Beyond Dagothar (The Oraclon Chronicles Book 1) Read online

  Far below the lands of Dagothar in the training pits beneath the dark elf city of Sarthaldon in the underworld, the maralich warrioresses have for ages trained the hordes of headhunters. Unlike the normal two-armed dark elves, headhunters were a special breed with four arms highly trained and used by the Aelvatchi as spies, assassins, rangers, scouts and intimidating emissaries. The dungeon pits held all manner of Hollowrealm species, soldiers of every race captured in the Deep, even Taran ogres and dusk giants as well as lesser known monsters and dangerous beings. Headhunters were trained to fight them all.

  But no orcan axemaster in service to the Great Mother had ever been captured alive and studied.

  The orc already perceived the double thrust of the elf, side-stepped and brought down his blades with the speed of a goddess in a blur that removed both of the Aelvatchi's two upper arms at the elbows. A single thump and clanging reported their contact with the stone surface.

  The elf blinked in surprise disbelievingly just before a silent horizontal back sweep of an axe passed right through his neck. The headhunter's head rolled sideways to topple wetly to the court as his dead body collapsed. The axemaster screamed in primal fury that echoed throughout this area of the valley and off the twin fortress walls as the southern Devilspire orcs and ogres joined in, followed by the Bholbash orcs. The noise of victory was so deafening that there was nothing Matthias could do when the axemaster did something very foolish.

  Raising his right axe high, the orc hero then pointed into the entryway and charged into the shadow. He was followed by his ogre guard, his wild orcs and many Bholbash warriors followed by more orcs all struggling with one another to join the axemaster inside in retaking the castle.

  Orcs have got to be the dumbest race in all Dagothar.

  Matthias was awed by the astounding prowess of the axemaster but equally convinced that in the tight spaces of the fortress the enemy would cut him down. Across the court on the other side the orcs had lowered both bridge-doors and were celebrating the victory of their hero. Still

  the court was covered with orcs. He stole a glance back toward his wardrake. She was tucked inside her wings watching orcs warily.

  The ground under his feet trembled and stilled. Hundreds of orcs heading for the entrance slowed to a stop and looked about nervously. Matthias saw his drake's head lift high into the air and look directly at him. The noise of elation and battle excitement died out as the orcs quietened. An uneasy feeling crept up the ranger's spine. Even the entry issued forth no sounds of conflict. His feet were numb.

  Matthias realized that the ground was humming. The numbing sensation crawled up his legs and his drake stood on all fours unfurling its wings and casting looks back at its master. Just as Matthias began moving toward his steed the vibrations ceased. When they did he noticed several pebbles fall a few inches and dust settle to the rock surface. He had not realized they had been floating. At his feet the flagstones suddenly showed thin spidery fractures branching out in all directions. Larger cracks appeared as he stepped off of it onto another that was not fracturing. As he began to run the flagstones behind him heaved upward pushing flailing orcs into the air screaming, whole seven foot long slabs splitting apart. An entire nine-stone section blew upward into the air as two other areas of the court surface between the fortresses began fracturing.

  Matthias saw an orc looking into the hole left after the explosion fall into the dusty darkness without a sound. A whole group of frightened orcs dropped below the surface of the court as the ground under them disappeared. Nearby a pillar of earth and broken stones blew upward from underneath the flagstone court and the ranger's drake covered its head with its wings as rocks rained back down. Sinkholes appeared seeming to suck struggling orcs into them like hungry mouths. Matthias saw a horrible thing.

  Out of the dusty clouds billowing about flailing orcs raised the massive head of some unknown, round-eyed monster, dirt and pieces of flagstones rolling off of its face. A gigantic feline-like eye turned on the gauntleteer as its curved tusks came into view and one enormous split hoof. Beyond it to his left Matthias watched stunned as a second beast erupted out of the ground like a demonic volcano scattering stones and bodies of orcs living and dead. Leaning its wide head downward and opening its cavernous mouth, a glowing tunnel of bluish wave-rings issued forth like a ghostly serpent. Everything in its path fell apart. Dust changed to smoke, pebbles turned to dust, stones broke into pebbles, flagstones fractured into rocks and orcs shook violently as bones splintered inside their bodies.

  The sudden assault from below was so swift Matthias was almost cut off from his drake. The steed was about to fly off without him, casting looks back his way indecisively. Two more of the terrifying garbolgs of the minatrorcs broke loose from below and unleashed their sonic destructions on the defenseless orcs. Flagstones exploded into sprays of projectiles that tore through the living and the dead as architecture crumbled. A garbolg had climbed toward the eastern citadel where many orcs were already raising the bridge when its death-weapon blew them apart with the rock bridge and completely cleared away the entry of orcs.

  As another geyser of earth and rock blew into the sky Matthias knew that these monsters had tunnelled their way from the undervein to behneath this court to give the minatrorcs an exit due to their earlier impasse with the axemaster. As he ran passing another garbolg climbing out of a dust-choked hole, it raised a massive hoof and Matthias saw the crushed orcs in armor stuck to the bottom of it. Also crushed but still recognizable was a cave ogre head. One of the two large guards of the axemaster.

