The Dark Lord's Handbook Page 24

  That silenced them all.

  “A hero? Like Uther?” Trondheim’s voice cracked as he mentioned the name.

  The only one who seemed unaffected was Birkenfeldt. “You have me at a disadvantage, gentlemen. Who is this Uther?”

  “Let’s just say,” said Penbury, “if there is one thing worse than a Dark Lord, it’s a hero.”

  “Forgive me,” said Birkenfeldt, “but isn’t having a hero to oppose the Dark Lord a good thing?”

  Penbury felt a warm glow inside, partly due to the slight heart burn he had developed but mostly as a reaction to young Birkenfeldt’s comment. It was good to see that even among a group such as themselves, driven by profit and power, such naivety was still present, even if it was confined to the youngest.

  “I suggest you go and read the histories,” said Penbury as gently as he could manage. “While it is true that Uther defeated Zoon and thus saved the world from an Undead Lord who would have laid jealous ruin across the world, what he replaced it with was barely any better; forty years of righteousness and inquisition the like of which the world had never seen. Many more died in those terrible years, denounced as heretics and blasphemers, as had been killed in the war itself. It was only thanks to the secular revolution of Chancellor Huffenhoff that religion was finally put in its place. So far, however, we have been lucky and this current hero, Edwin, has not yet played the religion card, but you can bet he will.”

  Penbury sat back and steepled his fingers. Waiters nipped in to clear the main course and to refill glasses. A mood of quiet contemplation descended as the group considered what had been said. In Penbury’s mind it was a conundrum. Ideally he didn’t want to have to pick either side in what seemed to be an inevitable conflict. As far as he was concerned, they were both as bad as each other and would seriously upset the stability that he, as Chancellor, managed. While he was aware of those who despised and feared him, and he did on occasion have to employ rather radical practices, it was all for the best. Not necessarily the good, but the best.

  His mind wandered back to his recent cornering of the drug market, and in particular Headfucker, as it was so charmingly known on the street. He could have left it in the hands of organised crime and let them continue to make huge profits, which could only be bad for business if they used that money to acquire power. Penbury was a practical man. He recognised that there would always be drug takers, and if that was the case then it was better he did the supplying. At least he was happy with the market as it was and would not seek to expand it into unsavoury areas.

  There seemed to be strong parallels with the current situation. It wasn’t a question of morals or ethics but more of practical expediency.

  Sven was the first to break the meditation. “Have we tried lawyers yet?” he asked.

  “If by that,” said Penbury, “you mean, have attempts been made to shorten their lives, then yes, with the obvious lack of success.”

  “Not so easy to kill a hero, I suppose?” asked Pierre.

  “Indeed not,” said Penbury. “They have the most incredible good fortune.”

  “And Morden is equally impervious?” asked Karoof.

  Penbury nodded and there was a collective sigh from the group.

  “Is there anyone close to them we can use as leverage?” asked Birkenfeldt.

  “A fine idea,” said Pierre. “Everyone has a weakness. Chancellor?”

  In instructing the Snort brothers he had asked them to find out all they could about Morden and Edwin and there had been mention of a girl. “The only thing that springs to mind is a girl. Apparently Edwin’s love, Griselda, was stolen from him by Morden and he has sworn to save her. He couldn’t give a pig’s nipple about anything else, or so I hear.”

  “There we have it,” said Paolo slapping the table. “The girl is the key.”

  “Maybe,” said Penbury. “But I fear there are other forces at work here. How is it that Morden, from all I can fathom, an odd but unremarkable child from a monastery of brewers, turns out to be a black dragon and a Dark Lord rising? And Edwin. Yes, he is an orphan raised by a blacksmith, and we all know what that means, but there are thousands of blacksmiths’ sons with barely an heroic hair between them. How is it that he has become such a hero? Besides, kidnapping the girl isn’t going to solve our problem, merely attract unwanted attention from both parties.”

  “There is one thing that I have noticed that I find curious,” said Birkenfeldt. “As you know, I am probably the biggest banker here, the Chancellor excepted. Borrowing over the last decade is up but of late it has increased dramatically; mainly among the aristocrats.”

