from THE UNDERGOD
FARCHRIST TALES - BOOK THREE
Speculative Fiction
Approximately 69,000 words
Copyright © Eric Lanke, 1991. All rights reserved.
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Amanda took my father’s advice to leave the City Beneath the
Castle. She left the very next day, after the body had been found and as the
town began to buzz about the possible scandals and reasons for the death of one
of their finest. She heard many rumors, some of which were shockingly close to
the truth and others that could only have been made up by a madman. It was a
warm sunny day when my mother fled from the city of her birth to seek anonymity
in one of the smaller hamlets of the Farchrist Empire. She took everything she
could pack onto one stubborn mule she had bought from a family friend for three
silver pieces and headed out on the North Road. She spent a night in Ladysmith,
but decided it was too close to home, and moved on the next day on the East
Road. The next town was a small one called Scalt and, as she rode through it, she
saw a sign in the window of a small tavern. She tied her mule to the hitching
post, took down the sign, and went into The Quarter Pony to start a new life.
+
+ +
Brisbane was kicked awake by
Snaggletooth a few minutes after dawn. The ork grumbled at him and roughly
helped him to his feet. The night on the ground had left him even more stiff
and sore, and he could still feel the tautness in his face that could only be
swelling. The orks had either already eaten breakfast or had skipped that meal
because they were all packed and ready to continue on their journey. Within
thirty seconds of being kicked awake, Brisbane was back in his position in the
line-up, fighting with the rope that connected his feet to match the tireless
pace of the orks. He did not remember the dream he had the night before.
He was miserable in the early
morning sun. He felt terrible, his entire body one massive ache with small
regions of flaring pain, one in his stomach, another in his face, and the last
in the small of his back, where Snaggletooth had delivered a particularly swift
kick. His hands had gone numb again and his twisted shoulders were beginning to
develop a numbness of their own. He felt like he was choking on his gag and the
rag in his mouth had lost all of its moisture during the night. It now tasted
like dust.
But his physical misery was
nothing compared to his mental anguish. Brisbane simply did not see how he was
going to survive another day of the forced march. His hunger had returned with
the morning, but unlike the sunrise, it seemed larger than it had been the day
before. Knowing the orks, he could expect no food until they camped again for
another night, and his stomach complained loudly that was much too far away.
The hunger left him strapped of all his energy, and he wondered how much longer
he would be able to shamble along like a zombie freshly returned from the
grave.
For the first time he found
himself wondering why he hadn’t just died when he plunged over the falls above
the lost temple of Grecolus. The thought entered his head for the first time
and it was quickly followed by the angry, and yet somehow still pacifying,
voice of Angelika.
No! Do not entertain such thoughts, Brisbane. You and I are
destined for better things.
He raised his head and fixed his
reddened eyes on his sword, still being carried in the eternal clutches of
Snaggletooth.
Angelika, he thought. I just don’t
know how much farther I can go.
There’s not much farther to go, Brisbane. Our journey will end today.
It will? How much farther is it? How do you know?
I know.
It helped Brisbane a little.
Today. If he could stay up just for today. Sometime today the hell would end.
It was enough to keep his mind pushing his body ever onward. It did not ease
his pain like, say, a healthy rub of Stargazer’s healing ointment—oh dear Grecolus, do you remember that
stuff, it was in your former life, you spread some on Roystnof’s back after the
attack of the ogres and the bruises faded a little right before your very eyes,
do you remember that, Gil, can you remember that—might have, but it allowed
him to endure the pain for a little while longer. He did not concern himself
with where he was going to be and what was going to happen to him when he got
there. He didn’t care. He only knew that before he had been lost in an eternity
of one foot in front of the other, and now, there was the promise that this
eternity wasn’t an eternity after all. It was just a long time. He knew because
Angelika had told him so.
And so he was able to push on. He
drove his body to the point of exhaustion, and then he drove it a little
farther. He had to stay up just for today. Today this madness would end.