  Suddenly the court filled with armored weapon-weilding horned minatrorcs and the ranger realized that they were ascending through the holes made by these colossal beasts. Orcs were hacked down, trampled, run through, beheaded and captured. Matthias pushed through fleeing orcs, many seeing him and changing direction to join him.

  Lions among puppies, he thought. Though he cared little for the orcs he had adopted Josiah's position that the Bholbash Alliance needed to hold because they were not the enemy. Surrounded by about two dozen orcs looking to him for leadership, Matthias ran toward his drake and they tried to keep up as minatrorcs set upon them viciously. Not one orc realized where the ranger was running to.

  A minatrorc with a wicked axe raised thought to oppose Matthias but the gauntleteer's razored fingers carved off his face. The underworlder was unfamiliar with such an exotic weapon and it cost him his life. Seeing the minatrorcs overtaking their position and the desperation of the orcs, he turned around and joined them screaming loudly as he attacked a minatrorc. With Thunder Hands beside them the orcs renewed their defense and began fighting harder, most not seeing the human ranger turn about and sprint for the wardrake twenty-five feet away. The orc line broke and those not cut down fled back toward Matthias as he jumped astride the steed and hung on to the saddle as the fearful drake lifted powerfully into the night air to get away from the noise-making monsters.

  Matthias glanced back down to see the orcs looking up cursing him as minatrorcs hacked at their backs and heads. Every single one of them that had been running in his group was killed. He could see minatrorcs spilling out of the western fortress entrance. The axemaster had fallen. Orcs throughout the court between the castles were being rounded up as they dropped their weapons. He reached down and grabbed the reins and turned the drake back toward Kag'ar Grul. He would return to their camp to await Josiah. He looked back down at the chaos.

  "Orcs are stupid."

  Venerating their Great Mother in the grottoes of

  their hidden mountain temple, the orc axemaster

  cultists brought all of Devilspire under their rule.

  For a time the giants faught back in a series of

  battles until the axemasters slew their king,

  Malbolg the Stormbringer. Dated as the 1009th

  year from the birth of Craniax.

  The Book of Giants 2.7.12,

  Nikolo Ord Magi Library

  Kag'ar Grul
Keep...Bholbash Valley

  The fortress was a hollowed out mountain once home to titans. It was the tallest peak on the western side of the valley. The protected entrance blocked by immense portals faced Dimwood, the unprotected open cavern entrance faced the valley. This valley entrance was over sixty feet high and was once closed off by the largest stone cylinders in all of Dagothar, requiring a titan one either side to move in and out of position. They were crafted from an entire cliff face to keep dragons out of the mountain. The scattering of boulders inside and in front of the cavern were all that remained of the archaic megalithic engineering.

  The mountain was originally a volcano, collapsed, with countless caves and large caverns. Layers upon layers of orc colonies were located inside and under the mountain. At least two hundred thousand females and young called in home. Over one thousand of the rare and very big white-furred winter wolves having red eyes appeared, all ridden by wild orcs of the southern range not allied to the Bholbash orcs but served the interests of the axemasters. Matthias had informed me that it was believed by the dwarves that the wolves were very intelligent, cunning, could speak orcan and were evil by nature.

  At that moment a group of five thousand hornback orcs on the mountain slope retreated a few hundred feet from a similar-sized group of Bholbash orcs guarding the portal when they were joined by the wild orcs of the winter wolf cavalry.

  Now it was painfully obvious what the Warlord was doing. I had returned to Kag'ar Grul and found a chieftain and a translator and described the giant dwarves marching down the valley. I related what Michel told me of the minatrorcs and their destructive seige-beasts. I tried to explain that their own methods of warfare were not sufficient, that they had best fight a defensive battle using the mountain as a shield. Fight cave-to-cave if necessary.

  "The chiefs are unyeilding," I told Matthias. He sipped a hot cup of cider tea, offering me one. The flame was small but we had good concealment under the precipice.

  "Horde warfare is all they have ever known," he said, thinking back to the incredible fight between the dark elf and the axemaster. He had told me of the engagement. From our position high on the cliff face in sight of Kag'ar Grul's western and eastern approaches, we sipped the hot cider looking out over the slopes of the battlefield.

  The Taran army was spread across the bottom of the western slope in rank-in-file battalions. But these organized orcs, the camps teeming with goblin archers, titan ogres, hornhulk knights, war wizards, pygmy goblins and the dusk giants were not in position to ascend the mountain nor did they appear as if they intended to.

  Matthias' words ate at me. Horde warfare is all they have ever known. What a waste of life and knowledge. Orcs were nothing like us. I thought back to something else Matthias had made me aware of that I had never known. At the war council inside Kag'ar Grul when I was by myself just observing the different groups coming to terms, I studied the crowd.

  As with the tunnels and chambered caverns I had passed through, elderly orcs were nowhere to be seen. He had told me that orcs prey on each other. Young females nearing adulthood harass the older females, the orc females instinctively know when the older ones are no longer able to bear offspring. These orc women are killed and eaten by the younger females. Elderly orc males that cease producing offspring or even slow down in their rutting are also killed by the vicious females. Once in a while a young female, having rutted with several males and unable to get pregnant, is also made a dinner of. I had to inform Matthias that the dwarves had told him right.

