CHAPTER SIX

  Exhausted, Sly slept well for the rest of that day and into the night. He mightn’t have woken to an alarm, but with the first touch on his arm he was immediately alert.

  He was… yes, in the comfortable chamber Hetlagh had found for him near her own rooms. Her trading compound, which doubled as a redoubt in times of conflict, was under threat from the humans of the mountain tribes. He had volunteered his help in return for shelter.

  I’m helping orcs, may my LoTR-loving kids forgive me.

  “How many?”

  Hetlagh had kept the shades. A necessity, she said, as not many orcs knew Aramaic, and Sly didn’t speak it himself. She wasn’t in his rooms but could hear him, through Gus and the device she still wore.

  ‘We believe twelve,’ she said through Gus. ‘They believe they’re unseen. Come with Jadegh-Mos, who woke you.’

  A few minutes later Sly was dressed and waiting with other orcs near the outer doors, holding a bucket. The mountain men had approached the wall with a ladder, now assembled, and were planning to scale the wall.

  While a smaller band than he’d seen the previous day, twelve armed men inside the Stronghold would still be a menace to the infants, children, and the sick. Orc females could and would defend themselves but were not well-armed, Hetlagh told him. Too many veterans and older apprentices had gone with the War Master, presumably to fight in whatever campaign had his attention.

  One of the juvenile warriors was Hetlagh’s son, Gutlat. He stood over five inches taller and twenty kilos heavier than Sly, who idly wondered how big orcs got. Sly made it a policy not to hit anything bigger than a truck without appropriate ordnance. An IED, maybe. Preferably an air strike.

  The humans outside were Gutlat’s size but better armed. He wondered if there were something in the water – they grew ‘em big here. Hetlagh told him one of the mountain men was carrying a battle-axe longer than a four-year-old child, but if her frame of reference was an orc child, that was one mother of an axe.

  Hetlagh wanted the attackers alive. Perhaps she’d listened to Sly’s argument about the consequences of slaughter and taken them to heart. Maybe, and perhaps orcs were vegan. More likely she acted out of self-interest. She was a trader and would need to walk a fine line if some of her customers were humans.

  Whatever the truth, Sly needed to take down a dozen large men without shooting them all in the head.

  Eventually those inside heard the expected crash and roar beyond the doors. Five orcs including Gutlat hurriedly opened the inner door into the kill-box, and Sly followed them out. This was, after all, his plan.

  He trailed the orcs outside, heedless of the armed humans. Each of the orcs carried a lit torch with a steady flame that illuminated the dewy grass, glistening men – most looking shiny, soaked and bedraggled – and a splintered ladder.

  One of the wettest humans still lay on his back in the grass, carried there when the Stronghold’s defenders pushed the ladder from the wall. Another, now on his feet, carried a sloshing bottle with a cloth in the top. A makeshift Molotov cocktail but unlit, for now. Above them the top of the wall moved against the light of the sky. It was a small group of orcs trying to look like a garrison, armed with all the buckets they could find.

  “Tell them to put their weapons down, and not to light a fire for that,” Sly said, nodding at the Molotov bottle. “Tell them that this,” he pointed at the bucket he hefted, “is all over their clothes.”

  A harsh voice shouted down from above, presumably relaying his words in the language of the mountain tribe. Ignoring the shield-wall the men had made, Sly put the bucket down a few feet off, then waved at Gutlat. The ‘boy’ flicked his lit torch over the top of the bucket, which promptly ‘whoompt’ with blue fire and the stench of a petroleum product. The shiny, bedraggled humans looked aghast. One of them shouted, incoherent with rage.

  Without asking what had been said, Sly smirked. “Tell him, ‘Oh yes we can’, and ‘I don’t care who his daddy is’. They’ll see their pyres early if the loud fool doesn’t back down. Tell them to drop their weapons and ask the Mistress’s mercy for their prank.”

  Three of the young men grabbed their angry companion, one of them cuffing him on the ear. Seeing that, Gutlat grinned back at Sly, his wide mouth stretching either side of his two-inch tusks.

  A metallic clatter sounded where swords hit each other and the ground.

  Two of the orcs went around the group and carefully picked up the weapons, taking them behind the door, while another two orcs carrying large buckets came through. This part was Hetlagh’s addition to the plan and Sly wasn’t sure it was a good idea, but it was better than the massacre it avoided.

