Jup and Calthmon’s pursuers slowed on seeing the band, allowing the pair to increase their lead. But they still kept coming, spreading out from a bunch to a line.
“Hold fast!” Stryke ordered. “No quarter and no retreat!”
“As if we would,” Coilla remarked in a gallows-humour tone. She swiped the air with her blade, limbering for a fight.
Cheered on by their comrades, Jup and Calthmon reached the Wolverines, their steeds lathering.
Two heartbeats later the humans came in like a storm tide.
Many of the horses of both groups wheeled round at the last moment, their riders engaging side-on.
Stryke faced a heavily bearded, weather-beaten attacker, eyes flaming with bloodlust. He brandished a hatchet and was swinging it wildly, but the weapon was being used with more energy than precision.
Blocking a pass, Stryke delivered a thrust of his own. His opponent’s horse bucked and the sword plunged harmlessly over the human’s shoulder. Stryke quickly returned the blade and parried another swing. They exchanged half a dozen ringing blows. The human overreached himself. Stryke chopped down hard on his exposed arm, severing hand from wrist. It fell away, still clutching the axe.
Gushing blood and bellowing, the human took a death stroke to the chest and went down.
Stryke turned to a second assailant as Coilla despatched her first. She wrenched free her blade just in time to throw up a guard. It stopped a swipe from a dumpy, muscular individual armed with a broadsword. Batting off several more lunges, she sent a whistling slash at the human’s head. He ducked and avoided it.
Without pause, Coilla went in again, ramming her sword low. Unexpectedly dextrous, the human twisted in his saddle and the blade pierced only air. He went on the offensive again. While she held him at bay with the sword, Coilla’s other hand found her belt and plucked a knife. She flung it underarm and punctured his heart.
Off to the left, Haskeer held his sword two-handed, flapping reins forgotten, as he laid about the enemy. He split skulls, caved chests, hacked deep into limbs. Pink flesh was lacerated, bones cracked, ruby showers soaked all in range. Far gone in berserk frenzy, Haskeer took no account of human or animal, his blade carving horses and riders alike.
In the screaming, trampling chaos, a handful of the attackers flowed around the defensive barrier to strike at the Wolverines’ vulnerable rear. Alfray and a couple of grunts turned to deal with the threat. Battle raged about Meklun’s litter, crashing hooves and plummeting bodies failing to stir the insensible form.
Almost toppled from his mount by a club’s glancing blow, in righting himself Alfray slashed his foe’s saddle straps. The human pitched to one side and hit the ground. As he struggled to his feet, a riderless horse flattened him.
Joining the defence of the band’s rump, Jup sideswiped one of two raiders who had Alfray boxed in. Dwarf and human crossed swords. Jup laid open the man’s arm and followed through by planting cold steel in his ribcage.
A human’s sword connected with Stryke’s and bounced off. Stryke’s response was a grievous blow to the other’s neck, hewing flesh to the bone. The next to take the victim’s place got equally short shrift. He managed to conjoin with Stryke’s blade twice before a raking sword tip ribboned his face and sent him howling.
Fighting with sword and dagger, Coilla held off a pair of aggressors employing a crude pincer movement. One caught the long blade’s edge across his throat. A second later the other halted the short blade’s flight with his chest.
There being no other opponent to deal with, she turned her attention to Stryke. He was locked in combat with a scrawny, long-limbed antagonist, sandy-haired and blotchy-skinned. She judged it an adolescent of the species, and its artless movements betrayed a life unsullied by warfare. The youth’s fear was palpable.
Stryke put an end to it with a swinging blow to the thorax. A smartly administered follow-through to the neck brought clean decapitation. Coilla’s face was speckled with red drizzle from the spray.
She wiped the back of a hand across her eyes and spat to clear her mouth. It was a purely reflex action, undertaken with no more distaste than if the liquid had been rainwater. “They’re finished, Stryke,” she stated flatly.
He didn’t need her confirmation. Human corpses littered the area. Only two or three remained alive to engage the band, and all were getting the worst of it. Haskeer was beating one over the head repeatedly with what looked like a cudgel. Closer examination showed it to be a human arm, white bone protruding from its sticky end.
