“We have to get out of this building fast,” Coilla said, “before more of those damn things get here.”
The three already in the room reached the platform and stopped.
“See?” Haskeer announced smugly. “Can’t climb.”
As one, the trio of Watchers retracted their blades. Their hands curled into fists. They lifted them above their heads. Then they brought them down on the dais with the force of a small earthquake. The platform shook mightily. They did it again. Wood cracked and splintered. The platform lurched at an angle. Wolverines fought to keep their footing. A final triple blow did it.
The dais collapsed with a roar.
Planks, struts and Wolverines crashed to the ground in a cloud of dust and chaos.
“They don’t
need
to climb, bonehead!” Jup yelled.
“I think it’s back to every orc for themselves,” Coilla spluttered, extricating herself from a tangle of timber.
“I’ve had enough of these fucking pests!” Haskeer bellowed. He seized a large joist and made for a Watcher.
“No!
Get back here!” Stryke ordered.
Haskeer ignored him. Muttering, he strode to the nearest Watcher and smashed the beam across its chest. The joist snapped in two. Nothing changed for the Watcher.
Suddenly it brought up an arm and delivered a weighty backhander that sent Haskeer flying. He collided with the remains of the platform. A couple of grunts ran to help him up. Haskeer cursed and waved them away.
Stryke spotted something that gave him an idea. “Calthmon, Breggin, Finje. Come with me, I want to try something.”
As the rest of the band played cat and mouse with the Watchers, he led them to the other side of the room. The chain Haskeer had brought with him was lying on the floor. Stryke explained the plan.
“The chain’s a little short for our purposes,” he added, “but let’s give it a go.”
Finje and Calthmon took hold of one end, Breggin and Stryke the other. He decided there weren’t enough of them, and beckoned over Toche and Gant.
Three orcs at each end of the chain, they positioned themselves behind a Watcher. It was busy having chunks of wood thrown at it by the others. The missiles bounced off uselessly. At Stryke’s word his group got a good grip on the chain, then they ran.
The taut chain hit the back of the Watcher’s legs. The orcs kept going, pulling on the chain like two tug-of-war teams. At first nothing happened. They strained on the chain. The Watcher swayed a little. It took a step forward. They kept tugging, muscles standing out, breath laboured. The homunculus started swaying again, more pronounced this time. They pulled harder.
Suddenly the Watcher toppled. It hit the floor with a deafening crash.
Almost immediately its arms and legs began working frenziedly. It thrashed and wriggled in an attempt to right itself, making a metallic scraping noise on the flagstones.
“That’ll give the bastard something to think about,” Stryke said.
They were targeting another Watcher when the sound of Haskeer whooping distracted them.
Launching himself from the platform debris, he landed on the back of a Watcher. The creature twisted and shook, in a stiff kind of way, trying to dislodge him. Its arms were too rigid to reach the orc, so it snapped out its blades to poke at its unseen assailant. That made it even more dangerous for Haskeer, who had to dodge the probing steel.
He got his arms around the Watcher’s neck and his feet in the small of its back. Pulling with the former and pushing with the latter, he rocked back and forth. The Watcher was soon rocking with him. Its efforts to skewer the tormentor on its back grew more urgent. Haskeer was hard put to avoid a hit, but he kept on pushing and pulling with all his strength. The fact that the Watcher was already moving and had its arms up helped Haskeer’s scheme. It reeled like a drunk. Then its balance deserted it.
As it fell backwards, Haskeer swiftly disentangled himself and leapt clear. The Watcher smacked on to the floor with a resonant clang.
Stryke and the others, watching this, ran in and showered the downed creature with blows from their weapons. They needed a little fancy footwork to evade its flailing blades, but its accuracy was out of whack. Haskeer joined them, snatched a mace from a grunt and set to on the Watcher’s face. He struck one of the gemlike eyes and it cracked. Encouraged, he hammered at it again. It smashed.
A high-pressure plume of green smoke spurted from the fissure. Almost reaching the ceiling, it formed a small cloud that shed verdant-coloured droplets. The smell it gave off was foul and some of the orcs clamped hands over their noses and mouths.
Following Haskeer’s example, Stryke leaned in and hacked at the other eye with his sword. That shattered too, releasing another gassy spout. The Watcher shuddered, its legs and arms hammering the floor. Gagging at the odour, the band backed off.
