But Hulburg isn’t, Geran thought. Or at least, it never used to be.
The harmach shook himself and motioned to the door. “No reason to stand here in the cold,” the old man said. “Come, Geran, you must see your young cousins Natali and Kirr. They’ve heard quite a few stories about the Hulmaster who’s off seeing the wide world. You are something of a marvel to them, even if you don’t know it.”
The swordmage pulled his gaze away from his cousin’s back. He had a feeling that he would see more of Sergen soon enough, whether he wanted to or not. Instead, he summoned a wry smile for his uncle. “I’m no marvel, but I suppose I have seen some marvelous things in my travels,” he said. “I’ll try not to disappoint them.”
THREE
12 Ches, the Year of the Ageless One
Two hours before sunset, the orc-hold began to stir. Warriors rose from their pallets, stretching and yawning, heavy canines gleaming yellow in the dim light. Females stoked the cookfires, fed the livestock, and began their long round of drudgery and toil. The young scurried about underfoot, fetching water and firewood, emptying chamberpots, and tending to the scraggly goats, sheep, and fowl penned within the crudely built fortress. Orcs disliked the brightest hours of the day, and therefore the hold took its rest from shortly after sunrise to the late afternoon. Only the scouts, the sentries, and those young given the job of minding the herds in the fields nearby stayed awake through the bright hours of morning and midday.
The warchief Mhurren roused himself from his sleeping-furs and his women and pulled a short hauberk of heavy steel rings over his thick, well-muscled torso. He usually rose before most of his warriors, since he had a strong streak of human blood in him, and he found the daylight less bothersome than most of his tribe did. Among the Bloody Skulls, a warrior was judged by his strength, his fierceness, and his wits. Human ancestry was no blemish against a warrior-provided he was every bit as strong, enduring, and bloodthirsty as his full-blooded kin. Half-orcs who were weaker than their orc comrades didn’t last long among the Bloody Skulls or any other orc tribe for that matter. But it was often true that a bit of human blood gave a warrior just the right mix of cunning, ambition, and self-discipline to go far indeed, as Mhurren had. He was master of a tribe that could muster two thousand spears, and the strongest chief in Thar.
Yevelda sat up when he threw off the furs. She was his favorite wife, a tigress with more human than orc in her, much like himself. Slender as a switch of willow by the standards of most of the tribe’s women, she made up for her small size and clean features with catlike reflexes and pure, fierce intensity. With a knife in her hand, she was more deadly than many male warriors twice her weight. Even when he took her to the sleeping-furs, Mhurren never really let his guard down around her. She cuffed his two lesser wives, Sutha and Kansif, awake.
“Rise, you two,” Yevelda said. “See to the kitchens and make sure our guests are looked after. They judge our husband by the table you set. Do not disappoint me.”
The junior wives scrambled quickly out of the furs. Yevelda had shown more than once that she was quick to beat one, the other, or both if she had to repeat herself. Kansif was a young, full-blooded girl who was thoroughly cowed by the half-orc woman and desperate to please her. Sutha, on the other hand… Sutha was an older and far more cunning woman, the first of the three to have shared Mhurren’s furs and a strong-willed priestess in her own right. She was a strong, fit mixed-blood who was not at all happy about having been supplanted by Yevelda as Mhurren’s favorite. The chieftain guessed that Sutha was well along in several plots against Yevelda, but it wouldn’t do to intervene. If the favorite couldn’t keep the lesser wives in their place, then she wasn’t fit to be the favorite, was she? As she left, Sutha brushed by him with a sly smile and let her hand trail over the thick mail of his broad chest, moving just quickly enough to deprive Yevelda of a reason to chastise her.
Mhurren grinned in appreciation as he watched his lesser wives dress themselves and hurry from his chambers. Then he moved over to the slitlike window and brushed the heavy curtain out of the way. The day was bright, and faint hints of green growth speckled the gray hills and moorlands surrounding Bloodskull Hold. Thar was a hard land, barely suitable for a few scrawny herds of livestock, but with the coming of spring the passes would soon open, and he’d be able to send hunting parties to the mountain vales and the open steppeland beyond. It would be good for his warriors to have something to do. Too many of his orcs were growing bored and restless after the long winter, and that usually spelled trouble.