  "By the way, the Galdirim had it right. The orcs are cannibals."

  "Didn't see any old ones, huh?"

  "Not a one," I replied.

  The Warlord and his generals were gathered in a very protected circle surrounded by other taran ogres having the single horn protruding from their foreheads, though none were as large as the Tyrant nor did they have a double-row of teeth and six fingers and toes on their hands and feet. It was evident to us that the Warlord was waiting for the battle for the valley to begin before he launched his fullscale assault.

  In the center of the valley floor a host of about ten thousand Bholbash orcs blocked the entry to the mountain. With them but spread out along the valley floor were some fifteen thousand other orcs from the southern range who followed the axemasters. With these stood cave ogres and hill giants with their own allies of warmongering minataurs and twenty-foot tall hulking cyclopes using small trees as clubs. The hill giants were a good three to five feet shorter. This army was led by eleven orc axemaster barbarians.

  We watched quietly as the red-armored gigantic dwarves from the underworld closed in on their position in a formiddable line of about seven hundred and fifty soldiers holding round shields and short wedge-shaped blades forming up eight solid ranks. Behind the giant dwarves were two lines of small, pale-skinned gnomen archers.

  "Those dwarves are huge!" Matthias leaned over the ledge staring. The loremaster of dwarven antiquities had never heard of such enormous dwarves in the underworld or on the surface. The catalogue of combatants who had faught at the Battle of Ghul-run did not mention them.

  "They must have been in the underworld forever," he breathed. "There is no mention of this race by the dwarves of Red Anvil, Grol-galdir or Emim'gard. Not even the Poltyrian archives at Three Bridges had records of this." I listened, not knowing what to offer. I was not a historian and if I was I would study the past of my people not the dwarves.

  The underworld armies in the valley formed an L-shaped battlefront. The Bholbash orcs and allies were unaware that they were totally flanked and unprepared for this type of attack. I looked down at the garbolgs. Matthias had told me how destructive their breath weapons were, what they could do. I stared at them with the same awe the gauntleteer watched the Grimh. The minatrorc line was stretched out at five hundred soldiers horn-to-horn in a formation twelve ranks deep. That made six thousand giant dwarves and six thousand horned minatrorcs.

  "Look at the gnomes," Matthias pointed. The eight hundred or so slender undyrgnomes shot their first volley of arrows over the Grimh, the darts soaring high into the air to rain back down onto the crowd of southern Devilspire orcs. I stared unbelievingly. Almost every body struck by an arrow fell down. A single ogre hit bellowed loudly as if terribly hurt as a hill giant flinched and cursed with a deep voice.

  "They act as if those arrows were spears," I said. Matthias was intensely studying the situation. He looked at me.

  "That ogre is wearing thick armor. Looks like leather under bronze or copper. No ordinary arrows are going to vex ogres even if unprotected. Not even giants are as hard to penetrate as ogres." I dwelled on this, thinking that maybe they were magical or cursed, when suddenly the thunderous garbolgs captured our attention.

  In a flash forty-one shimmering tunnels of snakelike blue rings belched out of their bellowing maws clearing out breaches seventy feet deep into the Bholbash lines. The whole valley rang with the noise of orcs screaming, convulsing, falling apart. I watched as the flint axe of a huge mountain ogre break apart like cracked clay burnt too long just a second before the ogre himself began to dance, lift up and jerk sideways before collapsing in a heap, motionless. The wave-rings froze orcs still as more rings made them spasm followed by rings that passed through their bodies shattering bone and curling armor. Even rocks on the ground popped and the ground in forty-one places before these beasts was obscurred by a low-lying cloud of dust like a creeping fog.

  As I watched the stunned orcs another volley of the deadly arrows fell upon them and those struck went down immediately. A minataur died, an enemy arrow sinking halfway up its shaft into its horned skull.

  "Matthias, those arrows must be enchanted."

  "They just blew apart forty areas of standing orcs..." he replied in shock. He was not paying attention to the archers any more. As we spoke the minatrorcs advanced into the disoriented orcs, cutting down most in the front lines.

  "Look, Matthias! Those minatrorcs surround the seige-beasts!"
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  "Yeah, creatures that valuable got to be protected."

  "No. You miss my meaning. The monsters are not blowing again." Together we studied the situation below. Matthias understood the implications without speaking them. Those hellish creatures required rest. They obviously could not repeat such a devastating attack until they were ready again. I looked at them seeing that it was important for anyone dealing with such threatening beasts to concentrate their efforts in killing them before they could revisit such destruction again.

  "They're just animals, Josiah. No different than our drakes."

  "Yes. They defend themselves poorly or the minatrorcs would not bother. Look how they pack themselves around the monsters."

  Another storm of eight hundred arrows peppered the orcs. I saw an orc impaled through its iron helm...the arrowhead jutted out from its lower jaw. No armor seemed to shield away the gnomen arrows. A hill giant wailed loudly, struck with three of them, the darts buried deep in his flesh with only the tails showing. They were not feathered, but had fins of some kind.