Khula.
Looking at the women before her, she made her decision.
This task should not be hers alone, but the duty of all the women of the tribe; for within each of them burned the spirits of Scaroth’s wives. It was they who had kept alive the contempt for that long-dead idiot king, they who had raised up a new society founded on the principle of avoiding his mistakes. The killing of the dragon was as much their right and destiny as it was Khula’s.
When she explained this to the women, there was a moment of silence in which she thought she had lost them, but then Yana’s sister — Lynca — came and knelt at her feet. Khula stared blankly at her until Lynca nudged the blade of the enchanted sword and held out her right hand, palm up. She marked Lynca’s hand with the tip of the weapon and as the black blood dripped onto the rocks, each female member of the tribe came forward in turn to be similarly marked.
The women hissed and howled as a strange, dark passion overtook them; they beat their chests and tore their clothes — some even mounted the men not swift enough to flee the mania that gripped the tribe, leaping on them and rutting with savage desire in the dirt. Next, the dragon costume from the play was pulled apart and burned, and the ashes from the pyre used to mark the women’s flesh. Finally one of the men of the tribe was dressed as Scaroth, the women circling and taunting him, clawing at his face and arms — hissing and growling, panting and shrieking — until, with one decisive blow, Khula removed his head from his shoulders.
The women bowed their heads in silence as a warm rain fell.
From somewhere in the mountains the creature roared again.
Looking at those gathered before her — bloodied and marked for battle — Khula raised the obsidian sword and answered the dragon’s roar with one of her own.
“Did you hear that?” Silus said, bringing their party to a halt.
They looked up at the high walls enclosing them, but all they could hear was the sound of their own breathing echoing through the narrow canyon.
Keldren’s translocation spell had brought them to deep within the World’s Ridge Mountains. So high and forbidding were the peaks here that even at its zenith the sun barely rose above them, leaving them to scrabble and stumble their way along in an almost perpetual darkness.
“Hear what?” Dunsany said.
“It doesn’t matter. I thought I heard a cry.”
“Couldn’t you have located us somewhere closer to our target?” Kelos said, turning to Keldren.
“I can assure you that the dragon is somewhere within these very peaks,” he said. “I have it on very good authority. Alymere the Amazing wouldn’t lead me astray.”
“Sorry… hang on,” Dunsany said. “You took advice from someone calling themselves Alymere the Amazing? What is he, a children’s entertainer?”
“Yes. But he used to be one of the most respected sorcerers in Miramas’s Red Cadre, until a certain unfortunate event. After his expulsion he remade himself as an entertainer. Even so, he knows these peaks like the back of his hand, and often comes into the mountains to conduct his arcane research.”
Dunsany shook his head and continued along the canyon.
After they had gone not much more than twenty yards, Silus raised his right hand sharply, bringing them to a halt again. This time, however, there was no question that something lay ahead of them; all could hear the inhuman wails and growls from beyond the next turn.
Certain childhood tales came back to Silus then — stories of goblins and ogur, things from the mountains that occasionally ventured into the human realm to snatch babies and mutilate livestock. He had never given such tales much credence, even as a small boy, believing them to be nothing more than the cider-fuelled folk fears of a simplistic people. Now he wasn’t so sure. After all, nobody he knew had ever been into the World’s Ridge Mountains. The peaks that defiantly bordered the far east of the peninsula were so hostile, and seemingly endless, that not even the hardiest of adventurers dared approach their foothills. There could be far worse than goblins and ogur here.
Dunsany and Kelos joined Silus, all drawing their swords as quietly as possible before, as one, cautiously peering around the corner.
Ahead of them the canyon opened out onto a boulder strewn plane. Swarming across this barren landscape were creatures straight out of the horror stories of Silus’s childhood.
“Orcs,” Kelos whispered. “Or, to be more precise, orc women. Strange, I’ve never seen so many gathered together in a group like this. Usually they’re to be found in their settlements, tending to the needs of their menfolk, or kept as broodmares. What we have here would appear to be an-”
“Army,” Keldren finished, pushing past them to get a closer look.
“Careful!” Kelos hissed. “We don’t want to be seen.”
But it was too late; a fearsome creature wearing only a tattered cloth shift about her loins and wielding a battered sword turned as the wizard edged out of the shadows of the canyon. She hissed, revealing needle-like teeth in a mouth as dark as night. The twenty or so women behind her showed their own teeth in warning, yet they made no move to attack.
“How curious,” Keldren said, as though he were doing nothing more than examining a particularly interesting work of art or an ancient text. “I have never heard of orc women banding together in this manner.”
Despite her ferocious appearance, the leader of the orcs made no move towards the wizard. Instead, she looked at him with an inquisitive expression, her head cocked to one side.
“I should like to examine one of these things.” Keldren held out his hand and muttered something under his breath, and a malnourished-looking orc came stumbling towards him, bone knife dropping from suddenly limp fingers. “But transporting a live specimen would be problematic.” He snapped his fingers and the orc dropped to the ground, blood-specked mucus frothing from her lips. “There. We’ll come back for this one later.”
Keldren looked round at his companions, only to be greeting by a host of shocked expressions.
“Oh, the rest of these creatures you can kill. I have no use for them.” He gestured, dropping another orc with a quickly worded spell.
The creatures attacked, their cries resounding from the surrounding peaks, making it seem like there were more of them than there actually were. They fought fiercely and with determination, and when the leader clashed swords with Silus he had to defend himself against a furious rain of blows. But he knew something of the monstrous himself and, staring into the demented eyes of the orc, he found the well of savagery deep within and drew on it, fighting back with animalistic glee.
Katya had hurried Zac away at the first sign of trouble. Alongside Silus, Dunsany, Kelos and Emuel now held the line, using the narrow mouth of the canyon to their advantage, preventing the orcs from flanking them. Even outnumbered, the humans were a match for the orcs, though much of this may have been down to the magical support supplied by Keldren. Any creature not killed by a sword was slain by sorcery. Only the leader of this tribe seemed unaffected by the magic, each spell seemingly absorbed by the black sword she wielded.
Silus’s opponent was tiring, but so was he. The pause between each exchange grew longer as they circled each other. Any openings were quickly closed by a feint or a parry and it was becoming clear to Silus that his opponent was his equal in every way. As they moved out onto the plain, he became aware that the rest of the orcs were dead, their black blood slick on the pale rock. This fact only dawned on the leader when a wide swing of her weapon brought her around and she could finally see what had happened to her army. A look of such human sorrow crossed the creature’s face that Silus arrested his next blow.
He scrambled to raise his guard, realising that he had left himself wide open, but the orc didn’t take advantage of the opportunity. She was making a strange mewling in the back of her throat, her sword dropping from limp fingers, as she knelt and examined one of the corpses.
Silus knew grief when he saw it, and he remembered that it had not been the orcs that had started the fight, but Keldren’s indiscriminate killing.
He stepped back and left the orc to her grief, sheathing his blade.
“What are you waiting for?” Keldren shouted. “Kill it!”
Katya and Zac had emerged from the canyon now. For a moment it seemed as if Katya would shield her son’s eyes from the slaughter, but she dropped her hand, realising the futility of the gesture; the boy had seen so much
