ORCS: Army of Shadows Read Free Page A

creatures’ progress. They rushed onward, heedless of the bristling swords intended to keep them at bay.
    A frenzy of colliding blades and clashing shields ensued. Soon, screams were added to the cacophony. A trooper collapsed, his skull split by an axe. Another lost an arm to the sweep of a broadsword, then succumbed to multiple stabbing.
    The fight grew yet more feverish. Fuelled by desperation, the two remaining defenders battled with ever greater ferocity. In the blizzard of stinging steel one misjudged the tempo of the battering and left open his guard. A sword found his belly; another stroke sliced cleanly through his neck, sending his head bouncing to one side. The headless corpse stood for a second, gushing crimson, before it fell.
    Only the captain remained. Bloodstained, panting, her blade near slipping from moist fingers, she readied herself for the final act.
    The monsters could have attacked en masse and finished her in an instant. But they held back. Then just one came forward.
    It took the captain a moment to realise that the creature was waiting to engage her. She raised her sword. The being mirrored her and they set to.
    Silence had fallen again, save for the pealing clatter of their blades. She fenced well, for all she had suffered and witnessed. The beast matched her in skill, though its method relied more on power and a boldness that was almost reckless. Their duel ranged back and forth across the cramped barracks, but none of the other creatures impeded her or tried to join in. They merely watched.
    The finale came when the captain suffered a deep gash to her sword arm. A swift follow-through saw her take a further wound to the flank. Staggering, she lost her footing and went down.
    The creature stood over her. She looked up into its eyes. What she saw was something more than brutishness. The bestial was there, but tempered with what she could only think of as a kind of empathy. And, perhaps, even a hint of nobility.
    It was a fantastical notion, and it was the last one she would ever have.
    The monster plunged its blade into the captain’s chest.
    Wrenching her blade from the female’s corpse, Coilla said, “She fought well.”
    “They all did,” Stryke agreed.
    “For
humans
,” Haskeer sneered.
    More than a dozen other orcs were crowded into the barracks with them. All were Wolverines, with the exception of Brelan, a leader of the Acurial resistance. He elbowed through the throng, barely glancing at the human’s body. “Time we were out of here,” he told them.
    They streamed from the barracks. There were over a hundred orcs in the compound, the majority of them resistance members, along with the rest of the Wolverines and the Vixens, the female warband Coilla led. They were busy scavenging weapons and torching the place. The few humans left alive were mortally injured, and they let them be.
    As Brelan’s order to evacuate spread, the force began to leave, moving out in small groups or singly. They took their own wounded, but by necessity left their dead.
    Stryke, Haskeer and Coilla watched them go. Dallog, the Wolverines’ eldest member, and one of the newest, joined them.
    “We bloodied their nose good ’n’ proper,” he remarked.
    Stryke nodded. “We did, Corporal.”
    Haskeer shot Dallog a hard look and said nothing.
    “The tyros are shaping up well,” Coilla offered by way of compensation.
    “Seem to be,” Dallog replied. “I’m heading off with some of them now.”
    “Don’t let us keep you,” Haskeer muttered.
    Dallog stared at him for a second, then turned and left.
    “See you back at HQ!” Coilla called after him.
    “Go easy on him, Haskeer,” Stryke said. “I know he’s not Alfray but —”
    “Yeah, he’s not Alfray. More’s the pity.”
    Stryke would have had something further to say to his sergeant, and in harsher terms, had Brelan not returned.
    “Most have gone. You get going too. Hide your weapons, and remember the curfew starts soon, so don’t