Siege State

Chapter Fourteen: Dragged into the Deep

No one spoke. Not even Clairvine. There was no need. They would fight here with every fibre of their beings and they would likely die anyway.

They waited, near to collapse. Tom grabbed his spear from where hed left it when they stopped, but he barely had the strength to lift it. His clothes clung to him uncomfortably. They felt gritty under his armour, caked with sweat and grime.

Tom took a deep breath. The howls grew closer still.

Any moment now he thought.

Figures burst from the trees, skidding to a halt as they saw the group. More and more piled out of the woods, twenty, thirty of them. They were tall, around six and half feet on average. Humanoid, but definitely not human. Dark red skin drawn tight over muscled frames. Dark as dried blood.

Orcs, Tom thought in disbelief. It cant be! There hasnt been an orc in the Deep Green in thousands of years. Not since well before the Great Purge ended.

The rest of the groups reactions ranged wildly. Some gasped. Some screamed. Some exclaimed their disbelief, making signs against evil.

Oh, Goddess Clairvine whispered.

Orcs were the age-old enemy of mankind. Monsters and mana beasts were bad enough, but it was orcs that ultimately forced humans to live in their great fortress cities. They were stronger and faster than a human, unrelenting, savage, cunning, and worst of all, exceedingly prolific. An orcish infestation left for a handful of months could spiral out of control. One left for a year could lay siege to a city.

Humanity had two distinct advantages. Orcs had no patience for creation, they existed solely to destroy. Any tools or equipment they made were crude, at best. They also could not follow Ideals, and never developed abilities like monsters. Not a huge disadvantage, when even their youths were as strong as a full Idealist, but it had made the difference historically.

The Great Purge was a worldwide campaign to eradicate orcs once and for all. For thousands of years they had plagued the other sentient species of the world, ravaging their lands and stymying their development. It took hundreds of years of concerted effort, but eventually every civilised land was declared free of their menace.

Now the legends were right in front of them.

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There seemed to be sexual dimorphism, but individually they were varied, no two exactly alike. The males were taller, broader, and heavily muscled. The females were rangier, their limbs proportionately longer compared to the males. Both had tiny, beady eyes, flattened noses and slitted nostrils, and over-wide maws filled with razor teeth. Tusks jutted from the males jaws, and sabre fangs from the females, but aside from that, they almost resembled the little piranha fish that could sometimes be found in the rivers of the Green.

Some had long, matted hair, and others, bald pates. They wore ragged loincloths, and some had pieces of armour on. Wayrest armour. Some carried proper spears, where the rest had crude axes and clubs.

Something clicked in Toms mind. Theyve been ambushing stragglers from the swarm attack. The woman we found must have somehow escaped one of their attacks.

This was bad. If there were thirty orcs here, there was bound to be more. Potentially a lot more. If theyd been ranging the Green in force during the Reaping then they might have attacked other units. They had to tell Wayrest. If no one made it back, the city could be under siege before they even knew to prepare.

The orcs spread out to encircle them. The group bunched in tighter. The orcs in front of them parted as a singularly massive individual stepped from around a tree and loomed into the clearing. The other orcs ceased their yipping and snarling as it entered.

It was enormous, well over seven feet tall. Tusks curled from its lower jaw all the way to its cheeks. Long hair tied with bits of bone and feathers draped down over a broad, muscled chest, covered with scars. It wore a mail skirt, clearly two different ones looted from dead soldiers and roughly stitched together. Its nostrils flared as it took a great breath and huffed it into the air. Its eyes narrowed as it saw the group, animal cunning writ on its features. It carried with it a huge silver hammer. Markharts hammer.

It stepped forward, completely unafraid of them. It spat and growled at them, casting a flippant gesture their way before letting out a series of rough coughs. It took Tom a moment to realise it was talking - laughing at them from the sounds of it.

Clairvine stiffened. She cocked her head slightly off to the side, her eyes flicking rapidly back and forth.

Amazing, thought Tom. Her Wisp can translate Orcish. Then something truly rare happened. A floating ball of pale green light, limned in white, appeared before them. Those in their group facing it gasped, causing the others to look around to see it too.

Her Wisp! Tom thought. Idealists very rarely let anyone see their Wisps, but they could make them visible should they want. From what Tom understood, they were an intimate aspect of Idealism, unique to each Idealist. Seeing one was like ogling two lovers as they kissed - a breach of privacy. Clairvine obviously felt the situation warranted them seeing what the orc was saying as well. Brown text scrawled itself in the middle of the Wisp, hesitating, before disappearing in sequence to make room for more.

- pathetic! These dogs can barely stand. The orc stopped to laugh uproariously. They are all so weak now. We shall roll over them like the tide and take back what is ours.

You wont find us such easy prey, orc! Clairvine declared.

The orc sized her up, pale and haggard, but putting on a brave face. It laughed again, spittle bursting from its mouth in a cloud.

Yapping dog tries to talk to its better! The other orcs began to laugh as well. It was an incredibly unsettling sound, like being in a Healers ward during a coughing plague. The orcs trailed off, prowling about outside the range of their spears. The huge orc stepped right up to Clairvine, just beyond her spear.

