Son of a Liche Read online

  Son of a Liche

  by J. Zachary Pike

  Edited by Courtney Rae Andersson

  Cover design by James T. Egan of Bookfly Design

  Published by Gnomish Press, May 2018

  Copyright © 2018 J. Zachary Pike

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Version 1.2.1

  Gnomish Press, LLC

  P.O. Box 64

  Greenland, NH 03840

  [email protected]

  A Note from the Author

  Welcome back to Arth, adventurer! It may have been a while since you last read Orconomics, and it’s possible you don’t recall all of the story or characters. Happily, a plot synopsis and character guide have been prepared for just such an occasion. You can find them at http://jzp.to/OrcRecap

  If you haven’t read the first book in The Dark Profit Saga yet, you can pick up a copy of Orconomics here. I strongly recommend that you read it first.

  With that out of the way, let me say thank you for reading, and I hope you enjoy Son of a Liche.

  Prologue

  The raven prepared to settle in for lunch at the Glens.

  Being a bird, the raven didn't understand what the Glens were; it just saw a massive stone nest built by the pink and brown apes that infested the ground. The entire concept of a fortress, let alone the strategic importance of a fort that controlled a narrow mountain pass, remained lost to him.

  Yet, as a member of the genus corvus, the raven was intelligent, as birds go. Along with most of his flock, he had learned that large groups of the green and olive varieties of ground ape left food in their wake, especially when they wore shiny clothes and carried sharp tools.

  The band of green apes below—Orcs and Goblins, though the raven didn’t know those words—had lived up to expectations. Now that the battle was over, the victors were stacking their own casualties outside the walls, onto makeshift pyres built from old furniture, and setting the possessions of the departed around the grim piles of corpses.

  The raven also had little concept of ceremonial cremation. From its perspective, the strange apes were wasting food by throwing it on ridiculously decorative fires. But it didn’t matter. The tantalizing corpses of the pinkish apes still waited in the courtyard for the raven and its flock.

  It took longer than the raven liked, but eventually the green apes finished the business of burning their dead. They departed in an organized stampede, thundering down the mountain path and into the forest below. They left behind enough food for a week, by the raven’s primitive estimations.

  The raven selected his meal as the raiders retreated, but he waited for them to be well out of earshot before he swooped to land next to a large, pink ground ape with a shining breastplate on his chest and a great axe embedded in his skull. It took some investigation to locate the perfect spot, and the raven had to pause and bark at a crow that kept creeping too close, but soon enough the raven moved in for the first bite of flesh. Its timing was unfortunate, because at that moment the dead man, against all odds and most of the laws of nature, sat up.

  The raven flapped back into the air, squawking as its uncooperative meal moaned and hauled himself to his feet. Across the courtyard, more corpses were rising, prompting a flock of startled carrion birds to launch themselves into the air.

  “Braaaains,” groaned the dead man, swaying as he stood. “Braaaaaaiinnns.”

  “Oh, allow me,” said another walking corpse. It stepped over and pulled the battleaxe from the first man’s skull. “Better?”

  “Cor, yeah! Thank you,” gasped the first soldier. “Hard to do much with an axe buried in your brains.”

  “I’d imagine so,” said the helpful zombie. “But it’s all better now, and we’d best be going.”

  “Yes,” said the first zombie, scratching his chin. He held his other hand to the side of his ear as if to hear some inscrutable sound better, or perhaps just to hold his head together. “Yes, we need to go.”

  “Funny thing, you speaking of brains,” said the second as they shambled toward the gate.

  “How’s that?” asked the first.

  “Well, I was just thinking of brains.” The second zombie clutched his stomach, either in hunger or to hold his innards in. “Hard to think about much else, actually.”

  “They do hold a certain appeal, now that you mention it,” conceded the first.

  With that, the two zombies joined the herd of the undead shambling out the gates of the Glens, heeding an inaudible call, and leaving a very confused—and hungry—raven behind them.

