Fallen Crown (Orc Destiny Volume II) (The Blood and Brotherhood Saga) (12 page)

Bending the orbs of power within him to his will, he turned
and summoned more and more of the fallen back into his service as the dead
began to rise and again take up arms. The angry fog clearing from his mind as
realization struck, Gnak watched the risen dead as they slowly stumbled back
into battle, making their way to the front lines where they were hacked
relentlessly but refused to die to normally mortal wounds.

This was it!
This
was the power Ishanya had given him
to save lives. How many more could be saved if only those already dead were
taking up the fight? Filled with pride at his knowledge and the minor victory
that it came with, Gnak shouted in celebration as something unexpected made the
battle take yet another turn.

With a chorus of barks and howls, the wizard’s wicked troops
burst into the fight. Tearing, biting, and clawing, the creatures fought
savagely, ripping to pieces all that opposed them. Gnak surveyed the
battlefield and watched as those blessed among the humans surged about the
field nearly unimpeded, the blessed champions of his own army seemingly having
been defeated. On and on the blessed humans waded through the masses of Orcs, ogres,
trolls and goblins, smashing beneath them paths of gore and death. Reaching
out, Gnak raised those still able to fight who lingered in the wake of the
giant men.

All around him those with magic flung fire at the humans,
and the humans replied in kind, though both sides’ numbers had diminished
greatly. Arrows still fell from the sky, but they were too few now to create an
overwhelming difference. No. The humans had suffered great casualties and even
with their obvious advantage of more blessed warriors, it was only a matter of
time before their main army was destroyed by the horde. Preferring that the
battle end sooner than later, it appeared suddenly that his wish was granted.

From further behind his position, a horn sounded again and
again as a goblin wearing nothing but a pack upon his back and armed with
nothing but a torch, came rushing directly towards him. As all others did, Gnak
simply stepped to the side, letting the obviously crazed creature go sprinting
past. Watching in his wake, as many from both sides seemed to be doing, he was
surprised when the little beast dove into the line of the human wizard’s beast
troops, stuffing the torch into the pack upon his back.

The blast that followed threw hundreds from their feet as
body parts, fragments of armor, and tufts of fur rained down over a fifty yard
stretch of the battlefield. His ears ringing, Gnak barely noted as more of the
high pitched horns blasted all around the battlefield, as more and more goblins
rushed to their own deaths only to take more of the enemy with them.

The battlefield changed in that instant as human mages and
champions all lent themselves to the destruction of the suicide goblins. Dozens
of the goblins died, perhaps hundreds, as Gnak worked to revive as many others
upon the field as he was able. Wills came to him as lives were extinguished on
a whim, and no longer did he need physical contact to collect or disperse them.

Another explosion sounded and then several more at once.
Blasts sounded from all sides of the field as the goblins exploded prematurely
amongst their own troops. From everywhere, wills assaulted him, filling him,
with more than he could use to revive those dead still able to fight on.
Rushing here and there, Gnak revived those he could, ignoring many that would
add no benefit to the battle. But they were dying faster than he could work. Even
his efforts, it seemed, were a losing battle. And that was before the human
wizard unleashed another unbelievable horror.

Turning as he revived a group of blasted goblins, Gnak
turned to witness what he could only describe as a river of fire. From the human
wizard a raging inferno blasted from his hands, in a swathe nearly a dozen
yards wide that blasted a hundred feet or more into the enemy lines, igniting
and incinerating hundreds. Even from here he could see the focus on the human’s
face as his torrent of fire ceased, only to be followed by another huge
explosion as Gnak actually witnessed one of the goblin suicide attackers
vanishing into a wisp of ash, its torch falling upon its pack as they hit the
ground.

Though many between him and the goblin now lay sprawled upon
the ground, their bodies wounded from shrapnel from the blast, Gnak remained
standing. All about the battlefield, small circular clearings stood where
goblins had been, but vanished as their packs’ contents exploded. He turned
back to the armored human wizard. He had to be responsible. He needed to die.