  A flood of white bloomed from the walls. In other circumstances it might look like a blizzard of snow, instead the goose feathers hit most of the dozen men and stuck to their armour, hair and furs. The two new orcs visited men missed in the initial deluge, and, with evil grins, poured extra feathers down on them in a localized avalanche.

  “Now tell them to go home,” Sly told Hetlagh, interpreted by Gus. “The weapons will be returned in the next couple of days as we’re not thieves. But we see well in the dark and have long memories for human faces. Don’t come back.”

  The substance that doused the mountain men was not naphtha. The orcs traded for naphtha from the north-east, and used it as a degreaser, for waterproofing cloth, and as a wood preservative, not for pouring over their enemies. Even the puddle Gutlat lit in the bucket was not inexpensive. The sloshing bucket had held mostly water, with a thin film of naphtha floating on the surface. Instead, the humans had been hit by a lot of thin, clear glue, meaning they would soon find the feathers very difficult to remove.

  The orcs found it hilarious.

  Sly thought humiliating the hotheads was risky but could see both sides.

  Wasn’t some punishment deserved? Hetlagh won’t get justice from a bunch of bloody-minded villagers. She should take payment in advance.

  Hetlagh explained a second reason for taking the harder line.

  “When Hosak War Master returns,” she told him, “I must be able to show the humans found our retribution… harsh. If not, Hosak will take a host and burn their people, since I would not.”

  Then she locked eyes with his and showed her teeth. “Besides, it was funny.”

  Without intending to, Sly smiled back.

  As promised, Hetlagh sent the weapons back to the humans with a passing trader. The moustachioed merchant visibly feared the orc delegation when it stopped his caravan on the road but seemed relieved by the presence of Hetlagh, who he knew and was relieved to see. The trader’s two wagons were escorted by a pair of tall, stern guards on horseback, each wearing bronze lamellar armour and carrying spears. The cataphracts exchanged looks when they saw Sly standing casually with the party of orcs, and he guessed it wasn’t usual to see humans in such company.

  “The guards are from the Ulmesh Pathfinders Guild,” Hetlagh told him, quietly, Gus translating. “Few merchants travel south of the human borders without its protection. To travel the roads here with only two guildsmen is a sign of trust.”

  Hetlagh spoke orcish slowly as she negotiated. The trader replied in kind, stumbling over the guttural words until finally accepting silver coins for his trouble.

  Following that meeting, Sly had two days to relax. Not that he did... his team was out there, alive, dead or dying, and he needed to find them.

  Patience...

  He spent more time with Hetlagh, learning about the orc as a people, but was mostly left to his own devices. He took time to clean his kit and himself. When he washed in the hot water of the vast communal barrel, surrounded by fragrant purple creepers overflowing from crocks, he removed the two rings on a chain around his neck but replaced the keepsake once he was done. It was safer around his neck. Or, at least as safe as he was.

  He had time to bemoan the loss of his only CS gas cannister, refresh his limited rations with preserved fruit, meat and nuts, and learn to avoid the vile chukta jerky, before Muirtagh Harbinger, Hosak War Master’s herald, arrived at the Stronghold’s front door.

  Muirtagh was greeted with all ceremony and invited into the compound, where Hetlagh saw to his needs personally. Sly stayed as far away as possible from Hetlagh’s house while he was there, but heard later that the visitor was what passed for a diplomat among the orcs. He was exceptionally pleasant to Hetlagh, his habits were refined, and he’d hooted uproariously when told of the plight of the raiders.

  That said, he was also two metres tall and, Gus estimated, over two hundred and sixty pounds of pure muscle wrapped in a metal skin. Muirtagh was apparently considered diminutive for an orc warrior, but his breastplate was steel plate and might have served as a hog roaster, had he stayed long enough to remove it.

  “You now need to leave,” Hetlagh told Sly, after Muirtagh and his three giant companions loped away. No one made horses placid enough to carry orcs, but Sly saw the four were deceptively quick. Their jog covered ground like marines at a run.

  “Why now?” Sly asked, curious as to her reasoning.

