Chapter 35
The air shimmered. Fire leapt from stone to stone in the circle of the Merry Maidens in Cornwall. Above the stone circle the Aurora coalesced into a circular rainbow and a shaft of white sunlight burst onto the grass. Lightening sheeted across the heavens, and the sound of thunder rolled over the land, crashing and booming so loudly that the very earth shook. All over England other stones circles shivered in empathy as electrical coronas of light skittered and flashed over them. From Stonehenge to Castlerigg, from Tomnavarie to Bryn Gwyn, the standing stones circles all shimmered with a power that had not been felt for many millennia.
The power of the old magic.
The power of the Life-Light.
And then the fundament tore open to reveal a venereal slit that slowly spread wider and wider.
Through it came the battle Orcs. Running four abreast in full gear, their nostril flaps fluttering as they breathed in and out, two-handed swords drawn and shield to the fore. As they came through they spread out and kept running. The early morning sun picked out their oiled armor and the sharp edges of their blades and painted them a shimmering red.
The column of battle Orcs continued for the next forty-eight hours until almost a quarter of a million battle Orcs had formed a perimeter that covered almost two square miles.
Next came the goblin archers, faster and smaller they came through at a rate of over one hundred an hour, so within another forty hours the full 400 000 of them were through. After that, Ammon ordered the fair folk and their construct retainers through the gateway, confident that, whatever happened, he had 650 000 armed troops on Earth and 560 000 troops protecting the opening of the gateway, including the 10 000 trolls.
By now the Orcs had started to score the surrounding countryside for trees to form stockades, as well as looking for close water supplies and searching out for any danger.
Even though it was a very remote area they were seen by three lots of people. The first; residents of the Bloiegh dairy farm. A mother, father and two sons who took one look at the group of one hundred Orcs stamping towards the farmhouse and simply ran screaming into the wilds of Cornwall.
The second; a group of old farmhands, Cadan Oatey, Perran Penhalligan and Ruan Gluyas. All three were sitting outside the farm’s grain storage barn when the group of Orcs came running over the hill. The Orcs stopped and stared at the three old men for a while, deduced that there was neither danger nor wood in their vicinity and carried on.
Ruan Gluyas took his pipe out of his shirt pocket and carefully filled it with a plug of navy shag, tamping it down well with callused, nicotine stained thumb. Then he took out his matches, lit and got the tobacco glowing merrily before he spoke.
‘Now that is something that you don’t see every day,’ he said.
‘Wonder what they were?’ Asked Cadan.
Ruan shrugged. ‘Could be them aliens that you hear talk of.’
Cadan laughed. ‘Now surely you don’t believe in that shite? Aliens, whatever next?’
‘Mind you,’ said Perran. ‘We did see something and it was something that none of us has seen before and we have all been around for some time now.’
There was a general murmur of agreement. Finally Ruan spoke again. ‘Probably some sort of government experiment,’ he said.
The two other old men nodded sagely. ‘Aye,’ agreed Cadan. ‘That’ll be it, to be sure. Bloody government.’
‘First they bugger up our electricity and now they start experimenting with ugly gray pig-men. It’s not right, you know. Waste of taxpayers money.’
‘When did you ever pay tax?’ Asked Cadan.
‘That’s not the point, is it?’ Argued Ruan. ‘It’s the principle of the thing. If I did pay tax I would be horrified that they was spending my hard earned cash on making gray pig-men.’
Once again there was a general nodding of heads.
‘Got any spare baccy?’ Asked Cadan.
Ruan handed over his bag.
The Godfrey twins claimed the third sighting. Two brothers who had only recently got out of Wormwood Scrubs after doing a stretch for armed robbery. They had been remanded into their uncle’s custody and he had moved them to his run down farm in Cornwall. The two brothers hated the countryside and spent most of their time wandering the fields with a pair of shotguns and decimating the wildlife.
Their reaction upon seeing the group of Orcs was true to form. They simply picked up their shotguns and opened fire. The birdshot bounced off the Orcs thick hides and, while the brothers were busy reloading, the Orc sergeant stepped forward and, with one massive uninterrupted blow, chopped both of the brothers in half, the blade cleaving through them at chest level.