A handful of the enemy were fleeing on horseback. About a third of the Wolverine grunts, whooping triumphantly, started after them. Stryke bawled and they abandoned the chase, though returning reluctantly. The human survivors disappeared from view.
Alfray knelt by Meklun’s litter. The band began gathering discarded weapons and binding their wounds. Haskeer and Jup made their separate ways to Stryke and Coilla’s side.
“Seems the injuries we took weren’t too serious,” Jup related.
“No wonder,” Haskeer sneered. “They fought like pixies.”
“They were farmers, not fighters. Uni zealots, by the look of them, probably out of Weaver’s Lea. Hardly a true warrior among ’em.”
“But you didn’t know that,” Haskeer growled accusingly.
“What you getting at?” Jup demanded.
“You brought them straight to us. What kind of idiot does something like that? You put the whole band in danger.”
“What did you expect me to do, meathead?”
“You should have led them away from here, taken them somewhere else.”
“Then what? Were Calthmon and me supposed to have lost ourselves out there?” He swept a hand at the wilderness. “Or let ’em take us to protect
you?
”
Haskeer glared at him. “That would’ve been no great loss.”
“Well, fuck you, pisspot! This is a warband, remember? We stick together!”
“They’re gonna have to stick
you
together when I’m finished, you little snot!”
“
Hey!
” Coilla snapped. “How about you two shutting your mouths long enough for us to get out of here?”
“She’s right,” Stryke said. “We don’t know how many more humans might be heading for us. And farmers or not, if there’s enough of them, we’ve got a problem. Where did you run into them, Jup?”
“Roadblock,” he replied sullenly. “Up the trail.”
“So we have to find another way forward.”
“More time wasted,” Haskeer grumbled.
The shadows were lengthening. Another couple of hours and they’d be travelling in the dark, a prospect Stryke didn’t welcome if there were rampaging mobs of humans on the loose. “I’m doubling the number of scouts riding ahead,” he decided, “and I want four covering our rear. You’re in charge of that, Haskeer. I’ll organise the advance scouts myself. Get on and pick your detail.”
Glowering, the sergeant moved away.
“I’m going to check on Meklun,” Stryke told Coilla and Jup. “You two get the column moving, but keep it slow until the outriders have left.”
He trotted off.
The dwarf gave Coilla a rueful look.
“Spit it out,” she told him.
“This all seemed so simple when it started; now things are getting complicated,” he complained. “
And
more dangerous than I counted on.”
“What’s the matter, you want to live forever?”
Jup thought about it.
“Yes,” he said.
Jennesta had made the woman’s end swift compared to her normal practice. Not through any sense of mercy, but rather a mixture of boredom and the need to attend to more pressing matters.
She climbed down from the altar and unstrapped the bloodied unicorn horn she used as a dildo. With the deft skill of experience she quickly disembowelled the human’s corpse, so speedily that the heart was still throbbing as she raised it to her mouth.
The repast was no more than adequate. Her tastes were growing either more refined or more jaded.
Physically and magically refreshed, but hardly better tempered, she sucked the juices from her fingers and brooded about the cylinder. The deadline she’d imposed on the hunting party was nearly up. Whether they’d succeeded or not, the time had come to hedge her bets and increase pressure in the search for the Wolverines.
It felt cold. The chill penetrated even here, in her inner sanctum. A log fire had been laid in the huge hearth but remained unlit. Jennesta stretched a hand. A pulsing bolt of luminescence, straight as a die, stabbed the air silently. The fire ignited with a roar. Basking in its warmth, she remonstrated with herself for needlessly wasting the energy just obtained. But, as ever, her delight at manipulating physicality was the stronger emotion.
Reaching out, she tugged a bell pull. Two orc guards entered. One had a bolt of sacking under his arm.
“You know what to do,” she told them. Her tone was offhand and she didn’t bother looking their way.
They set about cleaning up the mess. The sacking was shaken out and placed on the floor. Taking the body by its wrists and ankles, the guards lowered and covered it.
Uninterested, Jennesta pulled the cord again, twice this time.
As they left, the orcs passed another attendant coming in. Momentarily wide-eyed at the sight of their blood-soaked bundle, the elf hastily adopted a bland, impassive expression.
