Rift in the Races (21 page)

Pernie’s shrill cries could now be heard clearly and close as Altin ran onwards. The roars of several orcs could be heard approaching as well, putting Altin’s optimism regarding the Queen’s men to rest. He hoped her little legs could get her to the lieutenant and the assassin before the orcs caught up. He cursed himself for being so out of shape.

Her screams stopped abruptly, giving Altin a fright, but immediately the child’s cries were replaced by Lieutenant Andru’s battle cry, “Blood for the Crown!” The clang of steel on steel was followed by guttural snarls and the sound of metal, and sometimes wood, hitting stone.

Altin wanted to start a fireball spell as he continued to run down, but he didn’t want to have to try to ditch it if he had no room to let it go. He’d have to wait and look, pick the right spell for the circumstance.

A howl of rage shook dust from the ceiling as one of the orcs met with something untoward. Altin came around the last curve of the stairwell in time to see the cavalryman pulling his longsword out of the eye socket of an orc, insertion therein having prompted the death roar. The lieutenant batted aside a spear thrust with the dagger in his left hand even as he pulled his sword free with his right, and barely in time to avoid being taken in the throat by the wicked point.

Altin came upon the scene and saw it, and in watching horrified in that moment, nearly knocked Pernie headlong back down the stairs. Pernie added her own speed to the collision as she continued to sprint for higher ground, and it was only with some luck that Altin managed to catch her and prevent the tangle of them both from rolling down the stairs into the melee right below.

“Are you all right?” he asked as he regained his feet. He examined her for signs of injury.

She nodded, looking frightened, but none the worse for wear.

Lieutenant Andru now hacked down at the four orcs remaining of the group that had been chasing Pernie. He had the advantage of higher ground, and his legs were fresher than theirs were. Their stabs were clumsy, and the two at the back were pressing their forward counterparts physically, which impeded their ability to dodge and dart.

The lieutenant made a quick feint at the face of the leading orc on the left, tricking it into raising its guard. He then pierced it through the gut with a deft thrust, capitalizing on the absence of defense. He kicked the hulking body backwards, and the weight of it nearly sent the two behind it tumbling down the stairs.

The royal assassin appeared out of the shadows behind the snarling orcs as they struggled for balance and position. Their eagerness to be the first to cut the human down coagulated their collective effectiveness. They had no idea the elf was there. With a tidy slice across the throat, the assassin pulled one orc’s head halfway off, then plunged the long, slender blade down into the exposed gore and ganglia and, with surgical precision, stopped its heart. Graceful as a dancer, he pulled the knife out, spun and slung the corpse down the stairs while managing in doing so to avoid getting splashed by any of the blood. Two more quick thrusts took both kidneys from a second orc at the back, who had only just realized his companion was gone.

Altin started to cast an ice lance at the last orc when the young lieutenant cut it in half, removing the need for Altin’s magic at all.

“Well,” he said, cancelling the cast in time to spare himself a major headache for the rest of the afternoon, “you didn’t even save me one.”

“You’ll get your chance,” the lieutenant said. “Plenty more down there.” He pointed downward with his gory sword.

“Right,” said Altin. He turned back to Pernie. “Go upstairs to the library, and bolt all the doors between us. Find a table and some parchment and write Kettle a letter, okay? She’ll want to hear that you are okay while she is in the hospital. Run along, quickly now.”

Pernie didn’t move. She was staring at the elf with a peculiar look upon her face, something that seemed to teeter between revulsion and rapture.

Altin followed the line of her gaze with his own and saw that the elf was actually grinning back at her. Altin had been led to believe elves couldn’t do that. Bumps rose on his forearms, and a chill ran up his back. He was fairly certain that was the most disturbing thing he’d seen today, that impossible darkness glinting in those elven eyes, eyes that were green like the deepest shades of the forest, but only in its dark places, the places where sunlight hasn’t filtered down in centuries and mainly horror grows. Altin suddenly understood the subtle thing he’d missed before, the conclusion he’d not come to suddenly obvious. The elf was evil. Or if not evil, something so close to it that difference became little more than academic. He was, however, beyond useful in a fight, so Altin stored the thought for consideration on another day.