His attention focused, Gnak began shoving his way through
the surging army, ignoring the sounds of plight and clangs of steel all around
him. Then, as if it were fate, the human wizard strode down the face of the
hillside he defended, and leaving his great hairy warriors behind, he began
blasting a path through the horde for him and another human to traverse. They
moved directly towards him, but coming down the hill to Gnak’s level, he lost them
in the crowd, working towards them only by the sound of the screams that issued
out from the horde in that general direction.  Continuing on Gnak followed,
moving towards the source of the Orcs and goblins that began to rain down upon
their allies, having been flung by the human wizard. Gnak wondered the limits
to this human’s powers.

Fighting his way through the army, Gnak shoved and pushed to
make himself a path, leaving his clan far behind. Stepping atop the gruesome
torso of a destroyed troll, Gnak looked over the heads of his peers and located
his foe and its companion. Together the pair stood back to back, as if daring
the horde to attack them. Gnak moved to pick up his course to intercept the
humans, but paused when the scene suddenly changed.

All around the humans, those invaders closest to the pair
vanished, each of them crumpling to ash upon the ground, their weapons and
armor the only proof that they had ever existed. The human wizard’s head fell
back a moment as if he looked to the heavens, and Gnak stood transfixed, as did
many surrounding the pair. Then without warning, a ball of roiling smoke, fire,
and flickering light seemed to consume the humans as it pulsed unnaturally. For
just an instant the pair were obscured from view, before the unthinkable
happened.

Like a wave of wind blasting out in all directions,
thousands surrounding the human pair were cast from their feet to sprawl in a
tangled mess. Watching from his distance Gnak felt the blast, but leaning into
it, he managed to keep his eyes open and was one of the few that witnessed what
followed in entirety.

Like the blast before it, the orb of swirling death that
surrounded the pair erupted out in all directions. With devastating effect the
magic expanded, as it rushed away from its master with fingers of electrical
fire that danced from one body to the next, clinging to every metal surface and
blasting apart the bodies it touched instantaneously. Those nearest were
reduced to ash, as it left partially charred bodies in yet another ring in its
wake and those with burnt and blistering flesh in yet another. Gnak realized
all too late that he was too close.

Armored from head to toe, the fingers snapped out at him
like a whip as they came, and coiling about his body the tendrils of electrical
fire seared away his flesh as agonizing pain filled him. Hoping death would
claim him to strip away the pain, he fell from his perch, his charred flesh
tearing at his joints within his armor as he fell. Hitting the ground, he heard
a bloodcurdling scream and realized that it came from his own mouth. With every
movement his burnt and blistered flesh clung to the insides of his armor before
tearing away again, but the need to survive drove him to move.

Inch after agonizing inch he crawled, uncertain of his direction,
as his flesh stuck to the hot metal of his armor and tore away bit by
unthinkable bit. Hot fluid dripped from one of his eyes, as drool poured freely
from his ruined mouth, his lips having torn away in the blast. Destroyed of
body, Gnak clung to consciousness, and forced himself to rise. An Orc chief did
not die crawling on his belly like a slug.

Pressing himself to his feet, he felt as the flesh around
his fingers crumpled and looking down, revealed naught but bone and tendons
where thick flesh had once been. Taking a step forward, he felt the flesh upon
the back of his knees split open as yet more pain assailed him. His ankles
split and tore more with each step as flesh was pulled from his meat, his
heated armor shifting with every step. To any other the pain would have been
unbearable, but Gnak held himself above all others.

Swallowing back the bile that rose in his throat with every
step, Gnak turned and peered out through his malformed and melted eyelid with
his one good eye to survey the carnage. All around lay the dead. Before him lay
a great wasteland of smoking flesh and charred bits of armor. Ash floated down
to coat everything that lay wasted below. Only two things remained within the
blast zone. The humans.

From his place upon the perimeter of the blast, where its
effects were the weakest, Gnak could see plainly now that nothing stood to
impede his view. He watched as the armored wizard collapsed to the ground,
seemingly wracked by fits of some sort. He witnessed as the wickedly armored female
knelt to aid him where she removed his helm, and then her own. Gnak watched,
feeling moisture seeping from the wounds that covered his entire body. For a
moment he looked down, watching the fluid begin to pool at his feet. Though it
sickened him to look, beneath the pooling fluid he noted a familiar object. 
There, coated nearly entirely in ash, a war horn rested at his feet.

