Swung wide, Harvester didn't break the club's hickory handle, but snagged and ripped it from the orc's grasp. The big orc ducked the sweeping steel, but Sunbright stamped for balance, chopped his blade backhanded, and crushed the orc's collarbone. Yanking the leather-wrapped pommel past its ribs, Sunbright hooked the smashed shoulder into gray meat. Jerked like a pike on a line, the orc toppled at Sunbright's feet. The warrior-shaman kicked the gray head of lank hair, and stepped to kill the other two. The middle orc froze in fear, and Sunbright pierced its breadbasket, then twisted the hook to carve a hole that spilled guts. Leaving that one to die, the fighter lunged for the third, who ran.
Harvester's keen tip kissed the orc's shoulder, slashing muscle to white bone. Grabbing the spurting wound, the orc tripped over its own flying feet and crashed to earth. Sunbright scanned, found the gutted orc falling slowly. He batted it backward, then stabbed the prone orc behind the ear, snuffing the light in its sunken eyes.
Battle-lust sang in his veins as Sunbright Steelshanks whirled to find more enemies, to drown his sorrows in an orgy of blood. It was hard to see now, for the horses had kicked up dust, but the action had died down. Most of the orcs had fled or been killed.
A scratching by his feet caught his attention. The big orc with the crushed shoulder struggled for the hilt of its spiked war club. Sunbright hooked a toe and flipped the orc like a turtle. Despite grinding pain from a bleeding shoulder, the creature still craned for its weapon. Sunbright stamped on its breastbone.
Harvester poised above the orc's throat, Sunbright growled, "What's your name, beast?"
The dying orc focussed yellow eyes and sputtered, "To-Toch."
"Tell your gods you died game."
And Sunbright plunged the blade into the gray, dirty throat. Blood welled like a red fountain, then trickled away. Sunbright wiped his blade clean on his foe's tunic: gray wool with a freshly-painted red hand. "Symbol of the One King again…" the shaman mused.
Stooping, he picked up the war club. The long hickory handle gave a good heft, balanced, not nose-heavy, reminding him of Dorlas's warhammer. Chaffing the handle with dust to swab off blood, he slid it into his belt.
"Was that necessary?" Knucklebones asked. She stood nearby, small chest heaving, and buffed her brass knuckledusters on her lion skin jacket. The mane formed a curious hood. "He was dying anyway."
"I've left too many enemies alive."
Battle-lust passing, Sunbright was shaky and tired. He wore a brown bearskin vest but no hat, and never seemed cold.
"And I've paid for that mistake too many times," he continued. "It's a weakness, and I cannot afford to be weak. Besides, you never leave a throat uncut. Are you growing soft?"
The part-elf only polished her shiny knuckles. Raised to be ruthless, she couldn't argue, but one of Sunbright's major attractions had been his gentle kindness. Now, cut off from his people forever, he'd turned bitter, and she wondered if he'd ever be kind or gentle again.
Yet he sheathed Harvester to tend the bludgeoned woman, saw to her wounds while crooning to her children. His heart was still true, the thief knew. Only his mind was bitter. But his curt words, or lack of words, were a bugbear to endure.
Four dwarves joked and swapped boasts as they cleaned weapons and touched blades to whetstones. By contrast, the travelers grimly counted their dead, four lost out of twenty. A short, thickset man with massive, hairy arms jogged to Sunbright. Hugging his cowed children, he gasped, "How is she?"
"To tell the truth," the shaman told him. "I'm not sure." Sunbright knelt with the woman's head in his lap. The children had stanched her bleeding with rags and bundled her in blankets. Sunbright plied his belt knife to shave her scalp around a seeping wound. He rolled the woman's eyelids, examined her pupils, found them the same size. Nor did they bulge, as can happen with a severe head wound. "She may take the day to awaken, or three days. Or not at all."
The thick man gulped. All the travelers wore the same outfit. Canvas vests, thick knitted sweaters without sleeves, trousers of leather, knee-high boots wrapped with rawhide, leather caps with bills. Most had thick forearms and thighs, Sunbright noted, and wondered why. The man said, "I-we thank you for our rescue. We hoped to escape such troubles by fleeing the empire. But even here you're overrun."
Sunbright sliced up a skirt, and wrapped neat bandages around the patient's skull. "What troubles?" he asked. "We've heard naught."
Thick-fingered hands waggled helplessly as the man told him, "These orcs with the red hand raid everywhere, all around the compass. The emperor's soldiers wear themselves to a nub fighting, but they're like grass fires in drought. And they carry disease. Men partake in raids too. Bandits and pirates loot whole cities and torch them. Cities and towns shut the gates and admit no one, not even their own peasants. Markets and fairs languish. We journeyed to Zenith for the Festival of the Harvest Moon and found naught but empty fields. We've met no buyers, no one with cash, yet everyone wants our horses. The bandits are bloodthirsty, but imperial troops are just as bad. Twice we met small armies that threatened to take the horses in the empire's name, and give us nothing but wooden chits…"
Talk of rampant raids and chaos intrigued Sunbright, the dwarves, and Knucklebones. While the horse traders untangled their mounts and picked up and packed, and Sunbright stitched wounds, the dwarves brewed rose hip tea and unwrapped oak cakes. With the hostlers' permission, they butchered a dead horse and sliced the red meat into long strips. The dwarves cut wood and scraped a fire pit as the short winter day ended and brittle stars winked. Everyone feasted on horse meat and liver and brains that steamed in the frosty air like their breath. The hostlers unfolded curious shaggy ponchos with slits that left their bare arms free.
The hostlers' news was patchy and shaded by personal escapes, but it was clear the empire was inundated by the One King's ravagers. Rumor said Lady Polaris had discussed truce with the One King, but they'd warred instead and blown the top off Widowmaker Mountain. No one knew who controlled what territories. Orcish and imperial armies alike splintered into raiding parties. All strangers were foes, and no place was safe. The hostlers, honest traders once welcome throughout the empire, were war refugees, as were many other folk.
Sunbright went quiet as Hilel, the leader of this horse-trading clan, spoke of meeting "tall men with horsetails like yours." Stranded on the grasslands, the Rengarth Barbarians had dug sod houses into low hills. They foraged game from the grasslands, ventured into the forests for food and firewood, but many were waylaid by orcs, and the surviving barbarians were a morose lot, Hilel claimed, starving and haunted-eyed. He'd feared a massacre and the theft of their horses, but the barbarians let them pass without even asking the news. Some mothers and fathers had begged food for their children, who shivered with hunger.
Late in the night, Hilel asked for directions northwest. The brooding Sunbright didn't answer, so Knucklebones explained. "You can't go on. We've explored with the dwarves. This canyon rises too steeply for horses to mount, and cave bears are big as your horses. They'd eat you and your animals like blueberries.
"Nor can you pass south of the mountains, for the elves kill interlopers. Were it spring, I'd recommend you swing around Vandal Station and follow the Bay of Ascore to the Waterbourne River. But in winter, that'll be frozen. So there really is no way northwest except through the Cold Forest.
"Perhaps they can advise you better at Bandor Village."