Chapter 5—Orc Angels

After we had garaged the quad, Mandrake shifted into his dragon form and me and Moth climbed aboard. Six beats of his wings brought us to the altitude from which he deemed it safe to drop and he landed on the lawn with us on his back.

I jumped down and Mandrake opened his mouth to speak to me. I shook my head. Moth put a hand on his arm.

“Beloved has a think in her brain.”

Mandrake shut his mouth and waited.

Once I had marshalled my thoughts I spoke. “Sorry beloved fae, but I think we need to speak to the Angels.”

Moth hissed. “Why for?”

“Because there is an idea in back of my head telling me they will find something out from the would-be bad boys.”

“Won’t the agency?” Mandrake asked.

“Good grief, no. Having sent the boys in to provide proper chastisement, the matter is very likely to be considered as closed. I’m fairly sure the request from the hot springs will have been dealt with by a clerk in the office. If a Deputy or Senior Investigator had seen it. But they won’t have.”

“Rewind that a bit, my heart, aren’t the motorcycle boys Deputies?”

“They are. But only insofar as that allows them to be intimidating without comeback. They certainly won’t see fit to report anything they may discover.”

Moth screwed up her face. “Fact. Moth will ask.” She gave me an evil look before concentrating briefly. “Agency will tell.”

“Now what?”

“We wait.” Moth said shortly.

“No time for that. We have to go back down to the flatland and get the barbecue started.”

This time the look Moth gave me could have melted steel. Mandrake eyed the annoyed fae with some amusement.

“What is the matter beloved Mothwing?”

“Cooking dead things.”

I opened my arms, and she flew into my embrace. “I do know, my love. How about if you stay up here? Mandrake can guard me.”

“He don’t know bikers.”

“No. But he knows dragons. And the boys will know what he is.”

Moth thought. “Is true. Maybe I stay here and mend garden.”

I hugged her and she sort of spread herself across my chest. Mandrake came and rested a gentle hand on her wildly curly head. After a minute or two she sighed.

“Moth is better now. Thought she would have to smell dead things cooking.”

“I will guard our beloved.”

Moth turned and rubbed her face against his chest. “Why your skin feels scaly, loved dragon?”

He smiled. “I’m a bit dragonish, because I’m preparing to guard our mate.”

“Good.” She held up a hand for quiet. “Message comes. Bikers will. At sundown.”

At sundown me and Mandrake waited in the shadow of an oak tree while about half a cow cooked on the hot coals and a long table groaned with bread, cheeses and beer. Mandrake had an icy cold bottle of lager in his hand, and he sipped it appreciatively.

“Good beer my darling. Where does it come from?”

“I don’t honestly know. Moth keeps the cellar stocked. And the food store up at the cottage.”

“But she really is grossed out by meat, isn’t she?”

“You have no idea. I ate some buffalo once. When I was running with a wolf pack. She was sick for weeks.”

“I bet you felt guilty.”

“Not until my master had dragged me back into this shape. I lost myself and all but become a wolf forever. It was sobering and a much-needed lesson to a cocky youngling.”

He regarded me soberly. “Moth tells me your master died long ago, so how do you remain grounded in your true self now?”

“It’s Moth. She’s my anchor. There’s a shitload of strength in that cross-grained little body.”

“Maybe I can help her sometimes.”

“I think you already have. She obviously feels you can be trusted with some of the responsibilities that weigh on her so heavily.”

Mandrake drew me to him, and I leaned into his warmth. He bent his head but was forestalled by the sound of motorcycles growling up the road. It sounded to me like about a half dozen—so we should be okay for food and beer. The first bike came slowly into the clearing, followed by six more. The Angels parked their bikes facing back the way that had come and walked towards us in a loose arrowhead formation.

The leader spoke. “Where’s the fairy? Or is…” Fortunately for the success of the evening, he got close enough to recognise Mandrake before his big mouth got him into trouble.

“Wing leader?” The orc sounded both puzzled and impressed.

“Wing leader no more, Knut. I am Mated now.”

The other six Angels went very still, except for the hands that hovered above their weapons.

Mandrake chuckled and Knut stomped forward to grab him in a crushing embrace.