Unable to fight in his current condition, with much of the
battlefield frozen in disbelief of the magic the human had performed, with
gut-wrenching pain Gnak knelt and wrapped his fingers of bone around the horn.
With his lips gone, he pressed the visor of his helm open and shoved the
mouthpiece of the horn into the back of his throat and exhaled every bit of air
from his lungs in one loud blast.

A roar exploded from both opposing sides as the horde surged
from all sides to put an end to the weakened wizard, and the human’s allies
rushed in to protect him. And through those that parted around him to reach the
human foe, Gnak watched as the female grasped her neck, blood pouring from it,
as she and the wizard collapsed back to the ground once more.

Grinning from the toothy hole in his face, Gnak thought
victory inevitable until he was again torn from his feet and cast backwards,
bright light enveloping him as he tumbled end over agonizing end within his
armor, his flesh tearing and cracking more with every unwanted movement.
Everything went black.

CHAPTER TEN

Fighting the urge to pass out as his head struck the ground,
Gnak waited for his vision to return. Rolling to his stomach, his ears ringing
with amazing volume, Gnak lifted his head to find that all who had rushed ahead
of him towards the fallen wizard were gone. Both friend and enemy of the human
spell-caster had been reduced to ash. Even now, discarded pieces of armor spun
to a stop amidst the soft powder that coated everything. The human was gone,
and the female with him.

Rising, oh so painfully, Gnak turned to look beyond at the
tattered forces of both sides. Much of the horde had been decimated. Some were
already retreating. None knew if the humans had another such wizard, and none
dared linger to find out. Though it was against Orc tradition to retreat, he
thought it a wise idea.

Forcing himself up once more, he heard as the remaining
beasts led by the vanished wizard howled in anguish as they began to snarl and
bark viciously. It was time to leave.

Moving as fast as his destroyed body would allow, Gnak
turned and moved away from the blight that was the only proof the wizard had
existed, and favoring his left leg he half jogged, half limped towards the
southern rise of the valley. Behind him he could hear the fur-covered half men
closing the distance.

Reaching out his hands, he unleashed the orbs of many fallen
within him into corpses in various states of dismemberment as he passed.
Looking over his shoulder as he attempted to run, he witnessed as the dead
began shudder and convulse before they started to rise and shamble about,
picking up the fight where they had left off in life. Just as he hoped, the
wizard’s beasts set upon his re-risen allies, buying him time to escape.

For what seemed like an eternity, Gnak ran with members of
the army he had belonged to surging all around him. On and on he went, being
outpaced by even the smallest of goblins. It was growing late in the day when
he reached the mouth to the mountain pass, and so crowded was that bottleneck
point, that Gnak had not the energy to stand about waiting to gain entry.

Climbing to the rocky face beside the split in the giant
mountain, Gnak pressed his back against the cool stone and letting his legs
fold beneath him he slid down its hard surface to rest on the ground. Panting
heavily from the exertion of the run, he reached up and pulled the helm from
his head as thick chunks of flesh and one whole ear tore away with it.
Clenching his jaw against the pain, he took deep breaths between his teeth and
dropped the helm into his lap, before letting what was left of his head fall
back against the cool stone with something between a thud and a splat.

Closing his one good eye, if you could truly call it closed
with his destroyed eyelid, he concentrated on slowing his breathing and the
racing of his heart.

It must have worked, for before he knew it he was dreaming
of building his massive fortress once again.

* * * * *

Standing atop the temple built for Ishanya, Gnak strode
across its dark surface looking out over his city. Before him stood a
magnificent sight without rival. Built into the side of the mountain’s face was
a fortress unlike any other. From the ground below it resembled a giant stone
skull carved into the side of the mountain with a giant crown jutting off the
top of its head. The thick impenetrable walls creating much of the facade. The
crown was comprised of the many towering building and roads that snaked up the
side of the mountain, one of which he inhabited now.