With Glad Nizam before him Orc ran toward the uplifted roots of the fallen tree. Across the flood he saw the dwarf from the span and the pain on her face and the girl in her arms and he saw the cluster of orcs clawing down mounted humans who had set their swords on fire and the wall of shields advancing a hundred wide and a dozen deep and the shuddering engines of war with their plumes of black smoke piling skyward and beyond all of it he saw the train of an army twice as large as any that had marched through the [brigadier]'s stories.
He had brought his friends to a fight they'd never win.
The fallen tree's roots still clenched lifegiving soil in their tangle and their sundered ends still reached for good sweet earth and the part of him still raw from the [mother]'s touch reeled at the sight of their clenching and reaching. From their broken ends they seemed to sweep inward in thick and ancient fibers that twisted toward the ancient creature's dark center, as if its gravity swallowed the very threads of possibility and circumstance into its faceless gullet. Brownskins taking cover beneath and within its tendrilic ball stood less than one fifth its thickness. It looked like some monster of the sea grasping them toward a hidden beak.
He arrived at the root ball. It overhung above and he touched his fingertips to a rock clutched in its grasp and smelled the wet decay that comes the morning after rain. He closed his eyes and saw the overnight mushrooms in the [brigadier]'s garden and opened them and saw the greenskin perched on the [captain]'s shoulders.
Orc nodded at him. "You brought them up."
"Not me," said the [captain] who turned his eyes up toward the greenskin.
"Yew was right Orc. Ain't no difference when it matters."
The [captain] said, "He's who riled us. Someday you'll be wishing you were there to hear it. Got your mush off them cliffs and loaded everyone back onto them human ships and straight sailed em up. Cubs and sows and everyone. Thems who can't fight are up in them trees. Everyone else's been at it all night cept for you and Glad Nizam's crew. She got here just before you did."
"Ain't no orcsies starving now, but plenty still dyin," said the greenskin.
"Sorry I wasn't here to help," said Orc.
"Yew here now."
The [captain] said, "And now we stand a chance. All together we do."
He wouldn't correct the brownskin. The [brigadier] had taught him how this sort of thing ended.
Ogaz and Saand worked their way to his side.
"Ogaz wishing for missing tusk," said Ogaz.
"Take this." Orc gave him [Booky's blade]. He looked back to the forest's boundary. Between the rising steam and needle leaved ferns he saw the hopeful and hot eyes of his folk who were too young or too old or too sick to fight.
Glad Nizam was walking among those gathered at the tree with words of encouragement and light touches of fellowship and when she came to Orc she laid her riding crop on his wrist. "Musheater. You seen their big engines coming up?"
"Yes."
"You take yours and get to burning em before they burn us. Don't you be waiting for me."
"They want us to cross. It's a ruse."
She grinned at him. "It be one from the start. They opened the damned wire for us and you never wondered why."
"I wasn't there."
"Course you weren't. But you be here now. I never doubted you."
She turned to the others.
"Everyone ready?"
Saand laid her hand on Orc's shoulder. "You cannot stay," she said. "You must retrieve the orcstone. It is all that matters."
"I won't let you face this alone," said Orc.
"You must."
Glad Nizam said, "Quiet down the line. We be going over."
"Where's the weird?" said the [captain].
Glad Nizam smiled. "Dead. Listen. They'll be firing at me as we cross. Stick in behind and I'll get us there. Don't wait for me after. Get on and do what needs be done. It isn't about us now. It's about those up in the forest. It's about those camps that made em. It's about the land that be theirs, a home for orcs, a home for all orcs. Don't die here brothers. Make them die."
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Glad Nizam nodded and her brownskin warriors fanned out from behind the fallen tree firing their plundered longarms across the flood and Glad Nizam scrambled onto its trunk and a brownskin pitched her a [longarm] and she caught it one handed and started running across the flood.
Orc leashed the [Skyshard] to his wrist and started to climb.
"With you," said Saand and he saw her between his feet and Ogaz coming up after with [Booky's blade] between his teeth. When Orc made the top he sprinted up the trunk of the giant as if the whole world had tilted sideways and he set to run up its crooked sky. He swung onehanded around the lowest limbs and the flood rushed across his path in an unfurling brown flow that roared and shot away for fifty yards to the place where its channel plunged into the wadi. He saw the first [arrow] strike Glad Nizam as she stepped into the floodwater coming over the trunk. Her leg threw a wake downflow. The [arrow] stuck out of the top of her shoulder like a wayward twig, as if she too was becoming a tree. She roared, "See how they hate us," and shifted the [longarm] to her other hand. The second [arrow] tore through the outside of her thigh and disappeared into the water. She staggered forward.
Orc threaded through the limbs and arrows fell like rain. The branches fouled many but some drove into the trunk or splashed into the flood or sank into flesh. He heard Saand grunt behind him and he heard Ogaz call out.
