“Sorry,” I said to Max. The word seemed to have become an integral part of my vocabulary, destined to be used at least once every hour. I was in danger, I thought, of wearing it out.
“Sorry don’t cut it!” he replied, buzzing in front of my face. “First it’s me hat and now me sword! What else do yeh want to lose or break for me? Me vest? Me trousers?”
I felt an almost irresistible urge to simply swat him out of the way. Nevertheless, by exercising a superhuman amount of restraint, I resisted.
Given the nature of that conversation, you might be thinking that we’d left the orcs far behind and were well in the clear. Sadly, that wasn’t the case. We were still galloping for our lives through open meadowland with what remained of the orc army on our tails. Sure, the horses were swift. We’d gained some distance. But orcs are persistent, and it looked like they were hunting for me in particular. What’s more, they had our scent. They weren’t likely to give up easily, and that meant we weren’t all that much better off now than we’d been in the cage. We were simply postponing the inevitable.
Perhaps Max’s way of dealing with situations like this was to pretend they didn’t exist and distract himself with the inconsequential. Perhaps he was still drunk enough to have his priorities confused. Or perhaps he really did think his sword was that important. Whatever his motivation happened to be, he was becoming quite annoying.
“Look, I’ll do what I can to replace your sword,” I said through teeth still gritted. “Just like I’ll replace Gabby’s crystal ball and tavern. But right now I’ve got other things to think about, so if you don’t mind, can we put this aside for the time being?”
He made a few grumbling noises but obediently settled himself back down on my shoulder.
I nudged the Captain’s horse nearer to Gabby. “We’re in trouble,” I said loudly enough to get past the noise of the horses. “Got any ideas?”
“You’re in trouble,” she yelled back. “They’re after you, not me. So here’s an idea: go away!”
Oh. She might have been right. Ordinarily, I would have stayed with her anyway, in the hope that it would have helped with my own escape. It would have given me the chance to offer her to the orcs in my place. But I’d already brought enough bad luck her way, and for some reason I didn’t quite understand (it was totally out of character) I didn’t want to bring any more. So, feeling a trifle rejected and wondering how I was going to get out of this mess, I did as she suggested and veered away from her.
“Huh?” said Max. “Waddaya doin’?” I didn’t answer. “‘Ang on, if the orcs are after you, lemme stay with her!”
“Go to her if you wish,” I said. “I’m not stopping you.”
“How can I?” he demanded. “I can’t fly fast as a ‘orse can gallop! If I leave now, I’ll be stuck ‘ere with the orcs!”
“So? They’re not after you. Or do orcs eat pixies too?” I admit, that last might have been inspired by my feeling of rejection. But it shut him up, and that was a good thing.
My horse was starting to tire. It was breathing hard and sweat was building on its flanks. It couldn’t last much longer, so I scanned the distance for anything useful. Trees to hide amongst would have been a good start. Or a river not so deep that I couldn’t ford it, but deep enough to drown any armor-laden orcs that chose to follow. Perhaps an enormous, mechanical, repeating crossbow with a full clutch of bolts, aimed at the orcs and ready to fire. Anything, really, to supplement my arsenal of a tired horse, the knife I’d liberated from Thork Yurger, a drunk pixie, and more than an ordinary share of charm and wit. Oh, and my tail. Mustn’t forget my tail.
But there was nothing around other than flat, gentle meadows that in other circumstances would have been a complete joy to walk upon, and the Demesne floating nearby.
I risked a glance back to my muscular pursuers and noticed something that wasn’t altogether good news.
Grimly, I nudged my horse back towards Gabby.
“What are you doing?” she demanded when I reached her side.
“The orcs weren’t all chasing me!” I yelled back. “Some were chasing you!”
I saw her eyes grow wide. She nodded in understanding. “What should we do?” she yelled.
“That’s what I asked you!” I replied. Then I had a thought. “That exploding powder. Do you have more?”
She shook her head. “I used it all on the goblins!”
“Verna’s tooth,” I muttered to myself. Maybe I used the name of the goddess more often than I realized. Then, “Keep going!” I said. “Head for the Demesne!” Maybe the orcs would be less than willing to chase us underneath it. Yeah, even I knew it was a pretty feeble idea.
We kept going. Both horses were tiring quickly, and while the orcs came no closer, they showed no signs at all of giving up.
“Don’t these things ever get tired?”
I must have asked it loudly enough for Gabby to hear. She shook her head. “No, they don’t.”
We kept galloping.
