30. Interlude (Patreon)

Chapter 30

Interlude

Urgal stood on the cliff edge, looking at the expansive valley below him and even higher peaks in the distance. He was an honored forerunner to the Great Host, and just like all the days since the title had been bestowed upon him, he could see nothing in their path ahead that was a threat to the enormous army. They were still many hundreds of miles from their destination, the human city of Treledyne, but the distance did not trouble Urgal; they would arrive when they did.

His scouting for the time done, he turned and made his way down the goat path he had used to reach the high vantage. He had had his five balls of Chaos summoned, as he always did on such forays, the Source aiding his awareness of the constant changes happening all around. His thick green feet did not need protection from boots, and he felt each rock and rift in the cliff side, adjusting his weight accordingly with every step so that he did not fall. The wind picked up, pulling at him, cold and trying to tug him over the edge, but he found the play on his skin refreshing, like a mouthful of icy river water. As for its attempts to hurl him sideways, the challenge was a worthy one, and he was smiling around his short tusks when he reached the flat land at the thrill of having lived through it.

Turning away from the edge and working his way inward, it wasn’t long before the harsh words of the one named Reesk reached him. The high-pitched complaining tempered Urgal’s mood and slowed his steps. All scouting parties were composed in this way now, with a member of each of the three armies present, but he had yet to grow used to the mixed company, particularly the demon. All she knew how to do was be angry.

Pushing past a low branch, Urgal entered the depression they would be camping in for the evening. Reesk already had a fire going, as she did every night – apparently, her kind held a bitter hatred of the cold. Off to the side stood Calbrin the wight, dressed in rusted armor, his bluish skin pulled tight over a human skeleton, white hair trailing in wisps behind his head.

At Urgal’s arrival the demon whipped around, her long tail aiding the maneuver. Spiky balls of Nether hovered over her, and she lifted a card in a taloned hand to cast before seeing that it was him. Her face – long and pointed, spikes jutting from hard ridges around her eyes – tightened together, a look Urgal had come to know meant displeasure.

“You’re supposed to make a sound when you come back,” she shrieked in a voice that reminded Urgal of a hawk diving toward a kill. “Two raps on a tree trunk. Is that so hard to remember?”

“There were no limbs thick enough in my path,” Urgal answered simply.

She hissed in disgust, hunching, trying to get every part of herself as close as she could to the flame. The behavior made little sense to Urgal. Among the orcs, only children were allowed to hide from what was, and only when very young. Once they saw how those older than them lived by accepting the world as it came, it wasn’t long before they adopted the wiser attitude themselves.

Urgal tried to model the same for the demon, paying no heed to the cool air and striding over to Calbrin, who was their hunter. The wight had no need of sustenance himself and wasn’t particularly fast, but he still managed to catch them game each day. Urgal would have preferred to do the trapping himself and leave the surveying of the land to the undead. However, during the first leg of their journey together, he and Reesk had discovered that Calbrin had very poor long sight, despite the wight claiming it was better than most of his kind.

Much like the weather, Urgal accepted the situation for what it was, taking the two scrawny rabbits Calbrin gave him and walking them over to Reeks to have her pick. With barely a look, she selected the plumper of the two, as she did every time when given the choice. Urgal stood there a moment, while the demon turned with her prize back to the fire, weighing his heart to see if her behavior bothered him. Hunger ate at him more than annoyance, it turned out, so he stepped away to find a flatter piece of land to sit on. One day her selfishness would lead him to batter her into the dirt, but it seemed today was not that day.

Seating himself cross-legged, Urgal tore into the hide of the raw rabbit, not bothering to skin it or hold it over the flame as Reesk was. Neither the demon nor the wight kept their Source summoned, which he understood even less than building fires. Orcs were rarely without their Sources, and certainly not when doing things that involved the senses, like eating, fighting, or child-making. With his Chaos, Urgal could taste the fresh grass the rabbit had eaten, some mushroom even, the flavors mixing in the juice of the meat and making him hungry for more.

In contrast, Reesk held the rabbit over the fire until it was nearly blackened. After multiple nights of watching her do the same, Urgal had decided that she must like the crunch of such fare.

As he ripped the last of the flesh from the bones of his small meal, a thought entered his mind, and Urgal gave it voice, honoring the moment. “Why do your leaders have the same name?”

The question had been directed to the demon, and she paused after swallowing a whole leg. “Yveda? It means they have both single-handedly killed a creature of high Epic Rarity: one a Silver Wyrm that coiled in the depths, the other a Void Demon swollen with Nether. It is only two names down from our great Akkanos, Primarch of all Demons,” she added in a tone that indicated the information should impress.

Killing things was a worthy skill, Urgal could agree, but to earn a name through the act? “What do you call your young then? And do not many of you end up having the same name?”

“We are nothing before our first kill,” the demon snapped, “and of course scores of demons bear identical names. That way you know what our value is with a single word. There are only nineteen other Reesks in the war camp,” she preened, then, almost as an afterthought, she asked, “What were you named for?”

“The shape my mother’s birthing fluid made on the earth when I was pulled from her.”

The demon twisted her elongated face. “How can ‘Urgal’ mean that?”

“How can anything we make here,” – Urgal pointed a finger to his mouth and then lifted it to his eyes – “mean what we see here? It simply does.”

“An orcish philosopher,” the wight hissed with a rasping chuckle, joining the conversation though he remained standing, still as death.

