by Dan Fish
“Probably not, if the orcs come back.”
“Mind if I leave through the kitchen?”
“Suit yourself.”
Sorrows threw a silver on the table.
“Gods be with you,” he said, turning to leave.
“Why would they start now?” the owner asked without looking up.
Chapter 2
SORROWS STEPPED OUT of the tavern and into the fading gray of the evening sun. He kept to the shadows, working his way through the village. He moved quickly. Made no noise. Drew no attention. He found a path on the edge of the forest and followed it into darkness. Left it when it broke south. He made his way to the cave, fumbled around in the darkness. No time for a fire. He found his bundle, unwrapped the layers of cloth until he held her.
The twin arcs of a recurve bow shone faintly. Wide at the handle, tapering slightly along mirrored lengths, curling at the tips. Sorrows ran gloved fingers along the bow’s length but left its string slack. His mind raced from one thought to another. Distracted. It didn’t matter. He couldn’t see her, not tonight. There was no time. But he had to talk to her. The bow warmed. It vibrated softly in his hands.
“There’s a tavern,” he said. Soft. Easy. Like he had just come in from a day in the woods. “Half-born owner. Honest enough fellow. Goblin and elf.”
The bow stopped vibrating but stayed warm. She was listening. Not to his words. They couldn’t talk like that. But she picked up on something else. Thoughts or emotions or something. She always had.
“Orcs showed up tonight. Three of them.”
The bow began to glow, faint yet unmistakable in the dark cave.
“I’m bringing you along, but I can’t see you. Not right now. There’s no time.”
The glow wavered for a moment, then steadied. The energy pulsed within his grasp. A heartbeat. Sorrows waited, quiet, like he was approaching a deer in the woods.
The bow thrummed and grew cool. The glow faded. He wondered if she was sad. If she was disappointed. He was tempted to clear his mind, to see her again. But the few minutes with her would be at the expense of the tavern owner. He sighed. His focus drifted to the chain hanging around his neck, the amulet resting against his chest. He had a message to deliver.
“I need to do this.”
The bow went cold in his grasp. Sorrows grabbed the quiver beside it, slung it over his shoulder. The strap crossed his chest. The pressure of it felt familiar, reassuring. He left the cave, slipped the bow into the bindings on his back and worked his way through the forest. The air was cool and smelled of pine. The quarter moon had begun its slow climb into the sky. He returned to the trail made silver by moonbeam. He followed it to the village and slipped like a shadow along walls and through alleyways. He approached the kitchen side of the tavern, passed by the woodpile, and made his way around the windowed side. Spots of yellow lamplight hung from the rafters like fireflies caught in a box. The elf and half-born had left. The place was empty except for the owner, who was wiping circles on tabletops and glancing at the front door. Sorrows continued his scouting of the tavern and stopped when he came to a dark corner off the front. He shrugged out of his cloak. He strung the bow but set it in the shadows, to the side. He was a big man; the cloak added unnecessary intimidation, and the bow added threat. He wanted the orcs to think him approachable, vulnerable. But he wanted the bow close in case a bad situation turned to worse. He leaned against the wall and waited.
An arrow on the string is restless, full of wanderlust and hunger. Sorrows shifted from one foot to another, flexed his fingers, rolled his shoulders. The ground lay open from road to tavern. The grass turned to pale silhouette in the moonlight. The orcs would return soon. He had little doubt. This was a fight he had seen through many eyes. The corruption of power. The twisting of strength into a weapon to impose selfish desires upon the weak. It was done everywhere. If not here, then in some other village or city. It was done by anyone. If not orcs, another mortal species or the gods-born. It mattered little. Where corrupt strength discovered weakness, it pounced and devoured. Predator and prey. Unless something stronger stood in its way. Unless by blade or flying shaft the predator was crippled, weakened.
The sound of low, grunting conversation drifted in the night air, and Sorrows moved forward. An arrow on the string.
