Argun's Luck, by Matt Gilbert

3671.CE

The two dice dropped from Argun’s hand and rattle-bounced across the wooden table. One hit the heavy tankard of grog that sat in front of the brown-skinned thug to his left before coming to a stop at the edge of the game board. The other skidded off onto the floor. The orc to his left, Jarl, picked his teeth with the tip of a wicked looking dirk.

“Six,” he noted, his single good eye staring at the die remaining on the table. “But the other doesn’t count.”

The third player at the table contemplated this and then slowly studied his hand of painted wooden sticks. “Yeah,” he ventured, and then “does that mean the boss ‘as another go?”

“It means I ‘ave to roll that one again, you idiot,” snarled Argun. “Just like all the other times it’s ‘appened.”

Argun took a swipe at the orcling perched on his left shoulder, causing it to flinch away and then scamper on to the floor to retrieve the errant die. It chattered as it skipped across the floor and then held the carved bone cube up out of the shadows with both hands for the players to see.

“Five. So near yet so far,” Jarl said. “Looks like your luck ran out this time, Argun.”

The orcling scrambled clumsily up the thick table leg, hampered by the load it was carrying. As it reached the top, Argun snatched it away.

“Give that ‘ere, Spittle, you little runt. Right, boys, watch and learn. My luck never runs out.”

The die was dwarfed by the hand of the Krudger, and with his other he grabbed Spittle by the head and held him dangling over his own large mug of ale. “Just in case though,” he said, grinning with yellowing teeth, “let’s get this die pissed so it forgets not to screw me around.” He squeezed the helpless orcling until its mouth popped open. Then, ramming the die into the orcling’s mouth, he held it by one leg and dunked it in the beer before pulling it out again. “Right lads, watch this.” He punched the back of Spittle’s head with a wet thunk and the die popped out, landing with unerring accuracy in the middle of the board.

“Six.” Jarl threw his own hand of sticks down in disgust while Meathead, the other orc at the table, looked up and said, “so as ‘e won then?”

“Of course I won,” said Argun, dropping Spittle to the floor. The orcling quickly scurried across the flagstones into the corner of the room out of reach. “I always bloody win.”

***

Life was good for Argun. He’d always been one of the biggest orcs in a race of hulking brutes. His size gave him power, both physically and psychologically. But he was good at what made an orc rise to the top; he knew how to fight – and fight dirty. This and his wit had seen him rise to power quickly, the status of Krudger coming easily with many orcs willing to follow the ‘Facesplitter’ – a name he’d earned after altercations with a number of challengers to his authority. Piece-negotiations, Argun called them. You talked. He left you in pieces.

Like most warbands, his boys had scoured the plains; raiding dwarf mining camps and terrorising human towns and villages. The horde had increased in size as smaller bands were subsumed, and soon larger settlements became viable and necessary targets. Argun’s reputation for fortune preceded him and was only enhanced by engagements like those at Harvon’s Pass and The Bickervale where they’d taken minimal casualties and routed larger and superior forces. At Yurdhaven Cross though, things had not gone so well.

The humans and elves had prepared well, and the elven general managed to take Argun’s left flank by surprise. The resulting collapse had scattered the Krudger’s warband, with only about twenty or so following Argun into the Forest of Huur. They had killed their pursuers but found themselves wandering aimlessly for many days, harassed by all sorts of strange woodland creatures. Argun violently suppressed any mention of ill luck, as was a Krudger’s right, and drove the band deeper into the trees. Four days into the trek, his fortune changed.

One evening, they’d accidently stumbled into a clearing occupied by a rag-tag band of human adventurers and chancers. Having set a poor watch and gotten themselves intoxicated on cheap wine, the humans had been quickly overpowered and put to the sword – the fresh meat a welcome feast for his ravenous gang. Argun kept one of the humans alive long enough to… entice the man to divulge the group’s purpose. The man-thing whimpered and cried and soiled himself more than once but eventually explained that the group were treasure hunters, following a map recently discovered in a library in Yolkston – two hundred leagues to the West. They were looking for an ancient hideout said to be in the forest nearby. Between the tears and screams, Argun deduced that other parties were also scouring the area for the hideout; the lure of what might lie within too great to resist the perils of the forest. The man had a copy of the map and knew they were close. On the morrow, they were certain they would find it.

Sensing an opportunity for some sport for his demoralised grunts, Argun had them search the bodies. The map found, he had snapped the neck of the last survivor and tossed the body aside.

