The Dark Lord's Handbook (33 page)

The harpoon lay on the sand next to him on a large patch of dark sand, which Morden quickly realised was blood soaked. It was the blood that had attracted the flies. By the look of it he had lost a lot of blood. No wonder he felt strange. He was lucky to be alive. He sat up and reached one hand to his side to feel the wound. There was a tear in the robe with congealed blood around it. Exploring with his fingers, Morden could feel a sizeable gash that was still open but not bleeding. It felt sticky to touch.

He thought about looking to see how bad it was but, feeling as he did, he thought it best not to. The last thing he needed was to be sick and provide the flies with pudding.

Morden got slowly to his feet, which further agitated the flies. The blood that he had lost had spread under him and, judging from the dark stain of the sand, he couldn’t have much blood left.

First things first though, he needed to get out of this sun and find water. Looking up and down the beach he could see no signs of civilisation. That left the jungle. At the edge, where it met the beach, it was thin, like a fringe, but became dense a few yards in. It wasn’t as though he had much choice. If he stuck to the fringe he would have shade.

Gingerly at first, and then with confidence as he felt no pain, he made his way to the edge of the jungle. The canopy provided by the broad green leaves of strange looking trees was welcome indeed. The trees were not like any he had seen before, with banded trunks and no lower branches at all. They grew fairly straight, with a slight bend, before spreading their rubbery leaves. Clustered at the top, where the leaves branched, were clusters of what looked like giant nuts. Looking around, he could see where some of these had fallen and split open. Most of what had been inside had been scavenged by beast or insect but there were traces of white juicy flesh.

To get at these fruit a normal man would have to hope to shake them loose, or maybe go and get the harpoon and knock them loose, or even use the thick bands to climb up and pull them off, but he was Morden Deathwing. All he had to do was turn into a dragon and fly up. He could crack them with a talon, and cook them should they need it. All he had to do was apply his will and change.

Nothing happened.

He tried again as he had taught himself. All he had to do was will it so and…nothing. He could feel it, the power, but there was something else. Maybe it was his weakness from the injury. He concentrated harder and gave it another go. Again, nothing. There was something horribly wrong. It wasn’t a lack of strength. He didn’t actually feel that bad. As he had learnt to recognise the dragon power he had inside himself, so now he could sense there something else there, something new.

Whatever it was, it was stopping him changing.

What else had it affected? Morden tried to breathe fire but all he got was a splutter of smoke. It was as though his throat was empty of fire. Had his glands dried up?

Then a dreadful thought struck him. If he couldn’t fly then he couldn’t get back to the fleet and they had no idea where he was either. He was stranded.

That was not good. Not good at all.

As his predicament began to sink in he could feel panic start to rise. What was he going to do? Damn it. Damn those orcs and their harpoon thing they had fired at him. Damn Penbury for having ruined his safe empire, and damn Grimtooth for having found him with his stupid book. He was going to die on a beach in the middle of nowhere and all they would find would be a black robe.

He punched the tree in frustration.

A second later something hard hit him on the head. There was a crack as whatever it was fell to the floor. It was one of the nuts and it had a split in the side, out of which white milk was leaking. Quickly, Morden scooped it up and drank. It didn’t seem to taste of much – not much did these days with all the fire breathing – but he could feel the cool fluid running down his throat and it felt good.

When the milk had run dry, he smacked the nut against a rock in the sand to try and break it open. It proved to be an extremely hard nut to crack but he got there in the end. As he thought, there was hard flesh on the inside.

He sat on the rock and considered the other nuts. There were plenty of them. It might not prove to be a varied diet but now he was sure he wasn’t going to starve. They were hard buggers though.

And with that thought, he put his hand to his head. The nut falling on his head should have knocked him out cold, and at the very least hurt a lot. Feeling his skull, there wasn’t even a lump. In fact, thinking about it, he had hardly felt the nut hit him.