He glanced to his left and scowled. The camp of the Vaasans was still there, perched in the shelter of a rocky tor a quarter-mile from the hold’s walls. In the center of the humans’ tents stood a small tower of iron, summoned up out of nothing at all by the Vaasan lord’s magic. The humans had shown his tribe every respect, sending fine gifts ahead of their emissaries, and his scouts had counted an escort of almost two hundred spears for the lord they sent to speak to him-a sign of the man’s importance. But the fact remained that if negotiations were to take an ugly turn, he was not sure that he could drive the Vaasan company away from his keep, not with the sort of magic the black-clad humans evidently commanded.
“What do they want with me?” he growled.
Yevelda stretched out atop the furs, deliberately not covering herself to remind him why she was his favorite. She answered him, even though he had not meant the question for her. “You will find out soon enough,” she said in her throaty purr. “But if you must guess, then ask yourself this: What does the Vaasan lack?”
Mhurren grimaced in annoyance. Along with her straight, smooth limbs and dusky beauty, Yevelda’s human blood blessed her with the same sort of fiery ambition and quick curiosity he himself possessed. She had a mind every bit as sharp as his own and seemed to feel that entitled her to help him rule over the Bloody Skulls. In truth, Yevelda might just be clever, strong, and ruthless enough to govern the tribe without him, but it was rare indeed for any woman, no matter how exceptional, to rule as queen over orc warriors. “He’s here to bribe me to attack the Skullsmashers,” he guessed. “The stupid ogres don’t have enough sense to leave the Vaasans alone, so they send this man Terov to find my price for an alliance against King Guld and his band of dimwits.”
“What price would you demand for your aid?”
“Gold, furs, wine, good steel… and some assurance that the Vaasans will actually fight. I’ll be damned if I let my warriors get mashed to bloody pulp by the ogres while the Vaasans sit back and watch us kill each other.”
Yevelda rolled over onto her belly and looked up at him. “It depends which warriors, doesn’t it? I can think of a couple I wouldn’t be sorry to lose.”
Mhurren barked a short, harsh laugh. “True enough. The warriors grow restless, and it would be good to find someone to fight. My berserkers are ready to turn on each other. But I can’t let the tribe think the Vaasans played me for a fool. That would look weak.” He reached out and slapped her shapely flank. “I go to see what he thinks my price is.”
He buckled on his weapon harness and padded out of his den. Six fierce warriors with the elaborate facial scarring of the Skull Guard waited for him. They grounded the butts of their spears against the stone and shouted, “Kai! Kai!” when Mhurren appeared.
Without another word they fell in around him and escorted him through the keep’s tortuous passageways and cramped guardchambers, brutally striking and shouldering aside any who got in their way. Mhurren was as sure of their loyalty as he could be. He made sure that his personal guards freely plundered the rest of the tribe. Should anything ever happen to him, the warriors of the Skull Guard would not long survive his demise. And, just to be sure, years ago he’d had Sutha lay fearsome curses and compulsions on each Skull Guard with her priestess magic. But Sutha was likely not very pleased with him at the moment, not as long as Yevelda was first among his wives… he would be wise to have one of the battle-sorcerers or priests of Gruumsh test the spells that ensured his guards’ loyalty. If, of course, he could find a spellcaster other than Sutha that he trusted.
No matter, he told himself. The game was to remain chief as long as he could, father a son strong enough to succeed him, and try not to kill the whelp-or let the whelp kill him-before he was ready. But that day was still many long years off.
The warchief marched into the keep’s great hall, a long, low-ceilinged room with thick pillars holding up a simple masonry vault. Four heavy braziers full of red-glowing coals illuminated the room. The walls were bedecked with the trophies the tribe had taken over the years-the crudely preserved skulls of hundreds of enemies, steeped in a crimson dye so that they always looked as if they were fresh and gory. Dwarves, humans, goblins, orcs, ogres, gnolls, even a handful of giants, all were represented among the dangling bones. The tribe’s priests knew the story of each one. Some were mighty enemies the Bloody Skulls had bested. Some were enemies known to have fallen
