2k words***
“So prudish, but yer the one who’s gotta thing for girls with tails. And where is this rat girl of yers then, eh? Need to know how she managed to get a human to expand his tastes.”
Roderick didn’t want to damper the mood, this slice of light-heartedness was a welcome reprieve within all that had happened since the shipwreck, but his expression darkened all the same.
“I do not know,” he said. “I told you of how we became stranded after a Skaven fleet accosted us. Well, that was the last I had seen of her. We split up during the battle, but when we fended off the boarders, I could not find her. I searched everywhere, even when our ship was taking water. Perhaps she fell, or was buried beneath all the bodies, I’m not sure which is worse. The maelstrom was terrible, the waves near two storeys tall at times. If she ended up in that without something to help keep her afloat, I fear…”
Mazkha noted his change in demeanour, reaching across the gap between them. Instead of patting him on the back as before, she laid her large hand on his shoulder.
“Don’t be goin’ all gloomy on me, little knight. I ain’t never met a Skaven, but I know some boyz who have. They’re crafty little critters, right? And ya just said she was clever. If anyone could weasel their way out of a bad situation, it’d be a Skaven.”
“Wilfred thought likewise, that’s why he chose to stay behind and search for her,” Roderick continued. Now that he had started, it was all coming out now whether wanted it to or not. “And I’ve not heard from him either in just as long. If he’s in trouble too…”
“I know it ain’t easy, but worryin’ about it won’t da ya no favours. If yer wizard friend thinks he can handle himself solo, then he believes he can do it, and so should you. He wouldn’t have gone out looking for yer girlfriend if he didn’t think he’d do it.”
“He was not aware that Chaos was afoot when he made that choice,” Roderick muttered. “Still, I appreciate your counsel, Mazkha.”
She grinned down at him, and he grinned back.
“Well then, how much further will we ride?” Mazkha asked, returning her hand to her bridle. Roderick looked up at the sun, which had moved well past its zenith.
“Not for long. We should break camp soon. Don’t want to ride too far too quickly, or our scouts will never catch up to us on their return.”
They found a suitable clearing beside the road, Roderick grateful to give his sore rump a rest from the harsh leathers of the saddle. Camping out in the open so was bold, but Von Kessel’s host was less than a day at their back, and there were scouts in all directions. If there was trouble, it would have appeared long before now.
The dozen of his followers set about making a fire, the mix of orcs and men joining into several smaller groups as they dined on salted strips meat. It was so odd to see the two species interacting, as though they were simply commonfolk discussing current affairs. Even a few of the sailors from Von Kessel’s ship were taking a liking to the greenskins, regaling them with their stories of the sea.
Logs were chopped to make firewood and sitting areas, Roderick taking a spot among the men and warming his hands by the flames. He soon turned them to his guns, rolling out a leather hide and placing the two weapons upon it. It was high time he had them cleaned, and he began to disassemble the pieces with practiced speed, stripping them to parts.
The ritual of oiling and replacing helped to make the hours feel like minutes, but as he finished piecing them back together, his thoughts turned to his other weapons. Not the great sword on his back, or the short blade on his hip, but his most potent weapon of all, the one looped to his belt. The stave was not something that could easily be pulled apart, but what sorts of machinations worked inside it, he wondered. Instead of a trigger it used his mind, and in place of bullets the relic used Chaos energies to work its strange magics. How had he used it against bale, however fickle his attempt had been? The way he saw it, a tool of the Great Enemy should not work against its own kind. Maybe Wilfred’s warnings had not been as accurate as it seemed?
“Nice firearms,” a deep, husky voice said, bringing him back to the present. Mazkha took to sitting on the ground nearby, the way she flopped onto her backside very unlady-like, but that was perhaps more a result of her sheer strength than her lack of grace. “I like the colours of that one.”
She pointed to the newer of his two pistols, Roderick picking it up off the pelt. The wood was coated in a very fine, blue paint, not so thick as to conceal the wood engravings beneath. Gold patterns were engraved onto the handguard and pan, and the underbarrel was shieled with a smooth, gilded metal plate of the same shining colour. It was the kind of weapon one would bring to a parade or ceremony.
“It shines too brightly when caught in the sun, but it functions well enough,” Roderick replied. He saw she was interested, so he passed it over to her. The weapon looked like a toy in her large hands, but she was surprisingly dextrous with it, careful not to put her prints too close to the pin or trigger.
“If ya ain’t all that fussed with it, why carry it around?”
