The Heavenly Host (Demons of Astlan Book 2) (67 page)

“The complex has that sort of heavy artillery?” Tom asked, surprised.

“Yes, sir. We had been working on adapting force field generators we had liberated, but the war in Etterdam put that on hold and then we no longer had the power or resources.” Varn shook his head sadly. “We were probably within less than a decade of having force fields on top of the runic wards.”

“Science and magic working together!” Tom marveled. He grinned and clapped Varn on the shoulder. “We shall carry on and rebuild everything!”

Varn smiled, thrilled to finally begin the return to glory.

~

“Reattach the saddles to the D’Wargs’ harnesses,” Virok ordered once they had returned to the wargtown and the large tent they had rented for the D’Wargs to rest in. Because the pavilions were designed for wargs, they were outfitted with water troughs and food troughs. D’Wargs did not need to eat, but since the food and water were included in the price, the D’Wargs had spent the last several hours eating, drinking and investigating the wargs.

“It was just socializing,” Fed Tal told Tal Gor as they grabbed the saddles for their D’Wargs. They had left most of the harness on the D’Wargs and just detached the saddles and extra pieces of tack, such as weapon holders and saddlebags. Those extra pieces could be hooked and strapped into place quickly in the event a quick departure was needed.

“What do you mean?” Tal Gor asked his tribemate.

“A number of them mated,” Fed Tal said.

“With wargs?” Tal Gor looked curiously at the other orc. “I wonder if they can interbreed?”

“I don’t know, but if so, I pity whoever has to deal with the pups!” Fed Tal chuckled.

“So did you watch, you pervert?” Tal Gor grinned.

“Tal, trust me; everyone observed. It was so noisy and violent that it would have been impossible to miss,” Fed Tal said. “Pretty hot, actually.”

Tal Gor shook his head at Fed Tal’s weirdness. He had to admit, warg mating rituals were interesting if one had never seen one, but they were not erotic to any rational person. Or at least, not to him.

“Were any of the wargs brave enough to approach a female D’Warg?” Tal Gor asked.

“No, they were too frightened of the D’Wargs. But a couple of the D’Warg bitches did manage to force themselves on male wargs.”

Tal Gor laughed. “It figures! They’ve been stuck with the same partners for thousands of years!”

Tal Gor and Fed Tal finished saddling their D’Wargs and walked with them out to the staging area.

The staging area was about a thousand feet outside of the town. Zerg and Fed had marked off an area after the first wagonload of supplies had come back from the city. Nagh Felwraith, one of the D’Orcs, had stayed behind to help guard the supplies. D’Orcs were so new to the people of Murgatroy, they did not feel they would need too many guards to defend the supplies. Especially with a pack of twenty snarling and slobbering D’Wargs a thousand feet away.

While saddling the D’Wargs, Fed Tal told Tal Gor that the orcs in the town had been more wary of the D’Wargs than Zerg. Or they had been up until he began winning too many drinking games. Naturally, neither Fed nor Zerg had mentioned that D’Orcs could not get drunk on glargh, ale, wine or anything else. After about a dozen orcs passed out, and a good number of the onlookers had lost more money betting than they’d spent on drinks, the wargtown orcs finally realized that Zerg and his infinite glargh-gut were a bigger threat to their wallets than the D’Wargs were to their hides. Fed Tal showed Tal Gor his now-rather-stuffed money pouch.

Tal Gor had laughed and clapped his friend on his back. “So while we were in town spending Lord Tommus’s treasure, you were out here making money?”

Fed Tal was quite tipsy by this point and simply gave him a wide grin, as if he had been caught eating warg droppings.

As they approached the staging area, they shifted their direction to come up beside Vespa, who was manipulating a large abacus.

“So what’s the total haul?” Tal Gor asked.

“Very impressive!” Vespa said. “We may want to come back here for more supplies at some point.”

“Given that you are paying in gems and chunks of precious metal, I am pretty sure you will be welcome!” Tal Gor said with a grin.

“I am sure we were taken advantage of, but we are in a hurry,” Virok commented drily as he walked by while arranging items for transport through the gateway.

