Defiant Necromancer (Book 2 stubbed)

Andric and the others broke into a near sprint up the hill, before the harpies, deciding that the situation required speed, flapped their wings and took to the air. Each woman held a sling in her lower claws, but neither of them threw stones, even as they ascended high enough that they could surely see the top of the hill and whichever figures had been up there.

But nor did they smile as they descended back to Andric.

“What’s going on?” he asked a little uneasily.

“A trio of centaurs,” Sabine said. “They’re running away.”

“Most likely outriders for the horde of ogres,” Tatiana said, her expression grim. “Rushing to alert the others. I suspect we’re about to find out whether King Tybalt is correct that they can be negotiated with - or not.”

“Well, I’m glad you two didn’t start a fight,” Andric said. “If there’s any chance we can approach them in a friendly way, we should take it.”

Both harpies nodded, but they looked as uncertain as Andric felt.

All five continued ascending the hill, and when they got to the top, the foxman was able to confirm with his own eyes what Tatiana and Sabine had seen. Three centaurs - though, from that distance, they could have been riders on horseback - retreated into the distance.

“They’re moving toward a tree line,” he noted. It was only a copse of trees, not a forest, but thick enough with greenery to block the five from seeing beyond to where Andric guessed the horde must wait.

“We should get away from here,” Tatiana said in a quiet, urgent tone. “Even if they might be willing to negotiate generally, you will not have the chance to apply your charm if a bunch of grunts charge up this hill on a mission to kill the people they think are sneaking up on them.”

Andric nodded and frowned.

“Let’s work our way down the hill and try to angle toward the copse from the side,” he suggested.

They quickly descended and moved toward the stream that still ran on their left hand side, aware that they might be able to use it to conceal their movements as the ogres had been doing. It might even lead them straight to the horde’s camp, though it was somewhat orthogonal to the direction the centaurs had taken.

The five walked for ten minutes before they saw them.

A half-dozen ogres and one centaur rushed out from the tree line. More shocking than that, though, was the fact that there were a half-dozen beastfolk with them, a kind that Andric had never seen before with dark-colored ears. The beastfolk were a mixed sex group, four men and two women, and unlike the ogres, they were mounted on horseback.

“What do we do?” Sabine asked. To her credit, her hands immediately went to her sling and the little pouch of stones she carried. She had a dagger, too, but being a harpy, her typical role was one of ranged combat.

“We can’t outrun them,” Andric judged instantly. “Get ready to fight, but don’t start anything until they do. If we can avoid killing or being killed… that’s best for everyone.”

While his two fiancees and the two undead bodyguards drew weapons, and the mounted beastfolk - gods, it was a strange thing to see other beastfolk outside the Salt Waste! - rapidly approached, Andric walked ahead of his companions, hands raised high over his head to signal peacefulness. As the faces of the beastfolk grew clearer, Andric had to resist the urge to reach down to the weapon he had at his side. He was armed with the sword that had once belonged to Commander Volusia, given to him by Tybalt before he left.

The faces on those beastfolk looked far too hostile for Andric’s liking. Their lips were curled back in snarls that made the hairs on the back of his neck rise.

Shouldn’t they be happy to see their kin?

At least their weapons - they had spears - were held points up, not aimed immediately to kill.

But those ears bothered him. The closer they got, the more they looked like…

“They’re wolf beastfolk!” Andric shouted back to the others.

He couldn’t see how Tatiana and Sabine reacted to the news, but the tension in his body ratcheted up to a new level. Andric had heard stories about the wolf tribe growing up. He mostly considered them as myths, or at most legends of people from a different time, completely irrelevant to the life he himself led.

But now the stories came back to him with distressing clarity.

The wolf tribe was notoriously hostile to outsiders, including other beastfolk. They were considered as the bad apples of the race - and possibly even traitors. But that was a story from centuries back.

Andric considered lowering his hands to reach for the sword, but the horsemen were almost upon him now, and as he observed them, he could see they were skilled cavalry, familiar with their mounts, graceful, and swift. They had the half-dozen ogres hot on their heels, too, in the event that he and his companions managed to somehow overcome the six cavalry.

We couldn’t possibly win against all of them… even if we weren’t here on a diplomatic mission, trying to avoid fighting.

Then the wolf beastfolk were upon him. They at least didn’t look to be snarling anymore. Their eyes, looking over the group, were more curious than anything else.