  “If Hosak’s herald is here, Hosak is not far behind. He’s not fond of humans,” she said, grimacing, “and it’s best for our friendship that you are on the road, not in my house. Hosak owes me favours and will not openly insult my guests, but I can’t protect you from him for very long. It is in my power to send Gutlat to guide you to Ulmesh, the nearest human city, if we are quick,” she said, emphasising ‘quick’ with a finger prod. “Gutlat can tend to some business for me there.”

  After a moment’s thought Sly welcomed the offer, although he had private reservations. He might have to return to the obelisk at some point, but before that he needed information, both about portals and his lost team. Ulmech was likely the best place for that.

  Was there a someone there I can ask about portals? The culture is agricultural at best, so far, pre-industrial. Post-apocalyptic, maybe, given they’re living with alien artifacts disguised as standing stones. The country-living humans are no better than tribal, while the cities had signs of guilds and government but hauled things around by cart. Can I expect them to grasp the kind of tech the obelisk represents? I don’t think so.

  Contemplating a question like that, he also wondered if he was insane, or in intensive care in New Zealand having tripped over his laces on the way to the plane.

  Not that there’s much choice. One plays the hand dealt, even when information is incomplete, imaginary or delusional. We walk the road we’re on one step at a time.

  It was decided that he and Gutlat would walk overland to Ulmesh. Hetlagh didn’t trade in horses, since orcs had no need for them except, Sly thought, as an ingredient for excellent kebab. He wasn’t too disappointed to walk. While he had once ridden well, thirty years was a long time out of the saddle. He collected fresh food, shook out Greyhair’s cloak, and waited for Gutlat’s call.

  That night Sly wandered the compound one last time, saying goodbye to Kitleigh – Sandal’s proper name – and her grateful mother, who tried to hug him. On the way back to his room he glimpsed someone familiar on the other side of the central courtyard. He was curious enough to follow.

  Gutlat was speaking to a hulking orc in a brown cloak who made the boy look like the juvenile he was. The two were shadowed beneath the eaves of the lower passageway where it opened out on to cobblestones. Sly wasn’t completely sure he understood the nuances of orc mannerisms but thought Gutlat was reluctant and argumentative. The hooded stranger said something in an authoritative tone, turned on his heel and left. Gutlat remained where he was for a long breath, then he left too.

  The exchange was worrying as it reminded him that he had no real allies here. While he’d never exchanged many words with Gutlat, only the grunt of an orcish ‘hello’, the boy was the Mistress’s scion. Sly wanted to believe his own relationship with Hetlagh was sound.

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  That night he received a knock at his door. In the corridor he found Jadegh-Mos, Hetlagh’s personal servant. Stepping inside, she carried in a wooden box, the size of three packs of playing cards side-by-side and two deep.

  ‘Forgive this indirect farewell, Sly,’ Gus wrote for Hetlagh. ‘Take this gift with my appreciation for your help in recent days. Open the box.’

  Sly took the gift and Jadegh-Mos nodded and left the room. He closed the door and put the container on the bed before lifting the lid. The case's plush interior clutched three crimson containers, each a different shape and shade. The first was a sinuous ampule holding a million red particles dancing in liquid suspension. The second vial was an hourglass through which powder drifted and flowed like a sandstorm on Mars, when Sly lifted it to the light. And the third jar of clear glass contained a salve of jellied blood – or so it seemed.

  ‘These traditional remedies are well known among the orc, though costly, and rarely shared with your kind,’ Hetlagh said, translated by Gus. ‘These potions can close a wound in moments, restore [life | vitality], and heal disease. Sprinkle the dust on external cuts. Drink the liquid [sparingly | sipped] for sickness, blood loss and even broken bones. Use a little salve on your neck or face for a boost to energy.’

  Sly was wary. “What’s in them?”

  ‘Each potion contains spores with [fast | miraculous] healing properties, held in a sleep. If the medicine is red, it is safe to use. If green, the spores are dangerous, and the potion should be carefully destroyed in a hot fire. Remember this, for while the red is precious, pulling you back even from the edge of death, green can and will kill.’

  A visual use-by date – good to know. Sly thanked her for the gift.

  Sly and Gutlat left the Stronghold at five a.m. local time, on a day Gus called the seventeenth of October. The morning was chill, due to the altitude and clear skies, but the day grew warm as they walked and took a path sheltered from the wind.

