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  The King of Black Crag - Guy Haley

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  THE KING OF BLACK CRAG

  Guy Haley

  Gorfang Rotgut, King of Black Crag and lord of the Red Fangs Tribe, sat in murderous silence. The great throne room was almost empty, just his majesty, his overrunt Gabble, and a couple of Gorfang’s big uns lingering by the hall’s giant doors, trying not to fall asleep.

  And the entertainment: Birgit Boggle’s Bouncing Gobbo Entertainanters. They pranced around and showed their behinds, bells on hats a-jingling. They sang rude songs about dwarfs, which might have been funny had they all sung the same song at the same time. The defaced carvings of hall’s walls echoed to the screeching of goblin song and the unpleasant warblings of squig pipes. The noise was enough to deafen a troll. A shaved dwarf, broken in body and spirit, danced miserably on the end of a long chain. Every time he slowed down, one of Birgit’s boys poked him with a cruel spear, and he moaned hopelessly. His body was covered in scars, his ears mutilated.

  Swathed in filthy tapestries against the cold, the battered crown of the long-dead dwarf king of the Crag balanced on his pointy head, Gorfang weathered the racket of with remarkable calm. At least, he had not yet killed the squealing troupe.

  As far as Gorfang was concerned, the definition of entertainment was being stretched beyond tolerance by Birgit’s boys. Being an orc, Gorfang was not overly concerned with such things as definitions. He certainly was not concerned with tolerance, probably not even entertainment, come to think of it, at least not entertainment such as Birgit offered. Rending and maiming were more to his taste. Not even the leaden dance of the dwarf raised his spirits.

  What should have concerned everyone was that Gorfang was beginning to contemplate a spot of rending and maiming right there and then. Gorfang glowered at the capering goblins. One caught his red eyes. The runt’s smile froze, and he faltered. His juggling balls thumped to the floor and he wobbled on the shoulders of the runt he was riding. A third slipped on a ball and banged into the juggling goblin’s mount, dropping his squig pipe. They collapsed on one another. Quicker than seemed possible, all twelve of Birgit Boggle’s Bouncing Gobbo Entertainanters were tangled in a heap, shouting high-pitched imprecations at each other. Within seconds they were punching and biting, rolling about in the filth and bones of the floor.

  They said things like: ‘That was your fault!’ and ‘Nah! Shut it’ and ‘I’s gonna bite your bleedin’ nose off Klatter!’ and consequently ‘Nyargh! Ged ob be node!’ The dwarf cringed, its ruined face confused and frightened.

  Gorfang half-smiled at the fight, but it slipped off his face before it could become properly established, and he growled and sat forward on his furs. He tensed, bending the ornate golden cup in his hand out of shape. Gabble recognised the warning signs and clapped loudly. His ears twitched in annoyance when Birgit’s boys paid no attention, so he lifted the long skirt of his filthy overrunt’s garb and began kicking. He wore heavy iron boots under his robes, did Gabble, right and proper for kicking runts into shape or bruising the shins of aggressive orcs. As all runts need kicking and all orcs are aggressive, Gabble used his boots rather a lot, and was therefore skilled in their application. He huffed as he booted; too many squig snacks and mushroom delights sat in the rolled fat about his midriff. Other goblins said that being overrunt had been good to Gabble, but the truth was he ate to dull his terror, and he was terrified often. Being overrunt was nothing like as easy a job as he had thought. The skills needed were many, the tasks arduous and complicated, the life expectancy short.

  Gabble was smart enough not to let Gorfang know any of this. He soon had the Birgit’s tatty, motley-clad crew in a line. With a series of hissed curses and cuffs around the head he drove the troupe out of the hall. One of Gorfang’s guards kicked at the goblin holding the dwarf’s chain as he passed. The goblin dodged out of the way and the big un missed. The goblin blew a raspberry and tittered his way from the hall.

  The doors creaked closed behind them.

  Gorfang passed one huge hand over his face, pulling down hard on his gnarly green skin till his cheeks nearly snagged on his tusks. He cleared his throat and stared hard at his overrunt. ‘What did you do that for, Gabble?’ he said. His expression spoke of danger, lots of it.

  Gabble’s stomach rumbled. ‘Eh heh. You looked like you was about to kill ’em, your great greenness.’

