Hostiles (The Galactic Mage series) (30 page)

Gromf lodged his torch between two rocks near the edge of the pond and stared at the water for a time. Its surface looked black as the stone that formed it, and were it not for the occasional drop of water falling into it, an echoing plop that sent rings rippling to the edges and warped the reflections of the ceiling for a time, Gromf might never have known there was water there at all.

He sat at the edge of the pond, waiting, his eyes growing tired of staring at the reflection of himself. He looked about, studying the chamber more closely than he had before. Empty, smooth and shapeless, an anonymous formation of time and water passing through. A few crannies pocked its walls where some element or another had embedded itself and then given way to erosion more readily than the surrounding stone, the evacuation making little shelves and alcoves into which Gromf realized Kazuk-Hal-Mandik and perhaps the warlocks of the northern clan for seasons beyond counting had set lamps and tapers and obscure items of ambiguous use.

In one of these, a very large one at the back of the pond, Gromf saw a skull, a terrible thing, wide and fissured, lumpy and gray with eye sockets that must have held fist-sized eyes and a row of upper teeth that might once have eaten steel. The brow ridges were uneven, large even for an orc, but pronounced more on the right side than the left, jutting out like a bent pinnacle. Whatever soul had housed itself in such a form must have been a fearsome thing.

The water lit up with the bright light of day as Gromf studied the misshapen skull, and once again God sat upon his rock beneath a cloudless sky of blue, the stony rope of his long left arm trailing out of view over a jumble of God Stone-covered boulders, his jointed legs all in a twist before him like a bramble of fleshy cord.

Gromf stared into the pond, keeping his revulsion in check, though the quiver that moved his upper lip might have been obvious to a god.

“You come without your master,” said God in the voice of an avalanche. “Already there is divide.”

“No,” said Gromf, squinting into the glare of so much light. “There is no divide between orc and orc. It is this magic you would have us do. Your demons have no Discipline.”

The fissure in his face elongated, grotesque and horrible as it shaped the fault line of his laughter.

“You laugh at Discipline,” Gromf accused.

“I laugh at your fear,” God said. “I laugh at your weakness. You crawl down here to beg for power over the power I already give.”

“No. I come to seek what the human song does not know. The demons must have Discipline or they can be of little use.”

“I will discipline them,” said God, his long left arm rising and falling in a whip-strike of elastic stone. It cracked a thunderous sound and several boulders near the impossible figure were turned to glittering clouds of sand.

“And who will discipline you?”

Again came the whip-crack, this time cutting a trench knee-deep into the rocky landscape twice the length of God’s long arm, the last half of it spreading along the ground like cracking ice. The ocular depressions of his eyes moved outward in their perimeters as if by rage. The surface of the pond grew choppy then, the water covered with tiny lines like those the night winds draw in desert sand. Storm clouds formed in the skies above the deformity of God.

Gromf watched in silence as fury contorted and pulsed before him in the pond, but eventually it stilled and the storm clouds went away.

“You are strong and clever, Gromf. You will lead the All Clans one day.”

“Warlord will lead the All Clans,” Gromf said. “I will serve him in my place. It is the way of Discipline.”

“And you will serve me, young orc. This too is the way of Discipline.”

“Discipline must tie both ends of the rope to cross the gorge.”

Tremors crossed the water again, but only briefly.

“How do we control the demons that we bring forth?” Gromf asked directly, feeling confident now. “How do we control them if something happens to you when the fight begins?”

“I am God. What can happen to me?”

“The same that has been done to the old gods.”

“That was at my hands. There are no gods left to challenge me. This world is mine. And I will give it to the All Clans, and your beloved Warlord as you choose.”

Gromf nodded, seeing what he saw in that. He asked his question again. “How do we control the demons when they come?”

God roared then, no attempt to hide the emotions at all, a great wailing and flailing of all four malformed limbs. “You will do what I tell you, mortal, or I will crush your people and give the world to the elves.”

“Then you will not tell us how it is done?”

“They are mine to control. That is all you need to know. The time has come. Open the gate, and open it all the way.” The water went dark.

Gromf’s face contorted with the tempest of his thoughts, but he quickly brought them in check. The sky might be gone from the pond, but God might still be watching. If he was a god. Gromf was no longer sure.

Gromf stood on the open plains beyond the city of the golden queen, the walls of her vast fortress visible in the distance a few measures off, or at least the image of it as it had been two hours before when the great dome of concealing magic had been cast. Now what he saw was a memory of a time when the plains were empty but for the All Clans shamans arriving, the time of commencement now well underway.

The shaman circles were working together to bring the warriors out of the mountains. In only an hour they had managed ten thousand of them, and more shamans were still arriving from the southern clans. Soon there would be a hundred thousand orcs ready to march on the human capital and crush it forever. Soon Warlord would sit in the high place that the humans’ golden queen sat upon, giving orders and eating the cold meat of her dead heart. It was time.

He turned and watched Kazuk-Hal-Mandik directing another circle of shamans, sandy-skinned orcs from the edge of the Sandsea Desert, to their place far from where his own clansmen were. Warlord was smart enough to know that even in this time of pending victory, it was best to keep the individual clans far apart so no accidental fighting occurred. What tragedy it would be to have a clan war break out now, here under the concealment of a great dome of magic, a racial suicide just when they stood at the mouth of humanity’s cave ready to take it for themselves. Finally. The humans would find the dead bodies rotting in the sun by the stench, only see them after stepping into the soft mess of their decay. Such was the fate of the undisciplined. It was good to see that the plan made by Warlord and Kazuk-Hal-Mandik was made of Discipline.