“Did you get all of what you needed?” Fed Tal asked.

“A great deal. We managed to get a dozen and a half barrels of glargh, six barrels of ale and two barrels of wine. We also picked up two large sacks of ground salt, three sacks of cornmeal, four sacks of ground wheat and five sacks of oats.” She paused and looked up from her abacus, grinning. “The D’Wargs are going to be excited for us to make wargmeal for them.”

“I thought the Abyss was a desert? Where do you get water?” Fed Tal asked.

Vespa grinned. “It is. You were paying attention to our stories last night!” Then she mock frowned. “And apparently sober enough to remember them!  As for the water, now that Lord Tommus has returned, the storm clouds and rain have returned to Mount Doom.”

“Lord Tommus made it rain in the Abyss?” Tal Gor asked, awed.

“Indeed he did. His power is as described in the legends. Glorious days lie ahead!” Vespa said before looking back to her abacus. “However, for this celebration, we will be using x-glargh, oats and meat to make the wargmeal.”

“Lucky D’Wargs!” Fed Tal pounded his fist into the palm of his hand.

“They are.” Vespa chuckled. “As far as inventory, we also got a case of large snake eggs and two cases of chicken eggs. A cask of sodium bicarbonate, that was a nice find! Or so I am told. I have no idea what it is,” Vespa said.

“It can be used for several things, but for bread, it makes it bubbly,” Fed Tal said.

“So you will not want to use it in Schwarzenfürze’s wargmeal!” Tal Gor joked, and they all laughed.

“In any event, there are a dozen other sacks of things: potatoes, turnips, ginger, beets. I won’t bore you with the entire list,” Vespa said.

Virok came back and nodded to Vespa. “We are set, commander. Whenever you and Tal Gor are ready, we are ready for Lord Tommus.” Vespa looked to Tal Gor.

“I am ready. My brother Bor Tal has a fire started over there.” He pointed to the far side of the staging area, away from the wargtown. Quite a number of orcs were watching them from the town, obviously curious as to what they were up to. Given that the wagons that had brought the barrels had left and the orc they had rented the other wagon from was returning with it to Murgatroy, there was no obvious way for them to transport their goods.

Tal Gor went over by the fire and stared into it while reaching for the summoning stone. As he had done yesterday, he cleared his head and began a ritual chant that calmed his mind and let him reach out to Lord Tommus over the link, using the fire as a bridge. It was surprisingly easy.

Lord Tommus, we are ready,
Tal Gor thought through the link.

One moment,
came the reply. A few silent moments passed and then suddenly the small campfire blazed up higher and higher. When the flames became larger than the amount of wood present would permit naturally—taller than Tal Gor—reality split itself down the middle of the flames.

Tal Gor was certain that no matter how many times he saw this, it would still disconcert him. It simply was not natural; one’s mind instinctively recoiled from the sight of the overlaid realities. Lord Tommus stepped through, and Tal Gor and the nearby orcs all stepped back, overcome by the awesome sight of their lord.

Tal Gor could hear a scream or two coming from the wargtown as people started fleeing in terror. He had thought the town to be far enough away, but he must have been wrong. The D’Orcs started chuckling as they looked back to the town to see the wide range of reactions.

Lord Tommus looked at their haul and smiled broadly. “Excellent! Much more than I had hoped for! Hezbarg is going to love you!”

~

“Aggghhhh!” Fer-Rog bellowed as he exhaled the breath he had been holding.

Rupert grinned. The funny part, aside from the fact that Fer-Rog did not actually need to breathe, was that when the D’Orc let the air out of his lungs, he expanded rather than contracted.

“That is really hard!” Fer-Rog exclaimed.

“You managed to stay orc sized for over a minute!” Rupert exclaimed, clapping. “That’s great progress, given that you did your first shape-change this morning!”

“Whooo, it is so hard to hold that smaller form. I have no idea how I am going to make my wings disappear or change my appearance and keep it all together.” He shook his head in frustration.

“Yeah, but the fact that you could make yourself shrink means you can do it. It will just take time and lots of practice,” Rupert told him.

