Salt Storm: The Salted Series: Episodes #31-35 by Galvin, Aaron (top 5 books to read TXT) 📗

need to release the Selkie prisoners at all, and might instead put the whole wooden car to the torch. Lenny fought against the rising panic in him, the thought of being trapped inside and burning alive. He was already starting forward when the train car door slid open, revealing the face of a single Orc upon the platform.

Dressed in simple, leather garb, the Orc guard paled when the weight of the cabin door escaped his grip and slammed at the end of its rail. By his surprise and youthful face, Lenny judged the Orc as being no older than fifteen in age.

A recruit? Lenny wondered. I don’t remember the Orcs having anyone so young down here back when they loaded me and Jemmy before . . .

As he had done in Bouvetøya, Brutus wasted no time in brushing the young Orc aside to allow those inside the train car to exit. Among the first of those to reach the platform, Lenny scouted what little he could see beyond the lip of his Selkie hood.

Unlike before in New Pearlaya, when he had been brought down among a chain gang of other Selkie prisoners, Lenny heard no cracking whips, nor saw any other chain gangs now. Of Selkies, he estimated there were near a thousand locked in cages to await their own boarding of the Sailfish train and with their shipment south to follow. But of Orc soldiers and taskmasters, Lenny counted less than a dozen. All of them appeared as young and curious as the recruit who had let the Selkies out of the train too.

Though he could barely hear it, the cavernous train station being so far beneath the city, Lenny’s ears pricked at the constant, distant stream of echoed trumpets sounding too from somewhere in the above.

Something’s wrong here, Lenny thought, the hairs on his neck rising at the dim echoes beyond the underground station.

The remaining curious Orc recruits left their charges of the Selkie cages to come and meet with the seeming soldiers of the Painted Guard that exited the train with prisoners of their own.

Brutus met them all with the same brazen act he had performed for the real soldiers in Bouvetøya. “Oi! Who’s in charge here?”

“If you please, sir,” said the recruit who had let them out. “W-We don’t know, sir.”

Brutus grabbed the boy by the tunic and pulled him close. “What do you mean you don’t know?” he growled. “You’re a soldier, aren’t you?”

“No, sir,” said the Orc boy. “We’ve not even been taken in to train for the Painted Guard yet, sir.”

“What are you doing here guarding these prisoners, then, lad?” Brutus asked, keeping the collective attention of the confused recruits as Tom Weaver and the other Selkies dressed in Painted Guard armor surrounded the young Orcs. “Where’s the real soldiers, eh? Why aren’t they here to keep on with the king’s command to sort this rabble and send them on south?”

The young Orc shrunk under his questioning. “They’re out searching the city with all the rest of the Painted Guard and Violovar, sir.”

“Searching?” Brutus asked. “For what?”

“Assassins, sir,” said the Orc. “The ones who killed the king and took the princess too.”

Brutus grabbed the boy by the arm and shook him. “Say that again . . .”

“The king, sir. He’s been killed, or so the rumors say. The queen and the princess taken too. The whole city is searching for the ones stolen away and the king’s assassins too.”

The Merrow king is dead? Lenny thought, glancing to his companions at the shuffled sound of their armor clanking as they looked to one another in shared disbelief. And Sydney and the queen taken too?

Brutus held his grip steady upon the Orc teen. “If the king is dead, who’re these assassins what killed him then, lad? What do the others say to that?”

“It were a half-breed that done him in, most say. Or a number of them, rather. The Blackfin called all the soldiers in the city to search out the killers and bring them to justice, sir. They called us young ones here to watch over these whilst the rest of the real soldiers are out.” He jerked his thumb toward those in the cages lining the walls. “They told us these caged Selkies can’t go nowhere, so they’re no trouble for us to watch over, sir. We’re just meant to keep the watch and hold them here.”

“Aye,” said Brutus, his tone laced with anger. “You’re right about that, my lad. Them Selkies aren’t going nowhere . . .” He pulled the Orc boy close. “But then neither are you lot now.”

Lenny pounced forward with all the other free Selkies when Brutus gave a nodding signal to those already surrounding the young Orcs.

The Selkies had each of the bewildered Orc teens brought to their knees in a matter of seconds. Some of the rougher Selkie sort were already bringing their blades to the young Orcs’ throats when Tom Weaver called them off.

“Spare them,” he shouted them down with words and a disarming glare. “They’re too young to know what they’re doing and just following orders, besides.” When the others listened, Tom jerked his head toward the empty train car they had abandoned. “Lock these Orcs in with the rest of those we brought with us until we figure out what to do with them.”

Lenny eased his grip upon his hidden blades as his Selkie allies in Painted Guard armor led the bewildered Orc recruits away to lock them inside the hostage train car with the other Orcs they had brought up from Bouvetøya.

Brutus snorted. “Might be young, but those Orcs know well enough what they’re up to, Tommy,” he argued. “Enough to know what fate awaits all those who board the train and are sent south.”

“Argue that later,” Lenny piped up. “Sounds like we got bigger problems to figure out now. If what the Orc said is true, then how are we supposed to help all these on board and all the rest over