When the old warlock was through with his instructions, he came back to where Gromf stood. He wore his God Stone on a leather thong around his neck. Gromf’s was in a pouch tied to his waist. Gromf decided to try once more to dissuade Kazuk-Hal-Mandik from opening the gate to God.

“I think we have enough warriors for victory,” he said. “The humans do not know we are here on their plain. Much of their force is still encamped at the base of the great peak far to the north of us, guarding the castle with the broken tower. The demons will be trouble for us all. God will not send them back when this is done.”

“You continue to blaspheme, Gromf. I accept it from you because you are young. Warlord will not. The spear is thrown. That is the end of it.”

“We cannot control them.”

“God will control them.”

“And who will control God?”

“We’ve had this discussion before, Gromf.”

“This is not Discipline.”

“Discipline is how we got here, Gromf. Look around you. We have the power to conceal ourselves from human eyes. We fill their fields with warriors while they sleep and get fat on honeyed sweets. You complain sometimes like a woman. Now is the time to find your heart for war.”

Gromf shook his head, but he would not disobey. That was not Discipline either.

By what he guessed was well past midday—it was impossible to tell through the concealment spell for the sky above was stuck fast and still displaying the morning’s clouds—all the orcs had arrived, a massive host bristling with swords and spears and axes. All but the southern warriors wore steel armor, another product of Discipline, and more than half of them had at least some form of enchantment on their weaponry. For most, merely the added bite of fire, but for a few, the strongest warriors, more powerful effects were in place, sinuous reaching spells put upon their spears and more than a few with devouring acid dripping from their blades. Even the humans were afraid to use that particular magic.

Warlord came to the front then, riding a horse like a human would. The animal looked small beneath the massive figure, and Gromf wished privately that Warlord stood upon his own two feet.

The other clan commanders came to line up beside him, each of them on a horse of his own. The animals shifted and shied beneath the weight of their riders, and twice one of the gray orc horsemen clouted his beast in the head in an attempt to calm it. The tactic did not work.

“The time has come,” shouted Warlord, facing the distant city walls. “I will have the night’s feast in that high place there.” He pointed with his axe at the highest spire of the palace, which strove above all else in the city, at least a half measure into the sky.

Shouts and calls for victory and glory of various clans followed, which Warlord let play out until they were still. He turned in his saddle and placed a huge hand on the rump of his animal, nearly encompassing it. He looked straight to Gromf and Kazuk-Hal-Mandik standing there.

“Drop the illusion and bring forth the demons,” he said. “Let it begin.”

Chapter 26

“T
ake a thousand men and go help Lord Forland hold off the Earthmen,” the War Queen ordered the officer alongside the gryphon rider. “Find out what they want.”

“Yes, My Queen,” said both in unison, and once again they went off at a sprint.

The Queen looked back at Orli who returned her gaze with a frown, irritated by the monarch’s implications that somehow Orli might be responsible for the fleet landing a company of mechs on Kurr—not to mention that somehow she might have been responsible for the Hostiles attacking Earth or any other issue of warlike incursions anywhere. She had as much pull with the fleet as she had with the Queen, and Blue Fire certainly wasn’t taking any orders from her either. Blaming her was ridiculous.

“So, Miss Pewter, you haven’t answered me,” pressed the Queen. “Why is it that war seems to follow you everywhere you go? What have you to say for yourself?”

Orli’s eyes narrowed as she found her spine. “What I have to say is that Captain Asad believes invading forces follow Altin around in the same sort of way. Which makes the captain just as wrong about him as you are about me. I would also say that at some point, hopefully, someone in charge of one of these human worlds will stop jumping to conclusions and accept that maybe things are more complicated than is convenient for decision making right now. That is what I would say.” She put her hands on her hips and stared up at the resplendent Queen defiantly.

Altin jumped in on her behalf, hoping to avert calamity. “Your Majesty, when I rescued her, her execution was being carried out. The headsman’s axe had fallen, almost literally. Doctor Leopold had to extravasate the venom from her body or she would be dead right now.”

Her Majesty cocked an eyebrow at that. “Is this true?”

Orli nodded.

“What were you charged with?”

“Being your friend.”

Her Majesty rolled the royal lips inward for a time and looked off after the gryphon rider and the other officer. When she looked back, it seemed the subject had changed. “Do you think a thousand riders is enough to hold off two hundred or so of the steel golems your people ride?”

“I don’t know,” Orli said. “I don’t know what your people are capable of. I’ve only ever seen Altin and Tytamon in a fight. I can say, I don’t think fireballs and lightning are going to help very much. They can ground out the lightning, and they have pretty strong shields. Fire probably won’t do anything to them at all. Swords and arrows will do even less.”

“I’ve seen those machines at work, Your Majesty,” Altin said. “They are very powerful. They have a device that issues shaftless arrows, thousands of them in the span of a few heartbeats.”

The Queen nodded grimly. “They must also have the red-light weapons that Miss Pewter wears. The ones we had to enchant against for
Citadel
.” She looked down at Orli again and realized the Earth woman wasn’t wearing the blaster at her side; in fact, her fleet uniform had been exchanged for Prosperion attire, if perhaps a bit in the style of a brigand, comprised of black trousers tucked into high riding boots and a cobalt blue blouse, all of which appeared to be brand new. Even her dog tags had been exchanged for a light blue sapphire dangling from a golden chain, which the Queen recognized as the amulet Altin had taken from Madame Kenouvier two days past. She wore no weapon at all. “I see you’ve come unarmed to battle, Miss Pewter.”

“I didn’t know we were having one,” Orli said. “Although I guess I should just assume it now. It seems like that’s all anyone does anymore.”

“You asked if I would honor my promise to make you my subject one day.”