The Wardog's Coin Page 3

  “The what?” I stared at her in confusion. “Oh, the stones.” I fumbled awkwardly inside my leather armor and felt the pouch the mage had given me. It was still there. “Yeah, I got them.”

  She turned toward the south and the fires that burned like an vast assembly of hell beasts, and she pointed to the nearest flame.

  “You saw the pen where the pigs are sleeping. There are guards near the fires, but I saw no patrols about, so you need not be overcautious on your approach. The magister will have given you five shards, each of which should be placed with the icon face down, pointing to the earth, not the sky. Place them equidistant—”

  “The icons?” I interrupted.

  “The engravings pursuant to the spell. One side is smooth, the other is carved.”

  “So the carved side goes—”

  “Down, yes,” she said impatiently, as if I was expected to know anything about elf magic. “They don’t need to be perfectly equidistant from each other, but they should encompass the pens. Use the four fires we saw as reference. As soon as all five instigators are in place, return here. I will go to the sky now, but we will watch for you.”

  My face must have showed my skepticism, because she smiled contemptuously and shook her head.

  “Neither elves nor hawks are night blind, Man. If you make it back here, I will retrieve you. The king has promised your capitaine as much. But place all five or die in the attempt. If you do not, I will leave you to the tender mercies of the orc.”

  I believed her. Hellfire, I figured I’d be lucky if the stone-hearted bitch didn’t trigger the spell the moment the stones was in place and roast me along with the bloody pigs. And it was clear there would be no slipping away under the cover of the night either, not with little miss owl eyes watching me from on high. There was only one way out of this alive, and in that direction lay about ten thousand orcs and goblins. Slumbering, I hoped, although the way my fortunes seemed to be running lately, I wouldn’t be surprised if most of them turned out to hail from a tribe known for its insomnia.

  She didn’t seem the sort of wench liable to give a man a kiss for good luck, so I just nodded at her and began to make my way down toward the warboars. I could have found them even without the fires for reference. All I had to do was follow my poor abused nose.

  It took me three times longer to reach the pens from the rendezvous point than it had for me to reach the rendezvous from the elf camp. It was hard to see where I was going, and despite the she-elf’s assurances, I wasn’t convinced that Ulgor would leave off his patrols this close to the elven army. The orc had to know the elves didn’t mind fighting at night. In fact, it occurred to me that a raid on the enemy center would have been a useful diversion. Of course, it would also have roused the boar guards from what I hoped was their sleep, so a quiet, peaceful evening would be to my advantage.

  The stench of the giant pigs was bloody near unbearable by the time I was close enough to lay eyes upon them. They snorted and grumbled in their sleep behind a feeble pen that was nothing more than ropes stretched around spears driven into the ground. It wouldn’t have prevented a piglet from breaking out if it was so inclined, which made me wonder if the boars was better trained then I imagined. Then I saw a glint of moonlight reflecting from something metal on the ground near the closest behemoth—the beasts was chained to spikes driven into the ground. That made a little more sense and explained why the boars didn’t do more than lie around. They simply couldn’t do anything else.

  I made the first set of guards easily. There was five orcs lying insensate around the glowing embers of a dying campfire not more than a spear's throw away. A pair of empty wineskins made it clear why they was unconscious. Shady would probably have sneaked forward and slit all their throats, but I just slipped past them. Once I reached the perimeter of the boar pen, reached into my armor, withdrew one of the stones, and felt the carvings under my thumb. I placed it right next to one of the spears holding up the rope, careful to put it so the carvings was pointed downward, in the direction of the flames it seemed they would soon be calling.

  Marking the location by the campfire, I circled around the pen as silently as I could manage, counting my steps as I walked with my left hand resting lightly upon the upper rope. After fifty paces, it looked as if I’d covered about a fifth of the circumference, so I kneeled down and placed the second stone.

