Horde, p.1
Horde, page 1
HORDE
A Novel
IAN THOMAS HEALY
Copyright 2017 Ian Thomas Healy
Published by Local Hero Press
Smashwords Edition
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
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Cover art by S. Bell
Book design by Local Hero Press, LLC
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Table of Contents
Chapter One: The Blumpkins
Chapter Two: Through the East Gate
Chapter Three: The Wicked Garden
Chapter Four: Wilmasnatch
Chapter Five: Hodak the Inconsequential
Chapter Six: Hero of the Realm
Chapter Seven: Bathing with Elves
Chapter Eight: The Barbarian and the Thief
Chapter Nine: Reaching the Escarpment
Chapter Ten: The Ancient Stair
Chapter Eleven: The Tomb of Hanrah
Chapter Twelve: A Cleric Comes to Brazzer’s Landing
Chapter Thirteen: The Great City
Chapter Fourteen: The Docks of Brazzer’s Landing
Chapter Fifteen: Into the Wilderness
Chapter Sixteen: Up the Coast
Chapter Seventeen: Into the Forest
Chapter Eighteen: The Forest Dwellers
Chapter Nineteen: The Queen of the Forest
Chapter Twenty: The Pit
Chapter Twenty-One: Consequential
Chapter Twenty-Two: Scufthalansà of the Wood Elves
Chapter Twenty-Three: An Old Enemy
Chapter Twenty-Four: Escaping the Elves
Chapter Twenty-Five: The Grove of Souls
Chapter Twenty-Six: Rellevart’s Crypt
Chapter Twenty-Seven: The Burnt Village
Chapter Twenty-Eight: Down the Dhûm River
Chapter Twenty-Nine: The Singers
Chapter Thirty: Maìdenslakh
Chapter Thirty-One: The Stone Boat
Chapter Thirty-Two: The Depths of Maìdenslakh
Chapter Thirty-Three: The Cinnabar Tower
Chapter Thirty-Four: The Dark Floor
Chapter Thirty-Five: The Library of the Silvestrì
Chapter Thirty-Six: Eyes of the Watcher
Chapter Thirty-Seven: The Blank Pages
Chapter Thirty-Eight: The Siege Begins
Chapter Thirty-Nine: The Gate Scrolls
Chapter Forty: In the Hall of the Mountain King
Chapter Forty-One: Hail to the King
Chapter Forty-Two: The Battle of Maìdenslakh
Chapter Forty-Three: A Hero for the Ages
Chapter Forty-Four: Ascendents
Book One
The Gathering
Chapter One
The Blumpkins
Treasure! It was the engine that drove the world in those days. Most folks had a few coppers to their name, and even a gold piece or two, but legends spoke of the great hoards that could let a man buy the world—great mountains of gold and jewels, piled higher than a man could climb in a day, more than he could decamp with in a wagon if he had a year undisturbed. Every wide-eyed crusader who set out to seek his fortune did so with the sound of gold coins clinking in his ears. Even those most noble of heroes, whose journeys turned the very direction of the world from darkness back toward light, were little more than treasure-seekers in the end. Greed was the great motivator, the equalizer that made Elves, and Dwarves, Men and Halflings the same in the eyes of their gods.
But once in a great while, heroism would rise from the most unlikely, the humblest beginnings, and the acquisition of wealth might only be a secondary concern. Keeping that in mind, it is time to meet our heroes . . .
* * *
Paug Blumpkin was smart for an Orc, which for many people might be like saying he was smart for a tree, or smart for a lump of clay, because Orcs—like politicians—have never been thought of as a particularly intelligent race. Their skills laid along different lines, namely those involving wholesale slaughter, retail slaughter, torture, barbarism, and bureaucracy. Paug was cut from a different cloth, though. For one thing, he could read, a skill most Orcs valued about as much as Halflings did calisthenics. For another, he had big dreams. Whereas most of the piggish, green-skinned louts were content to eat their slop, swing their swords, and polish their helmets regularly, Paug could often be found walking through the quiet parts of the caves, muttering to himself. Thinking, if you can believe such a thing.
His father, Blump, didn’t approve. “It’s unnatural,” he would shout. “Why’s he got to be such a bedamned smart ass? What does he think he is, an Elf?” And Blump would spit goo onto the floor, because Elves were the sworn enemies of Orcs. Come to think of it, so were Dwarves, Halflings, and Men, and probably some races that have long since passed into legend.
Paug’s brother Milph would shrug and say, “I don’t know, Da’,” which was the one thing that made Blump proud. Milph was a good Orc. He would never be caught thinking. The chubby youngster was as dumb as a proverbial box of hair, which meant he would likely be commanding a regiment for the Horde when he was older.