“Well, watching you do it through that link thing was what did the trick. Once I could sort of ‘feel’ you do your own change, it gave me a place to start,” Fer-Rog said.

“It just feels weird though, like I’m going to explode at any moment when I’m in that smaller form,” Fer-Rog observed.

“Well, just think about my dad. He squeezes down from his normal size to a skinny human for days at a time!” Rupert said. “I myself only have to squeeze down about a foot or so. Can you imagine being in a body about one-third your normal size?”

“Not at all. But then your dad is Lord Tommus; I bet there is very little he can’t do,” Fer-Rog replied.

“Well, I…” Rupert trailed off as he felt the link from Tom. He mentally let Tom know they were out a little ways and needed to return to camp and that he would summon him as soon as they got back. It was rather weird how one communicated over the link like that. It was not so much thought as… he had no idea. “We need to head back to camp,” he said to Fer-Rog. “The orcs are ready to return.”

“That sucks! I’d like to stay here longer!” Fer-Rog complained.

“Yeah, I know. This has been fun!” Rupert said, motioning for them to head back towards the camp.

~

“I think we’ve got everything we need,” Tal Gor said to Vespa as the last of the supplies they had requested from Murgatroy were brought through the portal: specifically a barrel of glargh, one of beer and a sack of potatoes. “We haven’t unsaddled the D’Wargs yet; we should do that now, I am thinking,” he added.

He and almost half the orcs were on the Astlan side of the gate along with Fer-Rog, Rupert, Virok and Vespa. The rest were in the cooled staging area where the D’Wargs were.

Vespa smiled and shook her head. “That’s okay, we are going to take them back to their cave and unsaddle them there so we don’t have to lug all the tack back to the cave as well.”

“Okay, then.” Tal Gor gestured to the rest of his tribe, who were still in the Abyss. “Say the last of your goodbyes and come back through!”

“Vespa, Virok, it has been our honor to hunt with you!” Tal Gor told the D’Orcs.

“Tal Gor, it has been our honor to hunt with you. May we hunt again soon!” Virok said as Vespa grinned and nodded.

“Ouch!”

“What the…?”

“Move it or I’m going to get trampled!”

“Argh!!!”

There was a lot of yelling coming through the portal as orcs who had been trying to come through were suddenly shoved aside and started falling over. Vespa frowned. “What the Abyss is going on over there?” she yelled.

“It’s that—” someone yelled before being cut off.

There was a large, splattery, moist, sickening explosion on the other side of the gate. Suddenly the cursing doubled, along with the shouts and yells of orcs and D’Orcs. The immediate area of the gateway completely cleared and out came Schwarzenfürze! She burst through the gateway, still saddled, wings batting away anyone trying to stop her.

She plunged through the orcs on this side of the gate, even as they had begun to scatter as the hideous stench released by the D’Warg’s bowels floated through the gateway. Bor Tal had been next to the gate; he bent over retching, as did several others.

“Damn!” Vespa cursed as the smell finally reached her nose. “I knew we shouldn’t have fed the D’Wargs!”

Schwarzenfürze charged across the staging area and then circled around to the other side of the camp.

“Tar Roth Non!” Vespa yelled through the gateway. “Get your damn D’Warg!”

Tar Roth Non stumbled through the gateway, his eyes still watering from the deadly miasma released by the cranky old D’Warg. He launched into the air and flew over to where Schwarzenfürze was parked on the other side of camp. Tal Gor and several others, including Vespa, ran over there too.

When they arrived, they found a showdown in progress. Schwarzenfürze was standing stiff legged, claws dug into the ground and baring her truly ferocious teeth at Tar Roth Non, who was trying to convince her to come with him.

“What is wrong with that D’Warg?” Vespa demanded.

“She doesn’t want to go back to Mount Doom,” Tar Roth Non said.

“No warg dung!” Virok cursed.

“She was in Mount Doom and when we started coming back, she charged through with us!” Fel Nor noted.

“Apparently she wants to stay in Astlan?” Vespa said, shaking her head.