He turned his attention back to Pernie, stepping in front of her to block the strange mesmerism that held her to that wicked elven grin. “Pernie, do as I tell you. Kettle will be worried about you. Go up there and write to her, and tell her that you are okay. I’m going to help with the last few orcs down there, and then I’ll come help you send the letter off. Be a good girl, and do it, okay?”

She looked as if she might protest.

“For Kettle,” he repeated.

Pernie suddenly looked very tired. “Okay,” she said. The grit of a whole day’s battle was smeared upon her round young cheeks, dust and sweat and more than a bit of dried orc blood. She blinked up at him, trying to be a good girl and do what he said, to impress him, but tears began to pool in her bright blue eyes. She tried valiantly to hold them back, but after a few futile blinks meant to stay them, they ran freely down her dirty little face.

“It’s okay,” he said, folding her into his arms at the behest of an instinct he didn’t know he had. “Kettle is okay. Tytamon is too. So am I. And you are a very brave little girl. Everything is going to be all right.”

She clung to him for several long moments and let all the tears run out. Altin could feel the impatience of the young warrior and the elf, but neither said anything aloud.

Altin held her a moment more, before finally peeling her away. “Now be a good girl and go write to Kettle. I’ll be right back for you. Bolt all the doors.”

“All right, Master Altin,” she finally said. “I will.” She smiled then. “It will be the best letter what Kettle ever got.”

“Good,” he said as he stood up. “She’ll like that.” He sent her off with a warm smile and turned to the other two. “Let’s go.”

They decided to have him cast a seeing spell before they went charging down. Now that Pernie was reasonably safe, there was no point rushing blindly in to gods knew what.

That turned out to be a very good idea. Eleven orcs were taking turns defending the space at the base of the stairs where a narrow doorway opened into the outer hall, which was filled with the Queen’s men who poured in from the courtyard beyond. Two shamans and nine of the great armored brutes, like those they’d encountered in the meadow, worked efficiently to keep Her Majesty’s men at bay. They were extremely organized. Two of the warriors bore enormous heater shields and pressed them at the door, barring entry and only minimally at risk from the jabbing longswords and probing spear points of the soldiery. Behind them, on a knee, a third orc thrust a long spear between the two shield bearers, its bloody tip flicking forward like a serpent’s tongue, its reach made several feet longer than its physical length by the effects of some strange extending enchantment Altin had never seen or heard of before. It was extremely effective and the cries of punctured men sounded regularly from beyond the door. The piling up of the dead was working to augment the orcs’ defense.

Behind the trio defending the door hand-to-hand, four more orcs fired huge crossbows over the heads of the defensive front line, their two-and-a-half span frames allowing them perfect angles for shooting over their companions who were bent and leaning into the shields. The two shamans cast spells as furiously as they could in support of all of this. Altin could see that an ice storm raged outside the door, adding its effects to the licking death of the enchanted spear as the sweaty flesh of men froze to their weapons and armor, the frost burning them painfully as only magic ice can. The soldiers cried out and fought to free themselves from the biting steel, but to no avail, and all the while their bodies being pierced by the falling icicle spears bombarding them from above.

The two remaining warrior orcs were leaning on their weapons, eyes closed, as if in meditation, but Altin suspected they were making the most of an orderly turn at rest. Further evidence of unprecedented orcish efficiency. What had happened to the mindless barbarians of the last two hundred years? These were not those. These were not the primitive remnants of a vanquished people, the disorderly tatters of a race completely dismembered by the last of the Great Orc Wars five centuries before. This was something else. But what were they doing? Why not send those two with a shaman up to get at the treasure of Tytamon’s books? They could barricade themselves in, haul out as many books as they had time for, and then the shaman could get them out. Surely one of them had a spell for that.

But perhaps not. He supposed it was possible that they were simply cornered and going to fight it out for their lives. He supposed he couldn’t blame them for that.

