The Dark Lord's Handbook (21 page)

“Well, Count,” began the man. He sniffed and wiped his nose on his sleeve. “We found this man, see, him there, on the edge of the wood, and he was out cold, and we thought he was a knight and been set upon so we tried to lift him and get him back but he woke up and started shouting and screaming and got all violent and he broke free and his sword was out and men got chopped and before you know it there was blood and mess and commotion and that’s it really.” The sergeant sucked in a breath.

“Griselda!” Whoever the man was, he had started to stagger forward, his sword raised in a guard. “Where is she? What have you done with her? Come on. Cowards! I’ll take you all on. She’s mine, I tell you. Mine.”

As he came forward, men stepped back. An archer glanced over to the Count, looking for an order. The Count looked at the man, at the sword, and quickly calculated that disarming him would cost blood that none present were anxious to spill, and he was buggered if it was going to be his. He tapped a hand on his thigh and nodded at the archer.

An arrow took the man in the leg and he went down.

“Cowards! Face me like men. Scum! Griselda!”

The man was on his knees, blood seeping from the arrow in his leg. His eyes met the Count’s. The Count had seen the look before. In it was madness and blood lust. The Count thought he was going to have to kill him and was about to raise his arm to command a volley when the man’s eyes widened, his head turned as though listening to something, and then he fell forward flat on his face into the mud.

“Take him,” commanded the Count. “Take him to the hospital tent.”

It took four soldiers to lift the man and haul him off. His sword was left lying on the ground and studiously ignored by the Count’s men. The Count walked over to retrieve it himself. As he got closer, a growing recognition blossomed in his mind, along with a sense of something else, something not quite right, a wrongness. Standing over the sword, he was sure he had indeed seen the weapon before, when the ill-fated Countess of Umbria had brought it forth. This time, however, rather than just being a well crafted piece of steel honed to perfection for killing, there was something else. If the Count didn’t know better, he would have said there was whispering at the edge of his hearing. As he grasped to hear what was being said the words would slip away leaving him with nothing more than the suggestion that the sword wanted blood.

“You, give me your tunic,” said the Count to a loitering soldier.

The soldier, having looked to his left and right and realising the Count was addressing him directly, swiftly de-robed. The Count threw the tunic over the sword and only then lifted it, wrapped. Even so, as he carried it back to his tent, he could hear it clearly now. It spoke of his younger days when he had revelled in battle. It spoke of glory and power and blood. All he had to do was take it and he would be a hero.

Twenty years ago the Count may have succumbed but he was far too old for that now. He loved soldiering and, despite his growing misgivings as to the rightness of what was unfolding, he would leave the right and wrong of it to others, along with the being a hero. He would do his job, which was to win battles and make sure his side was more alive than the other. He was good at that and, as he passed through the camp and men greeted him with respectful salutes, he was as determined as ever to keep as many of his men, and himself, as alive as possible.

Without doubt, this sword was not meant for him. If it was a hero the sword wanted, and Lady Deathwing wanted, then the crazed knight in his hospital tent would be it.

Chapter 26 Fifth Lesson – Pillaging

A little pillaging goes a long way.

The Dark Lord’s Handbook

Morden sat in the hut alone. He had sent everyone else away so that he could think on what needed to be done. Now that he had made the decision to plunder Bostokov, Morden felt like he had finally accepted what he was, and that was a Dark Lord. At least, what he was professionally. He was still mystified as to what he was physically. After all, he had become a large black dragon and breathed fire. There were so many unanswered questions. Could he fly? Who were his parents? It seemed unlikely that Harold and Jesobel Thrumpty of Little Wassop were his real parents. What did the pendant around his neck have to do with anything?

What he couldn’t deny, like it or not, was that he was destined for greatness and power. This was not altogether disagreeable. From the moment he had broken Billard’s finger and bent his first lackeys to his will, he knew that he was different. There were things he understood that others did not. They were so consumed with the little things in their lives that they completely failed to see the greater opportunities that life could afford a smart person with a will to get what he wanted.

Then there was the whole business of who ran everything. Morden knew unswervingly that he was born to rule. He suspected that only Chancellor Penbury was of a similar mind. So it would be his will against that of the Chancellor and the world would be their battleground. Morden knew he couldn’t hope to compete with the Chancellor financially, economically or politically, but he did have things the Chancellor did not have. He had the orcs and he had himself.

The lessons that Morden had learnt when he had broken Billard’s finger were that not many understood the real nature of pain, and even fewer understood that true power does not come from indiscriminate acts but calculated demonstrations of will. Bostokov would be another broken finger and the world would see his will.

That was the theory anyway.

The clammy fear that lurked at the back of Morden’s mind was that he had never pillaged a city before and had no idea how to go about it. With Grimtooth gone, and Stonearm more of a weapon than a confidant, there was only one place to turn to, and that was the Handbook.

Morden pulled the Handbook out and laid it on his lap.

He could feel it, like a living thing. At the back of his mind he could hear it whispering. It wanted to be read. It was another of the great mysteries that had entered his life in recent months. The time would come when he would have to find out what the Handbook really was, but now was not that time. He felt out of his depth and needed advice.

For a Dark Lord there is little more satisfying than his first pillage. There’s nothing quite like the smell of a burning city first thing in the morning. To stand upon a battlement and watch cleansing fire burn away the refuse that a city has collected over the years is a moment to be cherished.

Yes, yes, thought Morden, but how does a Dark Lord go about the actual pillaging? Is it the random free for all loot and burn that it looks like or is there more to it than that?

