Free The Bone Orcs by Jonathan Moeller

The Bone Orcs

    In the Year of Our Lord 1474,
Ridmark Arban needed answers, so he went to one of the most
dangerous places in Andomhaim.
    He thought it worth the risk,
because the Frostborn would return.
    Perhaps not today, and likely
not tomorrow, but soon, within his lifetime. The Warden had warned
him about the omen of blue fire, a day when blue fire would fill
the sky from horizon to horizon. On that day, the ancient wizard
had said, the way would be open for the Frostborn to return.
Ridmark had tried to warn the nobles and the Swordbearers and the
Magistri, but to no avail. No one believed him, so he needed
proof.
    The Qazaluuskan Forest might
well hide that proof.
    It was a dangerous place. The
pagan orcs of the Qazaluuskan Forest were aloof and remote, but
nonetheless unremittingly hostile to the men of Andomhaim.
Outsiders who ventured into the Forest tended to never return.
Whenever the Forest’s tribes launched raids on the nearby lands,
seeking captives and loot, the Duxi of the Northerland and
Caertigris launched punitive expeditions, sacking a few villages
and burning a few forts, but every attempt to conquer the vast
lands of the Forest had ended in catastrophe.
    Going there was madness.
    Yet the Qazaluuskan shamans
knew secrets, whispers wrung from the dead by their necromantic
spells. They knew secrets lost everywhere else in the world, and
sometimes bold Magistri went in search of those secrets. They, too,
usually did not return.
    But Ridmark thought it was
worth the risk. If he could find proof of how the Frostborn would
return, perhaps the realm could prepare itself. If he was killed in
the process…well, that would be no great loss for anyone. He had
once been a Swordbearer, a knight of the realm, and a husband, and
now he was none of those things.
    As if to remind him of his
failures, the scar upon his left cheek and jaw, the brand of a
broken sword, still felt tight, even after a year.
    Not that he needed it to
remind him of his failures. He saw them every time he closed his
eyes.
    So Ridmark made his way
through the wild hills of the Northerland, making for the western
borders of the Qazaluuskan Forest. He moved with silent haste, his
staff in his right hand and his dagger at his belt. A quiver of
arrows hung from his hip, his short hunting bow slung over his
shoulder. He had been a miserable shot with a bow, but a year of
living alone in the wilderness had improved his skills, and he was
now a decent enough shot that he didn’t have to worry about
starvation.
    Hunger was a marvelous
teacher.
    The rocky hills of the
Northerland grew fewer, the pine trees thinner. The ground sloped
downward, moving towards the flatter lands of the Qazaluuskan
Forest, and Ridmark followed the course of a stream as it flowed
south. Not many people lived in the hills of the northeastern
Northerland. This part of the Northerland was too dangerous. The
hills were riddled with entrances to the Deeps, and the dvargir and
the kobolds and the deep orcs often came forth in search of slaves.
More dangerous creatures emerged from the Wilderland to the north,
and over everything hung the threat of the secretive Qazaluuskan
orcs, who issued forth from the Forest on a whim of their strange
rituals and vanished again just as quickly.
    The hills were dangerous, but
for now they were quiet. The air was heavy with the smell of pine
needles and the wet mud of the stream, the wind rustling through
the branches. The wind picked up a little, tugging at Ridmark’s
gray cloak, and…
    He stopped.
    Smoke. He smelled a great
deal of smoke.
    He was almost to his
destination, a village called Toricus at the very edge of the
Forest. Most of its folk made their living digging silver from the
hills, while the rest dared to lumber in the Forest itself. Ridmark
was only a few miles away, enough to smell the smoke of the
village’s fires.
    Yet the smell should not have
been that strong. Had a fire broken out? Ridmark hesitated for a
moment, and then