  “Is that not to fund their war games?” asked Pierre.

  “I thought so too until I tied it into other areas. While spending on armour, weapons and the supplies of war has increased, it does not match the amount being borrowed. What has gone up is the price of gold. This is normal in uncertain times, but the movements cannot be attributed purely to speculators and worried savers. Somebody, somewhere, is stockpiling.”

  This was the first bit of news that Penbury did not already know himself and it was both interesting and disturbing. With everything that had been going on it was also a reminder that he needed to maintain a close eye on his own businesses and the markets. As had just been shown, movements of goods and hard currency often gave away preparations for war and other less visible activities.

  “Very good, Birkenfeldt,” said Penbury. “A most interesting observation. Clearly we need to look into matters more closely. If, as I am beginning to suspect, Morden and Edwin are mere puppets then we need to know who is pulling the strings.”

  As the other seven murmured their assent, the doors at the far end of the hall swung open and a procession of waiters entered each with a covered platter held aloft.

  “Ah, dessert,” said Penbury.

  While chatter at the table turned to the quality of the sponge, the use of vanilla and various thickening agents in custard, and the sweetness of dessert wine, Penbury’s mind was going over the discussion so far. It was, as he had thought, a tricky situation and one that could not be solved by a hostile takeover or a well targeted slanderous pamphlet campaign.

  Once dessert had been given due diligence and the eight were once more left alone, cigars on hand, port glasses full and cheeseboard arrayed appropriately, Penbury guided discussion away from how long soft Yak cheese should be left and back to weightier matters.

  “Gentlemen,” said Penbury, tapping his glass. “Let’s wrap up this Dark Lord issue before we retire.”

  The seven other richest, most powerful men in the western world made sure their glasses were full, their cigars lit and waistbands adjusted.

  “We find ourselves in a situation that has not been faced for centuries. A Dark Lord is rising and a hero has appeared, leaving a trail of blood behind him. These are indeed worrying events. I shall continue in my intelligence gathering and keep you all appraised. The goal is to try to find a resolution that will cause the least disruption to our affairs so that the world, and most particularly ourselves, may continue to prosper. We must also accept, however, that the world as we know it may well be laid waste.”

  There were grunts of consternation at this frank observation but Penbury had always believed in not dressing things up or avoiding hard truths. That kind of head-in-the-sand thinking led to companies over extending and losing far too much money long after they should have been wrapped up.

  “Gentlemen,” said Penbury, calming them with a raised hand. “Let us also not forget one of the immutable truths: you can’t beat economics. Whatever transpires in the world, people will still need feeding and Paolo will ship their food. They will need houses and Sven will build them. There will still be money to be lent and Birkenfeldt will lend it. While ideally we would like things to continue as they are, and I pledge I will do everything in my power to ensure that this is the case, if the worst does happen and there is a Dark Lord holding dominion over us all, he’ll still need us. Be
cause it is us, gentlemen, who make things work; for where there is a profit to be made, we will be there.”

  It was the insight that the first Chancellor had written down and had passed on to every Chancellor that had followed. Kings and Queens, despots and dictators, came and went; people were richer and poorer, but there was always, always, always a profit to be made.

  Chapter 35 Foreign Lands

  Pain is a great motivator.

  The Dark Lord’s Handbook

  Morden wasn’t sure how long he had been unconscious. The last thing he remembered was collapsing onto the beach and hearing a crow. He opened one eye. There was a fly on the end of his nose. It sat there for a second and then took off. Around him there was a buzzing sound consistent with a pile of dung and a hot summer’s day. Opening his other eye, but still lacking the strength to move, Morden could see a cloud of flies dipping and buzzing over the sand next to him. His first thought was that the way his luck had been going that something had wandered along and crapped on him.