Orcs never had a good reputation among the other races in the best of times, and times had been notoriously lean of late. It used to be that there was always an evil Wizard or warlock in need of an army-for-rent, or a Barbarian king that wished to overrun a neighboring nation. All one had to do was send an emissary to the Orc King with a sufficient amount of gold, and then the Horde would be mobilized—a tremendous host of the foulest warriors ever seen in the world, with their cruel blades and twisted armor. The Orcs would set out to slay at the behest of their new master, along with specialized platoons of Goblins, whose cunning built the Orcs’ great war engines, and Ogres, whose gigantic size and strength made them perfect for dragging those war engines around, and Kobolds, who nobody knew quite why they hung around but everybody agreed were delicious. It was every Orc’s honor to march in a Horde and throw himself joyfully against the spears and arrows of their enemies, to die as he had lived: hooting and hollering and making a ruckus.
Unfortunately for the die-hards of the Orcish warriors, a time of peace had come to the world. The Necromancer had been killed. The Wizards were all sequestered back in their towers, doing whatever magic-users did. Reading, snorted most of the Orc fathers in disdain. There hadn’t been a good war since Blump had been a mere tadpole, barely large enough to carry the sword they’d shoved into his hands. He would proudly show off his war wound to anyone, whether they asked to see it or not, and would get very angry when it was suggested that perhaps he’d been facing the wrong way. “I stepped on a loose stone and fell,” he would yell. “Arrows come from above. Of course I got shot in the ass. I wasn’t running away, like a coward.” And then, to illustrate his point, he’d punch whoever was closest to him.
Paug had learned long ago not to be sitting near his father when the question of bravery in battle came up. Milph never quite figured that part out, and as a result, his nose was permanently squished instead of protruding like most Orcs’ did, and Blump said it looked positively regal. “You’ll be a great leader of Orcs someday, my son,” he would say.
“Lead from the rear,” was Paug’s suggestion, whose ideas about the difference between bravery and foolhardiness were at best unpopular. “The warriors at the front die first.”
“So, uh, that’s good, right, Da’?” asked Milph. “Because that’s honorable, right?”
Blump slapped Milph’s shoulder. “Indeed it is, my son! Indeed it is.”
“Da’,” began Paug. “Who would the Horde even fight? There hasn’t been a war in twenty years.”
Blump’s piggish eyes narrowed into slits. “Who’s counting?”
“Well, you got wounded in the last battle, right? And you were younger than we are now. Which means we hadn’t been spawned yet. And twenty is as high as most Orcs can count, anyway.”
“Twenty-one,” said Milph. “Who’s the smart one now, Paug?”
“Don’t be a know-it-all, Milph.” Blump shook his finger at his younger son’s face.
“You’re only saying that because you forgot your trousers this morning,” said Paug. “And that’s pretty bad, even for you.”
Milph looked down at his bits and pieces. “Oh. Whoops. I can’t recall where I left them last.”
“Why don’t you try your pallet?” suggested Paug.
Milph grinned a gap-toothed smile, his lower fangs flashing in the torchlight of the family’s cave. “Thanks, Paug.”
“You know, my father could count to twenty-two,” said Blump thoughtfully, watching his younger son root around his bed in search of the elusive trousers. “Of course, he took a funny wound in the Seventh Elf War.”
“I’m sure it was funny, Da’.” Paug tried not to roll his eyes.
“He was a smart one, like you. I suppose smarts skips a generation. Believe me, son, I try not to hold that against you.”
“I can’t help it, Da’. Why do we even have brains if we don’t use them?”
“Now, you hush right up with that line of thought. You sound like a bloody Elf when you ask questions.” Blump wandered over to the cooking pot and raised the lid, filling the cave with the stink of the morning glop, made from freshly-caught cave fish, cave mushrooms, cave water, and a handful of oats leftover from the last raid.
“Da’, just because they’re Elves doesn’t mean that they’re useless.”
Blump spat phlegm of disappointment into the fire, which hissed and crackled. “There you go again, saying Elves are this and Humans are that and Dwarves are something else too. You’re an Orc, Paug. Your destiny is to die gloriously in battle on the spears of our enemies, not to—to bloody daydream.”
“I found my trousers!” crowed Milph. He held them up, one hand jammed into each leg and his head stuck in the midst of the crotch.
“Milph . . . they go on your legs,” said Paug.