Snaggletooth and the other orks
did not notice any superhuman effort coming from their prisoner. They knew
where they were going and how long it would take to get there. The human was
just extra baggage. They were glad he had given them as little trouble as he
had. They were only concerned about getting home, and when they got there, the
big human with the star around his neck would no longer be their
responsibility. For them, it would be feast, drink, and old stories around a
hot fire.
Brisbane did not care how she knew
it, but Angelika had been right. His forced march ended that day. It was in the
afternoon, far past noon but still early enough not to be troubled with finding
a place to camp for the night. The sounds of bustle and activity could be heard
from a long way off, but Brisbane was walking in a stupor of deaf ears, and he
had no idea they were approaching the orkish settlement until he was brought to
a halt by the ork holding onto his dead arms.
He looked up. He saw Snaggletooth
had stopped and he was talking to an ork he had never seen before. This new one
was also dressed in a mismatched set of black armor and he carried a shield
with a large red eye painted upon it. He had a sword belted at his side and in
his free hand was the leash of a dog, the breed of which Brisbane had never
seen before.
It was a large animal, about as
high as the ork’s waist at the shoulder with fur speckled in black, gray, and
white like the fine grains of sand on a beach. It had a short snout and tall
ears. Its eyes were bright orange and its teeth glistened white, wet with
spittle. The dog was sitting at attention beside its ork master, growling deep
in its throat.
Snaggletooth and the Dogmaster
were exchanging what sounded like pleasantries in their brackish language.
Brisbane wasn’t really paying attention to the sounds of their speech, but he
seemed somehow attuned to the word groo-mack
and, at its mention, he saw the Dogmaster begin to look him over suspiciously.
Snaggletooth then held Angelika up
for the Dogmaster’s examination but he did not give the weapon to the ork.
Talking all the while, Snaggletooth pointed out the large emerald in the base
of Angelika’s pommel and then tried unsuccessfully to draw her from her
scabbard. From a forgotten place deep inside of him, Brisbane’s wrath began to
build at the sight of the ork handling the sword, but Angelika’s voice quickly
echoed in his brain and calmed the tremors.
Snaggletooth and the Dogmaster
talked for a little while longer and then the Dogmaster walked his dog down the
length of their line, stopping beside each person to let the dog sniff them
over. The dog approached Brisbane first, still growling low in its throat.
Under other circumstances, he might have been embarrassed when the dog came up
to him and sniffed at his crotch, but in his present condition, he just added
it to the list of his personal tragedies since he had left his friends. Some of
the orks laughed when the Dogmaster had to forcefully pull the animal away from
Brisbane.
The other orks extended their
hands before the dog got close enough to invade their private areas. The dog
reacted favorably to each of the orks and, after the initial sniffing had been
taken care of, each ork gave the dog a friendly pat on the head. The Dogmaster
then returned to the head of the line and Snaggletooth slapped him on the back,
barking out what could only have been a warm goodbye. Brisbane was shoved
forward again.
The party continued over the rise
of another hill and Brisbane thought about what he had just experienced. It had
obviously been some sort of checkpoint, to control the flow in and out of
wherever it was they were going. That was interesting in itself, that the orks
would be organized enough to post and maintain such a patrol. It was the kind
of thing that required strong leadership to work properly. It was the kind of
thing one would expect to find around a fortification like Farchrist Castle,
but it was a bit remarkable to find it out here in the wastes of the Windcrest
Hills among a group of orks. But what really caught his attention was the dog,
and more directly, the Dogmaster.
The domestication of animals was
something Brisbane was sure most people would have put past the ability of an
ork. Most people thought of orks as little more than animals themselves. But
the Dogmaster had definite control over his animal. He remembered the way the
dog had sat, seemingly at attention, while its master chatted with Snaggletooth
about him and Angelika. That dog had not just been domesticated; it had been
trained, probably to do much more than to sniff at the genitals of strangers.
At every turn, Brisbane was seeing that these orks were much more than most
people thought they were. He decided most people were full of shit.
The small group topped the hill
they were climbing and started down its other side. Brisbane saw ahead of him,
sprawled in a short valley amidst a high group of rocky hills, the large extent
of the ork settlement.
