A voice through his nightmare said: “What’s that smell?”
Will Brandiman moved his head fractionally and winced. A blaze of pain subsided. It was no nightmare. He tested his wrists and found them cord-bound. His lock-picks, by the feel of it, were still sewn into his cuffs. His ankles throbbed, tied much too tightly.
“Roasting pony?” he guessed thickly.
“One day you’re going to wake up to the smell of roasting brother,” Ned grumbled.
The ground was hard and damp under his face. Will strained to lift his head. The brilliant moon blazed in his eyes, and he flinched. There was no locating the source of the pain as yet, but he had a small bet that it would be a head-wound, and an unprofessional one at that.
“Orcs,” he concluded, sniffing.
A bare foot, hard as the hardest leather boot, kicked him in the ribs. The force of the blow threw him over onto his back. He stared up at a broad-shouldered, squat-legged orc in shining black plate harness. The orc opened its tusked mouth and spat accurately into Will’s eye. The saliva stung.
“Orcs,” Will marvelled. “Well, you can’t be that stupid. You managed to surprise me and my brother, and that isn’t often done—ahh!”
A slightly smaller orc leaned over Will’s face from behind him and shoved the muzzle of its hound-faced bassinet helm open. The fanged and tilt-eyed face was upsidedown from Will’s point of view and (he thought) none the better for it. The orc gave a light contralto growl. “Show respect! Do not speak before Ashnak!”
Will managed to roll himself up into a precarious sitting position. Ned, a bundle of rope, lay a few feet away. A fire burned. The shelter of branches and bracken that had concealed this dip in the ground and the cave-entrance were scattered about; the brass-bound chests were open and their contents looted. One of the heavy crossbows hung at the belt of the armoured orc. Will raised one eyebrow in a rare respect.
“Agaku,” he guessed. “The man-smart Agaku.”
The armoured orc smiled, showing polished yellow fangs. “I have not met many, Man or elf-filth or halfling, who are smart as the Agaku.”
Will managed to wipe his face against his knee, cleaning off the last of the acidic saliva. His eyes still ran, blurring the night sky, so that for a panic-stricken moment he was not sure how many orcs surrounded them.
Ned’s voice, thick with pain, said, “A scouting party, I’d guess, since there’s only two of them. Will—”
“Yes, yes, I know. It’s difficult.”
A spark from the fire drifted through the air and lodged against his cheek, burning. He shook his head violently, and then groaned. The fire had been set in the cave-mouth, not visible from the moorland above, and the charred carcass of the pony appeared to have been extensively chewed.
“You’re getting rid of the evidence,” he marvelled, looking up at the larger orc. “Ashnak, was it, that she called you? Master Ashnak, you and I must talk. I’d find it more convenient if you cut at least my ankles free, since I think that if you don’t, I’ll lose the use of my feet.”
The ground swooped dizzyingly away as a clawed hand grabbed the back of his doublet and swung him up into the air. The female orc’s helmet-covered face grinned into his from a distance of six inches. Her tusks were long, curved, and capped with bronze. Her whiteless eyes gleamed. She hefted a spiked morningstar in her free hand.
“You little halflings, always so tricksy,” she said, in guttural admiration. “Mark me, Ashnak. They’re on some quest for the Light. If we heed their pleas and free ’em, they’ll have some miracle later on, and bring us down in our pride. I’ve heard Man-tales. I know how it goes.”
The spiked pole swung up, poised, swung down—
“Not without my orders, Shazgurim!” The large orc wrenched the morningstar away and belted the other orc with the smooth end, sending her crashing against the earthwall of the dip in the ground. Will tried his best for a tuck-and-roll fall—being tucked reasonably well already by his bonds—but a sharp rock caught him in the gut, and it was a minute and more before he dragged enough air into his lungs to breathe.
He heard Ned say, very reasonably, “A bargain—our equipment, which you can use, for our lives, which you have no use for.”
An owl hooted twice, and then hooted twice again. The owl is not necessarily a moorland bird. Moving almost as silently as halflings, two more armoured orcs slid around the tor and over the side of the dip and brandished their war-axes in salute to Ashnak. Will groaned as he rolled over, the cords at his ankles cutting into him like wire.
“They’re alone,” one of the orcs grunted. “No smell of strangers: Men or wizard-filth or squat dwarves.”
The smallest orc, which in the flickering firelight Will thought might be another female, gave a high-pitched giggle. “No smell of magic, no. None. None!”
He saw Ashnak open his fanged mouth, knew that the orc’s next words would be Kill them! and played his last card. Fortunately, as usual, it was a fifth ace.
“Hold your hand!” he cried. “In the name of the nameless necromancer!”
Ned, at his side, made a noise that might have been a groan or a whimper. “In the name of the nameless?”
“You know what I mean. In the…oh, the hell with it. Orcs!” Will exclaimed, loudly. “Strong though you are, I know your kind fear magic. Do you really wish to risk offending the nameless necromancer?”
The big orc motioned with his hand. The two scout orcs vanished up onto the moorland again. Shazgurim stood, rebuckling the plate-armour on her forearms, and scowled at Ashnak’s back. Will noted it. As Ashnak approached, he flicked the hair back out of his eyes and gazed as fearlessly as he could at the orc.
“Hhrmmm…” The orc squatted down. In the firelight Will could just make out the clan tattoos on his horny cheeks. Polearms slung across his back, black armour thigh- and arm-defences, engraved breastplate—This is no orc bandit, Will thought. He assumed a dignified confidence.
“And just why,” the orc growled, “would it offend my master the nameless to slice your skins from your bodies, and cook them, and feed them back to you, before we leave you impaled by your arses on our spears for the ravens to rip at?”
“You have a wonderful turn of phrase.” Will paused. “Your master?”
“Yes, little coney. My Master. Whose name you have made filthy in your halfling mouth, so perhaps I will feed you live coals after I feed you your skin.”
Ned Brandiman groaned.
“Bloody hell, Will! We’re not even at the Grey Crag. We’re not inside twenty miles of the place!”
Will sighed. He looked up at the orc’s face, upon which confusion was giving way to comprehension with surprising rapidity.
“I have a certain talisman about my person,” he said. “If I were you, I’d cut me free and let me reach it out. There are poison needles in the matter, you see.”
Shazgurim growled, disgusted. “Talisman. By the rotten bowels of the Dark Lord! Ashnak, you mark my words, we shall live to regret this.”
The jagged knife sliced the cords at his wrists and ankles. When they saw how he could not move, the big orc chafed his flesh between horny hands until Will, yelping, managed first to stagger to his feet and then, while they cut Ned free, to reach into the booby-trapped pouch and extract an inert cube of amber.
“Say your word.”
The orc’s brow furrowed. Ashnak at last muttered: “Zerganubaniphal!”
The amber cube pulsed once, warming Will’s hand. He tossed it to the orc, said “Banidukkunishubar,” and watched it glow with as great a light. “I won’t say ‘well met.’ We are twenty miles off the rendezvous and you’ve eaten my pony.”