“This my man. He save my worthless hide a couple centuries back.”

The rest relaxed and Mandrake grinned at me. “I truly didn’t know, amata.”

“I don’t suppose you did, any more than I knew this orc’s name.”

Knut’s face creased as he thought that one through.

“Don’t suppose you did,” he said eventually, “names is power.”

“Indeed they are.”

I thrust out a fist and he bumped knuckles with me almost reflexively. I tried the smile with dimples and discovered it works on orcs as well as anything humanoid. He blushed and ducked his huge head.

“Help yourself to beer, my friend.” I suggested and he ambled over to the buffet.

“The others too?”

“Why not? Unless you and my mate can drink all that beer and eat all that cow meat.”

Knut’s smile showed his long, yellow fangs as he grabbed a beer then went and ripped about a dozen ribs off the barbecue. The sound as he chomped was unsettling to say the least.

Mandrake rested his chin on my head and made the mind link. ‘I can understand why our fae finds this lot disturbing.’

‘Me too. Although they are behaving far better than they ever have before.’

‘Yeah, well. Your man Knut owes me a life debt. And I’m thinking he is the big guy in the group.’

‘He is.’ I favoured Mandrake with a narrow-eyed stare. ‘Where did you learn to instigate the link?’

‘Mothwing thought we might need it.’

I couldn’t argue with that so I just sat back and watched, entranced as always by exactly how much beef and beer seven orcs could get outside of. It was impressive if a trifle messy. It took them the best part of an hour to finish off the beef and a goodly portion of the beer.

Mandrake flicked an eyebrow my way and I nodded.

“Knut,” he said casually, “what was up with those kids at the hot springs?”

Knut was picking his teeth with a needle pointed dagger and he grunted. However, something in my mate’s voice must have penetrated the beer fog, because he put the dagger away and stood scratching at one armpit as he thought.

“I dunno. They were pretty up themselves until we rolled in. Then they mostly shut up.”

One of the other Angels belched quite loudly. “The tall one with the mouth never buttoned it.”

“Until you smacked him around the head.”

“The second time. The first time he just kept right on talking.”

“Asswipe,” a third muscular orc joined in the conversation. “The piece of shit I had hold of was riding high on something. I near to twisted his dick off before he stopped wriggling.”

“Wonder what he was on,” Knut grunted.

“I dunno, but he had some glass vials in his pocket. I stomped on most of ‘em. Ground ‘em to paste under my boot.”

“Where’d he get the shit?”

“His dad’s some sort of science human out of the research station. Snotty bumhole. Didn’t like being told that if his kid got caught trying it on with underage females again he’d be in trouble.”

The orc, who I just then realised was female, grinned at some memory and her neighbour elbowed her hard.

“What’d ya say to him?”

Her grin grew wider. “I might’ve said that I’d castrate the brat myself and make him eat his own balls.”

Knut belched sonorously. “Seems proportionate to me.”

He ambled off into the trees and I had to push down the impetus to question the female further. It was unlikely she knew any more than she had said, and anyway asking her without her pack leader being present would have been the cue for a fight.

The drunkest of the orcs lay on his back and started to sing. Well, I say sing, what I mean is bellow loudly at the sky.

“Shut up Gobshite.”

“You gonna make me?”

The singer struggled to his feet, but whatever he had been going to say or do was immediately superseded by the call of nature.

“Orcs shit in the woods,” he announced before shambling off into the undergrowth.

I marked his entry place carefully as the chances of him getting lost were high, and if that happened me and Mandrake would have to lead the retrieval party.

While we waited for Knut to return I replayed the conversation in my head. I’d just got to ‘most of them’ when the pack leader stumbled back into the clearing. He’d obviously been thinking too.

“Stomped on most of them?”

“Yes Pack Leader. I kept two.”

“Why’d you do that, my mate?” He sounded puzzled and right on the edge of being angry.

She showed him her fangs. “One for our chemists to look at and one for The Agency.”

It was amazing, and mightily pleasing, to see such a big orc reduced to the status of a naughty schoolboy. He ducked his head and looked at his own huge feet.

“I’m sorry, mother of my cubs, it’s you have the brains.”