It seemed to have little
organization. There were a few ramshackle buildings scattered over the village,
the most notable being what was obviously a kennel of some sort, giving its
function away by the barks of dozens of fenced-in dogs. Figures moved randomly
around the settlement, concentrated the thickest around the buildings. The settlement
seemed to grow more dense as it neared the sheer side of the hill on the
opposite side of the compound. The hill appeared to have been cut off by some
mechanical means and a large cave mouth had been dug into it. Periodically,
figures moved in and out of this cave mouth, and he could only assume the orks
had some sort of underground complex in there.
As he was marched down the hill
and into the settlement itself, Brisbane lost sight of his overview of the area
and began to see more and more detail. Most of the orks moving about were
dressed in ordinary, if dirty, clothing, but a few among their ranks wore the
typical set of black ork armor. Of those in regular clothes, females were by
far more numerous than males. They looked a lot like their male counterparts,
big and solidly built, having snouts and tusks smaller than those of the males
and less hair around their faces and necks. But they were most easily
distinguished from the males by the large pair of breasts each of them seemed
to have, pushing out the fabric of their dirty tunics. As Brisbane looked
around, he did not see a single female with anything near to what would be
considered normal for a human female. Some were almost freakish in their
proportions.
Nearly all the females were
engaged in some kind of handiwork. Mending clothes, preserving meat, or
cleaning weapons, they all seemed to have some task to perform. Each of them
also seemed to have a small litter of orkish children dancing around them,
making a good deal of noise and doing their best to turn the attention of the
females away from their work. As Brisbane was led through the settlement, the
children paused in their activities to watch him walk by, their eyes wide with
avid interest, only to lapse back into their foolishness after Brisbane had
passed.
He also saw a number of small
tents scattered between the few buildings. Their front flaps were open but he
saw almost no one sitting inside any of them. The day was warm, and Brisbane
figured they would stay empty until nightfall, when it would be necessary to
put all the unruly children to bed.
His impression of the settlement
as a whole was one of order amidst chaos. Out here in the wilderness the orks
had obviously carried on a productive society for some time. There seemed to be
no logic in the layout of the area—buildings, tents, and people scattered any
which way—but in the actions of the men and women he had witnessed so far,
Brisbane could see each ork had a job to do in their society and each ork did that
job well.
These perceptions did not rattle
off in his head like a lecture in sociology, he was in much too much physical
distress for that. But the inklings of them were there, tugging away at the
fringes of his conscious thoughts, reinforcing his idea that these orks were
much more than anyone had given them credit for being.
After marching Brisbane through
the center of the village, Snaggletooth stopped him when they arrived within a
hundred feet of the cave mouth Brisbane had seen from the distance. There were
many more armored orks in this area, all of them male and all of them carrying
shields with the red eye symbol. Lined up next to the cave mouth, radiating out
away from the small cliff face, were a row of structures that, from the distance,
Brisbane had thought were just another group of run-down buildings. They were
not. They were familiar for he had seen such things dozens of times in his
life, but they seemed out of place here in the ork settlement. They were circus
wagons.
There were five of them, lined up
like a train, the hitchings for a team of horses laying uselessly on the ground
and extending under the raised floor of each one’s neighbor. They were not the
happy, colorful models, the ones used to transport the circus people from town
to town in relative comfort. They were instead the ones used to transport
dangerous animals, constructed of heavy wood with two walls of thick iron bars
to cage the animal apart from innocent onlookers. They were not derelicts. They
were being used by the orks to cage animals, and those animals were human
beings.
Brisbane suddenly began to fight
against his bonds and his captors. The ork who had control of him from behind,
Brisbane thought it was Floppy, held firmly onto him and cruelly twisted his
arms, forcing him toward the circus wagon closest to the cave mouth. Had
Brisbane been rested and healthy, he might have been able to wrench himself
free from Floppy’s grasp, but in his weakened condition, it was no contest. He was
pushed steadily and painfully forward.
Snaggletooth took a key off a hook
driven into the wood of the wagon and opened the padlocked door on its front.
There was a small window in this door, guarded by small iron bars, which must
have once been used by the circus masters to look in on their animals. When
Snaggletooth had the door open, Floppy wrestled Brisbane up a step or two and
drove him into the circus wagon.