Morden didn’t have time to consider this further as an arrow whistled past his nose and thumped into the trunk of the tree.

“Gruk ng kasz!”

The order came from Morden’s right and he spun to see who had shot at him. There was an orc. His skin had a yellow tinge to it over the normal green, and his eyes were slanted, but he was unmistakably an orc. He was holding a bow, rather shakily it had to be said, and perhaps that is why he had missed.

“Gruk ng kasz!” said the orc again and this time Morden’s brain kicked in.

“It’s all right. I have no intention of moving,” said Morden in what he thought were soothing tones, but he startled even himself as he spoke. His speech had dropped an octave and his voice sounded like the older men in the pub who had smoked pipes all their lives. Morden cleared his throat and a disgusting sound came out. The orc took a step backwards.

“Gruk ng kasz!” insisted the orc.

“Look!” said Morden. “I’m not moving, you stupid orc. Now put that bow down before you hurt somebody, and in particular, me.”

The orc took another step backwards and his hands were shaking so much Morden was worried he would loose his arrow. Not that he could have hit anything the way his aim was wavering.

Morden spread his arms to show he was unarmed and was no threat. The orc’s response was not quite what Morden expected. The orc, while obviously scared, now looked terrified and with a yelp threw his bow in the air, collapsed on the ground in a quivering heap and started muttering something over and over that Morden couldn’t quite make out.

“Where do you live?” asked Morden, realising his concerns about survival, being shot aside, were now gone. But the orc lay there shaking and muttering. Morden asked again, slipping effortlessly into the orc’s own tongue this time. “Gkar mpu fegz?”

When Morden had first discovered his gift of tongues he had found it disconcerting. Now it was just useful. The orc seemed startled to hear his own language. With some effort, he brought himself under control and assumed a kneeling position in front of Morden. The muttering assumed a chant like quality. The orc’s face was pretty much in the sand so it was hard to make out but it sounded like,

“Zoon. Dark Master. Zoon. Lord of All. Zoon,” over and over.

While Morden had got used to how he was viewed by orcs in the west, he was used to being addressed as Morden. He was taken aback by being called Zoon. Shrugging inwardly, and assuming it was the robe that did it, he had more pressing matters to deal with.

“Get up,” he commanded, and the orc sprang to his feet as though a puppet. “Show me where you live.”

The orc scurried off and led Morden through the jungle along a path that he wouldn’t have known was there from just looking. The jungle was dense; branches and vines hung over the path and snagged at his robe. It became feverishly hot and the orc had to pause and wait for Morden to catch up on several occasions. Morden wished he could fly and then he could have sailed above this mess. He tried to change; he could not. It was worrying. As before, he could feel the power there but there was something else now that was getting in the way. It wasn’t exactly foreign, rather something different, much like when he had first looked inward and seen the dragon power. Unlike that power, this new thing made Morden’s hackles rise. There was a deeply disturbing quality to whatever it was. Though he had grown used to being called a Dark Lord, he had not until now felt dark. This thing inside him, that he could feel growing, was truly dark.

After what must have been only another thirty minutes or so, but felt like several weeks, they popped suddenly into a clearing of huts. It was a small village, maybe twenty dwellings, one bigger than the rest, made from the stuff of the jungle, with green thatching. There were more orcs here, all about their business: tending pigs, fixing a roof, playing with children, scratching their arses.

Morden took in the scene unnoticed. It was one of lively peace. Though the conditions would be considered meagre by the standards of Bindelburg, unlike the orcs in the slums around the cities in the west, it was obvious that these orcs had no master but themselves and were happy. As Morden cast his eye around, evidence that they shared some common heritage with their western cousins became more apparent. At one end of the village was a fire pit, and behind it were a number of stakes with heads impaled upon them. The male orcs were all armed with crude clubs and knives. One had a bow slung across his shoulders. When they laughed, long sharp teeth were much in evidence. These orcs had not had their tusk-like canines filed flat.