He tugged his gloves down tight and flexed his fingers, one hand and the other. A restless habit. He needed to keep the orcs away. And a fight against three orcs was one Sorrows would win. But it would only draw more orcs to the tavern. He needed to make believers out of the three. Contagious believers who would spread their fear like pox to any who would listen. He needed them to believe the tavern was protected. To believe the entire village was protected. He reached into his tunic and retrieved the amulet, let it hang loose against his body. He looked down at it and smiled, watched the lights swirl in its depths. It was a simple thing, the Grimstone. Glossy black and smooth, no more than two fingers’ width in diameter. Set in steel, hanging from a loop of steel links. Unremarkable by itself. But lights danced below its surface like stars in a night sky. And the lights made the amulet spectacular.
An arrow on the string waits without will or purpose. It is a restless thing of potential and promise. Of feathers, shaft, and sharpened tip. It is a deadly thing, crafted to pierce and plunge. It is a vessel for the hunter’s desire. Tonight, Sorrows waited for three orcs when he should have been searching for a Seph. But he feared what a Seph might mean. What might be taken from him. When they had already taken so much.
He, like every other human, had been taught to fear the Seph at some point in his life. It was a warning passed on by mothers and fathers. It was a lesson woven into story and song. It was the horror threatened in childhood games. Run and hide, run and hide! Seph will find you, go inside! Sorrows had been full of bravado as a boy, not so different from the other children, but he, too, had felt the tingling along his spine when he turned his back to darkened doorways. When the wind howled in the night.
Despite his youthful boasts, he had heeded the warnings. As he grew older, the attacks on humans spread, trust withered. Any human might be a Seph walking in stolen skin. People grew frightened and wary and defensive. They watched him with sideways glances, slipped away as he approached. They walked in pairs, whispering his name as they touched fingers to lips. None of it made sense. He knew he was not Seph and wondered at what drove their fear.
Revelation hit him like a fist to the side of the head one evening, coming in from the woods. He heard shouts, ran to investigate, and came upon a fight. It was little more than a drunken disagreement, but he threw himself between the two men. He was fifteen. He shoved the men apart like squabbling children, sending them stumbling to the ground. Gods, Solomon, if the Seph catch you, we’re done for.
He walked home dazed by realization. The other humans looked past who he was to what he might become, and they feared him for it. Treated him differently for something he had not done. Like any other teenage boy faced with injustice, Sorrows grew angry. But unlike other teenage boys, he used his anger to shape his purpose. He would show the other humans they had nothing to fear. He would become a protector. A weapon. An arrow on the string.
When the moon hung high over the mountains, Sorrows left the dark corner and moved beside the front door, leaning against the wall. The tavern was quiet behind him. The owner had stopped cleaning the tables and was waiting. Crickets chirped. A breeze rustled the grass, carrying the smells of fall and rain.
Three lanky-armed shapes appeared on the road, gray and hazy in the moonlight. Two conversed with grunts and gestures while the third followed a pace or two behind. They stepped onto the path leading to the tavern and reached toward their backs, pulling their blades free. The first two cut clumsy arcs in front of them. The third held his weapon awkwardly, like it was the first time he had gripped a sword. They walked closer. The lines of their leather armor gleamed in the moonlight. Sorrows slipped out of the shadow beneath the eaves of the tavern and stepped bet
ween the door and the approaching orcs.
“You made a mistake coming back,” he said. “Leave now, live to drink another ale.”
A simple message. One the orcs were guaranteed to ignore.
The orcs, despite being startled, maintained their composure. Their shoulders tightened, their swords moved in front of their chests, tips pointed forward. They almost looked like they knew what they were doing. They were tall, well-muscled, intimidating. Their armor added bulk, their tusks added menace. The two in front dropped into wide, balanced stances. The third stood tall and watchful in the back.
“Who in all hells are you?” the largest of the three asked.
His voice was low and guttural. A bull barking like a dog. And he was the first to speak, which made him the lead bull.
Sorrows squared to face him. “I’m your friend. I might not be your only friend, but right now I’m your best friend. Do you know why?”
Stubborn silence. Expected.