  For the first time, I began to think this wasn’t so bad after all, even though second campfire lay in my way, so I had to abandon the rope and take a wide path around the second set of guards. This group was more conscious than the first, although not much more alert. One orc was staring morosely into the fire. Two of its companions was ululating drunkenly at the boars. And the fourth, a giant brute, was roasting what looked disturbingly like a human leg over the fire. Whether it belonged to an orc or to a goblin I couldn't tell, and I wasn't curious enough to go and ask.

  I shook my head as I laid the third stone. The elves was right. Orcs was just nasty pieces of work, and whatever god or demon made them must have had a truly sick sense of humor. But I was glad the breeds was occupied with something other than keeping an eye out for intruders. I continued sneaking around the perimeter, put the fourth in place, and I actually started to relax, thinking I’d be long gone before the orcs had any idea what hit them.

  Let that be a lesson to you: Never relax. Don't never think it’s over until it’s actually done and you’re back safely in your tent, because until then, anything can happen.

  The third fire was dying down, and I was away from the rope giving it a wide berth when I heard something that sounded like one of the boars grunting, only it was too close to be one. I stopped, drew my dagger, and crouched low to the ground, carefully scanning the darkness in front of me. Then the odor hit me. It wasn’t the stink of the boars, to which I’d somehow nearly gotten accustomed. It was more acrid, more immediate and offensive. Then it hit me, there was someone having a squat, and he was pretty damn close if I could smell him over one hundred and fifty pigs.

  I whirled around and found myself face to face, really, more like nose to nose, with an orc, whose yellow eyes was nearly as wide with surprise as my own probably was.

  He shouted, a wordless cry of alarm that seemed to echo throughout the silence of the night.

  His cry was answered by snorts and grumbling and roars as the boars woke and at least one of his fellow guards called out to him in that throat-crunching noise that appears to pass for their notion of a language.

  I reacted without even thinking. I punched my dagger once in the orc’s stomach, ripped up as hard as I could, then grabbed his hair as he started to scream and double over. I pulled his head up and slammed the dagger into his right eye, driving it all the way in to the hilt. That shut him up with little more than a strangled shriek, which was followed by the sound of his body collapsing to the ground with an audible thud.

  I was quick, but I wasn't quick enough. The flames was already being fanned, and at least two torches was lit; it sounded like a couple of the dead orc’s companions was rushing toward me. I had one stone left and a moment to decide my course of action. If I ran off into the night, I couldn’t be sure of getting away or even of being able to sneak back and place the fifth stone before sunrise. So I did the exact opposite.

  Before they could reach me, I put my blade in my teeth, got on my hands and knees, and scrambled forward, right past the pursuit and toward the big pig corral. The light from the first torch barely missed me. I was amazed that none of the orcs managed to spot me as they ran past me. But then, they wasn’t looking for someone doing his best impression of a sprinting tortoise—they was looking for an elven raider, and judging by the tone of their cries, they was terrified that they was going to find one.

  I slipped between the two ropes and disappeared into the herd of giant pigs. But with all the ruckus nearby, the boars was snorting and stirring, and as I ran past one monstrosity, it grunted and reluctantly pushed itself to its feet. The who
le damn herd was waking! While useful in that they would hide me from the orcs for the moment, the problem with hiding in the midst of the bastards was that any one of the ornery beasts could quite easily do for me.

  I ran my left thumb over the engravings on the fifth stone and eyed the general direction where it needed to go. Did I dare just throw it and hope it landed face down? What would happen if it didn’t? Would the spell work anyhow? I wished I’d thought to ask the elf, but there was nothing to do about it now.

  SQUEEEEEEE! An outraged squeal erupted right in my ear. It made me jump and very nearly caused me to drop the stone. I spun around and saw a huge warboar straining at the heavy chain that held him in place, tossing his neckless head furiously back and forth as he tried to get at me.