“Hey! Shitheads!” Morden’s guide called out.

He was mostly ignored but some looked over. In seconds, a transformation occurred. Women scooped up children, men drew weapons and before Morden had even a chance to say hello he was surrounded by a bristling group of orcs, all of them with bared teeth, guttural growls and snarls in abundance. Spears poked forward but didn’t make contact.

“What the fuck is going on?” came a loud voice from the back of the pack and a huge orc muscled his way through.

When he saw Morden, he stopped and frowned. He glanced sideways at the orc who had led Morden to the village and then turned his back on them.

“Kill him,” he said over his shoulder and strode off.

The thicket of spears closed behind the orc as he left.

Morden’s hand went instinctively to his chest where the dragon pendant lay under his robe. It had always been his talisman. He didn’t understand how, but it always protected him. Expecting it to be roasting hot in the face of an imminent skewering it was in fact quite cool to his touch.

The orcs seemed to gain confidence from his inaction. One let rip a shout and sprang forward and stabbed at Morden. Though he didn’t feel pain, it was with amazement that Morden looked down and saw the spear sticking into his midriff.

Then another orc stabbed him, and the orc with the bow shot him. The arrow twisted his shoulder backwards as it hit; again, he felt impact but no pain. The orcs let go of their spears and jumped backwards. They looked at him confused. Morden himself was not entirely clear what was happening beyond he was getting pissed off with being shot and speared.

He supposed at this point he should be writhing around on the ground in death throes but frankly he was far too annoyed to play along. He was a Dark Lord and he had important Dark Lord business to be getting on with if he could find a way to get back to his fleet and army. Being abused and poked at was not the way he should be treated. Didn’t they know who he was?

The orcs looked perplexed as well. Another orc jumped forward and stabbed his spear into Morden’s belly and jumped back, as if it was a matter of enough spears to do the trick. All it left was a third spear dangling ineffectually.

“ENOUGH!” bellowed Morden.

The orcs shrank back. The one that had led him to the village fell to his belly and started his chanting again; the others looked at him with open amusement. Morden realised he’d probably been rescued by the village idiot.

Bracing himself for pain that so far had not come, Morden tugged the arrow free from his shoulder and tossed it aside. He gripped one of the spears close to his body and pulled hard. It came free with a horrible slurp and a few gobbets of flesh came out as well. In short order, Morden removed the other two spears. Looking at his robe, he should have been drenched in blood but, apart from rather disgusting wounds, there was none.

Instead there was a gurgling sound and Morden’s stomach heaved. It took him by surprise. The last time he’d felt like this was when he had inadvisedly eaten the cook’s lamb special at his Bindelburg school (special in that it was plainly raw). He retched again and couldn’t keep back the bile. He bent over and a stream of white sick spewed onto the ground. The surrounding orcs leapt even further back to avoid the splash with cries of disgust.

And it kept coming until Morden was forced to his knees, his stomach knotting itself trying to empty its contents. At last all he could manage was dry retching.

That about did it for Morden. He’d had enough of being shot at, stabbed, puking, being laughed at and generally not taken seriously.

He forced himself up and straightened.

“I said enough!” roared Morden.

It was as if his voice was a blast of wind. It blew out from him and knocked the orcs off their feet. They screamed as they fell, many grabbing at their faces. The bushes blew backwards, blackened and shrivelled. The huts bent and creaked; bits of wood and roof flew off into the jungle.

Morden had to some extent got used to the strange and gratifyingly powerful things that he had been able to do, but this was different.

He strode forward to see what had happened to the orcs as they were still writhing in pain and screaming. He was angry but he didn’t mean to hurt them. He liked orcs. As he walked something caught his eye, and looking down he was once again surprised to see that where his feet fell the ground blackened and what greenery there was withered into black ash in seconds. As he got to within a yard or so of the nearest orc, the screams grew and it scrambled away from him as best it could. Morden could see its face and it was as though it had been pickled.