  After the descent from the terraces the climate turned decidedly subtropical, Hetlagh had told him. To the north the land rose and grew increasingly craggy, cooler and more temperate. As the climate cooled the woodland looked increasingly European, not that any of the trees or bushes were familiar enough to name.

  Sly had repacked Hetlagh’s gift into his bag, ensuring no one saw the potions in their new home. He had no confidence in his ability to live off the land, so the rest of the pack contained mostly provisions, and he kept to the foods he knew wouldn’t kill him – currently a very short list.

  Turning at the compacted trade road, the unlikely pair passed four orcs heading in the other direction, yawning and picking their yellowed teeth. For some reason, seeing Muirtagh Harbinger and his three colossal sidekicks didn’t surprise Sly at all. The herald didn’t say a word, only flicked his hand in a casual salute.

  Hetlagh had returned the shades without complaint and the device was back in his bag and on charge. Clarity’s vision system provided adequate night-sight, but he’d missed the shade’s other low-light options like UV, which used lamps built into the frame, or infrared.

  An idea came to him, and he shaped the question in the air. ‘Can Clarity be adapted to see infrared?’

  Gus churned for a long second, as though debating with itself.

  ‘Seeing into the infrared bandwidth without use of shades is feasible but not immediately possible. The change to Clarity requires a firmware update.’

  That was that, for now.

  Hetlagh told him Ulmesh was the southern-most human city. The largest and oldest human settlements were northern seaports where explorers first made landfall on black-sand beaches, so large inland cities were still relatively rare. Two-thirds of the continent yet belonged to orcs, some living in high-walled city-states ruled by warlords and princes, though most orc towns were little better than hill forts. While orcs had the advantage of overall numbers and territory, humans banded together in much larger political units – nation states and coalitions of independent coastal cities. Alliances between orc chieftains were as rare as pearls in their pigsties.

  In her talks with him Hetlagh loudly bemoaned the stupidity of males that permitted human borders to expand into orc territory by a miniscule but measurable degree every year. That said, the relationship between the races wasn’t entirely warlike, and she benefitted more than most.

  Cautious trade took place between human city merchant guilds and high-born female orcs, like Hetlagh. Orc tradition permitted unmarried females to support themselves as merchants, while Hetlagh’s male counterparts were generally too proud to deal with humans. Trade with humans had become Hetlagh’s life, except for the year of passion that had produced Gutlat.

  That triste left her near bankrupt. Only her mate’s untimely death saved her business, she said. Coincidence?

  Sly wasn’t sure. While compassionate, and as intelligent as anyone he knew, Hetlagh was likely ruthless when it came to her independence.

  “Coinage is a wonderful leveller,” she said to him once. “Rub two gold together and it doesn’t matter if you are a commoner or a clan-chief, they spend the same, no more and no less. A large pile of coin buys a modicum of freedom even when all above you are orcish men.”

  Whatever the truth, Sly was glad Hetlagh had legitimate business in Ulmesh.

  Her son, Gutlat, was a competent guide and pushed on into the late evening before settling down for the night. The pair camped on the edge of a clearing under a rock overhang, using an oiled tarp and rope to block the wind and waterproof fabric sacks to protect their bedroll from the damp. Sly didn’t complain – he’d done worse. Climbing from the bivy-sack at dawn, they made good time.

  Sly offered Gutlat use of the shades so they could speak but the boy refused. Gutlat knew how the device worked, had seen his mother use it, and spoke Aramaic, but for some reason he felt no need or wish to talk with a human.

  That didn’t matter to Sly, much. He didn’t need to chatter but he was sure there were things he could learn from Gutlat that he couldn’t from Hetlagh. Things that might save his life.

  Like, who was the hulking orc in the brown cloak, and what did he want?

  Muirtagh Harbinger and his men wore similar cloaks, but that meant nothing if everyone in the War Master’s service dressed the same. The exact shade might narrow the wearer to one of a few hundred local warriors. Whoop-de-doo.

  As he walked, Sly chewed on the problem of what to do on reaching Ulmesh. First, he would quarter the city and see if Gus could find any of his team. With luck, he might find one or two of them that way, but with buildings interfering with the signals he’d need to be closer than a mile. Then he needed to find an expert on portals, someone who could explain how he’d got here and how he might get back.