The answer to that is, of course, both. To the citizens of the city, and the world at large, it will look like the Dark Lord has randomly run amok in the city, his horde taking what they please, burning indiscriminately and leaving a trail of corpses in their wake. And all of this may well happen, but a Dark Lord who acts without volition is nothing more than a Warlord.

I sense, Morden, that you have already learnt several of the characteristics of real power. To blindly thrash around for the sheer sake of inflicting suffering is not one of them.

When you pillage a city there are many beneficial things that can happen besides the gaining of loot. For a start, it’s good for morale. Your troops will love you as they are given license to run amok. The trick is to let them have a good time, but to direct them expertly. A city that is completely burned to the ground is not much use to you. You need to carefully pluck and prune. The slums can go. A cleansing fire that burns away disease will actually be welcomed by the larger populace. Slums are also easy to rebuild.

Don’t be fooled by beauty, it is fleeting. Nor be fooled by age, as all decays in time. Do not spare a building because it is beautiful or old. Think of what it can do for you, and if the answer is that it can demonstrate your will then it must be pulled down to its foundations.

Be an iconoclast.

You’re doing these people a favour. They may realise that life is more than stone and sculpture and that the gods don’t give a damn.

This was more like it. It was like having a light shone in the dark and seeing properly for the first time. While it was true that he had grasped the basic understanding of inflicting pain for purpose, never had he considered it on such a scale. To bend a person to your will was one thing, but to do the same with an entire city’s population was quite another. But then he was going to rule the world so it shouldn’t really be such a surprise.

There have been those that would advocate total destruction of the first few cities that you pillage so that future cities will just open their gates on your approach, and this strategy has had success, but it’s been done. The smarter city leaders know that a city of rubble is no good to anyone.

Most city leaders are also corrupt, thieving tyrants in their own right and will happily see rivals destroyed to better their own end. It will never be difficult to find those that will turn over their fellow citizens for their own gain. Seek them out and make good use of them, and when you’re done, dispose of them discreetly; after all, they can’t be trusted. But do be discreet. Tell people they’ve retired into luxury somewhere pleasant. You’ll want these people wherever you go and if word got out that their life expectancy was poor then they’ll be less willing.

It was all fitting into place. Let the orcs have their fun, but point them at targets that served a greater good, like at the houses of unpopular politicians rather than the pubs, which should be looted but not burned. Destroy, burn and steal in such a way as to put fear into people’s hearts by the seeming randomness of it all but in fact be precise and calculated. Take what was needed. Destroy that which spoke the loudest. Find allies in the cancerous leadership of the city itself.

Morden set the Handbook down and thought a while. He had originally considered standing at the gate, a horde of disgruntled orcs at his back, storming the city and having an epic battle. But he saw now that this was his romantic side coming to the fore.

He needed to be a touch more selective. What he needed from Bostokov was a means of transporting his orcish army, supplies and cash. He also needed to send out a strong message to the Chancellor.

All of this he now realized could be done at the docks. That is where he would strike. It wasn’t yet midday so he still had time but there was a lot to do. He had plans to make and orders to give. This was it.

“Stonearm!”

*****

It was early evening and time to set the plan in motion. It had been a busy day. He’d spent most of it poring over maps of the city identifying targets. Fortunately the city was soft; the only military was a small but decently armed guard whose main duty was to man the gates and look pretty on ceremonial days. Certainly they should bear little challenge to the sheer number of orcs, even less so to orcs set free from their poverty.

Morden racked his mind for anything he had overlooked. It seemed straightforward enough but he was still nervous.

“Time to go,” he said to Stonearm, who had proven to be a more than able right hand man. His sheer size commanded a deal of respect among the orcs, and this was compounded by Morden’s own obvious trust in him.

His lieutenant held the leather awning aside and Morden ducked into the gloom of dusk. Straightening, he was momentarily surprised by the sight that greeted him. The square was packed solid with orcs, silently standing. Looking closer he could see that some had rudimentary armour, and that all had weapons of one kind or another: knives, axes, clubs, hammers, poles with blades strapped on, and forks.

“I thought you’d like to address the men,” whispered Stonearm from behind him, and a crate was produced.

Morden set one foot on the crate and hesitated. It was one small step for him onto that crate, but one big step for a Dark Lord. The pendant at his neck grew hot against his skin. If he botched this they’d rip him apart.

He took the second step and gazed out over the sea of raised heads from under his cowl. A feeling of power rushed into him like five of those cider spirit shots he’d done back in Bindelburg for a bet.

There was a rumble of impatience from the gathered horde.

Morden spread his arms but then a sudden panic hit him. How should he address them? ‘Fellow orcs’ was inappropriate. ‘Comrades’ was too familiar, after all he was a Dark Lord. ‘Men’ was inaccurate.

Then it came to him.

“MINIONS! OUR TIME HAS COME!”

The first few rows of orcs staggered back with the force of his words. A few looked puzzled. Morden glanced to his right to see Stonearm’s reaction. The big orc was grinning, his teeth, which he had resharpened, showing in two terrible rows. He’d found himself a huge club into which he had hammered a dozen iron nails. He raised the club one handed above his head.

“Gaaarrrrrgggghhhh,” shouted the orc.

A host of weapons were raised, teeth were bared and a cry went up from the assembled horde.

“MORDEN!”

It was like he had been struck by lightning. He felt like he was growing, towering above his minions – for that is what they were; his disciples, his followers, his army to do his bidding because he was their master. As the adoration continued, a primal fury seemed to be let loose in the orcs. It was as if they had rediscovered a voice that had long been lost.