  Gorfang nodded his barrel-sized head. ‘Well I was. They was rubbish. I might have had a bit of fun squeezing their little heads until they went squelch. You said entertainment. That was not entertaining, runt, not one bit. You mess up like that again, I’ll be looking for a new overrunt.’

  Gabble shrugged insouciantly, although ever fibre of his gobliny being was screaming at him to run. ‘Dancing runts is hard to come by. Sorry, boss. Waste of teeth to squish their heads. And, er, that dwarf was funny, wasn’t he?’ Gabble gave an experimental titter.

  ‘Is it a waste now?’ Gorfang scratched under his chin with a dirty talon. It made a sound like a rasp on steel. He squinted at the runt. ‘I decides round here what is a waste of teeth and what is not. You want me to squeeze your head instead then? Until?’

  ‘Until what boss?’

  ‘Until it goes “squelch”.’

  Gabble laughed as if Gorfang were joking. ‘Very good, boss. You want to kick something to death? I can get a couple of real squeakers sent up for you if you wants?’ Gabble leaned toward his master, his hands steepled, his mean goblin face the very image of solicitude under his ridiculous hat.

  ‘I hate that hat,’ Gorfang growled. ‘I hate you.’ He threw his cup down his throne room. It clattered off the steps of the dais, spilling fungus beer in a fan on the floor. Gabble’s ears twitched as the cup flew past his head, but he did not move. To allow himself a fully fledged flinch when his boss was in a mood like this would be fatal. Gorfang snatched the crown off his head and cast it onto the filthy flagstones. Gabble quivered under his robes as Gorfang unfolded himself from the throne. Up and up he went, like he would never stop standing and just keep on getting bigger. His spine unbent and he was as tall as a man, his legs straightened and he was big as a very big orc, then he stood up properly straight, which is something an orc will rarely do – crooked legs like ramrods, hunched shoulders arched back. The tapestries slipped from his enormous muscles and he raised his fists over his head, and then he was as big as an ogre. He roared, loud enough to bother Mork himself.

  This is what Gorfang Rotgut, king of Black Crag, sometimes called Troll-Eater, looked like: huge, for starters. As tall as the tallest thing under the mountains, nearly as tall, it seemed to poor little Gabble, as the mountains themselves. His shoulders were as broad as the pass below the fortress, his head as big as the moon. His jaw was long and had many fine teeth. Two impressive, iron-capped tusks jutted out when his mouth was closed and eight smaller tusks were visible when he shouted or roared, which was often. His skull was broad, his brows unusually beetled, even for an orc, his eyes glowed dull red from under them when he was angry, and blazed when he was fighting. He wore scale mail and a leering face upon his belly plate – part of his famous magical armour. His boots were large enough for Gabble to set up house in. There were not many orcs of any kind either brave or stupid enough to duel with Gorfang. Stacks of the skulls of those who had tried lined niches in the walls.

  ‘Grah!’ shouted Gorfang. He glowered down at the goblin from on high, his eyes like two red fires in the caves of an impossible, green mountain peak. ‘I’m bored, Gabble! Bored! I don’t like being bored!’

  Gabble slunk backward, his ears flattened. His fingers strayed to the bloodstain on his robe, all that was left of the last overrunt. He allowed himself a little sigh of relief as Gorfang moved off, clenching and unclenching his fists.

  Gorfang slammed a ringed fist into the wall. A chip of stone fell from it. He paced up and down the cracked slabs of the dais, kicking detritus out of the way.

  There was a clatter as a group of big uns ran into the hall.

  ‘Boss! We heard something, everything alright?’ said their leader.

  Gorfang shook his head. ‘If it weren’t I’d be dead by now, so slow you lot are.’ He strode down the steps and the length of the hall. He drew his fist back as he came, and punched the big uns’ boss square in the face. The force of the blow pushed in the nose guard of the Boss’s helmet. He went down with a noise reminiscent of a terminal accident in an armoury.

  ‘Typical,’ said Gorfang. He shuddered and snorted like a bull. ‘Not even big uns have got any fight in them these days.’

  The outburst of violence had calmed Gorfang, and he relaxed back into the usual stooped posture of the orcs. ‘Thing is, runt, there’s no one left to fight! No stunties this way for months.’

  ‘You beat them good boss, they won’t come back!’ said Gabble with forced gusto. ‘When they tried to come in through the mine workings last month, all them guns and armoured beardies…’

  ‘Hur hur hur,” Gorfang laughed. ‘Now that was a fight, eh? And what a stunty bake after!’

