The four shriveled heads sat in a row on poles driven into the earth. The fresher ones stank and sweated slime, and insects crawled in and out of the openings in their flesh.
Vom glowered at the boundary markers. He surely recognized at least one or two of the twisted, rotting faces.
Kagur sympathized with the anger no doubt burning inside him. But it wouldn’t do anyone any good to let him stand here and feed the fire. She tapped him on the shoulder and, when he turned his scowl on her, waved to the trail that ran on past the rotting heads.
Vom nodded curtly, and the four of them stalked on. He led, carrying a spray of sweet-smelling flowers with long white petals tinged pink at the base. Supposedly, they constituted a request for a peaceful parley. Kagur and Holg followed, and Dalk, a Dragonfly with a broken nose and a missing upper incisor, brought up the rear.
The trail wound downward through the transitional zone between highland and lowland. Though tree-ferns were scarce, true trees were reasonably common, as was brush. In time, Kagur spied a green face with two fangs jutting up from an underbite glowering at her from the other side of a thicket.
She stifled her initial reflex, which was to nock one of her new arrows and let it fly. Meanwhile, the watcher ducked out of sight.
“They’ve found us,” she murmured.
“Then it’s time for this,” Holg replied. He signed to Vom and Dalk that he wanted a halt, then murmured the prayers that would enable him and Kagur to converse with the orcs and the Dragonflies, too.
When he finished, he grinned at the cave dwellers. “Now, if the orcs hack off our heads, Kagur and I will be able to understand when you say, ‘I told you so.’”
Vom’s lips twitched upward into a grudging smile. “Everything’s good, then.”
As they marched on, Kagur spotted more orcs along the trail, each glowering from what was nominally a hiding place, although they became less and less concerned about genuine concealment as the humans penetrated deeper into their territory. Vom brandished the white flowers at them in a way less suggestive of peaceful intent than contempt. Like he meant to convey that if they ignored the sign and attacked, they were even more despicable than he’d imagined.
It wasn’t how Kagur would have conducted herself in his place, but maybe it was proper etiquette among the peoples of the highlands, for the orcs didn’t throw any javelins or stones.
They did start to call out, though: the word “humans” over and over again. Kagur decided that, infused as it was with scorn and ill will, it was all they needed to say.
As the path began to climb again, the taunt came more and more frequently, until it was like a drumbeat, and it was plain dozens of orcs were snarling it. Then a final scramble up a steep bit of trail brought Kagur and her companions into the orc village.
The habitation was on lower ground than that of the Dragonflies, low enough to support a fair amount of grass and even a couple fruit trees. A single mossy cave entrance, maybe leading to one communal living space, opened in the ground that sloped on upward on the way to ultimately merging with the wall of the Vault itself.
Dozens of orcs had turned out to glower at the humans who’d arrived under sign of truce. Kagur assumed one of the watchers on the trail had run ahead to alert them. A fair number of the creatures showed signs of human blood, which, in her eyes, only made them that much more repulsive.
As she and her companions strode to the center of the open space, the green-skinned creatures encircled them. “Humans!” they chanted, emphasizing each syllable. “Hu-mans! Hu-mans! Hu-mans!”
Vom ran cold eyes over the ranks of green faces. Then he spat in the dirt.
The chanting stopped, but apparently only so the orcs could move on to a different sort of harassment. Several particularly big creatures, one wearing a necklace of dried human ears and another with his hair plastered and reeking with old, clotted blood, prowled forth from the ring of onlookers to inspect the visitors at close quarters. Vom and Dalk matched them sneer for sneer, and Kagur followed her companions’ lead.
It was easy enough. Her expression simply mirrored the loathing she felt on the inside.
She attracted the attention of the orc with the dried gore stiffening his twisting, tangled spikes of hair. Up close, it was apparent the reeking mane harbored a thriving community of bugs.
For a moment, a flicker of genuine curiosity supplanted the ritual hostility in the orc’s expression as he registered her exotic appearance. Then he jabbed his finger at her longbow and thrust out a filthy hand.
Kagur pretended to hesitate. Then she swallowed and held out the weapon.