The floor was covered with dirty
straw and he stumbled face first into it. Before he could rise to his feet,
Brisbane heard the door shut behind him and the locking of the padlock.
Snaggletooth came around to the side of the wagon and he waved the key
mockingly in front of Brisbane’s swollen face. The ork then clipped it to a
ring at his belt and then, with Floppy and Half-Pint and the other two orks in
his charge, disappeared into the cave mouth.
The other orks in black armor who
stood around the area each looked Brisbane over for a while, but they kept
their distance and did not pester him. They muttered amongst themselves, but
their voices were low and, even if he could have understood their language, he
would not have heard what they said. Brisbane tried to ignore them as he
mentally went over his situation.
It did not look good. Here he was,
hurt, tied, and gagged, locked in a circus wagon deep inside an ork encampment.
He did not know where his friends were and he could expect no help from them.
The only orks he knew by sight were the ones who had captured him, and they
thought he was some kind of wizard. They had gone into the cave with his sword,
surely to report to their superiors, and he did not know when they were coming
back and who they would bring with them.
That was the down side. If there
was any up side at all, Brisbane supposed it would be that he was still alive.
The orks had beaten and starved him, but they had taken great pains to capture
and bring him here alive. They obviously wanted something from him, and as long
as Brisbane withheld it, he would retain his life if not his freedom. The
problem was he did not know what the orks wanted.
His thoughts suddenly turned to
those of the other people here in the orkish prison. He was alone in his wagon,
but he had seen other humans in the other cars. He wished he could remove his
gag so he could talk to them, so he could gain some kind of solace in the
company of misery, but with his hands tied behind his back, it was impossible.
Who were they? How had they been captured? What were the orks doing with them?
Did the orks eat them as Shortwhiskers had said? Use them as slaves? Had any of
them ever escaped? Could any of them help him? He had so many questions and so
few answers.
Some of the orks still watched
him, but they did not approach or try to communicate with him, and Brisbane
soon found himself with little else to do besides wait. He tried to make
himself comfortable in the dirty straw, but his injuries and hunger made it
difficult. How did this ever happen to him? It seemed that one moment he had
been standing in the hand of Grecolus, looking into the nest at the two eggs
and the dead ork, and the next he was being tied up with Snaggletooth on his
back. The attack of the bird-monster had been so swift he barely remembered it
happening. Its dark shape had appeared like a vision, slammed into him, and
knocked him from his perch in less than a second. The fall to the lake and over
the falls was a wet smear on his memory, and somewhere along the way he had
lost consciousness. It was terrifying to think his life could change so
drastically in such a short period of time. It was as if he had no choice at
all.
Brisbane did not know what was
going to happen to him but Angelika had promised they would have their revenge
on these orks if he would be patient and be strong. Well, he intended to do
just that. In his position, Angelika’s promise was better than no promise at
all, and Brisbane clung to it like a lifeline, a line to what his life had once
been. If any part of it was up to him at all, he was going to get his old life
back.
And so he sat there in the dirty
straw, being patient and being strong, waiting for something to happen which he
could control. He didn’t know how long he was going to have to wait in order to
get his chance, but at that moment, he was ready to wait until the end of time.
Brisbane sat in his prison for
about an hour before the orks took more than a passing notice of him. A group
of the armored orks with the red eye shields began to gather in front of his
wagon. They remained a respectable distance from him, but they were obviously
waiting for something to happen.
That something was the
re-emergence of Snaggletooth from the cave. The ork came striding out in the
daylight—without
Angelika, he left Angelika somewhere in that cave—followed by another ork
whose appearance and dress were like nothing Brisbane had ever seen before. He
was small for an ork, a little smaller than Half-Pint, and was dressed not in
black armor or dirty rags, but in rich red robes. They flowed down the length
of him with small sashes and belts of white to hold the many folds in place. He
wore a small pointed cap between his two pig ears and his face and hair were
immaculately clean. The ork wore a black patch over his left eye. Both the new
ork and Snaggletooth came forward and stood directly in front of Brisbane’s
cage.