At daybreak, Argun roused the mob, kicking most onto wakefulness, accompanied by angry snarls and grunts. With the map as a guide, they discovered the humans were closer than they thought to their goal.

And now here they were. What Argun had first seen as a minor setback had quickly become a new opportunity. Sure they’d lost a handful of volunteers to the various traps and surprises the place had to offer, but over the last year they’d made a good living. The hunting in the area was good so food was plentiful, and in the first few months at least four different groups of adventures had found the caves only to realise they were not unoccupied. The treasure haul from these unfortunates made the experience all the more fun. Argun began to stoke things up, spreading rumours of the cave’s treasures while at the same time terrorizing the villages which lay within a week’s radius of their new lair. A steady flow of opportunists and mercenaries hired to clean them out kept the boys in shape and the band’s hoard of plunder increasing.

They themselves had found none of the rumoured treasure of course. All that lay at the centre of the tunnels was a large cavernous hollow, its vaulted ceiling hidden in deep shadow. From the narrow opening into the chamber, they could see thick roots dropping out of the gloom, tapering to thin, delicate white filaments that eventually brushed a pool in the floor. The orcs avoided the place; it felt unnatural and repellent to them. The pool glowed with a cold, insipid light which cast eerie shadows. If anyone wandered too close, they suddenly found themselves back at the cavern entrance again with no recollection of how they got there. The voices would not stop whispering in their head for hours after.

Nearly a week ago, one of the goblins, Rikks, had thought it amusing to hurl night-soil in to the pool as a dare. Getting as close as he comfortably could he succeeded in hitting the target with some, if not all, his ammunition. Since then, the goblins had spent any spare time they had by entertaining themselves playing ‘crap-splash’.

***

“Boss?”

Argun leaned back against the cold wall. The place was remarkably dry, but no matter how many torches, wood, or bodies the orcs burned, the chill was always there.

“What?”

Argun had a space to himself at the end of wide tunnel. Most of the lads slept in two large communal chambers on the other side of the complex. The original occupants had seemingly taken a small, natural cave system and carved out additional rooms and tunnels to extend the warren-like layout to twice its original size. No trace or hint of who they might have been had been found.

Meathead stepped though the opening into the room where Argun and Jarl were dicing again. Jarl was a sly one and useful for his brains, but Argun only trusted him when he could see him and so liked to keep his lieutenant around when he wasn’t otherwise occupied. Meathead was his sergeant from the former Greatax regiment, and while a little slow, he had a ferocious battle temper and could swing a Greatax like no-one Argun had seen before.

“We got visitors, boss. Tinker just came back in. The other scouts is dead ‘e says.” Meathead began picking at the huge pale green scar running down his left arm; a gift from a cavalryman’s blade back at The Bickervale. “’e don’t look too good, boss.”

Tinker, Gobban, and Rikks were the only three goblins who had survived the events at Yurdhaven Cross, and Argun had employed them as scouts and sentries in the woods around the complex. Meathead picked up the small bundle of cloth and limbs he’d been dragging behind him and dumped it on the floor in from of Jarl. The bundle yelped.

Argun threw aside the cloth and grabbed Tinker by the scruff of the neck, lifting him level with his eyes. “He don’t look great, I’ll grant you that,” he observed casually, “But then ‘e always was an ugly sod. What ‘appened Tinker?”

The goblin moaned and tried to lift its head but was struggling to find the energy to speak. Argun tightened his grip and the sentry squealed. “E….e… elves. Lots.” The effort of speaking was too much; Tinker passed out, and Argun, irritated, growled and tossed him aside.

“Seems we’ve got company, lads. Good. We’ve all been getting a bit lazy of late, and Jarl and I were just discussing moving on out of ‘ere. We all need some bigger scraps, and I want to be out on the plains again. If that upstart Chok is still alive and fancies ‘imself a better Krudger than me, I think I’d like to show him the error of ‘is ways. We need to build the band back up again.” He stood and flexed his massive arms, trophy rings clattering across the blue tattoos and battle scars.

“Get Jurk to check and prepare the traps,” he commanded, “and tell Brekkun to get ‘is ‘airy arse out there and lure ‘them in.”

“Brekkun don’t ‘ave an ‘airy arse boss,” said Meathead “not since he sat on that knight’s oil lamp.”

Argun chuckled, a deep belly rumble. He turned to Jarl. “Want first pickings?”