  The rest of his plan was all hole and no doughnut. According to Hetlagh only a few human traders spoke Aramaic, so even talking to people wouldn’t be simple. Picking up the local dialect was going to be a painful experience, even with Gus’s help. He didn’t have a knack for languages, to his great regret.

  Thought of reaching Ulmesh was put far from his mind when, at noon of the second day, eighteenth of October, he saw brown-cloaked orcs in the trees.

  How long the orcs had trailed them, Sly didn’t know. He only saw them because he’d unexpectedly stopped to tie his boot. Inverted, he caught sight of tall shapes emerging from the treeline into the clearing, two hundred yards behind.

  When he stood and turned, they were gone.

  Sly looked at Gutlat, wondering if he knew. He had his answer when the orc grabbed his upper arm, took him off the main path and hurried along a narrow trail that climbed a bank to their left. Gutlat impressed Sly with how quietly he moved and before long the pair were trotting along the ridge on a deer path. The young orc clearly knew the area well and lengthened his stride. Sly ran to keep up but after about four miles he slowed to a walk, wanting to take a drink.

  Gutlat looked down at him without expression. The orc gestured forward, held up three fingers, then crooked his hand to the right, and held up two fingers. Then he raised his palm. Sly interpreted all that to mean they would stop after about five fingers of distance. His feet desperately wanted to know how far a ‘finger’ was, but he let the orc start again. Another half an hour later he was panting, needing more water, but this time Gutlat appeared satisfied.

  Sly looked around. They were now far away from the main road, in foothills surrounded by the sound of fast-moving streams. Willows hung like stringy-haired ogres over the close-cropped grass and dancing silver flowers of their clearing. In many ways it was idyllic but Sly was hot and uncomfortable. When he stood, ready to make a move, he was startled to see Gutlat put his hand out and offer to take his pack. Sly shook his head, refastened the straps, and followed to the path.

  Now the trail wandered uphill through cold, deep pools sunk into the limestone, rimmed by wand-like reeds and beds of soft olive-green moss on the banks. Gutlat marched them on at a good pace, as if he had somewhere he needed to be. Sly made no complaint about the speed or direction, even when the sun began its slow slide to the west.

  Gutlat slowed around four in the afternoon. By then they were deep in the foothills, hiking through a rocky area with no good paths. The orc gently pushed Sly on ahead, up an incline where a clan of rabbits, or a similar burrower, had made a trail. Sly did as he was urged, trusting his companion wasn’t lost.

  Sly reached the top of the bank seeing only gloom ahead of him, and had half turned to question the orc when he felt a fist on the top of his bag and a big hand between his shoulder blades. Gutlat pushed and pulled at the same time as Sly cried out in surprise and fell forward, feet scrambling for purchase on the gravel.

  Then one of the backpack straps gave way. For a moment Sly hung to the fabric of the other strap by the hook of his arm, leaning at forty-five degrees. Saw the curve of a wicked sharp knife behind and a yawning circular hole below, like the maw of a creature of endless shadows. Heard his own cry echo from the dank pit.

  Gutlat looked at Sly with black eyes that didn’t show human emotion, as orcs weren’t made that way. Sly half-expected a villainous soliloquy to explain why, after miles, this was where the treachery would take place, but unlike in stories there was no explanation.

  Only excellence in execution.

  The big knife reversed, sliced up. The backpack’s webbing split on the edge, ripped and gave. With a final wrench the bag disappeared from Sly’s grasp, taking with it the strapped-on helmet and nearly everything he’d brought here.

  Sly had jumped from a plane and the vertiginous lurch back wasn’t terrifying, in and of itself. Equally the feeling of leaning and letting go, his feet over a high drop, held little fear. Instead, the anticipation of falling without parachute or rope, and knowing this was how all his plans ended, was horrific. Terror filled his veins like a liquid fire with nowhere to go. Without volition he gasped, clutched, and clawed, boot heels on the edge, flailing instinctively.

  He hovered in the lap of inertia for one blessed moment… two.

  Then the fall into the pit began again, and time caught up with all his hopes.

  One arm hit the rough inner wall of the aperture, a hand scraped the surface without purchase, only succeeding in freeing pebbles from the wall and blood from his nails. In the next half-second the tough armour on his back hit something hard, spun him around, and that was the last Sly saw of Gutlat’s broad face leaning out. Sly’s shoulder struck rock an instant before the same hard boulder slammed into his skull.