She chuckled. “You stick to cracking heads and leave the thinking to me. Now. If we had some music.”

I sprinted into the biggest of the store caves and came out with the music box my master had stolen from some humans. I keep it charged in his memory so I could turn the dial to ‘heavy rock’ and fill the clearing with wailing guitars and a thumping beat. The orcs started to dance, stamping their feet and swinging their shoulders in perfect time with the beat.

I leaned into Mandrake. “They can keep this up for hours.”

“Somehow that isn’t a surprise.” He watched for a while. “Some of them are females aren’t they?”

I looked carefully. “Two or maybe three.”

“Three?”

As Mandrake studied the whirling stomping figures a ululating wail split the night air. He dropped into a fighting crouch.

“What the frag?”

“Orcs shit in the woods. And quite often get lost.”

The dancers came to a ragged and reluctant halt. Knut scratched his exceedingly hairy chest.

“Anybody know where that fragging moron Gobshite went?”

The orcs all shook their heads, and Knut tugged ferociously at his own beard in irritation.

I whistled sharply to get the big guy’s attention. “I know where your lost packmate went into the undergrowth, and what direction he took.”

“That’s a start, but it’s still gonna frag up the party.”

Mandrake laughed. “I’ll go find him.”

One of the females glared at Mandrake. “What you gonna do we can’t, human?”

Knut’s mate smacked her firmly around the head. “Mouth shut and eyes open,” she snapped.

Mandrake stepped out of the firelight onto the freezing cold grass of the upland meadow and the chilly moonlight. He made the change and the disrespectful orc swallowed audibly.

“You better hope,” Knut rumbled, “that there isn’t a vengeful dragon.”

Mandrake turned his whirling multicoloured gaze on the group of orcs for a heartbeat, before giving his full attention to the business of taking off in a fairly limited space. Three wingbeats took him to treetop height, and he began the search.

It didn’t take him long to locate the lost orc and he hovered above it, whistling to attract attention, but the distressed drunkard just carried on crashing about in circles and making his horrible ululating noises. Mandrake swooped and scraped the top of the orc’s head with his talons, but even that failed to break through the twin fogs of alcohol and panic.

I saw the precise moment that my mate’s patience ran out, so the blue flame that lit the woodland in front of Gobshite came as no surprise. The rest of the orcs were a bit more surprised, with Knut going so far as to throw back his head and roar.

“We’re in for some sport now,” he said.

His mate’s grin was a feral thing, and I made a mental note not to get on the wrong side of her.

“Sport?” it was the voice of the orc who had disrespected Mandrake, only now it quivered with barely concealed fear.

“Oh yes. You are about to watch a dragon herd his prey. Only this time he won’t eat what he herds. Or at least I hope he won’t.”

Knut looked at me and I hastened to reassure him. “No. He won’t eat your orc. Orc flesh gives him wind.”

The pack stared at me for a second before the idea that I was joking landed. When it did they laughed far more than such a small jest merited, with Knut himself capping my joke with a very rude suggestion about hot dragon wind.

In the meantime, Mandrake was carefully herding an increasingly terrified orc back to where his pack awaited him. The screams came closer and Gobshite broke out of the tree-line at a shambling gallop. When he saw his pack-mates, he hurled himself face down on the frozen grass.

“Dragon,” he yelled. “Look out there’s a dragon.”

Behind him, Mandrake made the change and dropped the final few feet to the ground in human form.

Knut’s mate grinned so widely I thought her face might crack in half.

“Mega cool.” She offered Mandrake a hugely knotted fist and they bumped knuckles. “Can all dragons do that?”

“No. Only the most highly trained of battle dragons.”

“Useful trick, though.”

“Indeed.”

The rest of the pack had gathered around Gobshite’s quivering figure. One poked him with a booted foot.

“Get up, asshole, there ain’t no dragons here.”

He peered suspiciously about him before he sat up.

“Did you chase it off?”

“Chase what off?”

“The dragon what was hunting me.”

One of the ones I had pegged as female put her face close to his.

“There weren’t no dragon fuckwit.”

Mandrake and his companion came over to me.

“I take it Gobshite is in for a bit of razzing,” I said.