“Why?” The smaller orc to the left. The question earned a backhand from the big orc. Expected.
So far, the orcs were behaving as Sorrows knew orcs to behave. Except the third. The pale observer that watched silently from behind. He watched too closely. He studied. Sorrows had never known an orc to study anything. An anomaly. And anomalies caused trouble. Anomalies were better confronted than left to fester.
Sorrows shifted. “What about you, gray? Care to guess why the big guy might lose his head?”
The question accomplished three things: it startled the pale orc, who thought himself invisible, standing in the back; it confused the orc to the left, causing him to turn toward his pale companion; and it enraged the big orc, the leader. A leader who had started out in control, but who had since been both threatened and ignored.
A wary orc holds his blade in one hand. Orcs are long-armed, with strong fingers and a firm grip. If the big orc had attacked Sorrows while his stance was loose and his sword tipped forward, he might have lasted long enough for the other two to get involved. But an angry orc doesn’t think of these things. An angry orc bellows and foams and brings his free hand onto an already crowded hilt. The second hand’s grip is both shackle and illusion. An illusion because on a crowded hilt, the second hand offers only a portion of the second arm’s strength. And a modest portion at that. A shackle because physical limitations of wrists and shoulders inhibit angle and thrust of the blade. The weapon must now be swung, or the body must rotate to obtain a viable line of attack. The dance of battle.
The big orc clapped one hand onto another, creating a tangle of gloves and fingers around the hilt of his sword. He raised it above his head, opting to swing instead of rotating. A wise decision for any orc, given the species’ lack of agility. Wise, but slow. By the time the hilt was at the orc’s chest, Sorrows was moving. Vision obscured by darkness and his own knuckles, the orc went from staring at leather to feeling it slam into his chin. Sorrows drove his palm upward with enough force to lift the orc off his feet. Teeth cracked. Yellow-green eyes flashed in the moonlight and rolled backward. The orc crumpled and lay in the grass, not moving.
Sorrows stepped on the big orc’s chest as he passed and leapt into the air, preparing to strike the pale third of the party. But that orc had already moved. Sorrows spun to see the quiet, yellow-green eyes studying him. Unexpected and unsettling. Orcs didn’t move like that. And Sorrows didn’t like orcs with surprises. He preferred things to behave as they were supposed to and worried when they didn’t. But he couldn’t deal with that problem now. The pale orc had removed itself from the situation momentarily. Sorrows would deal with him later.
He squared himself to the second orc. The smaller, oily skinned one that was fumbling with his sword as he scrambled backward into the third. Expected.
“Have you got my answer yet, gray? Why might the big fella lose his head?” Sorrows stared at the second orc as he addressed the third. The second orc’s eyes went from Sorrows to the big orc sprawled on the grass back to Sorrows.
“She doesn’t speak,” the second orc said. He steadied his grip and his stance. “Found her this past spring, wandering the plains. Was her that led us to this place.”
Gods, Sorrows thought. A female. Orcs were harder to tell apart than dwarves. Nothing about the pale orc seemed feminine. He reached down and pulled the blade from the fallen orc, whipping it in two neat arcs. The steel was notched, and the hilt was cracked, but the sword had good enough balance. He brought the tip to rest against the neck of the big orc.
Some nameless orc an unknown time ago grabbed a small, round rock and found food. Or maybe water. Or maybe the orc didn’t find anything. Maybe a bigger orc was about to club him over the head, but suddenly dropped dead. Something happened that turned coincidence into providence. It didn’t matter now. The details had become irrelevant in the steady flow of time, the rush of the gods-stream. What mattered now was that orcs were a superstitious species. They wove stone beads into their hair to ward against evil and bring good fortune. Three white beads for a calm and protected spirit. Three black beads for good health. Three red beads to grant strength in battle. Then a variety of colors, yellow, violet, blue, brown, and countless others to ward against the various demons that might harass or harm a mortal orc on any given day or night. And the more of these beads, the better. To behead an orc was to separate its beads from its body. Sacrilege. To use an orc’s own blade for the task was blasphemy.