Orc didn't turn. "Keep moving," he shouted. Move to live, stop to die. Another of the [brigadier]'s lessons. He ducked around a limb with water rushing up to his calves and another flight of arrows dropped all around him and one thocked into the limb between his finger and thumb.
The [captain] yelled, "Get on musheater!"
He turned to look and the [captain] and the greenskin sped past and he saw Saand and Ogaz had dropped back. She knelt where the flood came fastest over the trunk and its spray flung off her knees and over her chest while Ogaz crouched beside her with his elbow anchored around a branch and his other hand on her arm. The feathered shaft of an arrow came out of her hip and a bright red spot bloomed into her waistcloth. She looked at Ogaz and motioned for him to go and so he went. Orc turned to move up. The [captain] and greenskin were just ahead and Glad Nizam still advancing a few branches beyond them. The limbs grew thicker and the going slower but no more arrows fell on his head and he was past the heaviest part of the flood. Upstream it eddied with brown foam and spinning debris. The bodies of some humans and orcs were sucked under the trunk and ejected twenty yards downstream. Others were caught in the mess of the tree's crown. One of the humans was on fire and the branches cradling his corpse smoked and smoldered.
Orc looked back again but saw only more brownskins coming with axes and knives and the heads of harpoons clenched between teeth. No Saand. No Ogaz. He'd never make it to the ballistae without them. As if he'd make it with them.
Suddenly there was the crack of gunfire and Glad Nizam's roar and Orc sprinted toward the noise past the [captain] who now leaned against a standing branch like he waited for something with his dwarven helm sliding off his head. Orc set right the helm as he passed but the [captain] didn't move except for his head which swayed from the touch as if on a hinge. Glad Nizam roared again and he saw a steelclad [knight] skip off downstream and he watched the opaque water flow over him and his gloved hand thrust out and then nothing but foam rushing away and over the falls. Around another branch and he saw Glad Nizam with a [blade] in her gut. He saw her slash her crop into the eyeslit of a helmed and armored [knight]. The [knight] reached for the deposited blade. The great sow backpedaled. Arrows stuck out of her and the serrated head of one tented the skin between her spine and shoulderblade. She smashed the butt of her [longarm] into the [knight]'s visor then flipped the weapon in a single motion to site it directly into the eyeslit and fired it and the [knight] collapsed under a sheet of blood as a man in black armor rose from beneath the trunk's far side with a [long spear] before him and a [shortarm] in his gauntlet and the blinding orange flash from its muzzle and the clap of it and Glad Nizam's head snapped back and Orc saw her snarl and her blind eye was blank and her good eye was blank and he saw the hole in her head between them.
A brownskin leapt from the trunk into the waiting blades of humans gathered within the boughs of the fallen tree and Orc saw the dwarf there push the spike of her [alpenstock] into the brownskin's gut as he passed overhead but she never looked at her prey she looked only at Orc and he knew her instantly and his frenzy transformed to dread and grief and regret as if he were back in Booky's pit.
Out of nowhere Ogaz lowered his shoulder and smashed him off of the trunk and into the flood. The tusker flew over and into the water. Orc caught him by his whole tusk and reached his other hand toward where a branch might be and found the tiny hand of the greenskin.
The flood rushed over him and crashed in his ears and forced down his throat and he felt Ogaz slapping against his hold and he saw the greenskin wincing and the little claws rending the branch that held them and he saw the dwarf's face.
"Yew pullin me in half," cried the greenskin.
The dwarf crept out on the limb with the black blood of orcs down her neck and the red blood of humans across her chest and waist and thighs. The greenskin felt her there and turned his head and yelped. His grip gave out but Orc had him by the wrist.
She yelled over the rush of the water, "Where's me da's shard?"
Orc opened his mouth and water surged into it and down his throat. He felt Ogaz chopping at his hand. The greenskin's claw slipped. The dwarf hooked her pick around the greenskin's chin. She leaned over Orc. Her eyes were streaked red like the banner of blood she wore.
"Ye remember me?"
He sputtered and gagged and heaved himself forward and he heard the greenskin howl.
Her face so close. The misery there. The rage. She said, "There's no good in dyin te save the dyin."
He let go.
All at once the flood had him and what had before felt violently defiant was now eager. Foam swept alongside him through rapids and courses with no speed at all yet the banks streaked past and he flipped over to swim against the current and the fallen tree shrank away with the greenskin and the dwarf and he and slapped a score of strong strokes into the current but they made no difference, it took him where it wanted and he flipped over again to face his fate and Ogaz's head moved left across the flow then disappeared and a stone outcrop rose on his right with a crash of white water sheeting over it but when he reached it had already passed and he was falling in empty space. He didn't feel the water's surface break but he was below it and it punched him deeper and thrust him over and forced his limbs apart and him deeper and it felt like he was rising but his head struck the bottom and was dragged along it then off it then his shoulder struck and his skin tore but what did it matter. He opened his eyes in the murk and saw the face of death swimming out of it.
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> -1 [Rage]: Bitterness can only take you so far... (9/10).