We’d nearly reached the Demesne when it happened. My horse must have clipped a rock or struck a patch of uneven ground or something. Whatever it did, the result was that the poor creature gave a high-pitched, horsey scream and crashed to the ground. Even though Max was the only one with wings, both of us flew through the air. Max just continued to fly, but the ground came towards me with alarming speed. All I could do was tuck my head down, take the impact on my already bruised shoulders, and roll with it until I came to a stop.
I came up spitting grass and dirt from my mouth.
“Are you ok?” asked Gabby. She’d pulled up beside me.
“Sure,” I said, still trying to get rid of the dirt, but in reality my left shoulder really, really hurt. I flexed it and it moved ok, so I didn’t think anything was broken. Even so, I shot the horse an angry glare. But then saw it was limping about in obvious pain. Poor thing.
I hauled myself to my feet and looked at the orcs. They were closer than I wanted them to be. Much closer. I couldn’t smell them yet, but I could certainly hear them yelling their battle-cries.
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“You shouldn’t be here,” I said to Gabby as I drew Thork Yurger’s knife. It seemed a pathetic weapon against the orcs. But it was all I had. “I’ll hold them off as long as I can,” I said, marveling at how heroic the words sounded. “Hopefully it’ll give you enough time to escape.”
She dismounted instead. “My horse is exhausted,” she said. She still carried the crossbow, but as far as I knew didn’t have any bolts or anything thing else with which to protect herself.
I couldn’t help but be amazed.
Max, though, was less than impressed. He buzzed up in front of us looking angry. “What in the name of the Shadow’s left nut do yeh think yeh’re doin’?” he yelled. “Don’t yehs realize there’s orcs after yeh? If they kill yeh, how’m I gonna get back to Ulm?”
“No choice,” I said. “The horses have had it. The orcs are faster than us. We can either fight now or have them run us down in a couple of minutes.” I shrugged. “I can’t be bothered running.”
“Can’t be bothered? Can’t be bothered? I don’t believe this,” he said. “After all the crap yeh’ve put me through over the last coupla days, yeh choose to give up now?”
I didn’t really have an answer for Max, so I said nothing.
The ground was starting to shake and the orcs were now close enough to smell. I could see the anticipation on their faces and wished for something other than just a knife. Perhaps I could throw Max at one of them?
“If you’ve got any better ideas, Maximus, let’s hear them,” said Gabby in her beautiful voice.
Max spluttered for a moment. Then, “Maybe I do.”
That got my attention. “What?” Gabby and I asked together.
“If yeh’re sure there’s no other way?”
“Maximus, we really don’t have a lot of time here,” said Gabby.
Max just grunted. “‘K,” he said.
He brought out a tiny pouch he’d had attached to his belt. Without a word, he quickly flew over both me and Gabby, sprinkling some of the pouch’s contents as he went.
“Pixie dust?” asked Gabby.
“Yeah,” Max replied, somehow managing to get a whole sentence worth of surliness into the single word.
“Sprinkle some over my horse too, would you?” asked Gabby.
“Why?”
“It’s important to me.”
“Stuff don’t grow on trees, yeh know,” said Max.
“Please?”
Grumbling, Max did as she asked.
Nothing happened. “Now what?” I asked.
“Give it time.”
“Um, we don’t have much of that.”
I wasn’t kidding. The orcs were only a dozen strides away. They were already freeing their various weapons for use. In moments they would be on us.
Sighing to myself and quietly lamenting the loss of such a promising life (my own), I set myself to meet their charge … and suddenly found that I was no longer attached to the ground. By the time the wave of orcs had reached where we were, we were no longer there. Instead, we floated twice my own height off the ground.
I couldn’t help myself; I laughed out loud. Then I discovered I really didn’t have a lot of control over how I floated. In moments my feet were where my head should have been and I had to look up to look down at the orcs below. Gabby appeared to be having similar stability issues and her horse was frantically galloping in the air, sideways, spinning in a slow circle and neighing in sheer terror.
One more interesting thing about orcs that you rarely notice in normal circumstances is that their neck muscles bulge just as much as the rest of them. Such extreme musculature must be good for something other than impressing other orcs, but it also leads to serious limitations when it comes to looking up.
As well as expressing their anger in a variety of snarls and curses, the orcs below us were trying all sorts of things just to see us. Mostly, they tipped their heads to the side or leaned back as far as they could without falling over. I even saw a couple who were lying on the ground.
“Are we safe?” asked Gabby as she drifted through a twisting cartwheel.
