CHAPTER EIGHTEEN - THE BREAkING of A kNIGHT

Alec’s head rocked back as he took another punchfrom one of the two burly orc warriors standing by him.His head lolled to one side, and he spat out anothertooth.

That’s three. Much more of this and I won’t have to worry about solid food anymore.

He ashed a bloody grin,desperate to maintain his show of deance.

Across the small tent sat a tall orc on a stool, with alarge feral-looking dog at his feet. He did all the questioning,Alec knew too well by now, but he never deigned to get hishands dirty. Alec presumed him to be some sort of chief orshaman, but he didn’t know for sure. What he did know was that these orcs were amazingly persistent. The questions started again. “How many man soldiersare in your castle, pinkskin?” Alec sat quietly, continuing

to show his deance by not answering. “How many

horsemen in your castle, pinkskin?”Rather than answer them, Alec started to sing a littleditty he remembered from his childhood:

“Baa, baa, black sheep, have you any wool?”

SMACK! The other orc’s hand delivered a hard, back-handed slap to his left cheek. Alec simply smiled at theshaman. “You know I’ll never tell you anything, orc. I would

die rst.”

The shaman laughed. “That can be arranged, pink-skin.But trust me; you don’t want it to be.” His mastery of thehuman trader’s tongue was surprisingly good. Alec tried tofocus on that fact, giving his mind something to focus on tohelp control the pain. They’d been beating him off and onfor a couple days now; he couldn’t be sure exactly how long.

Once or twice a day the shaman would heal him up justenough that another round of beatings wouldn’t kill him.

He ashed back to that terrible battle. It was getting

harder to focus on simple things like time, but he couldremember the battle as clearly as he could anything now.

At rst, it had seemed like a simple attack by a

desperate wolf pack. Several of his sentries had beenmauled by wolves. At least two of his men – or maybe three,he wasn’t sure – went down before anyone had known what was happening. One of them managed to sound the alarm,but by that time it was already too late – the beasts werealready among them, attacking any man standing. Most of the sentries had died before they even had time to do more

than draw their swords. He never had been able to gure

out how the beasts had known to attack only the waking

men rst; why they were so damned efcient in doing so…

That wasn’t the worst part of it, he knew. The wolveshad killed many of the guards, but that was just cover.While his men stirred, dealing with what they thought wasa wolf pack, two thousand orc warriors had sneaked aroundhis camp, surrounding it, allowing for no escape.Alec would never forget the sound of that orc horn.His men had been waking up to the sounds of the wolves,grabbing swords, donning helmets and reaching for shields, when the horn had sounded. All at once, the wolves brokeand ran off, leaving most of his sentries dead or dying. Then the orcs rushed the camp. Their surprise had beennearly total and their tactics brutal, to say the least. Beforethe humans could react, the orcs had been among them,slitting throats, bashing in skulls, and quickly guttinganyone who was not wide awake. In moments, over half hismen were butchered. Those who were a little quicker on

their feet and managed to grab weapons fell back into thecenter of the camp, but were quickly surrounded.Still, some of his men fought on. Kinnith managed totake down a score of orc warriors before falling from nearlya dozen arrow wounds, and even then the big man seemedreluctant to die. Old Baldy had fought for several minutes with a broken long spear sticking out of his shoulder, buthe too eventually fell.And he, their brave leader? He allowed himself theprivilege of a small snort. He had managed to take down agood dozen orcs before he was magicked by an orc shaman,held by a spell and unable to move. If burned him to hiscore even now, the way the spell had simply held him inplace. He’d been forced to watch as they butchered his men,unable to do anything to stop it.

He never had gured out how they knew he was thecommander. He’d been sitting by the re with Kinnith,

wearing only his tunic. He’d had no armor on, no shield with a household crest – nothing at all to identify himself asanything other than a common soldier.

And yet somehow they knew.

He allowed himself a shudder as the questionscontinued to rain down at him.“What is the state of the garrison, pinkskin? How muchfood is stored there?” SLAP!He continued with his rhyme.

“Yes, sir, Yes, sir…. Three bags full…”

He grunted as the other orc punched him hard

in the kidney. He knew he couldn’t take much more of this…

The Shaman suddenly waved his two henchmen off. Oneof them started to protest, but a growl from the dog silencedhim. The shaman sat down on his haunches, stroking thedog behind its ears. “Come, come, commander. It is foolish