Orc And The Lastborn [Progression, Gunpowder Sword & Sorcery]

She led them around the rim of the gouge to the top of a landslide that plunged all the way down to the gut of the great rending. "It's too steep for dragging," Orc was saying. "We try and she's certain to fall."

"We'll have te carry her."

"Sure," he said. "Why just break one neck?"

She looked down the slide. An inch of snow over everything. "Ye got another option?"

"Yeah. You go down and find your kin. Bang your rocks together. The bosun will keep Daraway stashed someplace and I'll make straight for those kingsmen. Lead them off south through the cut."

"How far south?"

"As far as needed."

"And when ye run out of food?"

"I wouldn't be the first orc to eat a man."

She shook her head. "We tried somethin lek this once already. I'll not condone our separatin."

The drum rolled again, reverberating up the canyon walls and bounding about the gouge. They stared at each other as if waiting for the noise to subside. But they had no time for that. She left him standing there and went back to the travois. Daraway's eye was open. She must have heard the drum.

"Dara," she said.

The woman gazed up at her. "Orcstone," she murmured.

"Almost love. Almost. We have te carry ye down te the mountain."

"Down?"

"Aye. I'm goin te pick ye up. If it hurts too much I need ye te tell me so."

"It hurts."

"I meant after I pick ye up."

The woman coughed. There was the blood again. Bright red upon the snow.

"We're almost there," said Mym. She bent and tried to untie the knots holding the woman in place, but her damned left hand wouldn't work right. She slipped around her alpenstock and slashed the bindings. She put away the alpenstock and eyed the woman, her burns, the places her body had been holed. She reached and Daraway flinched. She withdrew her hand. She wasn't sure she could do it.

"Here," said Orc. He had come beside her. He bent Daraway's knees and placed an arm under them and with the other cradled her shoulders. The woman moaned and it was a sawblade across Mym's heart. Orc picked her up and the woman shrieked and cried, "Put me down, put me down."

"We need to bring you down," said Orc. "It's too rough for the litter."

"Put me down!"

He looked at Mym. "Do as she bids," she said.

He leaned over and placed her as she had been. There was new blood on her cloak but Mym couldn't see from where. The drum rolled.

"You hear that?" said Orc.

"Shut up," said Daraway. She seemed alert now. As if the pain had given her mind a fulcrum to turn upon. Is it not said that pain does not reside in the flesh but in the mystery of consciousness? Mym had heard human priests say if it were not thus then the redeemer's great lake of fire would be for naught.

Daraway sat up wincing. Her hand pressed into her side as if stymying a fresh fount of blood. She leaned upon an elbow in the snow and looked down the slope of the landslide. The bottom of the gouge had begun to haze again. A rivulet of blood ran out of her sleeve and down her wrist and into the snow. She leaned back. Her eye sought Orc.

"I'll need you again."

"Like last time."

The woman nodded.

"Alright."

"Stand me up."

There was cursing and gnashing and a great deal of struggle but at the end of it Orc and Daraway stood side by side at the edge of the gouge. The bosun had already begun down with the cat. Mym watched him pick his way down, stumbling and staggering. Slipping on the snowfall. Rocks tumbling down at every footfall. "I don't know Dara," she said. "I think it's safer if we carry ye. We can trade off lek."

The woman was wincing. Eye sodden with pain. She raised a charred hand to Orc's shoulder. He seemed to sag under it, a tortured wheeze came out of him, eyes rolling back as if he was about to black out. And yet Daraway seemed to stand taller. Her skin flushed with color.

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"What are ye doin?"

Neither answered. Orc seemed about to collapse when Daraway released him. He staggered sideways and fell to a knee, put a hand in the snow. The woman stood so tall and so easily she seemed to be levitating off of the ground. Mym looked again.

She was levitating off of the ground.

"Dara," she said.

Without gesture or sound the witch rotated around the axis of her spine. Her face a contortion of ecstasy and pain. "We must hurry," she said. "I don't know how long I can hold it."

Like a leaf lost of its twig by a strong breeze Daraway sailed off and over the side of the gouge. The cries of kingsmen now audible behind them. Mym didn't dare to look. "Orc," she said.

He still had a hand in the snow. He pivoted upon it and came to sit. Began to slowly slide onto his back.

"Orc!"

He laid an arm across his face. She couldn't see his eyes but she could see his mouth and it barely moved as he spoke. "You best get after her."

"Get up."

The cries gained a pitch. Had they seen them?

"I need a minute."