As if in answer, one of the orcs threw a knife at her. But perhaps because of the weird angle the orc had arranged itself in, the throw was wildly off target. Some of the others seemed to think throwing their weapons was a good idea and a couple more knives and a sword went flying with equal results.
Then one of the orcs yelled out, “We wait!” and there was a chorus of approving grunts all around. They settled themselves in.
“I’m not entirely sure that we are,” I replied to Gabby. “Max,” I said, craning my neck to find him, “how long will we stay afloat? And will we crash to the ground, or will we drift gently downwards?”
The pixie was buzzing about not far from me. From my perspective it looked like he was flying upside down, but he wasn’t. It was me who still hadn’t turned right side up.
“Dunno fer sure. Half hour maybe. But I ain’t never heard of no one crashin’.”
Great. We’d soon drift gently down into that mass of orc-flesh. I looked around for inspiration, but the only thing near was the Demesne. “Can we go any higher?”
“Not really. Though I think if yeh’da jumped as yeh took off, yeh would’ve.”
“Well, how do we maneuver?”
“Look, I dunno what yeh think yeh know, but it jus’ don’t work like that! All pixie dust does is make yeh weightless for a bit, an’ that’s it! Yeh can’t swim in the air as if it was water, yeh can’t run in it, yeh can’t do nothin’!”
“So,” said Gabby, “all we’ve gained is another half hour.”
“Guess so,” said Max, but I wasn’t so sure.
“Max, can I see that pouch?”
“Why?” he said. “Last time I gave yeh somethin’, yeh broke it.”
“Just give me the pouch.”
I was getting tired of viewing everything from upside down, so I floundered uselessly about for a bit and accomplished nothing more than setting myself drifting a little to one side. I gave up.
Surprisingly, Max did as I asked. “Careful,” he said. “Tha’s valuable.”
If I’d been in a position to shrug, I would have. As it was, I simply opened the pouch and sprinkled all its contents on the orcs below.
“Oi! Yeh flippen’ idiot! What in the name of yer own hairy backside do yeh think yeh’re doin’?” Max buzzed backwards and forwards, clearly aghast at what I’d done but powerless to do anything about it. After a moment though, he seemed to accept it. “Fine,” he said. “I shoulda expected it anyway. But why did yeh hafta do that?”
“I’m trying to save our lives,” I said. “Hopefully, this will give us something to jump from.”
“That’s pretty clever,” said Gabby. Or at least that’s what I thought she said. At the time, she was facing the wrong way and her words came to me a bit muffled.
“Now Max, turn us up the right way so we’ll be ready.”
“Why should I—”
“Maximus, just do it!” said Gabby.
“But yehs are both so big—”
“And neither of us weighs anything right now,” I finished for him.
He understood. Moving surprisingly quickly, he flew to my feet and gave them a push, then moved off to Gabby. I started spinning. When I was upright, Max was back to stop me.
It was just in time. I heard surprised grunts from below. “Get ready!” I yelled. Then there were floating orcs heading our way. “Aim for that!” I said, pointing upwards.
The orcs apparently didn’t take kindly to being weightless. They panicked and thrashed wildly about, and their menacing battle cries and threats turned into high-pitched squeals like those of animals caught in a trap. They could still be dangerous, I thought, even if only by chance. Many still held their weapons, and they hadn’t lost any of their strength. We had to be careful.
Out of the corner of my eye I saw an orc drifting close to Gabby’s horse, which was still kicking madly and spinning in a circle. Hooves connected. Orc and horse went flying at high speed in opposite directions. I would have laughed again, except that my time had come. An orc was flailing about right beneath me, approaching fast and looking at me with desperation in his eyes.
I couldn’t let him grab hold of me, I thought, and drew my knife. Fortunately, the orc had dropped whatever weapon he might have had before. He reached in my direction not as a warrior might reach for his enemy, but as a drowning man might reach for a branch. I slashed at him and he squealed in a most un-warrior-like way and pulled his hands back even as he continued to drift my way, turning as he did so.
It all happened rapidly from there. As soon as he was facing away, I grabbed him by the spiked, armored thing he wore at the back of his neck. Using it as leverage, I brought my feet up to his back, spent a moment to make sure of my target, shifted slightly and kicked off as hard as I could.
Perfect! I thought. It worked exactly as planned. The orc went sailing back towards the earth at the same time as I launched towards Gabby, who had obviously been just as successful as me. Max had grabbed Gabby’s hair and was holding on for dear life.
Amazingly, Gabby was grinning as if it was the most fun she’d ever had.
Together, we soared through the air towards the only place that could save us from the orcs: the Demesne, floating mountain-palace of the Shadow.