“I don’t think we could have done that in the old days,” Stryke told them.
The remaining Watcher was nowhere near the door now and engaged with the rest of the band.
“Get out!”
Stryke shouted at them.
“Orcs don’t retreat!” Haskeer exclaimed.
Jup and Coilla arrived in time to hear that.
“We do this time, dummy!” Jup said.
“The way your kind does, eh?”
“For fuck’s sake,
move
, you two!” Coilla urged. “Argue later!”
Everybody ran for the door.
Four more Watchers were coming along the alley from its open end. Enough to block that as an escape route. The Watcher in the house was moving to the doorway.
“Don’t give up, do they?” Jup remarked.
Stryke realised the only chance was to try getting over the wall that blocked their end of the alley. It was tall and plaster smooth. He got two of the band’s beefier members, Haskeer and Breggin, to give leg-ups.
Two grunts went straight up and balanced on the wall’s narrow top. They reported another alley on the other side, then started reaching down to help the next in line. Troopers began scrambling up and dropping down the other side. Because of his shortness, Jup needed an extra boost from a grumbling Haskeer, and the grunts above had to stretch lower for his hand.
Only Coilla, Stryke, Breggin and Haskeer were still to go when the Watcher came out of the house. Stryke and Coilla got to the top of the wall.
“Hurry!” Haskeer called out.
He and Breggin stood, arms above their heads. Eager hands clasped theirs and began pulling. The Watcher made a grab for Haskeer’s foot. He shook free and scrambled frantically. The four other Watchers were near now.
Haskeer and Breggin made the top. Everybody lowered themselves into the next thoroughfare.
Jup made a face. “Phew, that was close!”
A section of the wall they’d just climbed exploded. Masonry fell, powdery dust billowed. Tearing aside the obstruction like paper, a Watcher appeared, white plaster coating its metal body. A little further along, the fist of another blasted through.
“Get out of here!” Stryke ordered. “And conceal your weapons! We don’t want to attract even more attention.”
Swords were awkwardly hidden. Larger weapons like spears and maces were reluctantly discarded. The Wolverines ran.
They got themselves into the main thoroughfares of the quarter and slowed down a bit. Stryke had them break up into three groups rather than attract attention as a mob. He led with Coilla, Jup, Haskeer and a couple of grunts.
“I don’t know if the Watchers have a way of communicating with each other,” he told them in an undertone. “But sooner or later they’re all going to know and be after us.”
“So it’s the horses, the weapons and out of here, right?” Jup said.
“Right, only we forget the weapons. It’d be too risky hanging around at the entrance checkpoint. Anyway, we’ve got some weapons.”
“Getting the horses is a risk too,” Coilla said.
“It’s one we’ve got to take.”
“I need one myself,” she remembered. “We’ll be short.”
“We’ll buy another.”
“With what?”
“Pellucid’s all we’ve got. Fortunately it’s as good as any currency. I’ll dig out a little before we go into the stables. Don’t want to flaunt the stuff.”
“Pity about those weapons,” Haskeer complained. “I had a couple of favourites there.”
“Me too,” Jup agreed. “But it’s worth it to get you and Coilla back.”
Haskeer couldn’t work out if the dwarf was being sarcastic, so he didn’t reply.
All the way to the stables, near the main entrance, they were nervous of what might happen. At one point a pair of Watchers appeared ahead of them. Stryke signalled everybody to be calm and they walked past them without incident. It seemed the homunculi didn’t have any way of communicating over distances. Stryke speculated that perhaps that was another consequence of the fading magic.
They got to the stables. Their horses were collected, and another was bought, without too much delay or attracting suspicion.
Back on the street, Jup said, “Why don’t we stay in three groups while we make our way out? Less attention.”
“Hang on,” Coilla put in. “Won’t it look suspicious when the first group leaves without collecting any weapons? Could go bad on groups two and three.”
“Perhaps they’ll just assume we didn’t bring any.”
“Orcs without weapons? Who’s going to believe that?”
“Coilla’s right,” Stryke decided. “What we’re going to do is stay together. We get as near the main entrance as we can on foot, then mount up and make a run for it.”
“You’re the boss,” Jup conceded.