Suddenly she dropped it to one hand, thrusting the other out and firing a stream of blue petals at it. Almost casually, it raised one massive palm.

Red, glowing cracks spread through the air from its hand, like someone had shattered the side of a kiln. The petals impacted the area harmlessly. The orc turned its hand palm up and slowly clenched its fist. It looked at Clairvine curiously. She sagged on her feet.

Idealist it said. I had hoped they would be stronger. These pale rats have regressed so far. Take them.

It suited its actions to its words, carelessly batting her spear aside. The other orcs howled and charged them as one.

Tom gritted his teeth. A female orc came straight at him, using its long arms to propel itself forward along the ground like some kind of grotesque ape. It leaped at him as it neared, heedless of the spear he carried.

He thrust at it, skewering it straight through the chest, but it had enough momentum that it carried through to him and bowled him over. Tom thrashed around, tangled in its corpse and with his own spear. The sounds of fighting rang out all around him. Desperately, he fought to regain his feet.

He untangled himself and shoved the corpse off him just in time to see a club come whistling towards his head. He jerked backwards, but still took a glancing blow to the temple.

Tom immediately fell back to the ground, his vision swimming. He saw the massive orc, holding Clairvine by the face in one hand as she struggled weakly against it. Darkness claimed him.

~~~~~~~~~~

Tom awoke completely disoriented. He was being jostled about like he was riding a horse. As he got his bearings he realised he was being carried over the shoulder of one of the orcs. His arms hung in front of him, bound at the wrists with rope. Looking up, he saw another male orc carrying one of his comrades over his shoulder too. He couldnt see who, having only a view of their legs.

He began to thrash wildly. He had next to no chance of escaping, not alone and with his hands bound, but it couldnt be worse trying than waiting for the orcs to do whatever they had in mind.

The orc carrying him stopped and dumped him unceremoniously to the ground. He realised his armour had been stripped from him and his feet had been bound together as well. It growled something at him, its stinking maw mere inches from Toms face, and then backhanded him. Hard.

His ears now ringing like a bell, he was slung back over the orcs shoulder and carried off again.

As they moved and his disorientation from being knocked unconscious slowly faded, he noted at least four others from his unit being carried as he was. He couldnt see Clairvine back down the line anywhere. He assumed the lead orc would probably be carrying her, with his ability to shield himself from her skills.

The orc used a skill! Tom thought. We have to escape! We have to get word to Wayrest!

Orcs had never been able to use skills or follow Ideals. If that had changed, it was critical they get the word out. It was the main advantage humans had against them. The mere fact that there were orcs within a few weeks travel of Wayrest paled compared to that. When they returned with news, Wayrest would immediately dispatch riders to every nearby city, warning them, and urging them to do the same.

When Tom thought derisively. If. If we return.

When he set out for the Reaping, the last way he imagined it would end up was with him being eaten by orcs. Or tortured by orcs. Or sacrificed in the name of their dark God. Their presence revolted him. It terrified him. He had never thought to meet these creatures from antiquity, let alone be captured by them. Orcs were supposed to be met in battle, with armies, broken, and the remnants hunted down by specialised units of Idealists before they could propagate again. What could a normal man do against them?

A wave of hopelessness rolled over him.

How pointless, he lamented. All my training, all my work, all my pain - just for it to end like this.

Time blurred into nonsense for Tom. They were carried for days. His ribs hurt from being jolted against the orcs shoulder for hours and hours on end. His wrists were chafed raw. He had no idea where they were headed. North, as best as he could tell. The orcs moved through the forest with the natural grace of animals, finding the best path with ease. Wherever they were being taken, they were being taken there quickly.

Every night they were dumped in a rough pile with a lone orc to watch over them. Halfway through the night, the orc would change with one of its fellows. If they moved too much for their liking, they were kicked. If they talked, they were beaten savagely. None of them dared to try after the first few examples. Their hands and feet were never unbound. They werent fed. They were never given a chance to relieve themselves properly. They quickly became a stinking mess of abused, cramped muscles.

On their first night, Tom realised Clairvine hadnt been dropped into the pile with them. He wondered where they were keeping her, until the next morning, when he saw her head had been bound into the leaders mail skirt by her hair. Her face was frozen in an expression of anguish. At that point, Tom lost all hope of escape or rescue.

Gad, in particular, was a mess. He must have been hoping desperately to avoid the same fate. Tom had killed an orc for certain, and at least a few of the others surely must have as well. The only difference between them and Clairvine was that she was an Idealist. Tom supposed it made sense to kill her; she would be far too dangerous to transport as a captive.

Tom felt sorry for Gad. If they realised he was an Idealist they would kill him out of hand. If Clairvine couldnt fight the orcs then Gad had no chance. His Ideal of Bluntness was useless for escaping too. It looked like, for all Gads idiocy and pomp, he understood the graveness of their situation. He was in a constant battle with himself to stop himself from crying and snivelling, lest he take a beating from the orcs for making noise.

When Tom realised that Gad could understand what the orcs had been saying on their march through his Wisp, his utterly hysteric countenance took on a far, far grimmer perspective.