That’s when he rotated the angle of his seeing spell and realized that the cellar door had been bashed in. They had dispelled the ward and then cut through it easily with an axe. Some of them must have gone below. That set Altin near to panicking.

He snapped out of the spell and explained the situation to his two comrades. “There are eleven of them,” he began breathlessly. “Two shamans. The rest are the big ones we saw earlier. None are watching the stairs. Some unknown number seem to have gone down to the cellar. We have to get down there and stop them. I cannot express how quickly that must be done.”

“How do you want to do it?” the lieutenant asked. “I know we need to get the casters first, but what spell are you going to lead with … so I know where to stand?”

“I will get the casters,” the elf said, his voice hissing thinly, like the ancient air of a tomb opened for the first time in an age.

“Can you cast silence on them?” Lieutenant Andru asked. “Like they did you? Then the elf and I can do for the big ones while you do for them.”

“I could,” said Altin. “But I don’t know the spell.”

The cavalryman scowled. “Fine, then we’ll leave them to the elf. So what about the other ones?”

“We’ll only have one good shot to surprise them, and that assumes they don’t already know we’re coming. I think the best bet is the easiest one. I’ll get them all with fire.” He looked at the assassin. “If you don’t mind. You can kill whatever is still moving when I’m done.”

“I’m a firm believer in keeping it simple,” said the lieutenant. “I’ll make sure you aren’t disrupted while you cast.”

“Then let’s go,” said Altin.

The elf vanished without acknowledging anything they’d said.

The lieutenant shook his head at the empty space vacated by the elf. Altin could tell the horseman held the same opinion of the assassin that he had recently acquired.

They skulked down the stairs as silently as they could. Altin could swear his robes made more noise than a warrior’s armor plates. Every rustle seemed a screech, an alarm that would bring the orcs charging up the stairs.

They descended to where they could just peer around the curve of the wall into the chamber. The orcs continued to hold the Queen’s soldiers off. He watched as several fireballs came in from the outside to crash against the shields. Great big fireballs, too, but they had no impact beyond the brilliant light.

He realized that one of the two shamans must be maintaining an elemental shield, which explained why the Queen’s soldiers still hadn’t gotten in. With the conjurers neutralized, the Queen’s men were going to have a hard time getting past the ice storms and the darting spear. This was yet another unexpected bit of strategy from this grossly underestimated enemy.

The three of them pulled back a step, out of view, and the young warrior gave Altin a querying look that clearly asked what Altin was already thinking, “Will the elemental shield protect them from within, or was it cast only beyond the door?”

Altin shrugged, and motioned that they should try it anyway. He didn’t have anything more likely to help them memorized. The lieutenant nodded.

Altin moved down just enough to have a line of sight into the room. He didn’t know where the elf was, so he had to make the fireball smaller than he would have liked, just in case, but he could still do a lot of damage with a blast focused almost entirely on the group immediately at the door. The blast wave would at least knock the shamans down.

He closed his eyes and began the brief series of chants and gestures that would conjure a fireball large enough to fill a quarter of the small chamber. The two orcs who were resting heard him immediately, their animal-like hearing serving them well. Both spun and faced the sound of his voice, and catching sight of him, they charged.

Altin chanted steadily, unable to rush the spell, trusting the lieutenant and the elf to buy him time.

The brave horseman threw himself down the stairs at the orcs, flinging the bulk of his body sideways and filling the stairwell wall to wall with his flying armored mass. All three went rolling down the stairs, clanking and scraping all the way.

Altin’s fireball shot over the tumble of them and crashed into the orcs guarding the door. The explosion was blinding, and the backlash of heat blowing up the stairs caused Altin to shield his face. All three orcs at the door immediately burst into flame and for several long moments burned ferociously, howling at first and trying to push out into the throng of warriors, none of which would give way. They finally fell, nearly where they stood, filling the doorway with a crackling wall of fire that confirmed the protective spell did not, in fact, reach back into the room.