The apparent leader of these cavalry, a gray-haired older-looking wolfman with one eye socket covered by a patch, stopped his horse just in front of Andric, while the others fanned out around them.

The leader looked down at Andric, opened his mouth - revealing long, sharp teeth - and rasped something that Andric didn’t quite catch.

“What?” he asked.

The wolfman repeated his words, almost a growl this time, impatient, and Andric realized the wolfman wasn’t speaking Nietian. It was an old dialect of beasttongue.

Of course. It’s natural he’d use our people’s language.

The words, as Andric focused on them, were a basic question: “Who are you?”

Shit, I hope I’m not rusty.

He replied in his own beasttongue.

“I am called Andric, a chieftain among the fox tribe.” That was true enough; Tybalt had more or less promised to retain him in that role despite Andric’s father, Chief Mihalic, plotting against the necromancer. He extended his arms to the sides. “My companions and I are here as messengers to treat with Bloodlady Ragga.”

The wolfman frowned at that and seemed to chew over the words for a moment.

“Your accent is terrible,” he said finally. “I am called Bojan. Who do you work for? What king or emperor sends a chieftain to be his messenger?”

Andric was about to answer, but as Bojan was speaking, the ogres had arrived alongside all the wolf tribe cavalry. The centaur was with them but stood at a remove, watching from outside of range should any fighting begin.

The ogres were grunting something to each other, but Andric was unfamiliar with the language used. Their size was intimidating - eight or nine feet tall - and they stood in menacing postures, looking at the newcomers with eyes that gleamed with unwholesome interest.

Bojan turned to face one of them and barked something in the tongue the ogres spoke. The singled-out ogre growled back at him and lowered his head as if he wanted to gore Bojan or the wolfman’s horse with those long tusks that grew out of each ogre’s head.

“What are they saying?” Andric asked.

As he spoke, one of the ogres broke from the rest with a snarl and charged, not at Andric, but at those behind him.

Andric drew his sword in a flash, and then he, his companions, and the half-dozen ogres were locked in combat.

The foxman had to duck almost immediately as he found himself outnumbered. The very first blow almost smashed his head, but he dodged and it grazed his ear instead.

The ogres were armed with stone clubs, not the spears of the wolffolk, and they were noticeably slower than Andric and his allies. But they also had massive bodies and long reach. His advantage was that they could not gang up on him effectively without risking hitting each other with those heavy, hard to maneuver clubs. So he kept forcing himself to avoid blows at the last moment that either whizzed by his head or smashed into the ground with so much force that he knew he would have died if he hadn’t moved. Occasionally one ogre actually injured another, while Andric tried to bleed them.

They seemed to take cuts better than a human would - their hides blunted most of his blows with the sword, and the cuts he did manage to inflict seemed to begin healing only seconds after he sliced them open.

Andric was forced to commit more to his blows, trying to hack through limbs and stab vital places like the chest and neck, while not committing so much that he lost his sword in dense ogre flesh.

He hacked and stabbed at the closest attacker’s chest, then moved to the next, periodically shifting to watch his back in case the wolf tribesmen interfered.

Curiously, they did nothing despite their apparent allies being in the midst of a fight.

That was good, since the ogres didn’t go down with just a few slashes to the chest. They kept going and almost surrounded Andric before he realized he needed even more force - perhaps to destroy the heart or the head - before they would stop moving.

Tatiana and Sabine had managed to get airborne, and as a couple of the ogres tried to get behind him, the harpies pelted them with stones, allowing Andric a little space to dart away. He managed to put his back to the nachzehrer and began to fight in a triangle with his two undead comrades.

The nachzehrer and wight knight who had been accompanying the beastfolk showed their worth here. The ogres fighting around the nachzehrer visibly slowed down and weakened the longer they stood near him, while the wight knight moved swiftly, dodging, hacking, and slashing as effectively as Andric.

For a few minutes, nothing could be heard but battle grunts, cries of pain, and the sound of flesh being cut. The fighting began to shift, as the two undead fought determinedly, and without tiring in the slightest, to keep Andric from being harmed.

The ogres got in each other’s way when they tried to fight the three tightly grouped opponents with their big, clumsy clubs, and it was only made worse by the harpies slinging stones at their heads. The triangle formation and the oversized ogres’ difficulty fighting side by side effectively meant they were forced to fight two or three at a time instead of using their numbers to best advantage.

Soon the defenders started to do real damage.

Their foes seemed to rapidly regenerate from most wounds, but the wight knight stabbing one in the heart put it down permanently.

