Stan Nicholls: Army of Shadows

The finale came when the captain suffered a deep gash to her sword arm. A swift follow-through saw her take a further wound to the flank. Staggering, she lost her footing and went down.

The creature stood over her. She looked up into its eyes. What she saw was something more than brutishness. The bestial was there, but tempered with what she could only think of as a kind of empathy. And, perhaps, even a hint of nobility.

It was a fantastical notion, and it was the last one she would ever have.

The monster plunged its blade into the captain's chest.

Wrenching her blade from the female's corpse, Coilla said, "She fought well."

"They all did," Stryke agreed.

"For humans," Haskeer sneered.

More than a dozen other orcs were crowded into the barracks with them. All were Wolverines, with the exception of Brelan, a leader of the Acurial resistance. He elbowed through the throng, barely glancing at the human's body. "Time we were out of here," he told them.

They streamed from the barracks. There were over a hundred orcs in the compound, the majority of them resistance members, along with the rest of the Wolverines and the Vixens, the female warband Coilla led. They were busy scavenging weapons and torching the place. The few humans left alive were mortally injured, and they let them be.

As Brelan's order to evacuate spread, the force began to leave, moving out in small groups or singly. They took their own wounded, but by necessity left their dead.

Stryke, Haskeer and Coilla watched them go. Dallog, the Wolverines' eldest member, and one of the newest, joined them.

"We bloodied their nose good 'n' proper," he remarked.

Stryke nodded. "We did, Corporal."

Haskeer shot Dallog a hard look and said nothing.

"The tyros are shaping up well," Coilla offered by way of compensation.

"Seem to be," Dallog replied. "I'm heading off with some of them now."

"Don't let us keep you," Haskeer muttered.

Dallog stared at him for a second, then turned and left.

"See you back at HQ!" Coilla called after him.

"Go easy on him, Haskeer," Stryke said. "I know he's not Alfray but — "

"Yeah, he's not Alfray. More's the pity."

Stryke would have had something further to say to his sergeant, and in harsher terms, had Brelan not returned.

"Most have gone. You get going too. Hide your weapons, and remember the curfew starts soon, so don't linger." He jogged away.

Their target had been well chosen. Being comparatively small, the garrison was a mite easier to overcome than some of its better manned counterparts would have been. And its location, just beyond the outskirts of Taress city, meant it was conveniently isolated. Not that they could afford to ignore caution. There were likely to be patrols in the area, and reinforcements could be quickly summoned.

Outside the fort's broken gates the last of the raiders were scattering. Donning various disguises, they left in wagons, on horses and, mostly, by foot. The majority would head for Taress, taking different routes, and melt into the capital's labyrinthine back streets.

Haskeer grumpily declared that he wanted to make his way back alone. Stryke was happy to let him. "But mind what Brelan said about the curfew. And stay out of trouble!"

Haskeer grunted and stomped off.

"So, which way for us, Stryke?" Coilla asked.

"Haskeer's going that way, so…"

She pointed in the opposite direction.

"Right."

The course they chose took them through a couple of open meadows and into a wooded area. They moved at a fast clip, anxious to put some distance behind them. At their backs the fort burned, belching pillars of black, pungent smoke. Ahead, they could just make out Taress' loftier towers, wine-red in the flaxen light of a summer's evening.

Not for the first time it struck Coilla how much Acurial's rustic landscape differed from that of Maras-Dantia, the ravaged land of their birth; and how it so resembled their adoptive world of Ceragan.

"I'm sorry," she said.

Stryke was puzzled. "About what?"

"Losing the star you trusted me with, probably to Jennesta. I feel such a fool."

"Don't beat yourself up about it. I lost the other four to her too, remember. Who's the bigger fool?"

"Maybe we all are. We were betrayed, Stryke. It must have been somebody in the resistance who took the star I had."

"Could have been. Then again…"

"You can't mean somebody in our band."

"I don't know. Perhaps an outsider took it."

"You really believe that?"

"Like I said, I don't know. But from now on we keep things close to our chests."

She sighed. "Whatever. Fact is we're still stuck here."

"Not if I can help it."

"What d'you mean?"

"I aim to get the stars back."

"From Jennesta? From the whole damn Peczan empire?"

"There'll be a way. Meantime we've got our work cut out riling the humans."

"Well, we struck a blow today."

"Yeah, and the orcs of this world are waking up. Some of 'em anyway."

"Wish I had as much faith in them as you do. The resistance's gaining a few new recruits, true. But enough for an uprising?"

"The more the screw tightens, the more we'll see joining the rebels. We just have to keep goading the humans."

It was nearly dusk and shadows were lengthening. With the curfew looming they upped their pace some more. The edge of the city was in sight now and lights were coming on. Patrols were a real possibility as they got nearer, and they had to move with stealth. They crossed a stream and began skirting a field of chest-high corn that waved in a clement breeze.

Neither spoke for some time, until Coilla said, "Suppose… suppose we don't get the stars back. If we're stuck in this world, and whether it has its revolution or not… well, what's here for us? What place would we have?"

It was a thought that plagued Stryke too, although he was careful not to voice it to those under his command. His mind turned to what he would lose if they really were trapped in Acurial. He pictured his mate, Thirzarr, and their hatchlings, kept from him by the unbridgeable gulf that separated the worlds.

"We'll endure," he replied. "Somehow."

They turned their eyes skyward.

There was a light in the firmament, bigger than any star. It had an ethereal quality, as though it were a burning orb seen through many fathoms of water.

Stryke and Coilla knew it to be an omen. They wondered whom it bode ill for.

On the other side of the city, beyond its periphery, the terrain was less fitted to growing crops. There were moorlands here, and large stretches of bog, where not much more than scrub and heather grew.

It was a place with a reputation. This was partly due to its poor fertility compared to the verdant land thereabouts. Although poor was not quite the right way of describing it. Perverse would have been a better word. There was something less than wholesome about the flora that bred here, and the animals that roamed were chiefly carrion eaters. The magical energy that coursed through the world had become corrupted in this spot.

The area also had a bad name because of certain artefacts it housed. These were scattered about the moor in an apparently senseless jumble, though there were those who thought they saw a pattern. The ruins were called monuments, temples, shrines and moot-places, but nobody really knew their true function. Certainly none could guess at the purpose of some of the more perplexing and bizarre structures.

The artefacts were fashioned in stone brought somehow from a distant quarry, and they were immensely ancient. No one knew who had built them.

One particular stone formation, by no means the most extraordinary, stood at the bleak heart of the moor. It was an arrangement of columns and lintels, standing stones and ramparts, that made a whole yet seemed strangely at odds with geometry. Not in a way that could be seen, so much as it could be felt. Through design or decay sections of the edifice were open to the elements — notably a ring of stone pillars the colour of decaying teeth.