Urgal felt no kinship to that particular title. As a tracker and forager, he often spent long stretches away from his kin, and during those times his thoughts wandered, as natural as the clouds drifting through the sky. Names were also his gift. Ever since the Wills had seen fit to bless him with a Common Soul, his Forestcraft skill told him the secrets of forest plants and creatures as if he had always known them. If the Wills had so easily given him those names, surely they must have decided on names for all other things, too.

“You will forgive me if I engage in an old pastime of mine, yes?” the wight asked.

Urgal had nothing to do until the sun set, so he shrugged his shoulders in assent. Calbrin’s responding smile showed teeth rotted brown and swollen lump that might have once been a tongue.

“It is my understanding,” the wight hissed, “that your people dislike the act of controlling the world – one of the reasons you detest humans and their Order so much. Yet, isn’t the act of naming one of control, of enforcing Order upon things?”

Urgal frowned, the question making little sense to him. “I do not control the tree by naming it alder or oak, any more than you control me by speaking my name aloud.”

“Perhaps…” the wight hissed, and there was another long pause before it spoke again, which neither Urgal nor Reesk chose to fill. “It is said that before the Fixed and Fluid entities came to power, the races, both high and low, all spoke with different voices, different languages. I wonder what your people, if you existed back then, would have called each other, if anything at all.”

Urgal shrugged. Had had heard the Wills called such names before, but he cared for the past about as much as he cared for the future: both were a distraction from the now.

“What will you do if the orcs do not go to war?” Reesk asked the wight, gnawing on the remains of her burnt rabbit.

Calbrin turned its dead eyes onto the demon while also giving the impression that it was still watching Urgal.

“We did not march from the heart of the Red Desert to hang our hopes on the whims of the orcs. I may not be privy to the plans of Countess Felstrife, but after two long centuries of service, I know her mind well enough. I am sure she has contingencies should the need arise.”

More planning that did not interest Urgal, and Reesk didn’t seem particularly impressed by the wight’s words either.

“Contingencies,” the demon spat. “Power is all that matters, and our Demon Lords are brimming with it. Either of them alone could level Treledyne.”

“The Countess could easily do the same,” Calbrin replied haughtily, a fly buzzing out of a hole in his throat. “With the wave of one hand she could end every living creature in the city without an inner Soul card, and with a wave of the other she could raise them all to fight for her cause.”

If they were to compare the might of their leaders, Urgal felt obliged to champion his own. “Targu’Thal has not been wounded since his Soul became Mythic, his skin tougher than any bone, stone, or blade. He can lift a full-grown lonyx over his head, and his ax” – Urgal could see the Legendary Relic in his mind – “Horak’s Bane, can cut a mountain in half.”

“Hyperbole,” the wight said with a wheeze.

Urgal did not know that word, but he knew doubt when he heard it. “Travel south and you will find a great plateau. It was a peak before the Six Clans passed through.”

“One of the Yvedas can make a thousand copies of himself. He is an army unto himself,” Reesk said, clearly not wanting the demons to be left out. “And the other…” she leaned forward as if imparting a secret, the fire playing off her purple skin and its patchy scales, “can steal your Soul, even while you live.”

Urgal put a hand over his chest. To lose what the Wills had given him before his death struck him as an unnatural thing, deeply so, and he thought even Calbrin looked rattled by the idea of such a power.

“But will it be enough to kill the Sun King?” the wight said into the ensuing silence, his voice a light hiss on the breeze.

“With four living Mythic Souls?” Reesk screeched. “With the largest army the world has ever seen? We will carve his Legendary Soul out and feast upon the shards it makes.”

For once, Urgal agreed with the demon. He didn’t know if Targu’Thal or the Six Clans would decide to attack Treledyne when they arrived – only the Wills could decide that – but if they did…

He looked back at the Great Host that followed behind their scouting party. The trees were thin enough that he could see the hundreds of thousands of bodies that made up the gargantuan force. From the Clans, there were orc warriors, berserkers, iron-hides, and spirit talkers. Mammoth riders, sabertooth-kin, archers, half-giants, and even the enormous lynoxs, each tall as a mountain.

The undead boasted countless skeletons and zombies of all races that moved at a shambling pace, yet never tired. Armored wights on foot and mounted on desiccated horses flanked the lesser troops, and above them, huge bats swarmed the air, vampires flitting amongst them. There were half-seen phantoms, ethereal wraiths, slavering ghasts, and catapults composed of massive arm and leg bones. Perhaps most impressive though were the multi-armed skeleton giants that retained some flesh and walked with their much smaller cousins, the tinier skeletons and zombies often swarming around them, as if drawn to their obvious might.

Last were the demons, who were the most varied, their skin ranging in color from purples like Reesk, to reds, yellows, and shades of green. Some walked on two legs, others more; some had the bodies of snakes, others winged; a few even looked human; but one at all they had eyes that burned with an unsatiated hunger. This was particularly true of the demons that were larger than the rest, Void Demons Reesk had called them. There were three such creatures present, each as big as the giant skeletons and furred lynoxs, with enormous bladed weapons in their hands.

Urgal had planned to give the group only a passing glance, but he had trouble taking his eyes off the last of them, the force of malice the demon emanated something he could feel even at this distance. With his Chaos summoned, he could also feel the ground tremble slightly from the combined footfalls, great and small, of the Host, and the number of souls stretched so far from left to right, Urgal had to turn his head to take them all in.

With an army like that, if the orcs did decide to join the battle when they reached the human lands, Treledyne and their King wouldn’t just be destroyed… they would become dust.