When the orc reached for it, she simultaneously snatched it back and punched him in his snout of a nose. He reeled backward and groped for the flint knife thrust in his loincloth. His fellows roared.
Shouting at the top of her lungs, Kagur called them all the filthiest and most imaginative obscenities she knew, and from the looks of it, Holg’s magic did a fair job of translating. Surprised and maybe even intrigued or amused by insults different than any they’d ever heard before, the orcs fell silent.
When she ran out of epithets, Kagur sucked in a breath. “We came to talk. Listen or try to kill us, but don’t waste my time striking poses!”
Clad in only a ragged kilt, a female orc stepped forth from the crowd. She was at least as big and brawny as any of the males, and deeply scarred where some animal had clawed her left breast away. She carried two flint knives tucked in her garment, and a club with stone chips jutting from the head dangled from her grimy hand.
She fixed her bloodshot eyes on Vom. “Who’s the screecher?” she asked.
“Kagur of the Blacklions,” Vom replied, “and the other stranger is Holg of the Fivespears.” He turned to them. “This is Ikolch.”
As far as Kagur had been able to determine, the tribes of the Vault didn’t formally acknowledge a single chieftain the way the folk of the tundra did. But she inferred that Ikolch was a leader among her people the way Vom was influential among his.
Ikolch spat. “I never heard of those tribes.”
“Knowing how stupid orcs are,” Kagur said, “I didn’t think you would have.”
Ikolch snorted. “I like the way you throw insults around, screecher. I wonder, if I eat your tongue, will the knack pass to me?” She shifted her glare back to Vom. “What do you want?”
“With the blue giant to help them,” said Vom, “the xulgaths are killing whole tribes. The Dragonflies mean to stop it. But we need the Skulltakers’ help.”
The orcs stood silent for a moment, as if Vom’s words were so strange it took time to decipher them, and then burst into laughter.
Kagur waited for their mirth to run its course. Then she sneered and said, “Cowards. Like all orcs.”
“No!” Ikolch snapped, seemingly genuinely affronted for the first time. “But the xulgaths are mostly raiding humans. Why should we care?”
“Have you considered,” Holg asked, his tone mild and his stance relaxed amid all the truculence, “what would happen if the xulgaths did succeed in slaughtering all the humans?”
Ikolch leered. “Orcs would have more room and more food.”
“For a while,” the shaman said. “But as I understand it, the xulgaths are the enemies of everyone without scales, and it’s always been orcs and humans pushing back that kept them from overrunning your world. If the tribes of men fall, the balance shifts.”
“But if we kill the giant,” Kagur said, “the xulgaths lose heart, and life goes back to the way it was.”
Ikolch frowned like she was actually mulling that over. But her hesitation gave another orc the chance to push to the front of the circle of spectators and join the deliberations. He was losing his coarse black hair in the front, which had the effect of making him look like he had a higher forehead than his brutish fellows, and he bore a regular pattern of zigzag scars on his chest that someone must have cut there on purpose.
“That’s Yunal,” Dalk murmured, “the orcs’ shaman.”
“This is stupid,” Yunal said. “I haven’t seen the future the strangers foretell.”
“Maybe because we’re going to prevent it,” Kagur said.
The orc seer ignored her. “Humans are the cowards, and they want to trick us into fighting the giant and the xulgaths for them!”
“Wrong,” said Holg. “What we actually need from you is your boats.”
Yunal blinked. “Why?”
Holg explained.
Afterward, Ikolch frowned. “We use the canoes to fish the river. We don’t take them out on the lake.”
Kagur shrugged. “Water is water.”
Yunal sneered. “Says the fool! The reptiles in the lake are more dangerous than the ones in the river.”
“We’ll kill what we need to kill,” Kagur replied.
Ikolch chuckled. “I do like the way you talk.”
Yunal shot her a sour look. “Talk is all it is. It would be stupid to help humans!”
“It will only be one time,” said Holg, “and we promise not to tell.”
“Maybe their words are only talk,” said Ikolch to Yunal. “But with the ghost-giant to help them, the xulgaths are stronger than before.”
“The humans will lure Skulltakers to their deaths!”
“The plan is reckless,” said Vom. “But that’s good. That’s why the xulgaths won’t be expecting it.”