  The world switched off –

  – rebooting when freezing water pummelled back, arms and legs. Eyes sprang open to darkness, except for a single circular light high above. The ghostly radiance from the pit’s entrance illuminated a torrent of silver bubbles, squeezed from aching lungs. Arms thrashed for the light and hands grasped for the surface of the water, as they’d sought the bag’s severed straps.

  His face burst from the pool, gulping water and air in equal measure before he was sucked back to the muted world beneath. His head spun and for a long instant he lost himself in the cold silence.

  Was this a pursuit through a lightless city carved in rock?

  Was my wretched life since only a dream?

  Or was it another training wipe-out like the time he’d stuck the North Sea, towering waves resembling spume-topped mounds of grey unyielding asphalt, and watched the helicopter’s spotlights moving away?

  He re-surfaced, air exploding out from him.

  The insanity of his life returned, volume on full.

  The silver light above was Sly’s only illumination, small and occluded like a crescent moon or a half-lidded eye. He’d fallen into a pit shaped like an amphora, bulbous walls flaring out from a narrow neck... not that he could see much of the walls in the dark. Now he was swimming, the deep pool was all there was, a moonlit mirror distorted by ripples where his body breached its surface.

  He trod water until his mind cleared enough to think. The bullet-proof material of his armour was buoyant, but the ceramic plates were heavy and he needed to work hard to stay afloat. While his legs kicked, his head demanded answers.

  Treacherous Gutlat – not a good lad – had snatched his backpack even while shoving him into this hole. But why?

  Gutlat had known the pit was here. Had guided him here to toss him in.

  Which made no sense.

  Any time in the last few hours, while he was asleep or walking ahead, Gutlat might have sunk that sharp knife into his chest or back and taken the backpack intact, if that were his aim. Murder needn’t have taken so long.

  Perhaps Gutlat was squeamish – a strange thing to accuse an orc of being, but Sly knew the species better after talking to Hetlagh. Male orcs’ sense of honour imbued their lives, they had evolved to seek honour even as humans sought sweet, salt and fat. Their culture took a natural drive and gave it twisted form. An orc would charge a line of spears or gut himself with a butter knife, if his honour demanded it. If Gutlat was told to dispose of Sly by someone he was honour-bound to obey, he’d have done it without delay. But if his instruction conflicted with another duty he might choose the path of least resistance, one that let him keep his self-respect.

  Had Gutlat wanted the cave to kill him, so he could keep his hands clean?

  That felt close enough to the truth for now. He left it there as he squinted for the edge of the pool. Without Clarity he might not have seen it at all, but the glimmer from the oculus above was enough to trigger augmented night-vision on his left side, and suddenly there was the beach.

  This was not Prospect Lake Beach. The rocks were sharp except when they were slick with bat guano, or some other gunk, and the strip of exposed stones was short. There was no Beach House, no water sports and no pets, with or without a leash. Nevertheless, there was much swimming and wading, and a great sense of relief when he pulled himself from the water, which rapidly morphed to anguish as he grasped his crappy situation.

  A sidearm and an extra clip of ammunition were on his belt next to a small clasp-knife, but he had no food or water bottle. Worse, the red potions Hetlagh gifted to him were in the bag her son had taken, along with Greyhair’s code book. Worse, the shades were in the same bag.

  While Sly could see the cave pool reasonably well and could even spot the drips sparkling as they fell like gems from the ceiling, Clarity’s light intensification technology relied on radiance of some kind – he couldn’t see in total dark. If Sly couldn’t figure out a way to climb through the amphora’s neck, he’d be forced to explore for an exit through pitch-black tunnels. There, in the perfect dark away from any kind of light, the technology in his head offered no advantage. He’d be blind.

  “Gus, withdraw agency support from the shades.”

  It was a small, almost petty thing to do, but without Gus’s infrastructure the shades became a glorified camera. A pause for another recalibration, then the AI confirmed it had erased its agent from the lost equipment.

  It took an hour but by then both he and Gus were satisfied there was no way to leave the cave the way he entered. He couldn’t climb the walls without ropes and other equipment, and he was freezing, famished and drained. He shivered until he was dry. Then he struggled into damp clothes and armour, before looking for another way out.