Grishnak grinned broadly, baring oversized canines as he strode up the trail that snaked down the mountain valley at the center of his warband (and his more trusted lieutenants — now would be a bad time to take a knife in the back). They were almost to their new home!
What’s left of us.
His grin vanished at the thought. When he had left the tribe in the middle of the night to cross the Great Desert seeking a new home, not as many had followed him as he had hoped. And all the forks and grubs had died of thirst and starvation in the crossing — all he had left were warriors. And very frustrated warriors, at that — the discipline needed to avoid raiding human farms and villages they’d passed by since leaving the desert on the way to the mountain valley his grandfather had told him about had led to a few impromptu beheadings.
Okay, there may only be warriors, but there will be enough to take the valley — it’s been so many generations since the People were driven out of our lands on this side of the Great Desert, the humans here must have become soft, weak. Once we’ve conquered them, they’ll supply the slaves we need, and the forks for producing more spawn. The forks will be human so the spawn won’t be as tough, but they’ll be tough enough. And at least we’ll be living as true orcs should — no dueling circles, and dueling only when not injured or sick, or pregnant, no forks getting above their place, no giving weaklings special place just because of what they know or can do! Let them accept their places as breeders and slaves — they’re supposed to serve us, not us them.
Certainly, the new ways Karlag and his friends and kin had introduced had enabled them to drive the human invaders out of their stronghold at the edge of the last bastion of the People, back across the Great Desert to where they’d come from four generations back, but where was the glory in winning if one was just one more slave-in-all-but-name following whatever orders one received? And then to keep to the new weakling ways after victory was won....
A shout from the front of the band interrupted Grishnak’s thoughts, and the mob bunched up as it came to a halt. Forcing his jaw to unclench, Grishnak motioned for his lieutenants to force a way through the crowd to the front, and his eyes widened. Ahead the valley narrowed for several hundred yards until the trail passed through a notch between sheer cliffs, the opening about ten yards wide. The length of the notch was short before apparently opening out again, perhaps fifty, sixty yards? It certainly wasn’t like anything he’d seen in the arid steppes, scattered woods, and low rocky hills of home.
But what had gotten the attention of the orcs at the front of the band was the massive pine tree that had been cut down across the notch, with all the branches along the top cut away leaving the branches facing forward — and the figures behind it. Even as the warband spread out behind him, Grishnak squinted as he stared, then grinned. Humans, undoubtedly quaking in their boots, hoping this pitiful show of force would scare off him and his band and praying for their weakling gods to save them. They hadn’t at Castle Defiant, and they wouldn’t here. And ... were they forks?
“Come on, boys, time to introduce ourselves to the first of our new slaves!” he shouted, swinging his shield around from off his back and pulling his sword from its sheath, his lieutenants following suit as they fell in alongside him (as well as behind, no point in risking an ambitious knife). With a guttural shout, he strode forward, the mass of orcs behind him following suit. He doubted they’d actually be able to catch them, with the forks not wearing armor or carrying weapons, and fear to give them strength in their flight. Just as well — while his warriors were a bit hungry and nothing put fear in new slaves like eating a few of them, he had a better use for forks than a meal. No, that object lesson would be reserved for the males that were bound to object when their women were hauled off to warm the orcs’ beds.
As they strode forward, a few crossbow bolts came to meet them. Then a few more. And a few seconds later, some more. One bolt slammed into his shield, piercing through above his arm and scratching his ill-fitting but prized mail shirt. But few of his men had anything but hardened leather, and not many more had shields of any kind, and orcs were falling. The valley was narrowing, the sides getting steeper, and they were getting pushed together. Some had already tripped and were being trampled by those behind them.
Crossbow bolts continued to slam into the front of the horde, and beside him Krishig stumbled, Grishnak’s best friend and right hand for years (and one of the best armed and armored of the warband) going down with a bolt sticking out from between his eyes.
Enough! Grishnak broke into a full-out charge toward the fleas killing the men he was going to need, bellowing his war cry. His lieutenants and then the rest followed his lead, the slight delay spreading his men out a little in the narrowing confines. Another of his lieutenants went down and a bolt glanced off his helmet, and then he was forcing his way through the branches toward the tree trunk, yanking on his shield when it was caught by the branches — and a small fork appeared on top of the trunk in front of him, wearing good leather armor and with a large, oddly shaped, red glowing hammer in her hands, screaming like a banshee. One lightning-fast blow smashed into his sword arm and his sword went spinning away as the bones in his forearm snapped like twigs. Gritting his teeth against a shriek of pain, Grishnak yanked his shield free of the branches it had caught on, but even as he started to lift it the fork’s hammer looped up and around with the same impossible speed, and the last thing he saw was the hammer’s red glow coming down straight down at his upturned face.