“It was a… gift, from a friend of mine,” Roderick said. It was a half-truth. Skyseeker had given it to him during their stay in Tilea’s port city, Portomaggoire. He hadn’t had the time to ask her how she’d acquired the ceremonial pistol until after their quest for the relic was concluded, and it was quite the tall tale, even for her. Nevertheless, now was not the time the pistol’s dubious origins.
“First time I heard one of these shoot was that attack on Cassel,” Mazkha said. “Little beauty, it is, and with a damn good report on it. The echo must have reached all the way up them mountains.”
“Indeed, the Brettonian’s barely use powdered weapons,” Roderick mused. “They prefer their hand drawn bows. From what I’ve seen this is also the case for orcs?”
“A bolt through the heart works just as well as a bullet,” she said. “Except you don’t have to stuff around for twenty minutes on the reload. Not like this puppy.”
She drew something from a leather holster on her hip, and at first he thought it was a pistol. It was a little bigger than his own handgun, but instead of a muzzle, there were four, flexible limbs that formed the cross over a barrel, connecting to a cocking stirrup towards the trigger guard. It looked like some kind of crossbow but shrunken down.
“A miniature bow?” he asked. “How unusual. I would think most orcs believed in the bigger, the better.”
“You should know I ain’t like most orcs, little knight. With a full-sized crossy, ya gotta wind up the string, put yer back into a pull, but with this, I could reload with just my pinky.”
“It doesn’t look like much,” he admitted. “You couldn’t get much stopping power with that, can you?”
Mazka replied by turning and pointing the handheld crossbow towards the forest. There was a snap of string as she compressed the hair trigger, and the air snipped as a bolt the size of a quill snapped a nearby branch in twain. As it hit the ground, the four limbs on her weapon cycled, powered by gears maybe, and when they came to rest she pulled the trigger, and another bolt snapped into the branch beside the first.
She did this twice more, it seemed four bolts could be loaded, one to each fanning limb, and she fired them with barely a second’s pause between. Roderick’s expression must have been drastically different, for the orc turned to laugh at him.
“Not bad, eh? None of the boyz like using em’, too small and petite, they say, but they can’t put that much steel downrange so quick, can they?”
“It can’t compare to the raw power of a bullet, you can’t punch through plate or mail with a bolt that size.”
“Every armour has a break or a gap, it’s jus a matter of finding yer mark.”
He gestured for her to pass it over, Roderick turning it in his hands. It was very light, if a little unwieldy, it size meaning he was better suited to holding it two-handed, as opposed to Mazkha wielding it in one. She showed him how to reload it, pulling the four bowstrings back until they were tight, then slotting the bolts. The rotating barrel could be hand-operated, the bolts fed in the same style as a top-loaded rifle. It was so similar to loading a flintlock, yet so different in other ways. Perhaps some of the orcs had taken inspiration from captured powdered weapons. He had to admit, he wouldn’t want to be on the wrong end of four shots from this thing.
“Ya got one of them maps for me?” Mazkha said, taking back the handheld crossbow. “Wanna see how far off we are from the Contreforts.”
Roderick had one handy in his pocket, and the orc rolled it out between them. “Two full days of riding will see us to the border,” Roderick confirmed, tapping at their location. “We are here, and you see this red line? I’ve conferred with some of the knights who’ve travelled the area, and they agree this is the fastest way through, while staying as far from the forts themselves as possible.”
“Expectin’ trouble?” she asked. “Taking a break behind some big walls don’t sound so bad.”
“From what I’ve gathered, the forts are visible for many leagues, and placed on top of great peaks between the valleys. If our force were to approach one, we’d be seen from great distance. If Bael has his own eyes out there, he’ll know where we are, him and half the province, and I’d rather move in discretion for as long as possible. I’ve also heard that dragons roosting in the mountains like to make it their feeding grounds, we’d do well to stay out of sight.”
“Oversized iguanas,” Mazkha scoffed. “Damn beasts have taken more than one of me boyz in the past. Try to hunt them, and they just fly up to them peaks.”
She gestured behind him, and Roderick turned around. Far to the south, the land pointed up into sheer faces of cliff and rock, so high that their upper halves vanished behind the clouds. This was the first time Roderick had seen the northern faces of the Grey Mountains. His country flanked the eastern sides, where the slopes of stone gave way to golden fields and wild country, where vineyards and farms and wealthy villages scattered across the fertile lands of the Empire’s Southron provinces. The mountains looked so unfamiliar from this angle, even though they’d shadowed the Empire every setting sun since the start of time.
“Have you ever hiked the Grey’s?” he asked her.
“If I was tired of life, I would.