They were in sight of Hecklowe’s main gate when a number of Watchers, perhaps a dozen or more, appeared a way behind them. They were marching purposefully in the same direction. A crowd was gathering and walking with them, aware that such a large number of the homunculi meant some kind of drama was about to unfold.
“For us, you think, Stryke?” Jup asked.
“I don’t think they’re out for a ramble, Sergeant.” The band was further from the exit than he would have liked. But there was no choice now. “Right, let’s go for it! Mount up!”
They hurriedly obeyed as passersby stared and pointed.
“Now move out!”
They spurred their horses and galloped for the open gates. Elves, gremlins and dwarves scattered, shaking fists and bawling insults.
The gallop became a charge. Up ahead, Stryke saw a Watcher starting to close the gate. It was heavy work, even for a creature of such prodigious strength, and went slowly.
Jup and Stryke got there first. Stryke took a chance and pulled up his horse. He sidled as close to the Watcher as he dared and booted it in the head. Coming in high, and with the added strength of a horse behind it, the blow toppled the creature. The Watchers tending the queue turned and made for Stryke. One came out of the guardhouse. Blades zinged from their palms.
Jup had stopped too. “Get going!” Stryke told him.
The dwarf rode off, dispersing the crowd waiting to get in. There were outraged shouts.
Then the rest of the band tore through the gates. Stryke prodded his mount and went after them.
They left Hecklowe behind.
They didn’t slow until they’d put a good five miles between themselves and the freeport. Getting a bearing on the trail to Drogan, they fell to exchanging stories of what had befallen them since they were parted. Only Haskeer had nothing to contribute.
Recounting her experiences with the bounty hunters, Coilla still burned with resentment at the way she’d been treated.
“I’m not going to forget it, Stryke. I vow I’ll make them pay, the human scum. The worst thing was the feeling of . . . well, helplessness. I’d rather kill myself than let that happen again. And you know what kept going through my head?”
“No, tell me?”
“I kept thinking how it was just like our lives. Like the lives of all orcs. Born into somebody else’s service, having to be loyal to a cause you haven’t chosen, risking your life.”
They all saw her point.
“We’re changing that,” Stryke said. “Or at least trying to.”
“Even if it means dying I’ll never go back to it,” she promised.
He wasn’t alone in nodding agreement.
Coilla turned her attention to Haskeer. “You haven’t explained your behaviour yet.” Her tone was curt.
“It’s not easy . . . ,” he began, and trailed off.
Stryke spoke for him. “Haskeer’s not entirely sure what did happen. None of us is. I’ll fill you in as we ride.”
“It’s true,” Haskeer told her. “And I’m . . . sorry.”
It wasn’t a word he was accustomed to using, and Coilla was a little taken aback. But as she couldn’t decide to accept his apology until she knew more, she didn’t answer.
Stryke changed the subject. He told her about their encounter with Serapheim. She recounted hers.
“Something didn’t ring true about that human,” she reckoned.
“I know what you mean.”
“Do we count him as an enemy or a friend? Not that I’m used to thinking of humans in friendly terms.”
“Well, we can’t deny that he helped us find you by sending us to Hecklowe.”
“But what about the trap at the house?”
“Might not have been his fault. After all, he got us to the right place, didn’t he?”
“The biggest mystery,” Jup said, “is how he seemed to disappear each time. Particularly back there at the slaver’s house. I don’t understand it.”
“He didn’t come in,” Coilla supplied.
“It’s obvious,” Stryke volunteered. “He went over the wall, same as us.” He didn’t entirely convince himself, let alone any of the others.
“And how does he
survive?
” Coilla added. “If he really does wander the country unarmed, that is. These are times when even an armed orc does that at their peril.”
“Maybe he
is
mad,” Jup offered. “Many of the insane seem to have the luck of the gods.”
Stryke sighed. “Probably no sense in worrying about it. Whoever he is, chances are we’ll never see him again.”
The strategy meeting was held in the usual cavernous chamber. It was a place that looked more organic than fashioned, and water freely flowed through it.
Adpar’s military commanders and her Council of Elders were present. She was contemptuous of both, particularly the latter, whom she regarded as senile fools. But she had to concede to herself that even an absolute ruler needed help administering her subjects. She saw no reason to hide her disdain, however.