Standing behind the pine tree that Ukyo had cut down and from which she’d sheered the top branches and the ones on their side, Akane glanced anxiously around her at the girls and few boys she’d been helping train. They were pale, some of them shaking, and the faint stench from the results of the few that had lost their last meals hung in the air. But they all stood firmly in the five lines she and Ukyo had ordered them into, crossbows strung, waiting in silence, and Akane suddenly realized that she was proud of them. They had not been raised for this, the Japanese no more than the Keldara, but none of them had hesitated when ordered to stop, much less kept running. My people.
“Here they come.” Ukyo’s resigned voice pulled Akane’s attention around, back down the valley, and she blanched at the sight of the squat figures bunching up several hundred yards down the valley where they’d come into sight from around a twist in the trail, where the trees pulled away toward the valley’s sides. Details weren’t easy to make out at that distance, but she thought she could feel the stench of gleeful malevolence even at that distance. So soon. Ukyo should have stayed behind, cut down trees up the trail, slowed them down. There would have been plenty of time for her to set up the barricades.
Then they were again marching forward, throwing guttural bellows at the scouts behind the tree.
“Ready!”
At Ukyo’s shout, the five girls at the head of the line raised their crossbows, making sure the bolts were securely in their grooves, picked targets.
A few seconds later, “Fire!”
Five bolts flashed down toward the approaching impossible to miss uncountable mob, and the girls stepped to the side and hurried to the back of the lines as those behind them (along with one boy) stepped forward. At Ukyo’s shouted orders another five bolts flashed downrange, were replaced by the next five. She could see men — orcs — falling. Another five, and Akane’s fists clenched as the ugliest “men” she’d ever seen bellowed even louder than before and broke into a run straight at her — her people. They were dying, she could see them dying, falling to the crossbow bolts, stumbling and getting trampled as the valley narrowed, why didn’t they stop?
And then they were there, dark-skinned, hairy, bared teeth showing massive canines, waving swords, axes, hammers, clubs. “Fall back!” Akane shouted, and her following scream threw her defiance at the attackers as the Hammer flashed into existence and she leaped to the top of the barricade, barely aware of Ukyo and Konatsu following suit to each side. She knocked aside a sword, felt the crunch shiver up her arms as her follow-on strike smashed into a rage-twisted face and he dropped like a puppet with cut strings. A collarbone, shattered. An axe, torn from the grasp of itswielder. A leather-covered chest, crushed....
Then suddenly Ukyo was beside her. “Akane, fall back, our people are back, go!”
Akane glanced around to find the three of them alone, Konatsu’s wakizashi leaving a trail of red in the air as an orc behind them fell to the side. Orcs out of reach of the girls were clambering over the tree trunk, several falling backward as bolts slammed into them, one dropping forward limply — to land beside a slender, blonde girl, her blue eyes staring sightlessly up at the sky, her chest covered with blood.
Akane froze in horror, hammer vanishing, the world suddenly going hazy, unreal even as Ukyo’s battle spatula took off an orc’s axe-wielding hands at the wrists. Ukyo glanced down, sighed, and grabbed Akane and threw her over her shoulder even as she dropped to the ground inside the notch and raced past Konatsu. “Kon-chan, come on!” she shouted even as she beheaded an orc from behind and charged toward the second tree she’d dropped, on the other side of the notch. Already there were orc bodies scattered throughout the narrow confines of the notch, and a more ahead of her dropped even as several crossbow bolts zipped past her.
Staring ahead of the three Akane’s eyes widened, her fog of unreality shivering at the sight of Miyo and one of the Japanese boys helping lift a Keldara girl clutching a blood-drenched leg over the large tree trunk denuded of its branches lying across the high end of the notch. In front of them, a Keldara boy and girl and a couple of Japanese girls were crouching with shortswords in hand while more bolts flashed past from the other side of the tree trunk.
Then Ukyo and Konatsu leaped, clearing the improvised barricade, the girls immediately behind it, the lines behind the first in line breaking up as the girls scattered, and with the jolt of the landing Akane’s world abruptly came snapped back into focus. Even as she started struggling against the arms holding her, Ukyo was shouting for the scouts inside the notch to be pulled to safety as she swung Akane to her feet.
As treesap-smeared girls and boy were pulled up over the barricade and the lines reformed, the kunoichi and two martial artists rushed to the trunk, only to stare in shock down the notch — empty except for bodies and a few orcs scrambling back over the first barricade. “They had us on the run — at least, they must have thought they did,” Ukyo said after a moment. “So why aren’t they still coming?”
“I don’t know,” Akane replied. “Konatsu, why don’t you go find out?”
The former crossdresser (still breathtakingly beautiful in plain men’s clothes and leather armor, with no makeup and sweat streaking his face — damn it!) glanced over at Ukyo, then at his mistress’s slight nod leaped back over the barricade, and Akane turned to look around for the wounded girl.
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(Posted Fri, 08 Jul 2011 04:37)
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らんま1/2 © Rumiko Takahashi
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