Chapter 114: Dead Rising
Beatrix was trembling now, sweat beading on her forehead despite the unnatural cold that had settled over the ground.
"Grimoire magic. The most forbidden act in all of sorcery—resurrecting the dead. If the casting is performed within an hour of death, the spell takes their dying pain and suffering and turns it into a hunger that will not stop until it is fed."
"The undead rise and attack the nearest living creatures they can reach. They do not know friend from enemy. They only know the need to tear and feed."
Velma's voice was barely a whisper, filled with a new kind of dread. "No wonder they banned grimoire magic. You will see your loved ones wake again, only to watch them try to eat your face off. There is no mercy in it. No peace."
The undead army grew with every passing second as more bodies answered the call. What had been scattered corpses became a shambling, growing mass of a couple of hundred or more.
They fell upon the Orcs with a single-minded, silent ferocity that was somehow worse than any battle cry.
The green-skins hacked at them with axes, stabbed them with spears, even tore limbs free with their bare hands, yet the dead simply rose again and continued forward.
Some Orcs were dragged down in ones and twos and torn open while they still screamed, their own guts pulled free by fingers that no longer felt pain.
The risen elves moved with a terrible, jerky speed, leaping and skittering across the mud like insects, teeth and broken weapons finding the soft places under Orc armor with unerring, mindless accuracy.
Garkash stared across the field with something close to real fear on his scarred face. He had faced angels and human knights and elf captains, but this was different.
The dead did not tire. They did not feel the blows that should have dropped them. Jibreel finally pushed through the press of bodies and reached his king's side, breathing hard, the empty staff still clutched in one hand.
"My king," the orc-shaman said with urgency. "The enemy has a necromancer using grimoire magic. This is beyond anything we can handle on this ground. We have already broken the Fondel army and taken the angel as a prize. There is nothing left to gain by fighting the dead. They will not stay down. They will only grow."
Garkash's side still leaked blood from the earlier blow that had broken his ribs. The bones ground together with every breath he took. He looked at the rising tide of corpses, then at the distant trees that marked the way back to safer ground, and found the cold wisdom in the shaman's words.
Crushing living humans and elves was one thing. These things did not stay dead. He raised what remained of his voice and ordered the retreat in the guttural tongue of his kind.
The Orcs pulled back in a disordered wave, dragging their wounded where they could, leaving the slow and the unlucky to the undead. The dead followed for a time, then began to spread outward in search of warmer prey.
On the far side of the field, the Fondel survivors had gathered in a tight knot around Velma. She looked at the spreading undead—some of them already turning toward the low walls of Gulchtown itself—and made the only choice left to her that might still save lives.
"Evacuate Gulchtown," she ordered. "Get the civilians out by every road that is still open. The dead are spreading. They will not stop at the edge of the battlefield."
Then she turned her own remaining force toward the back gate of the town. They would swing wide around the hills and make for Cromwell Castle with whatever speed the wounded could manage.
Velma was finished fighting for this year. Perhaps for longer than that. The cost had already been too high.
The army began to file out through the rear gate in a tired, limping column, the stronger helping the weaker, the uninjured carrying those who could no longer walk.
Suddenly, horns sounded from the horizon, low and long and full of alarm.
Fresh Orcs appeared over the rise to the east, hundreds of them, armored and organized, moving with a discipline the earlier warband had never shown. They came from the direction the Fondel force had thought was clear, cutting off the retreat with the clean precision of a blade.
"They tricked us!" Beatrix's voice rose in something close to panic. "They had another unit waiting behind us the entire time!"
The Fondel soldiers, already exhausted, wounded, and drained by the morning's losses, simply stopped where they stood. Many of them let their weapons slip from their hands into the dirt with soft, final sounds. There was no strength left for another fight, and no hope of winning one.
Velma stepped forward alone, leaving the protection of her remaining guards. An enormous Orc came to meet her, tusks yellow and cracked, eyes small and cold as river stones. She held out her wrists, palms up, the gesture of a ruler offering herself in place of her people.
"Take me in chains," she said. "Spare my people and let them go back to their homeland. They have suffered enough."
A different voice answered from within the Orc ranks, clearer and more controlled than any male Orc Velma had ever heard.
"Nobody will be in chains while I rule."
The green-skinned soldiers parted in a clean, disciplined line, shields and spears moving aside with practiced ease.
A female Orc walked through the gap. She was tall, but not as brutishly built as the males around her. Her skin was a pale, almost silver-white, and her hair fell in a thick white braid over one shoulder.
Even by the standards of her race, she was striking, with sharp features and eyes that held a clear, dangerous intelligence.
She stopped a few paces from Velma and studied her with those sharp eyes, taking in the armor, the blood, the exhaustion, and the unbroken posture.
"Are you Ethan Cromwell's mother?"
Velma lifted her chin and met the she-orc's gaze without flinching. "I am. Please do not harm him if you have captured him. I will pay whatever ransom you name. Gold, land—name the price."
Behind her, Beatrix and Athena exchanged a quick, almost disbelieving glance. Relief loosened something tight in both their faces.
The she-orc chuckled, a low, almost warm sound that did not belong on a battlefield. "Why would I harm my most favorite human? If you are Ethan's mother, then you are my honored guest."
She inclined her head with a formality that looked strange and almost elegant on an Orc.
"I am Queen Luka Voltha. Pleased to meet you."