  Chapter 1

  Gorm peered into the remnants of the funeral pyre. The wind blew snow into the pile of charred timber, dusting the remains inside with frost. The same wind blew the ashes from the pit onto the jagged slopes of the Highwalls, forming gray trails in twisting patterns over the stones and snow. This wandering soot mingled with remains from the other pyres scattered around the fort.

  “It was the Red Horde,” said Burt, shivering in the cold. Like most Demi-gnolls, Burt had a coat of canine fur, but as a Kobold, his grew in odd patches that didn’t offer much warmth for his small, spindly frame. He wrapped himself in the fragment of a scavenged blanket and glared up at Gorm with his bulbous eyes.

  “How can ye be sure?” asked Gorm. He peered at the fragments of charred bone left after the fire, but they held no clue he could see.

  Burt stuck a claw out of his blanket and pointed at a string of beads among the weapons, trinkets, and carvings that decorated the area around the pyre. “See the complex pattern of color on that necklace there?” he asked.

  Gorm looked. “All right—”

  “Note the interaction of the different hues,” said Burt.

  Gorm sighed. “It’s all red.”

  “Oh! I guess it must have been the thrice-cursed Red Horde!” snapped Burt.

  “But what tribe are they?” Gorm said.

  “They don’t have a tribe. They joined the Red Horde.”

  A Shadowkin or monster foreswore any former identity upon enlisting in the endless ranks of the Red Horde. Yet, for the droves of former noncombatant paper carriers, or NPCs, who had lost their papers—voluntarily or otherwise—after the fall of Bloodroot, an identity was a small price to pay for survival. The movement had started out peaceful, when it was too small to be otherwise, but one by one the Shadowkin tribes were being absorbed into the crimson tide, and there was strength in numbers. Now the Red Horde was running regular raids across the Freedlands, pillaging small villages and robbing merchants on the road.

  Gorm sighed and kicked at the ashes. He’d heard whispers that the Guz’Varda had fallen under the Red Horde’s sway as well, but other sources said that Zurthraka’s tribe had resisted joining them. But rumors went a dozen for a silver shilling these days, and he couldn’t afford to rely on anything but evidence and hard facts.

  “Ye know what I meant,” he said. “Who were they before they joined the Horde?”

  Burt glowered at the carved totems and teeth that littered the ground. “Hmm… There’s Gnolls, a Kobold family or two… and a Goblin clan, though I could never keep all of those straight. Oh, see all the jawbone totems with the swirls carved in ‘em? The Orcs here were the Zabba’Nuktar. The Great Beard Tribe.”

  “So, not the Guz’Varda,” sighed Gorm. He wasn’t sure if he felt disappointed that he still hadn’t found the Orcs of Zurthraka’s tribe, or relieved that they weren’t yet a part of the Red Horde.

  “Hey, if you’re gonna stand around stating the obvious, at least let me get back inside,” growled the Kobold. “I’m fr
eezing my whiskers off out here, and I only say it that way because you get so sensitive when I talk about my—”

  “Fine. Get back in the bag.” Gorm sighed as he set his rucksack down. “No smokin’ in there. I don’t have a spare pack if’n ye start a fire in this one.”

  “Hey, they call it the Freedlands for a reason,” said Burt, scurrying into Gorm’s pack. “I’ll be careful.”

  “It stinks up all me clothes!”

  “Yeah? So do you.” Burt pulled the drawstring shut. A light flared within the rucksack, and thin wisps of pipe smoke trickled out through its seam.

  Gorm cursed stubborn Shadowkin and cheap pipeweed as he hefted the rucksack onto his shoulder. He grabbed the crimson beads and headed back toward the fortress at the Glens.

  The Freedlands kept a detachment of bannermen in the lonely outpost to watch for invaders from the southeast as a longstanding tradition. The isolated fort had earned a reputation as a tedious and uneventful tour of duty. Looking at the charred and twisted gates, Gorm imagined the last crew of defenders would have preferred it that way.

  An old spear pinned an ancient skeleton to the wall by the gates. It was missing the arms and head, and the bleached bones were connected by just enough ancient clothing and toughened sinew to keep it together as it rattled in the breeze. At some point in history, a disgruntled soldier had nailed a small, wooden sign to the dead man’s sternum. It read “ABANDON ALL HOPE, YE WHO ARE STATIONED HERE.”