Ikolch scratched at a stain on one of her tusks. “They’d never expect orcs and men to ally against them, I’ll give you that. And folk would remember our names forever.”
“Not if we fail,” Yunal snarled, “and we would, following humans.”
“No one’s asking you to follow,” Vom replied. “Our people may not like each other, but we’ll do this as comrades, fighting together.”
“No,” Yunal said. “We orcs would be carrying out your plan.”
“My plan,” Kagur said. “And if someone needs to lead, it should be me. I’ve known Eovath—the giant—my whole life. I know how he thinks, and that’s why I can kill him.”
“And,” Vom added, “she fights better than any warrior I’ve ever seen.”
Yunal snorted. “The strongest human is puny compared to the weakest orc.” Some of his tribe laughed or clamored in agreement.
But then a youthful voice said, “Kagur fights better than anyone I’ve ever seen, too.”
Kagur turned to discover it was Nesteruk who’d spoken and wondered fleetingly how she’d missed spotting him hitherto. Maybe he’d been standing behind someone taller.
But though she was surprised at him speaking up, Ikolch looked even more so. “What do you know about it?” the orc leader demanded.
Nesteruk hesitated, and Kagur abruptly sensed he was the hulking female’s son, and that she was the one who’d forbidden him to explore the tunnels running out of the Vault. In his place, Kagur wouldn’t have cared to confess disobedience, either.
He did, though. He told about the fight in the red-lit pit in a way that made Kagur sound like a true daughter of Gorum, although Holg and his magic came in for a share of the praise as well.
When Nesteruk finished, Ikolch’s fist clenched the shaft of her war club so tightly that the wood creaked. “You and I will talk later,” she promised.
“Yes,” Kagur said, stepping forth from her companions, “let’s finish our parley first. You just heard one of your own vouch for my prowess. And much of that is skill. But I also have weapons better than yours. Weapons that make me a match for any foe, even a giant and the beasts he commands.” She slapped herself on the chest. “Hit me with your club.”
Ikolch eyed her. “It will kill you.”
“What do you care?”
“You saved my whelp. But have it your way.” Ikolch lifted the club, and the orcs howled encouragement.
The coat of leather was protection. But no armor afforded complete protection, particularly if a carnivorous plant had previously gnawed patches of it thin. So, though the point of the demonstration was to show the efficacy of the reinforced leather, Kagur had no intention of letting the club bash her squarely or strike her breasts or vitals. She twisted and caught the blow on her forearm at an angle that made it glance down and off. She hoped the resulting noise, a sort of smacking thump, was still loud enough to impress.
Habit, frustration at her failure to pulp human flesh and smash human bone, or a combination of the two made Ikolch swing the club back up for a second blow. Kagur sprang backward, whipped her father’s longsword from the scabbard, and, extending her arm, put her point in line.
Orcs exclaimed to see a blade so long, or maybe at the flash of steel. Poised to rush into striking distance, Ikolch stopped short just in time to avoid spitting herself.
“Touch it,” Kagur invited. “Feel how sharp it is.”
Ikolch did. A bead of blood welled from the resulting cut on her fingertip.
“I also have this,” Kagur said. Pivoting, she thrust the sword back in its sheath, nocked an arrow, drew, and loosed at the trunk of a tree on the other side of the open space.
Flint, sadly, wasn’t steel. But the longbow was as powerful as ever, and the points Denda had shaped were razor sharp. The arrow punched through bark and into the wood beneath.
Many of the orcs goggled, and why not? They recognized that none of them could throw a javelin as fast and hard.
But if Yunal was impressed, Kagur couldn’t tell it from his sneer. “Is that all?” he asked. “Are these the tricks that will help Skulltaker warriors defeat giants and beasts as tall as trees?”
“Eovath’s not as tall as a tree,” Kagur replied, “but yes.”
“Then prove it!” Yunal snapped. “Kill Old Scar. By yourself. Then the Skulltakers will help the Dragonflies.”
“Agreed,” Kagur said.
“No!” cried Vom. “That’s mad! No one can kill a longstrider by himself! Especially not Old Scar!”
“I will,” Kagur said. “What is a longstrider, anyway?”