The menial was new, and Jennesta found it as hard to guess its sex as she had its recent predecessor. Although she’d found out in the end, of course. She made a mental note, again, to slow down the rate at which she was getting through the servants. None of them was around long enough to learn the job.
Curtly instructed, the elf assisted the Queen in dressing. Jennesta chose black, as was her custom for excursions outside the castle; skin-tight leather top and riding breeches, the latter tucked into thigh-high, tall-heeled boots of the same material. Over this she donned an ankle-length sable cloak, fashioned from the pelts of forest bears. Her hair was pinned up under a matching fur cap.
She discharged the servant brusquely. The elf retreated, bowing low and ignored.
Jennesta went to a table by the altar and inspected a collection of coiled whips. She selected one of her favourites to complete her ensemble. Slipping a slender hand through its wrist thong, she walked to the door, pausing for a second to check herself in an adjacent mirror.
The orc bodyguards outside snapped to attention as she exited, then made to accompany her. She dismissed them with a careless wave and they resumed their positions. Following the corridor, she came to a staircase, lit by burning torches in iron brackets every ten or twelve steps. As she climbed, she lifted the hem of her cloak, almost daintily, to stop the trim getting dirty.
She reached a door. An orc sentry opened it for her. Jennesta stepped out into a large courtyard surrounded by high walls, the castle towers looming far above. It was dusk and the air was frigid.
A dragon was tethered in the centre of the quadrant, one foreleg ringed by an iron fetter the size of a barrel. An equally colossal chain ran from the shackle and encircled the stump of a mature oak.
The dragon’s snout was buried in a small mountain of fodder that blended hay, brimstone, the carcasses of several whole sheep and other, less identifiable titbits. Ample quantities of steaming droppings, containing white slithers of bone and shiny clinker, had already been deposited at the beast’s rear end.
Jennesta pressed a delicate lace handkerchief to her nose.
The dragon’s handler walked towards her. She was dressed in tan-coloured garb of various shades. Her jerkin and trews were chestnut and soft as chamois, her sturdy knee boots mahogany-hued brushed suede. The only variations were a white and grey feather in her narrow-brimmed hat, and discreet cords of gold about her neck and wrists. Unusually tall even by the standards of her rangy species, she wore a proud, near-haughty expression.
The Dragon Dam’s race always intrigued Jennesta. She had never had a brownie. But she harboured a small, grudging respect for them, too. Or at least as much as she was capable of feeling for any other than herself. Perhaps because, like her, brownies were hybrids, the offspring of unions between elves and goblins.
“Glozellan,” Jennesta said.
“Majesty.” The Mistress of Dragons gave a minimal bow of her head.
“You’ve had your briefing?”
“Yes.”
“And my orders are understood?”
“You wish dragon patrols sent out to search for a warband.” Her voice was high-pitched, reedy.
“The Wolverines, yes. I sent for you in person to emphasise how vital your mission is.”
Should Glozellan have thought it strange that the Queen wanted her own followers hunted down, she didn’t betray the fact. “What would you have us do if we find them, my lady?”
Jennesta didn’t like the
if
, but let it pass. “That’s where you and your fellow handlers must take the initiative.” She selected her words with care. “In the case of sighting the band in a place where they can be captured, our land forces are to be alerted. But if there’s the slightest possibility of the Wolverines escaping, they are to be destroyed.”
Glozellan’s pencil-thin eyebrows rose. She knew better than to comment more explicitly, let alone protest.
“If you have to kill them you’ll send word immediately,” Jennesta continued, “and guard their remains, with your lives if necessary, until reinforcements arrive.” She was confident that the cylinder was capable of withstanding the heat of a dragon’s breath. Fairly confident, anyway. There was an element of unavoidable risk.
The dragon chewed noisily on the spine of a sheep.
After mulling over what had been said for a moment, Glozellan replied, “We’d be looking for a small group. We don’t know exactly where they are. It won’t be easy, unless we fly low. That leaves us vulnerable.”
Jennesta’s composure was strained. “Why does everyone bring me problems?” she snapped. “I want solutions!
Do as I say!
”
“Your Majesty.”
“Well, don’t just stand there! Get on with it!”