The new ork, Brisbane being too
shocked at his appearance to think up a name for him, studied Brisbane for many
long minutes and then turned to Snaggletooth and muttered a few sentences to
him. Snaggletooth nodded his head and slowly backed away from the new ork,
stopping just before the gathered group of his black-armored comrades.
The new ork took a step closer to
Brisbane’s wagon and planted his fists on his hips, pushing several folds of
his robes away from his feet. He fixed his single eye on Brisbane’s face and,
for the first time, Brisbane noticed the ork’s eye was red.
“Well now,” the ork said. “What do
we have here? A wizard?”
It took Brisbane a moment to
realize the ork had spoken in the common tongue, and not his orkish language.
His teeth and lips gave the words a guttural accent, but they were
understandable. Brisbane tried to say something to the ork but only mumbles
could get past his gag.
The ork held up a placating hand.
“No, no, please don’t try to say anything. You’ll just embarrass yourself. We
know how to handle hostile prisoners, regardless of their personal powers.”
The ork had quite a command of the
common tongue. No simple animal here. Brisbane saw his hopes of early escape
slip down another notch. These orks were sharp.
“Personally,” the ork went on, “I
don’t believe He-Who-Watches would grant the power to a member of a race as
weak as yours, but as others have said, it is better to be safe than sorry.”
The ork then went silent and bowed
his head. He raised his arms and began to growl in the back of his throat. At
first, Brisbane could distinguish no difference between the growls of the ork
and those of the dog they had met at the perimeter of the settlement. But as he
listened more closely, he began to hear familiar tones and syllables in the
ork’s low speech. It wasn’t common tongue and it didn’t sound like the orkish
he had heard since his capture, and yet it was still familiar. It was—
With a shock Brisbane realized
where he had heard some of the ork’s strange words before. He had heard
Roystnof use them in his magical disciplines. The ork was casting a spell.
Brisbane listened more carefully. He could only understand a fraction of the
words, either due to his inexperience with magic or the ork’s harsh
pronunciation.
But magic words were exacting.
They had to be pronounced perfectly or they would not function. Indeed, the
words Brisbane could understand were uttered correctly, so he had to assume the
ork was using many words unfamiliar to him. It might even be a completely
different kind of magic, like Roystnof had said Dantrius’ was. Brisbane began
to get very nervous about just what may happen to him.
The ork was soon finished with his
spell and he lowered his arms and raised his head. Brisbane looked at himself
and his surroundings. He could discern no difference in him or them. The ork
signaled to Snaggletooth and he came up to the front of Brisbane’s cage and drew
his sharp knife.
“If you will turn around and slip
your hands through the bars,” the robed ork said to Brisbane, “Vrak will now
sever your bonds.”
Brisbane slowly did as he was
told. Snaggletooth—Vrak, his real name is
Vrak—slipped his knife between his wrists and, with one quick pull, cut the
straps that had bound them together. Brisbane quickly moved away from the bars
and began to massage his numb and swollen hands.
Vrak moved back to stand next to
the robed ork, who Brisbane’s mind began to call Wizard.
“You may also remove your gag,”
Wizard said to him. “It no longer matters. Any powers you might possess have
been neutralized.”
Brisbane forced his aching
fingers, rising from their comas with the flow of blood back into them, to undo
the knot behind his head and he spat his gag out onto the floor.
“Wha—” he croaked, his voice
failing him on his first attempt to use it. “What do you mean, neutralized?”
Some of the orks behind Wizard and
Vrak seemed to shrink away from the scene and their mumbles grew louder.
Wizard looked at Brisbane as if he
was an animal to be trained. “This is the first and last question I will answer
for you. I have cast a spell over your cage so no magic will work there. If you
really do have the mark of He-Who-Watches, I encourage you to attempt to call
forth your power.”
Brisbane did nothing.
Wizard smiled. “I thought not.
Tomorrow, you will answer my questions.” He turned with a flourish and went
back into the cave with Vrak right on his heels.
Brisbane rubbed his aching hands
and tried to ignore the group of orks who did not disperse with Wizard’s exit.