It was at Harvon’s Pass where Argun had first met Jarl. The leathery-skinned orc from the deserts of the south had been taken captive by slavers of the Twilight Kin during a raid. The dark elves were returning home and converging with others of their kind in a large host heading back to Leith. Jarl knew his fate at the hand of the elves was going to be despairing, painful, and ultimately fatal. One evening, the Kin had picked Jarl out for special attention. They had taken his eye that night. Already tortured and tormented during the journey, many captives had not survived by the time the Kin were assembling in Harvon’s Pass before moving on. As the war horns blew in alarm that fateful evening, Jarl knew it would be his chance to escape. Strangling his guards with the chains that they thought bound him, Jarl managed to then free and rouse the other surviving orc prisoners, and began to run riot in the elven encampment. Assaulted by Argun’s force on one side and undermined by a revolt from within their own camp, the Kin were overrun and slaughtered. Jarl impressed Argun and quickly rose to prominence in his warband. Whenever there were elves to fight, of any persuasion, Jarl took the lead, his loathing for the race ignited in a frenzy of violence that was fed by pure hate.

“Yeah,” he snarled, picking up his axe from where it rested against the wall. “Show me where they are.”

***

No one had come back, but Argun had heard bellows and the sound of clashes echoing though the caves. He sighed. What was taking so long? In the corner of the room, the orclings in the cage on the wall had been getting more and more restless, their snivelling and whining getting on Argun’s nerves. Spittle cowered on the floor under the room’s single burning touch, the flickering light barely reaching the opposite wall. His cleaver in his belt and his axe in one hand, Argun took the torch from the sconce, knocking a fine cloud of old soot over the trembling orcling. “With me, Spittle. If you want something doing properly, you ‘ave to do it yourself.” He kicked the creature, causing it to squeak in alarm and hurriedly clamber up the orc’s body to perch on his shoulder. Argun pocketed his dice. “Let’s go play with the elves.”

***

Argun knew something was wrong; he could sense it. There was something in the air. Something unsettling. It was like the feeling in the pool room had seeped out and was spreading through the tunnels; the air felt thick and oily. The echoes of battle were coming in short, sporadic bursts. A shout. A clash of metal. A scream. As he turned a corner, he stumbled across two orc bodies. Jurk had been impaled on a spear that stuck from the ground: one of the traps he’d been tasked with checking. The dead weight of his corpse had slowly dropped all the way to the floor down the wooden shaft.

Kruk had had his throat slit and had also taken a stab wound in the left shoulder blade. He’d taken one of the enemy with him though, Argun discovered as he kicked the body over. Underneath the orc, the lifeless form of a young elf lay crushed and bleeding. Its smooth pale green skin was in stark contrast to the crimson liquid that leaked from the many cuts all over the body, and one arm was almost severed at the elbow. The feline-like eyes stared coldly at the wall, cloudy yellow and bloodshot. The Fey! Argun had heard about these elves but never seen one in person. Bound to the natural world and forest life, these faeries were a rare sight indeed. Spittle was routing through the pockets in Kruk’s leather jerkin but was studiously avoiding the elven body. Well, they seemed to die like any other elf, and they were going to pay for intruding in Argun’s lair. He kicked the body savagely and growled. Axe and cleaver in hand, he stalked down the corridor towards the sound of battle.

***

Meathead was fighting for his life. The tricksy little bastards were running rings round him and his lads, three of whom were already down. The elves had lost a couple of their number too but had the advantage of ranged arrow fire. The warband’s Sniffs were off with Jarl, so Meathead could only respond by getting in close, but the damn things kept dodging and striking, dodging and striking – darting in and out the sputtering torchlight. Suddenly, to his left, Var-Terkan roared in triumph as he caught an elf bowman in his grip as it tried to duck past him, slashing with a small curved blade. Var-Terkan lifted the elf straight off the floor and smashed its head against the tunnel wall with a sickening crunch. The body went limp, but before it dropped to the floor, Var-Terkan buried his axe deep into the chest, once, twice, three times. Meathead bellowed his approval and swung his own massive two-handed Greatax straight through the body of a spearman from shoulder to rib, spraying gore across the passageway. Undeterred, two more elves ran in to take their comrade’s place, one of them getting under his guard and ramming a spear into the meat of his thigh. Meathead howled in pain and fury as he watched Var-Terkan slain from the rear and two more orcs were felled behind him with arrows, the assailants then fading away again into the gloom. All alone now, something in Meathead snapped. A redness seemed to spread across his vision; a fury building to a tumultuous climax. Ripping the spearshaft from his leg, he swung his Greatax in huge scything arcs and charged headlong into the dark.