  Gorm passed Gaist on his way into the fortress. The weaponsmaster’s clothes and hood were black leather, and his skin was the dark complexion of the southern Empire. Gorm might have mistaken him for a shadow were it not for the crimson scarf he wore over his face.

  “Ho, Gaist,” said Gorm. “Are the others still searchin’?”

  Gaist’s eyes flicked to the courtyard before returning to watching the mountain pass. It wasn’t much of an answer, but by the silent weaponsmaster’s standards, it was downright chatty.

  “Thanks,” said Gorm, and he headed inside.

  The other heroes had built a makeshift cookfire in the middle of the ruined courtyard. They sat on the stones and fallen beams that littered the ground, waiting for lunch. Gorm trundled up to the circle, where Kaitha was stirring something gray and bubbling in a dented pot.

  “That smells… edible,” the Dwarf said.

  “You’re too kind.” Kaitha made a face as she struggled to pull her spoon out of the sucking muck. “Really.”

  Life as a ranger had prepared Kaitha for extended trips into the wilderness, and her birthright as Elven royalty gave her a gift for looking elegant anywhere. She wore her auburn hair in a neat ponytail, her face was radiant—if a bit grimier than usual—and her armor, all green leather and jade and drake-hide, looked as new as the day it was looted from a dungeon.

  “What is that anyway?” A trademark smirk curled Heraldin Strummon’s thin mustache. His wide-brimmed hat was frayed around the edges and his costume had faded from bright yellow and crimson to taupe and rusty brown, but the bard beneath the outfit had unfortunately remained otherwise unchanged by over a year in the wilds.

  “Just some scavenge from the larder,” said Kaitha.

  “I was certain that the Shadowkin looted the larder,” said Laruna Trullon, closing the book she had been reading. The ruby and gold trim of the solamancer’s brilliant orange robes shimmered as she pushed herself to her feet; a mage’s garments served as enchanted signs of rank, and magical glamours kept them neat and new. The woman wearing the robes, however, enjoyed no such enchantments, and a year running from the law had taken its toll. Her raven hair fell unkempt around a handsome face that had a hard edge to it.

  “They looted it clean,” Jynn Ur’Mayan confirmed. Life on the road had been hardest on the noctomancer, who had a physique best suited to long hours of reading in dimly lit spaces. His neat goatee had been overtaken by a creeping, haggard beard. His head, once clean-shaven, now sported a crop of stubble that exposed a large bald spot. “There’s not a single crate or barrel left down there.”

  “Right,” said Kaitha. “There was nowhere in the larder for the rats to hide.”

  Gorm stared at the bubbling pot, then shrugged. “I’ve eaten worse.”

  Kaitha’s face was grim as she ladled out the first portion of the sludge. “There’s worse in here.”

  It has been said that necessity is the mother of invention. In the same vein, desperation is the father of compromise, panic is the sister of slapdash improvisation, and despair is the second cousin of quiet apathy. By that reckoning, dinner was a dismal family reunion.

  The ex-heroes ate in sullen silence, wrestling with dour thoughts and noxious plates. The more Gorm consumed, the more he could see his reflection in the tin bowl he ate from. His long, red beard was frayed, his skin ruddy and pocked, and there were dark circles under his eyes after the long hike through the mountains, but he was no stranger to looking unkempt. Gorm had spent years on the open road, and years more in the open road’s ditches, before he’d met any of his current companions.

  Still, something about Gorm had changed. Some spark or light had faded enough that he looked more like his shadow than himself. It was that thought, and a dangerous rumbling in his stomach, that prompted him to set his foul meal aside and attempt to strike up a conversation. “Anyone find anything good?”

  “I think we just ate the best of it,” said Jynn.

  “How did you and Burt fare?” asked Kaitha.

  Gorm sighed. “We found signs that it wasn’t the Guz’Varda.”