Andric hacked deep into the neck of another ogre, and though his sword didn’t pass through completely - these things were tough - the ogre did drop to the ground, grasping at nothing in the air, green blood gushing out in torrents. He finally collapsed onto his face, Andric pulled his sword free, and he looked around once more.

The next closest ogre was stepping back, lowering his club, and the ones behind him weren’t pressing in to fill the opening.

A few ogres still lived - a lucky stone throw had caved in one’s eye, and Andric and the wight knight had killed two between them, while one was bleeding heavily and trying to sit up.

The foxman was breathing heavily and drenched in sweat. He thought that the ogres still had the better odds of winning the fight, if they wanted to continue.

But no more enemies appeared willing to approach. The ogres just bared their tusks but looked cowed. Bojan, who he’d been talking to before, still sat on horseback, his expression relaxed, a hand on his spear, but it wasn’t pointed at Andric.

“What the fuck was that?” Andric practically spat the words, glaring at the wolfman. He wasn’t really hurt anywhere, but that felt like pure luck. His heart was beating out of his chest.

Bojan shrugged. “I told the ogres you were here on a diplomatic mission. They thought you would serve better as food.” He smiled, showing those sharp teeth again. “I think you will make good allies. The best quality in allies is that they can keep themselves from being eaten. Ogres are not the most patient, and to some of them, anyone who holds still long enough looks like food. Come along, and I will escort you to Bloodlady Ragga.”

“Come along, to be attacked by more ogres?” Andric asked.

The wolfman looked thoughtful. “Fair point. Sit on the back of my horse, and they will have to attack me to get to you.”

Andric nodded and accepted a hand up as he joined Bojan on the horse, while the undead wordlessly accepted rides on two other horsemen’s mounts.

They rode toward the copse of trees, Andric’s sword still in his hand, trembling slightly and flicking droplets of green blood everywhere as the horse moved its riders up and down with every step.

The two healthy ogres were following behind them, leaving their wounded companion to recover or not on his own.

This is a savage people, the foxman thought. Can you truly make an agreement with a people that do not care for their own kind?

But they had already committed to trying.

As they drew nearer, Andric could finally make out what existed beyond the trees.

What he saw took his breath away.

He had imagined a small horde. Several hundred. Enough to make it worthwhile for Tybalt to send him to recruit them, given that ogres were strong and ferocious.

What he saw had to be in the low thousands. Tents and blankets went on as far as the eye could see.

From the number of individuals milling around outside, coupled with the number of tents, Andric estimated there were around a thousand ogres alone, plus hundreds of wolf beastfolk, hundreds of humans, and scores of centaurs. A coalition of different races, not so different from what Tybalt had been forging back in the Salt Waste.

Bojan steered his horse into the ogre section of the camp, where they instantly became the object of attention for hundreds of hungry-looking ogres. They pressed all around Bojan’s horse, though he did not allow that to slow his beast’s trotting. He barked loud commands at the others around him - Andric still had no idea what was being said, but the tone said everything - and the ogres let Bojan and the other wolffolk through, though they didn’t seem to like it much.

Greedy eyes fixated on Andric reminded him of what the wolfman had said about the ogres wanting to eat him and his companions. His sword arm tensed as he considered whether he would need to defend himself. At least the harpies were in midair, out of easy grabbing range.

As Bojan stopped outside the largest tent, the ogres gathered around, looking more belligerent than they had been.

The big wolfman called something out at the top of his lungs, and Andric heard movement from within the tent.

Then an ogre, taller than most of the others Andric had seen thus far, stepped up beside Bojan. Large, full breasts made it obvious this was a female, though her face was not pretty. She was so tall that she stood at eye level with the wolfman despite him sitting on horseback.

She growled something in the ogres’ tongue, and Bojan responded with something that sounded like a brusque refusal.

But she was flanked by a bunch of other females who parted the crowd around them and surrounded the wolffolk. Their postures and expressions were menacing.

A few of them drew stone knives or clutched stone hammers, their faces cold and hard.

Then a command from that central tent rang through the air - still in that language Andric didn’t understand - and everyone froze.

The female who had been getting in Bojan and Andric’s face stepped back and lowered her gaze.

Then an even bigger female ogre stepped through the opening in the largest tent.

Her eyes looked over Andric and the undead, then darted up to where the harpies flew.

She seemed curious about them, which the foxman supposed was a good sign. And there was one other thing.

This ogre is kind of cute.