“Paug! He’d figure it out eventually on his own,” said Blump. “We’re not Kobolds. Orcs have a proud tradition of solving problems the most effective way.”
With a tearing sound, Milph forced his head through the seam of his trousers and grinned at his father and brother.
“I’m just so damned proud,” said Blump, a paternal tear in his eye.
* * *
After Paug took a few minutes to get Milph’s trousers straightened out and mended with some rough needlework, the two young Orcs departed for their daily training regimen with the rest of the Mid Central Battalion.
“I wish you and Da’ wouldn’t fight,” said Milph. “It always makes me feel like I should punch both of you.”
“He doesn’t understand me,” said Paug. “Just because we’re Orcs doesn’t mean we have to be slaves to blind traditions.”
Milph laughed. “No, silly. We ain’t slaves. We don’t have chains on, see?” He raised his hands to show his brother. “Kobolds are slaves. Did you mistake us for Kobolds, Paug?”
Paug stopped in the rough-hewn corridor. Orcs had never been much in the way of diggers and excavators, but they were superb when it came to stealing others’ work. The Orcish Kingdom had been established in a Dwarven stronghold many generations before. Paug sometimes stopped in his travels to admire the work left behind by the stout craftsmen’s hammers. After difficulties with larger Orcs, he’d long since learned to tell them he was just staring at the walls. He felt like he could only really be honest with Milph, as they’d been inseparable since they were mere tadpoles. He didn’t know what it meant to love something, as that was as foreign a feeling to Orcs as kindness or charity. He didn’t even know the word for it. What he did know was that it would bother him if Milph were to tumble down one of the numerous open shafts that plagued the Dwarven tunnels. “Milph, listen. There are chains on us. They’re unseen, but they’re there. They’re what keep us hiding in these caves and training for battle, when that battle might never come again. All we do is practice fighting and killing each other while the rest of the world goes on without us. Nobody will ever remember us when we’re gone. We never make anything. We never do anything. We’re useless.”
“But we make swords . . .” Milph held up his smudged blade, unevenly-sharpened with a notch out of it near the tip.
“Goblins make swords,” said Paug. “All we do is practice swinging them.”
“Like this!” Milph swung his around in an admirably fast arc, making Paug leap back to avoid being cut in half. The whistling blade struck a thick rope that passed through holes in the floor and ceiling. The ancient fibers, soaked with oil and mold, parted without so much as a complaint. The severed ends shot both up into the ceiling and down into the floor, the latter with a crashing, clattering sound that suggested to Paug that it had been supporting a large amount of weight.
“I think we should leave,” said Paug. “Otherwise we’re going to be in trouble.”
“It was a good cut, huh?”
“Yes, Milph.”
“Would you stop fightin’ with Da’?”
“Probably not. Come on, we’re going to be late for regimen.”
The two Orcs hurried through the corridors until they reached the Training Hall, which had long ago been a central marketplace for the Dwarves. The Orcs had long since cleared away all the useless colorful tents and replaced them with various training stations where they could better themselves as warriors. There were wooden dummies that they could hack at with swords, terrified Kobolds that they could hack at with swords, and one overlarge Troll that they could pretend to hack at with swords but mostly run away from. Hacking at things with swords tended to be the most in-depth regimen that typical Orcs could handle. They were pretty much incompetent with bows, although Human-style crossbows were hardy enough that some Orcs were learning how to shoot “Just like Elves,” they proclaimed. “Except without all the leafy nature shit.”
“Blumpkins!” growled Sergeant Sluggo. “You’re late.” Sluggo was a veteran of the last war, like Blump, and in fact had served in the same unit as Blump. He even had a similar wound in his own hindquarters, as well as a scar across his kneecap from what he’d described as a vicious Halfling with a knife. He glared at the two young Orcs, his heavy brows bristling.
“That was my fault,” said Paug. “I was, uh, staring at the walls again.”
“I should put the two of you on Ogre work today, but it seems that we’ve had a bit of an emergency. A rope split and dumped about twenty tons of rock on the entrance to the Royal Chambers. All the Ogres are busy clearing the way for the King.”
“Oh, uh, gee, that’s too bad,” said Paug, realizing it had probably been Milph’s fault. “So, training dummies, then?”
Sluggo squinted at them. “What are you up to, Blumpkin?”
“I was wearin’ my trousers on my head this mornin’,” said Milph, pride spread across his porcine face like Kobold glue. “It was really dark.”
Sluggo slapped his face, the Dwarven gesture one of his peculiar affectations. “All right, you two. Get out of my sight and go beat a dummy into splinters. And no, I don’t care if it’s a Kobold or not.”