  That settled it. I couldn’t stay here anymore, not without getting torn to bits and trampled, and I could see from the torches that the guards had fanned out beyond the perimeter. Two or three of them was even starting to approach the pen, alerted by the angry rumblings from the herd. Could I just run past them, trusting the night to hide me from them? That seemed unlikely, especially once I got outside the wildly unsafe protection of the herd and they could hear me running. What I needed was a distraction.

  I looked at the giant hog straining violently at his chain, his mad yellow eyes promising me a painful, messy death if only he could break loose, and I realized that the orcs probably had some kind of release mechanism attaching the chain to the spikes driven into the ground.

  “Not you, you bristled waste of bacon,” I hissed at the furious boar, looking around for a less obviously angry animal. There was three nearby that still appeared to be sleeping soundly despite the commotion, so I carefully edged over toward the closest and prayed the monster wouldn’t wake up as I crouched down and reached out for its chain. I ran my hand lightly, following it down toward the ground until I encountered a crude hook that was attached to a circle welded on the top of the iron spike. The hook was loose and easily slipped, so easily that my heart skipped a beat when I realized that it was only dumb luck that all of them had held thus far.

  So far, so good. Now for the truly risky part. I took a deep breath then kicked the slumbering brute as hard as I could in the hamhocks. The boar didn’t even move. Astonished, I kicked it again. This time, it grunted in feeble protest, sounding for all the world like Fat Pierre on a cold morning.

  Salty bloody pork! I could hear shouts coming from the camp to the south now, about half the animals in the pen was bellowing in full throat, and this lazy bastard of a pig couldn’t even bother to get up. Too angry to be frightened, I booted the boar in its fat arse one more time, and the third time paid for all. The boar came alive and exploded from the ground like a bolt being loosed from a ballista. No sooner was it on its hooves than it crashed into two other boars in front of it. Both of them took extreme exception to the intrusion, squealing and shrieking as if they’d been possessed by all the demons of the Gerasenes.

  I took the opportunity to sprint in the general direction I guessed the fifth stone had to go, narrowly avoiding having my coolies ripped off by a pair of tusks before being sent sprawling to the ground by a hairy boar shoulder that felt like a mountain. I rolled to my feet and kept running, desperately hoping to get past the enraged animals before one of them could carve me open or catch me in its jaws.

  Somehow, I made it to the rope without any of them actually drawing blood, although I was still seeing stars from being flattened by the one behemoth. I ran my fingers over the stone to make sure it was facing the right way, then I slapped it down and ran for my life toward what I hoped was the north.

  Most of the torches was well off to my right, so I thought I was nearly home free. Then, without so much as a hint of warning, someone struck a flint, and a torch flared into life not ten paces to my left.

  I don’t know who was more surprised, me or the orc holding the torch, but I barely broke my stride as I angled away from him and his two fellows, desperately seeking to lose myself again in the darkness. They was too busy shouting and howling that they’d seen me to break into full pursuit right away, but with my night vision ruined by the sudden burst of light, I tripped over an unseen branch and smashed my left kneecap into stone.

  “Sainted Mother!” I grimaced and forced myself to my feet right away, even though the pain was enough to make me see red. I kept running, but in a weird sort of half-run, half-hop that wasn’t going to get me away from the torches that was rapidly coming in my direction, accompanied by the shouts and cries of the closest pursuers. I tried not to curse my fate. After all, without the elf spells we was probably all dead anyhow, but I wasn’t feeling all that inclined to be noble, not with my head ringing, my knee feeling like it was broken, and a score of orcs on my arse.

  I could hear their footfalls closing in on me now, so I gave up. I couldn’t run much farther anyhow, and at least I could take one or two of the bloody breeds with me. I crouched low, putting my free hand forward, thinking that if I could stab the one with the torch quickly enough, maybe I could grab it, throw it in the face of the other two, and break free again.

  But they wasn’t stupid enough for that. The one with the torch hung back, and the other two spread out to flank me, making sure I wouldn’t have nowhere to run.

  Then the one with the torch screamed for no reason I could see and leaped away from me as if he’d seen the devil, flailing wildly with his torch. At the same time, the orc to my right dropped to the ground like a stone.