"Get up." She pulled up his arm. He was practically dead weight coming. She feared she wouldn't get him up and she blew out her breath when he stood up and teetered over and leaned heavily upon her. Her shoulder dug into his gut he was so tall.

"Walk," she grunted.

"I am."

"I'll push ye off this bitch don't ye try me."

The way down was treacherous and she had to study Orc's every step before he made it. Daraway floated miraculously above, a dark silhouette against the grayscape, hands outheld to either side, robe curtaining in the wind, toes slightly pointed. By the time they reached the bottom of the slide several dozen of the deranged kingsmen were snaking down after them. Daraway came to rest fifty yards along the bottom of the scouring and she sunk upon herself into a heap.

Orc said, "Go," and she let go of him and rushed to the woman. When Orc came up he saw the state of her and he looked back up the slide, at the kingsmen upon it. "We should've brought the litter."

She tried to keep her voice steady. "Can you carry her?"

"I don't know. Whatever she did took it out of me."

"Please."

He slung back his musette. "I'll try."

They seemed to crawl forward so enormous were the features of that wide-cut land. The slickrock they walked upon bore long and straight gouges that seemed to go on for miles and miles. The stone surface was otherwise smooth from where it had melted and settled and hardened back up. The crucible of the mantle rendered as a flashpoint where the moon had dragged along the earth like a steel sword swiped through a wicker shield. All the fibers catching fire.

She could hear Daraway talking to Orc. Past his shoulder she saw the woman's eye focused upon his face. Him shaking his head. "It won't come to that," she heard him say.

"Come te what?" said Mym.

"Nothing."

Ahead of them the bosun lurked out of the gloom and hollered and waved his arms. Then he turned and disappeared again.

Minutes later they came to where he had stood. The edge of a shallow pit. A trench really. The walls smooth, the floor covered in debris. Pavers peeking through. They walked along its rim not understanding what they saw. Then she saw the scrollwork, the runes. She stopped a moment and put her face beside it. Saw how it had been lopped clean through and the ceiling gone with it.

She hopped into it. Kicked around the dust and detritus and revealed the smooth joined pavers. "It's a wynd," she said.

"Going where?" said Orc.

"After yer undead friend. Hand her down and come on."

He looked back over his shoulder. "We go this way they're bound to come after."

"Aye. Hand her down carefully now."

The trench went gradually down and she went after it. It tunneled below the floor of the gouge and there the bosun waited. She led them in. Forty feet on was black as pitch, but she knew more now than the last time she passed this way. She placed her hand upon the wall and spoke and the runes etched into the scrolling glowed softly like heated iron. By this light they hurried on. Sometimes they could hear their pursuers. The scrape of steel on rock. A shout or a call. The bay of a hound. At the end of a long straight corridor they came to a fork.

"They're getting closer," said the bosun.

"Aye."

"Which way?"

She didn't answer. She was looking at a mark made on the wall. The scratch of an alpenstock's pick. Hours old at most.

"Khaz," she said.

"What?"

She nodded at the mark. "Khaz was here."

The bosun didn't look at the mark. "Which way?"

She studied the ground. The arrangement of the dust. "He went left."

"That where we're going?"

She looked left. Khaz still lived. Who else might?

"Right," murmured Daraway.

"What's she say?" said the bosun.

"She said go right," said Orc.

Daraway's head turned slightly. "The black heart," she said. "The orcstone."

The bosun looked at Mym. She looked back. She nodded. The bosun took off. The others started after.

"What's left?" said Orc.

"Wynds down te the delvin's gut."

"And Khaz is down there."

"Aye. Somewhere. Lookin fer the second colony maybe. Or maybe he's set up where the old keeper took me folk durin yer uprisin."

"Alright."

"Or maybe he's gone after the blue dwarves. Old keeper said they were messin about down there in the wynds of time."

"The wynds of time."

"Aye."

"No," moaned Daraway. She was delirious. "No. The forge. Go to the forge."

Mym reached for the woman's arm where it hung out of Orc's grasp, penduluming limply back and forth as he went along. She raised it up and placed it back. "We're goin," she said. "Just hold on."

The woman's eye opened. The pupil and iris all one dark pool in the dim light of the runes. She said no more.

Mym looked at Orc. "Follow the lit runes."

"I will."

"Get her there. Use the orcstone on her."

"What about you?"

She looked back. The wynd was straight as a rule for as far as she could see. The passageway back to the spalling's scar was an oblique gap some hundred yards back. Anyone coming around it would be impossible to miss. She slung around her longarm. "Don't ye worry about me."