen to the song again.

Chapter 22

O
rli didn’t fight the Fort Minot security men when they put her onto the table and strapped her down. She’d fought at first when they dragged her out of her cell, kicking and butting with her head, but it had proved pointless. She also thought it pointless that they still followed these dumb old formalities, the meal and the solemnity, the execution itself.

The solemnity was probably the worst. The procession that had brought her into this room, a slow march down the long sterility of the hallways, the mumbling of the chaplain’s hopeless prayers, the clicking of Angela’s heels in the corridor, louder than they should have been, conspicuous given the absence of other sounds. Just the
tap tap tap
of her shoes and the mumble of the priest.

The execution chamber was made in the shape of a half circle, with windows around the arc looking out into another room where they revealed a laboratory. The lab was full of gleaming machinery and racks neatly filled with equipment and chemicals, and along one wall, several long cylindrical tanks were attached to pipes that ran up and disappeared into the ceiling. The windows, and the view into the laboratory, ended where the arc stopped and the chamber’s straight wall began. The upper half of this surface was all one large flat pane of mirrored glass. Orli could not see what was on the other side, but no doubt the witnesses would be watching from there.

Orli saw herself in that mirror as they strapped her to the table, which was tilted nearly upright at the time. They pulled up the elastic material of her plain black uniform sleeves to expose both arms above the elbow.

A stooped man with a ring of hair that had the look of a tonsure to Orli’s doomed eyes came in through a door in the back wall, from the laboratory, pushing a cart upon which lay a variety of medical gear. He pushed the cart near the cold stainless steel slab to which she was being bound as the guards secured her knees, waist and head with flat black straps. The guards left, and the stooped figure pressed the lever on the table that tilted it back, moving it slowly toward horizontal.

While she’d been doing a champion’s job up to that point of keeping the rush of fear at bay, it came upon her heavily now. She could hear the rise of her breathing even over the whine of the motorized table mechanism, and her heart beat palpably in her chest—though not for long, she knew, a fact of which she was suddenly very aware.

The hunched figure took a bottle from the tray and spritzed brownish-yellow liquid onto a cotton pad. Antiseptic, Orli recognized. What the hell do they need that for? The distant part of her brain was still striving to hold on to sanity, to herself, to that person who had been staring out through her eyes throughout her entire life, so seemingly unchanged over all these years.

She looked back at herself in the mirrored glass, could see herself slowly tipping back. She couldn’t even tilt her head forward. She was going to lose sight of herself, denied her own reflection. Maybe that was mercy. She hardly knew.

Thoughts flew through her mind. She thought of Altin. Missed him. Forgave him anything. Apologized for everything. Loved him so thoroughly. She thought of Roberto. He would be heartbroken too. And her father. He would hide in anger. He would only become more fierce. But mostly there was Altin. She wished she could have been better for him. She should have made love to him. She should have forced him to. Pointless morality be damned. She wished she could hold him now, just that, just one last time. She hadn’t held him enough. She hadn’t held any of them enough.

“Ensign Pewter,” came the voice of Commander Adair through a raspy speaker mounted in the ceiling. She could see it clearly now that she was lying almost completely level with the floor. She stared into its tiny black holes as if expecting to see poison gas clouding out. “You have been sentenced to death for crimes against the Northern Trade Alliance, against your country and against the people of Earth. Your sentence is upon you. Is there anything you would like to say before that sentence is carried out?”