The instant Sorrows rested the tip against the big orc’s neck, the second orc shouted and rushed forward. Expected. The orc’s free hand found the hilt of his sword and he brought the blade to the side and behind him in preparation for a swing that would cut clean through Sorrows, notches or not. A powerful move. An all-or-nothing attack. A mistake. Two mistakes, in fact. The movement of the blade in an arc from front to back and front again takes time. The first mistake. The rotation of the orc’s body to accommodate the backswing of the blade creates a narrow stance with most of the orc’s weight on the back foot, halting the momentum of the rush forward. The second mistake.
The defense against such an attack, if one were not caught by surprise, is to get near early. The power in the attack comes from the shifting of weight forward while rotating. The extension of the arms and wrists increases the speed of the blade passing through air into the target. Longer arms create greater speed. Greater speed creates greater power. The dance of battle. You can’t control the strength of your opponent, nor the heft of his blade. But you can influence, or interrupt, your opponent’s rotation—thus limiting speed, thus limiting power. If you weren’t caught off guard, you would get near and you would disrupt the attack, while the blade is behind the attacker, stopped or still slow. No power. The orc’s first mistake was to preface his attack with a significant backswing. An angry backswing. An unthinking backswing.
And Sorrows was not caught off guard. He rushed forward and locked a hand on the orc’s leading elbow at the point in the backswing when the blade had come to a complete halt and the orc’s weight was primarily on his back foot. Sorrows was a large man already, but caught off balance as the orc was, Sorrows became a mountain bearing down on him. Sorrows stepped inside the orc’s stance, forcing him onto one foot. The orc released his hold on his blade to keep from falling. He flailed his arms wide. Defenseless. Sorrows brought the hilt of the big orc’s sword hard against the side of the second orc’s head. Hard, but not crippling. The blow was meant to daze the second orc, not create a second limp burden.
Two orcs out of three taken care of. One snoring on the ground. One swaying where he stood. Two blades out of three accounted for. One lying in the grass. One held by Sorrows.
“Have you figured why your big friend might lose his head, gray?” he asked. He placed his hand on the second orc’s face and gave it a shove. He turned to face the pale orc.
She was gone.
She was gone, and this presented two problems to Sorrows. First: without the orc, he had no one to answer his question. An answer
which would have suggested that the tavern was a favorite of local humans. An answer which would have revealed that among the various foods humans enjoyed eating, orc was a favorite. A delicacy. Orcs didn’t know humans. None of the mortal species lived long enough to remember a time when humans inhabited cities and villages. With a little help from the Grimstone, Sorrows would have convinced the orcs he spoke the truth. And they would have hurried back to their tribe and spread the message that the tavern in the village was best avoided.
The second problem was the more pressing one. The female orc continued to misbehave. To move in a manner unlike orcs or any other mortal species. And when a mortal creature no longer acted like a mortal creature, then chances were the creature was not mortal.
“No.”
A quiet word, softly spoken. But a word that caused Sorrows to tense every muscle in his body. A word that sucked the breath out of Sorrows like a punch in the gut. And a voice that sounded more female, but less orc.
He turned again to see the pale orc studying him from ten paces away. She hadn’t been there a second ago. He took a step forward. She backed away quickly, holding out a hand.
“Stay there,” she said. “I can hear you just fine from here.”
“You don’t sound like an orc,” Sorrows said. He tightened his fingers around the hilt of the big orc’s blade.
“You don’t sound like an elf,” the orc said.
“I’m not an elf.”
“Perhaps I’m not an orc.”
“You look like an orc.”
“Do I? I wonder. Something doesn’t feel right about this one,” the orc said. She held her hand out, staring at her fingers as though noticing them for the first time. She twisted her arm at the elbow, rotated her wrist. Her eyes remained fixed on her hand as she spoke. “I know who you are, Hollow Man.”
“What did you call me?”
His mother had named him Solomon. The orc tongue involved a good deal of grunting and subsequent misunderstanding. Solomon, hollow man. It was a plausible mistake.