***

Jarl was breathing hard. He’d taken a nasty stab wound to the ribs which was impeding his movement. Hatred drove him on though: hatred of the elven race and what they had done to him. It mattered not that it was Twilight Kin who had captured him. Tortured him. Ripped out his eye. All elves were the same to Jarl, and murdering them gave some small measure of revenge. No number of dead elves would ever be enough for him though; his lust for blood consumed him totally. He was hunting now, stalking his prey – two surviving Fey which were eluding him. He paused briefly by a body slumped up against the wall. Brekken. Some darkly humorous voice in the back of Jarl’s head told him this was the first time Brekken had been able to sit down in ages, but Jarl dismissed the thought with a snarl and pressed on. Ahead, the corridor opened out slightly and had been hastily blocked with a collection of rubble and broken furniture; a makeshift barricade for the lone orc Sniff who stood behind it and had started trading arrow fire with the two Fey Jarl now saw swiftly moving towards him. He covered the ground quickly – two arrows barely missing him to impact against the wall, one chipping stone across the floor. He dived behind the barricade, rolling and coming to his feet in a fighting stance just before Fey leapt the obstacle and fell upon him.

***

Argun’s weapons were slick with blood. He’d taken some minor wounds, but in return had dispatched five Fey and one of the beings they called a Mage-Queen. She had fought savagely and with magic too – blasts of incandescent lightning smashing into the orcs around Argun and conjuring powerful gales which swept down the corridor, knocking them to their feet. Many bodies, Spittle’s included, lay scorched and battered before Argun managed to take the elf-bitch down, hurling his cleaver with all his might and burying it in her arrogant face. As he strode over to yank the heavy blade free, he caught a glimpse of something at the periphery of his vision. The silhouette of a large Fey, bracketed by the pale, unworldly glow which seemingly emanated from the being itself, paused briefly at the entrance to the tunnel leading to the pool chamber and then vanished in a blur. Argun retrieved his chopper and moved to follow the being down the passageway.

***

Jarl’s hatred knew no bounds. He’d killed the first elf quickly, his knife now pinning the faery against the tunnel wall, through the throat, and deep into the rock. The second elf was now weaving in and out of his reach and had twice breached his defence to score glancing hits while the Sniff was still rapidly loosening arrows from the barricade into the dark passage. All Jarl’s swings and blows were a fraction too late; the lithe elven fighter seemed to have an almost preternatural ability to anticipate his actions. He was becoming increasingly frustrated, and as a consequence, he almost made a fatal error. The elf came in from the left, and Jarl swung his axe down in a vicious chopping sweep; but his mistimed slice caused him to overbalance and the elf nimbly rolled right, under his weapon and then came to its feet, weapon chopping down and severing Jarl’s arm just above the wrist.

Argun heard the scream of rage as he rounded the corner and took stock of the picture in front of him. Down the corridor was a hastily prepared defensive wall from which a Sniff was desperately firing arrows at the iridescent figure speeding down the tunnel with an effortless grace and speed that couldn’t be natural. Clambering up the pile of rubble and hauling a comatose body behind him in one hand, Jarl appeared oblivious to the approaching danger. Now at the top, he hoisted the elf into the air and brought it down across his knee with a sickening crack. Contemptuously, he tossed the body aside and roared – a primeval venting of emotion that thundered down the passageway with an almost physical force.

The shimmering Fey leapt, drawing its bow as it did so with an almost impossible agility. It contacted the wall and instantly flipped across the passage, acrobatically gaining height off the tunnel sides. Mid-air and halfway across the space, it launched a crystal tipped arrow shaft with unerring accuracy. The missile flew true – a cold and impassionate answer to the cacophony of rage emanating from the orc atop the blockade. Jarl took notice too late, his brain registering the situation a split second before the arrow took his remaining eye. As he crumpled backwards to the floor, the elf cleared the barricade, landing and taking the head off the Sniff with a single fluid motion and sweep of its razor sharp blade. Argun felt uneasy. Not fear – he’d never felt afraid, but he had a distinct feeling his fortunes were perhaps not running along their normal tack. This finishes now, he thought and ran down the passage after the demon elf thing.