  Gabble was pleased by Gorfang’s change in mood, and seized his chance to avoid a beating. ‘The ratties won’t show themselves neither, will they? Last lot tried that…’ He gestured to a white, horned ratskin rug laid on the floor close to the throne with a vicious smile. He nodded encouragingly as Gorfang grinned at the memory.

  ‘True, true,’ said Gorfang. ‘Done them in good, didn’t I?’ He chuckled hoarsely, but then he sighed, and Gabble’s ears drooped. ‘And the humies won’t try anything. Too busy tripping over their feet to give me gold so’s they can go out east, and them ogres, they wants me to pay to fight with me…’

  He strode over to the looking hole occupying the whole of the wall behind the throne. Black Crag had once had scores of these ornate traceries of stone. Many had been bashed in by the orcs or broken by earthquakes. Where the tracery survived, their crystal glazing had long gone. Gabble couldn’t think why the stunties wanted so many looking holes, as a result, although Black Crag was lighter than its underground nature would suggest, it was freezing cold for nine months of the year, the broken windows allowing mountain winds free access to its deepest recesses. Stupid, if you asked him, and he’d tell you it was so even if you didn’t.

  The looking holes afforded sweeping views up and down Death Pass and out onto the Badlands beyond. On a clear day, it was possible to see a hundred miles or more, but now it was night and Gorfang was not interested in what lay outside the pass. He stared out into the dark. Tiny lights wound their ways along the floor of the pass, following the old dwarf road to the Dark Lands. Greenskins of all kinds, passing back and forth over the mountains, even some foolhardy human caravans with strong guards and deep pockets to pay Gorfang’s tolls. To the left and the right of the window, the mountain’s flanks were alive with the flames of campfires and torches, as was the ruined town outside the main gates of the Crag, the camp of greenskin freebooters and other creatures drawn in by Gorfang’s reputation.

  He wasn’t looking at this either. He was looking across the pass to the black shapes of the mountains on the other side.

  Death Pass was broad, twenty miles maybe where the Crag was. Diagonally opposite, a little to the east, hidden behind three snow-clad peaks, was the great city of the Eight Peaks. Domain, it was said, of a new power.

  ‘There’s always that runt,’ Gorfang said thoughtfully. He grasped the ruin of dwarf stonework and ducked through to the wide balcony outside. One half had crumbled away and the remaining part had been reinforced with crooked timbers and rusted iron. Heads in various states of decay were mounted on spikes along the balustrade. Some of Gorfang’s large collection of banners snapped in the wind. ‘I could go pay him a visit. That might be fun.’

  Gabble popped his head out of a hole low down the fretwork. ‘Boss, boss, think about it! They say he’s got the whole city under his control, or near enough. They say he’s beat the ratties and the stunties are afraid of him! They say he’s the craftiest goblin what ever there was.’

  ‘What’s his name again?’

  ‘What, him? The runt boss? Skarsnik, boss.’

  Gorfang shook his head. ‘Cave runt taking a name like that. Not right. That’s an orc name that. Perhaps I should go give him some educay… educat… edu…’

  ‘Education, boss?’

  ‘Yeah that. Don’t finish me words for me Gabble. I might see what kind of squelch your head makes yet.’

  ‘Sorry boss.’

  ‘What we know about him, Gabble? What do we know about this cave runt Skarsnik?’

  Gabble shook his head sadly. ‘Not much boss. I sent me best spies in and they sent them back. In pieces.’

  Gorfang laughed. ‘In pieces, eh?’

  ‘Yeah, marinated in fungus beer. We ate them the other day. Right tasty.’

  ‘And not poisoned.’

  Gabble wanted to say, ‘Obviously not’, but wisely refrained. ‘Nah, I had Fugwik try it first.’

  ‘Don’t seem like his style,’ said Gorfang. ‘I hear he’s a bit crafty, that one. What’s he up to?’

  Gabble wanted to say, ‘But I just said that, boss,’ but he didn’t say that either. In general, Gabble was better at holding his tongue and not cheeking his boss than most goblins. It was how he had become overrunt in the first place, and why he was still alive. ‘Yeah boss. He is.’

  Gorfang stared. The far side of the pass was unlit. Gorfang’s boys advertised their presence for all to see with fires and banners. Skarsnik’s side was dark as a slab of fresh cut midnight. True, thought the orc king, he’s not been in charge long, and most of the old stunty delvings over there are inside the stone, but there used to be fires up there. ‘Used to be lots of them,’ he said aloud.