  Well, whatever had happened while he had been out cold he couldn’t lie there forever. The sun was blazing down and his mouth felt drier than the hot sand he was lying on. Bracing himself for the anticipated pain, he lifted himself up onto one elbow, sending flies into an annoyed cloud. But the pain didn’t come. He did feel stiff around the middle but there was no sharp pain as he would have expected having been impaled.

  The harpoon lay on the sand next to him on a large patch of dark sand, which Morden quickly realised was blood soaked. It was the blood that had attracted the flies. By the look of it he had lost a lot of blood. No wonder he felt strange. He was lucky to be alive. He sat up and reached one hand to his side to feel the wound. There was a tear in the robe with congealed blood around it. Exploring with his fingers, Morden could feel a sizeable gash that was still open but not bleeding. It felt sticky to touch.

  He thought about looking to see how bad it was but, feeling as he did, he thought it best not to. The last thing he needed was to be sick and provide the flies with pudding.

  Morden got slowly to his feet, which further agitated the flies. The blood that he had lost had spread under him and, judging from the dark stain of the sand, he couldn’t have much blood left.

  First things first though, he needed to get out of this sun and find water. Looking up and down the beach he could see no signs of civilisation. That left the jungle. At the edge, where it met the beach, it was thin, like a fringe, but became dense a few yards in. It wasn’t as though he had much choice. If he stuck to the fringe he would have shade.

  Gingerly at first, and then with confidence as he felt no pain, he made his way to the edge of the jungle. The canopy provided by the broad green leaves of strange looking trees was welcome indeed. The trees were not like any he had seen before, with banded trunks and no lower branches at all. They grew fairly straight, with a slight bend, before spreading their rubbery leaves. Clustered at the top, where the leaves branched, were clusters of what looked like giant nuts. Looking around, he could see where some of these had fallen and split open. Most of what had been inside had been scavenged by beast or insect but there were traces of white juicy flesh.

  To get at these fruit a normal man would have to hope to shake them loose, or maybe go and get the harpoon and knock them loose, or even use the thick bands to climb up and pull them off, but he was Morden Deathwing. All he had to do was turn into a dragon and fly up. He could crack them with a talon, and cook them should they need it. All he had to do was apply his will and change.

  Nothing happened.

  He tried again as he had taught himself. All he had to do was will it so and…nothing. He could feel it, the power, but there was something else. Maybe it was his weakness from the injury. He concentrated harder and gave it another go. Again, nothing. There was something horribly wrong. It wasn’t a lack of strength. He didn’t actually feel that bad. As he had learnt to recognise the dragon power he had inside himself, so now he could sense there something else there, something new.

  Whatever it was, it was stopping him changing.

  What else had it affected? Morden tried to breathe fire but all he got was a splutter of smoke. It was as though his throat was empty of fire. Had his glands dried up?

  Then a dreadful thought struck him. If he couldn’t fly then he couldn’t get back to the fleet and they had no idea where he was either. He was stranded.

  That was not good. Not good at all.

  As his predicament began to sink in he could feel panic start to rise. What was he going to do? Damn it. Damn those orcs and their harpoon thing they had fired at him. Damn Penbury for having ruined his safe empire, and damn Grimtooth for having found him with his stupid book. He was going to die on a beach in the middle of nowhere and all they would find would be a black robe.

  He punched the tree in frustration.

  A second later something hard hit him on the head. There was a crack as whatever it was fell to the floor. It was one of the nuts and it had a split in the side, out of which white milk was leaking. Quickly, Morden scooped it up and drank. It didn’t seem to taste of much – not much did these days with all the fire breathing – but he could feel the cool fluid running down his throat and it felt good.

  When the milk had run dry, he smacked the nut against a rock in the sand to try and break it open. It proved to be an extremely hard nut to crack but he got there in the end. As he thought, there was hard flesh on the inside.

  He sat on the rock and considered the other nuts. There were plenty of them. It might not prove to be a varied diet but now he was sure he wasn’t going to starve. They were hard buggers though.

  And with that thought, he put his hand to his head. The nut falling on his head should have knocked him out cold, and at the very least hurt a lot. Feeling his skull, there wasn’t even a lump. In fact, thinking about it, he had hardly felt the nut hit him.