“Was about time that one learned some humility. This hadn’t happened me or Knut was gonna have to kill him sometime soon.”

“In that case…”

“You ain’t like any human I ever met,” she said.

Knut had come across, walking quietly enough so she hadn’t heard his approach.

“I tell my mate?” I nodded. “Lady isn’t human no more than her mate is.”

“What you saying, you old fool? She ain’t no true born critter I ever seen.”

“No. She ain’t. She’s a True Shifter.”

“Don’t you be razzing me. Them’s just a fairy story.”

Mandrake made as if to say something, but I put a finger across his lips.

“Mate of the Pack Leader,” I said formally. “Will you show me your fist?”

She looked confused but proffered a huge, scarred and knotted appendage. I laid my own hand on the air beside it and concentrated briefly. The hand and forearm I Shifted was a complete simulacrum of hers. It felt as if it weighed nearly as much as my human body, but I managed to hold it still. She stared, and I let it dissolve back into a human hand.

“Your fist weighs a lot,” I said, and I could hear the physical strain in my own voice.

Mandrake moved to the buffet, returning with a thick slice of buttered bread. I sank my teeth in gratefully.

“Shifting uses a lot of calories,” I explained, not caring that I was talking with my mouth full.

The female orc bent her neck in a gesture of respect. “I never thought to meet one such as you.”

“There is only one so far as we know,” Mandrake said.

I swallowed the mouthful of bread and butter I had been chewing.

“There won’t be any more. I refuse to put another being through what I went through to gain my powers. It really isn’t worth it.”

The big she-orc looked into my eyes for a breath, before turning way as if embarrassed. “I don’t believe,” she said to nobody in particular, “that I would like to have the Shifter’s memories.”

Knut, who had stood in unusual quiet while his mate and I worked things out between us, actually tasted the atmosphere with his thick, red tongue. Finding it unthreatening he looped an arm over his mate’s shoulders.

“Not all her memories are bad,” he offered. “I remember a wild ride through the night with a band of marauding orcs streaming across the sky behind a lone female with blood in her eye and The Dagger of Death in her boot top.”

“She got the Dagger of Death?”

“She do, and that little bastard don’t miss wherever she throws it.”

The she-orc pushed out her lip in thought. “You led a shitload of orcs on The Wild Hunt.”

“Yup. Must have been seven centuries past. And I never knew Knut was in that raiding party.”

He grinned and farted loudly. “I was on my first pack ride, and when the bikes rose into the sky I all but pissed myself. Fun though.”

His mate turned to him, and I understood that whatever she had to say it was not about anyone but their own selves. I listened anyway.

“Was that the last time the Wild Hunt rode out of the sunset?”

“Last but one. It was not The Lady who led your father to his death.”

“I wasn’t thinking it was. According to Mother it was likely his own stupidity.”

“Likely. He was growing old and unwilling to accept that.”

“And you, Knut. You became Pack Leader in the void.”

“Only after I made a few orcs get dead. But yes. I won the Pack in a void, but I rule it because there is none among the members who can best me.”

She looked at him and her mouth twisted bitterly. “So why did you need to mate with me then? I was told it was to consolidate your hold on the pack.”

He made a harsh sound in his throat. “I mated you from need for you. There is no other reason than that.”

The smile she gave him was so bright as to hurt the eyes, before she thumped him hard on one of his meaty arms.

“Why did you never tell me?”

“Because I thought you mated me for status.”

She groaned as he dragged her into his arms. The female bit her mate’s lip and I saw the blood flow.

“Mine,” he said thickly, and she licked his bleeding lip.

I looked away to find Mandrake smiling down on me.

‘Love orc style,’ he whispered in my head, before turning up the music and encouraging me into the dance.

And that was pretty much how the night ended, with drunken dancing and a sense of recklessness.

The orcs finally fell asleep where they dropped from sheer exhaustion, and Mandrake and I crawled into the open store and wrapped our tired bodies in thick northland quilts.

Dawn came and our guests awoke. Mandrake helped me to break out loaves of bread and slabs of pre-cooked bacon. The orcs made huge sandwiches and rode off munching. I think Mandrake carried me up the stairs to a proper bed.