***

The air fizzed with the taste of magic. Argun approached the figure cautiously as it stood facing the pool room. Tendrils of pale wispy light radiated from the elf-thing and floated down into the pool, and motes of dust sparkled and flared as they drifted into the rays. As Argun neared the Fey, the light pulsed brighter, and then suddenly dimmed. The temperature in the corridor dropped to a bone-chilling low. Wall torches sputtered and died and a crackling frost spread across the stone walls. Argun’s breath burned his throat, and his breath smoked around him as the elf turned to face him. Tall and slim with the stereotypical physiology of the race, the Fey had feline eyes and a catlike grace to match. Where the younger Fey had a pale green complexion, the older more powerful Fey were typically a brown-grey, their skin almost bark-like. This one however was surely something born from the Abyss. An Archwraith. Its skin was a deep crimson and seemed to paint the space around it in a bloody red luminance. The face of a demon. It spoke, but Argun felt the sound in his head rather than hearing it through his ears.

“Your kind have defiled this place, orc,” the sound was at once soft, caring, and at the same time full of threat and menace, “and we have come to cleanse the infection. The seedling-pool of the tree is sacred, and you must pay for your violation.”

The fiend moved with a speed that seemed impossible. Argun had excellent night vision but struggled to pick up the elf’s movement as it began a relentless assault, a whirlwind of flashing blades and stabbing strikes. Sparks flew as Argun fought a retreating defence, his world becoming a pattern of block, parry, block, parry. Twice the elf got through his guard, once to slash down his left arm and again somehow appearing behind him to cut across his spine, barely missing his neck. The wounds in themselves were superficial, deflected and weakened by Argun’s mail coat, but many more would start to take their toll: death by a thousand cuts. Argun’s own blows when he made them were skilfully dodged by the elf, the evasion becoming a seamless part of its flowing battle-dance. Argun’s cleaver was knocked spinning from his hand, and he tripped and fell heavily over the leg of an orc carcass. As he landed, his hip jarred painfully and his pair of dice scattered out across the floor. The elf-demon slowed briefly, approaching the body Argun had stumbled over. During the brief respite, Argun realised where they were. The elf was about to step onto a trap trigger buried under the floor. Somehow it had not gone off previously despite all the fighting, but a spark of hope now flared in Argun’s heart as time appeared to slow and the elf’s foot stepped lightly onto the floor.

Nothing happened. Curse Jurk and his laxity. The elf vaulted forwards to finish him off, and he heard the voice in his head again, pure malevolence this time. “And now you die, orc.”

Argun scrambled back, deflecting the blows raining down on him with his axe as he backed out into the junction. Anger now boiled within him. He was not going to die like this, not killed by this hell-cursed faery. Catching the elven blade on his axe, he opened up the elf’s body and surged forwards, slamming his huge mailed fist into the side of its head. The Fey staggered backwards and crashed into the wall. Before Argun could follow up, it pulled its bow free and drew an arrow in a blur of supernatural movement. It aimed, drew, and then spun to the right as Meathead came crashing round the corner out the gloom, his Greatax already moving in a huge sweeping arc. Orc and elf struck at the same time. The massive axe bit through the torso of the Fey, carving the demon-thing in two before crashing into the cave wall. The elven arrow passed clean through Meathead’s throat. The light went from both combatants’ eyes as the momentum of Meathead’s charge toppled his corpse into the bisected elf and they both slumped to the floor. Blood began running in an ever spreading pool across the stone.

***

Argun blinked and shook his head clear. The faint glow from the Fey had quickly receded, but a small point of light, intense like a miniature sun, rose from the body to the air before speeding down the tunnel towards the pool room, briefly illuminating the passage walls in a cool blue light before vanishing into the distance. Some degree of warmth returned to the air. Argun used his axe as a crutch to push himself to his feet. He walked over to the torso of the elf and prodded it gingerly with the toe of his boot. Satisfied it really was dead, he walked back up the passage and picked up his cleaver, slipping it back into his belt. Looking around, he spied his dice in a dark corner against the far wall. This was a sign, he thought. Perhaps from Garkan himself that he’d grown complacent here in the caves. It was time to move out; regrow his warband and his legend before both time and younger, ambitious Krudgers caught up with him. He was still lucky – of that much he was certain, or he’d now be dead along with everyone else.

Stooping down, he reached to retrieve the dice on the floor. As his weight pressed on his front foot he heard a click, and then felt the whoosh of air above his head as a huge blade span out from the wall and buried itself in the stone opposite. Jurk’s trap had finally sprung.

He glanced at the dice. Double six. Scooping them up, he dropped them back into his pocket. Yes, he thought as he made his way outside, still lucky.

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