  The other adventurers shook their heads. Heraldin groaned. “So we came all the way up here for nothing?”

  “Well, we know another place that the Guz’Varda ain’t,” Gorm ventured.

  “We know a lot of those,” said Laruna.

  “Do we know anywhere else they might be?” asked Heraldin.

  “Wouldn’t have come to the Glens if we did,” Gorm said. “Burt will have to gather more information.”

  “Easier said than done.” Burt reclined in the warmth of the cookfire, picking his teeth with a twig. “Word spreads, and I’m getting a reputation.”

  “For asking too many questions?” asked Heraldin.

  “Uh… more for associating with all of you,” said Burt. “People are reluctant to help any Lightling, but that goes double for this crew.”

  “It’s really that bad?” said Laruna.

  “Of course,” said the Kobold. “They hold you personally responsible for the business at Bloodroot. And since they pinned Niln’s death on the Orcs, the guild’s been way more aggressive about revoking NPC papers. Why do you think the information costs more gold every time I ask around?”

  “I’d always assumed you were taking a large cut of it, to be honest,” said Jynn.

  “Ain’t saying I’m not,” said Burt with a shrug. “But with your reputation preceding us, any Gnoll or Goblin who’s heard of you takes extra, uh, convincing to talk about the Guz’Varda. The Red Horde have a term for you guys.”

  “Us specifically?” said Jynn.

  “Oh yeah. They call you barg’hegga spi’nix’hest,” said Burt. “Roughly translated, it means ‘a dog that befriends you so it can try to kill you.’”

  “Ah,” said Kaitha.

  “It’s like a traitor without the dignity,” said Burt.

  “We get the picture, thanks,” said Gorm.

  “Well, I hope you didn’t spend all this time thinkin’ the Shadowkin still liked you,” said the Kobold. “I’m not saying they’re right, you know, but some of you already had reputations for killin’ Shadowkin before you met the Guz’Varda, eh, Pyrebeard? Those Orcs knew they were takin’ a big chance trusting you, and just when it looked like it paid off, they got wiped off the map. That sort of thing drives up the price of information. I don’t think you can afford it any more.”

  “If we could afford much of anything, we wouldn’t be eating garbage,” said Laruna, prodding at her plate with a spoon. It
burbled in response.

  Gorm grunted and looked back to his stew.

  “Perhaps it’s time for a change in strategy,” said Heraldin. “As in, we should have one.”

  “Not this again.” Gorm set his spoon onto his plate. “I’m gettin’ sick of havin’ this conversation.”

  “My sentiments exactly, my friend,” said the bard. “Perhaps this time you’ll listen. We all want to help the Guz’Varda, but we can’t do much running around the wilderness and scavenging the Orcs’ leavings. Maybe if we were a little more established, we could talk to a local lord or lady about opening diplomatic relations with the Orcs. Maybe we could find them a place in the Empire.”

  “And given that King Handor wants us dead, the Heroes’ Guild branded us traitors, and someone keeps sendin’ assassins to kill us, how are ye proposin’ we establish ourselves?” Gorm asked.

  “There’s plenty of mercenary bands in the pirate towns of the High Coast,” suggested Laruna. “They’d leap at the chance to take on a band of ex-Guilders with our resume.”

  “We could start over there,” said Kaitha.

  Gorm leveled a suspicious glare at the Elf. “Sounds like you’ve been talking about this idea a bit, then.”

  The Elf wore a guilty expression. “We’ve been discussing our options.”

  “And what are the other ones?” asked the Dwarf.

  “Starving to death in the wilderness, it seems,” said Jynn, setting aside most of his food.

  Gorm shook his head. “I ain’t one for quittin’. Besides, it don’t feel right abandonin’ the Orcs to go seek our fortune in pirate towns.”

  “More like our survival,” said Heraldin.

  “Just about everything feels wrong these days,” said Kaitha. “Maybe we have to settle for a compromise here.”

  “Ye don’t compromise on some things,” growled Gorm.

  Heraldin held out his plate. “Perhaps you’d like another helping of Rat Surprise while you lecture us on standards?”