  Night turned into day. Without warning, within the blink of an eye, it was as if midnight magically exchanged itself with high noon. I could see everything stretching out before me: the orcs running toward me, scores of boars going berserk and pulling at their chains, a troop of gobbo infantry marching out from the camp in the direction of the pen, even the fallen orc lying on the ground with an arrow through his eye.

  A heat wave struck me, and the ground trembled beneath my feet. There was the roar of a thousand devils cursing Heaven, followed by a thunderclap that knocked me from my feet. The elven spell!

  Too awestruck to move, I watched a huge column of flame rising from the bowels of the earth, surging up as if from the depths of Hell itself and climbing toward the moons to devour them. How high did it rise? I couldn’t say, but it was the most awesome and terrible thing I had ever seen.

  The screaming started.

  The boars squealed frantically in agony and terror as the hellfire burned their flesh from their bones. The orcs was crying out in fear and terror, shrieking in their barbaric tongue as if the great circle of flames that towered over us all was one of their pagan gods.

  I pushed myself slowly, painfully, to my feet. The two orcs near me was still on their hands and knees. The one with the burning torch was staring at me wide-eyed and gabbling away nonsensically as if he was praying. They didn’t look like they had any intention of attacking me, which was a dirty good thing because I don’t think I could have defended myself against even an unarmed, week-old goblin.

  “Just leave me the hell alone,” I said wearily, waving my knife in the direction of the silent one. I swear, it turned almost yellow, threw its arms in front of its head, and cringed. That’s when it hit me. Exhausted and sore and scared as I was, standing there alone, staring at a whole army of orcs under that vast tower of roaring fire, I nearly started laughing. The poor bastards thought I did it! They must have thought I was the most fearsome bloody wizard L’Académie had ever produced, to call up fire on a scale like that!

  “Go,” I shouted at them, waving them away as I wiped my dagger on my pantalons. “Get on out of here!”

  They may not have understood the words, but they understood the meaning all right. They ran. They ran, and I laughed. I watched the world burn. I listened to the orcs shrieking and screaming and shouting, and it was like music to my ears. I laughed and laughed. I didn’t even understand what was so funny. I just knew that if I didn’t laugh, I was going to go mad from the fear, and t
he shock, and the horror of it all.

  That was when that godforsaken bird hit me from behind, and the ground abruptly vanished from beneath my feet.

  I missed the first part of the battle the next morning. The Company was in reserve, so the capitaine let me and Shady sleep in. One of the wounded men serving as a runner told us the goblins had already come at us twice and been thrown back both times by the elven infantry. I was a little surprised to hear the elves was still around. Me and the she-elf had barbecued our pigs, but something went wrong on Shady’s side, and the spell never triggered. I guess the king figured we’d thinned them down enough to keep them from breaking our lines, or maybe he never planned to run away in the first place. Wasn’t the first time the scuttlebutt had it wrong.

  “You sure you put the stones face-down?” I asked Shady as we was walking toward the position the Company had taken up. They was in the middle, waiting to relieve some elf prince or another, about fifty paces behind the two ranks of elves waiting for the third goblin wave. Two bells before noon, it was a cool, clear day, which made it easy to see the four warhawks keeping a watchful eye on the enemy lines overhead. All in all, not a bad day for battle.

  “Yeah, carved side down, just like they said.”

  “And equal distant?”

  “I can count to five, Sarge.”

  “Then what happened?”

  “I don’t know. I slipped in, the guards didn’t notice, I placed the stones, I went back to the rendezvous and met the elven raider there. No trouble at all. But the spell didn’t work. I don’t know, maybe he did something wrong. All I know is that mage what gave us the stones was chewing him a new one when we got back. What about you, how’d you go?”

  “Oh, the same,” I lied. “In and out, just like you said. Except the stones went off.”

  “Yep,” Shady agreed. “That was a sight. They probably saw them going off back in Fleurance.”