  ‘Your royal greenness?’

  ‘Fires. Lots of fires. None now. You reckon he’s watching us?’

  ‘Probably, boss.’

  ‘Hmmm.’

  Gabble gave an inward sigh. Gorfang was more thoughtful than your usual orc, and prone to voicing his interminable internal debates aloud.

  ‘Thing is, I is very, very bored. I could do with a good war. You do with a good war, Gabble?’

  ‘Oh yes your highestness, that would be fun,’ said Gabble, who really couldn’t think of anything worse than a good war, especially if he had to fight in it.

  ‘But if we has ourselves a good war, all them gobboes and others will sneak through the pass without paying up, and that won’t do. I likes gold.’

  ‘Yes boss.’

  ‘On the other hand, I can’t be doing with no uppity runt taking an orc name and thinking he’s the boss on me bleedin’ doorstep! Gabble – that’s a proper goblin name that, not, not… Skarsnik!’ Gorfang spat.

  ‘Thanks boss. Er boss, perhaps, you know, you could team up? I hear a little rumour the stunties have come back over there, got ’emselves dug in in the old castle up top. Give them a kicking together. You could–’

  Gabble’s advice was cut short by an outraged bark. ‘Me, Gorfang Rotgut, baddest orc warlord of the biggest orc fort in all the Badlands and mountains, chief of the Red Fangs and boss of the Broken Toofs and a whole lot others besides, team up with a goblin? A cave runt?’

  ‘Er, yes boss,’ said Gabble, who suddenly felt very vulnerable with his head poking through the lattice. He pulled it out and came through to the edge of the balcony. Not too close to the warlord – the overrunt before the one before Gabble had been pitched over the edge by a drunken Gorfang one day to prove that goblins could not, in actual fact, fly. There was a crusty patch on the back of Gabble’s robe that he thought might once have been his predecessor’s brain. Nothing frightened Gabble more. Thinking about it made him feel ravenous.

  ‘War and fun, but no gold. Or no war, no fun and loads of gold. Or,’ Gorfang grumbled, ‘team up to fight the stunties and have everyone say I’s gone weak and them get all uppity and me have to slap them all down. Hmmm. You know what, Gabble?’

  ‘No, boss?’ Gabble said.

  Gorfang’s top lip lifted in a smile, exposing his impressive collection of teeth. ‘I’m going to have to see old Zarrgakk, ain’t I?’

  ‘Boss!’ squeaked Gabble, pointing upwards. ‘Go all the way up there, up the Twisty Stairs, past the Wyvern Crag, over the Cold Place, into the Deadly Cave, past the Smasher and into the crazy wizard’s lair?’

  ‘You left out the Troll Hole.’

  ‘But boss–’

  ‘Shut it, Gabble. It sounds like fun. Get me armour sorted, and get me Red Fang. Have it ready for tomorrow. All shiny and polished like. I wants to look me best.’

  ‘Yes, boss.’

  Gorfang stroked his chin. ‘Team up with the runt. Might work. Not a bad idea, Gabble. We’ll see what Zarrgakk has to say for hisself on that score.’

  ‘Thanks boss.’

  ‘Shut up, Gabble. I hate you.’

  The giant orc pushed his way past Gabble, leaving the goblin’s sensitive nose full of his offensive, frightening reek. On shaky legs, the overrunt went to obey his master.

  That is, once he’d got his own business out of the way.

  Gabble hurried down the secret steps as quick as he could, his bare feet slapping on the stone. He’d left his iron boots at the top under a rock, the noise they’d make clanging down here would be sure to bring something on his head. Whether it was an orc or a scumbloid, it wouldn’t be nice. Without his kicking boots he felt extremely vulnerable. It was dark and mildewed on the secret stair. Damp things brushed his face, and if he stopped and held his breath he could hear something nasty scrabbling about in the dark. He didn’t like the secret steps, not one bit. They were dark and stank funny. What with the scare the king had given him today, it was altogether too much. Now he was all alone, he permitted himself to whimper. The sound escaped his lips as his feet touched each slimy step. It comforted him. It made him feel like a proper goblin to whimper. ‘What is I doing?’ he muttered. ‘I ain’t no overrunt, I should never have come here!’

 

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