  Morden didn’t have time to consider this further as an arrow whistled past his nose and thumped into the trunk of the tree.

  “Gruk ng kasz!”

  The order came from Morden’s right and he spun to see who had shot at him. There was an orc. His skin had a yellow tinge to it over the normal green, and his eyes were slanted, but he was unmistakably an orc. He was holding a bow, rather shakily it had to be said, and perhaps that is why he had missed.

  “Gruk ng kasz!” said the orc again and this time Morden’s brain kicked in.

  “It’s all right. I have no intention of moving,” said Morden in what he thought were soothing tones, but he startled even himself as he spoke. His speech had dropped an octave and his voice sounded like the older men in the pub who had smoked pipes all their lives. Morden cleared his throat and a disgusting sound came out. The orc took a step backwards.

  “Gruk ng kasz!” insisted the orc.

  “Look!” said Morden. “I’m not moving, you stupid orc. Now put that bow down before you hurt somebody, and in particular, me.”

  The orc took another step backwards and his hands were shaking so much Morden was worried he would loose his arrow. Not that he could have hit anything the way his aim was wavering.

  Morden spread his arms to show he was unarmed and was no threat. The orc’s response was not quite what Morden expected. The orc, while obviously scared, now looked terrified and with a yelp threw his bow in the air, collapsed on the ground in a quivering heap and started muttering something over and over that Morden couldn’t quite make out.

  “Where do you live?” asked Morden, realising his concerns about survival, being shot aside, were now gone. But the orc lay there shaking and muttering. Morden asked again, slipping effortlessly into the orc’s own tongue this time. “Gkar mpu fegz?”

  When Morden had first discovered his gift of tongues he had found it disconcerting. Now it was just useful. The orc seemed startled to hear his own language. With some effort, he brought himself under control and assumed a kneeling position in front of Morden. The muttering assumed a chant like qua
lity. The orc’s face was pretty much in the sand so it was hard to make out but it sounded like,

  “Zoon. Dark Master. Zoon. Lord of All. Zoon,” over and over.

  While Morden had got used to how he was viewed by orcs in the west, he was used to being addressed as Morden. He was taken aback by being called Zoon. Shrugging inwardly, and assuming it was the robe that did it, he had more pressing matters to deal with.

  “Get up,” he commanded, and the orc sprang to his feet as though a puppet. “Show me where you live.”

  The orc scurried off and led Morden through the jungle along a path that he wouldn’t have known was there from just looking. The jungle was dense; branches and vines hung over the path and snagged at his robe. It became feverishly hot and the orc had to pause and wait for Morden to catch up on several occasions. Morden wished he could fly and then he could have sailed above this mess. He tried to change; he could not. It was worrying. As before, he could feel the power there but there was something else now that was getting in the way. It wasn’t exactly foreign, rather something different, much like when he had first looked inward and seen the dragon power. Unlike that power, this new thing made Morden’s hackles rise. There was a deeply disturbing quality to whatever it was. Though he had grown used to being called a Dark Lord, he had not until now felt dark. This thing inside him, that he could feel growing, was truly dark.

  After what must have been only another thirty minutes or so, but felt like several weeks, they popped suddenly into a clearing of huts. It was a small village, maybe twenty dwellings, one bigger than the rest, made from the stuff of the jungle, with green thatching. There were more orcs here, all about their business: tending pigs, fixing a roof, playing with children, scratching their arses.

  Morden took in the scene unnoticed. It was one of lively peace. Though the conditions would be considered meagre by the standards of Bindelburg, unlike the orcs in the slums around the cities in the west, it was obvious that these orcs had no master but themselves and were happy. As Morden cast his eye around, evidence that they shared some common heritage with their western cousins became more apparent. At one end of the village was a fire pit, and behind it were a number of stakes with heads impaled upon them. The male orcs were all armed with crude clubs and knives. One had a bow slung across his shoulders. When they laughed, long sharp teeth were much in evidence. These orcs had not had their tusk-like canines filed flat.