An Orc on the Wild Side

by Tom Holt

  “Thought so,” he said.

  “What?”

  “I heard a pin drop. I take it,” he went on, as she stared at him, “that the idea comes as a bit of a surprise.”

  “You broke your brooch.”

  “A present from King Drain. I didn’t like it much anyway. Well?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “It’s certainly—”

  “Refreshing? Imaginative? Radical?”

  “Weird,” she said. “Weird as a butter churn full of ferrets. Why?” she demanded. “What would be the point?”

  “You’re asking me what’s the point of females?”

  “Goblin females.”

  “Ah, I get you. You’re saying, why innovate when the goblin race is perfect as it is.”

  “No, actually that’s not—hello,” she said, catching sight of something. “What’s that?”

  “What?”

  “In the box under your chair.”

  “Oh, that.” He reached forward, pulled it out and handed it to her. She opened it and frowned. “It’s an egg whisk,” he said.

  “I can see that.” She turned the handle and the blades whirred. “Not bad. What do you want it for?”

  “It’s human.”

  “No, it’s an egg whisk. If it was human, it’d have arms and legs.”

  “Of human origin. Apparently it came from one of those new human settlements out by the old wizard’s tower.”

  “You turn the little crank and the blades spin round and round.”

  “You noticed that, too?”

  “That’s quite a neat idea,” Tinituviel said, with grudging admiration. “Takes much less strength and effort than the conventional type. And quicker, too.”

  “It’s a very fine egg whisk,” Mordak conceded. “So what?”

  “Humans made this?”

  “So?”

  “It’s better—” She stopped abruptly. “Almost as good as the Elvish pattern. Better than anything the dwarves make.” She looked at him. “How did you say you got hold of it?”

  “One of the scouts brought it back. He found it. On a trash-heap. Look, what about my goblin women idea? I want your honest opinion. What do you think?”

  “I think,” she said, frowning, “that people who can make something as ingenious and advanced as this, and then throw it away even though it’s still working just fine, are not your ordinary run-of-the-mill humans.” She looked at him. “What do we know about these colonists?”

  “Don’t look at me. You’re the one who gets all the reports.”

  “We know nothing about these colonists,” she amended. “Which won’t do at all. I’ll send out more scouts.”

  “You do that. Listen, what about goblin females? Do you think it’s a good idea or not?”

  “Straight away. I don’t like this. We need to find out about these humans. Just look at the work that’s gone into this,” she went on, turning the whisk over and staring hard at the flywheel. “That’s a casting, not forged. And look at how evenly the gear teeth are cut. I bet if you measured it with a pair of dwarvish callipers, you’d find it was made to really fine tolerances, like maybe thousandths of an inch. Which is why it runs so smoothly.”

  “Fascinating. So you think I should go ahead, then.”

  “And it’s plated. Not with silver, it’s something much harder than silver. A bit like mithril, I guess, but it isn’t that. Something harder and shinier than mithril, then. The dwarves are going to be livid when they find out about this.”

  “Or would it be better to forget the whole idea and carry on as we are?”

  “And what this stuff on the handgrip is I have absolutely no idea. It’s not horn, it’s not bone, it’s not ivory, it’s definitely not any kind of wood—”

  Mordak reached out, grabbed the egg whisk and took it away from her. “Hey,” she snapped. “I was looking at that.”

  “For crying out loud,” he said, “get over it, will you? It’s a kitchen appliance, that’s all.”

  She made a half-hearted grab for the whisk, then glared at him. “You don’t get it, do you?”

  “Get what?”

  “Look at it. Go on, look. Well?”

  “It’s an egg whisk.”

  “Fine.” The basilisk stare. Elves do it so well. “Now, I want you to ask yourself. What sort of people go to all that time and trouble and expense on a gadget for fluffing up egg whites?

  “I don’t know, do I? Idiots?”

  She shook her head. “Look at it another way,” she said. “If they can come up with something like this just so as to produce a better omelette, what else do you think they’re capable of making?”

  Drain son of Dror son of Drifel, King under the Mountain and hereditary Convener of the Dwarvenhold, cautiously opened one eye, then closed it again. The only light in the room was the faint amber glow of a single baked clay oil lamp, resting on a low table in the far corner. It was far too much for a dwarf with a bad migraine. He groaned; then his head swam, his stomach lurched and the molten lava started to pump through his hiatus hernia into his windpipe. Must’ve been something I ate, he told himself.

  In which case, it could only have been either the slack half-handful of dry roasted peanuts or the cocktail olive, which were the only things he’d eaten the night before, when he’d presided over the Grand Lodge Gala of the Ironworkers’ Guild. Doctor’s orders, naturally. That damned Elvish quack had told him he needed to lose weight; and, to be fair, maybe he had a point. It’s never a good sign when you’re taller lying down than standing up, and the only part of his ceremonial armour that now fitted him was the scabbard. Well; you don’t pay good money in ridiculous quantities to a needle-eared sawbones and not take his advice, so Drain had gone on a diet. Dry bread, lettuce, celery and skimmed-milk yoghurt. Washed down with all the beer he could get down him without falling over, of course, but that was drinking, not eating, and the Elvenquack had specifically said; you’re digging your grave with your teeth. Teeth, please note, not gullet. Drinks, therefore, were clearly not included in the regimen.

  Maybe it was lack of food that was making his head hurt so much; that and overexposure to searingly bright lamplight. It also appeared to be affecting his memory. They’d been celebrating something last night, he was pretty sure about that, but what was it?

  Signature. He’d signed something. That narrowed it down to five possibilities: treaty, contract, death warrant, banker’s draft or autograph. He could probably rule out three and five, and signing number four wasn’t something you’d celebrate. Contract or treaty? One or the other.

  He left his bedchamber and wandered down the corridor to the Royal Forge. Dunking his head in the water bucket stopped the throbbing in his temples but wasn’t much help in getting him to remember. He staggered another three doors down and kicked open the kitchen door.

  “Coffee,” he shouted.

  The trouble was, you couldn’t get the staff. Any dwarf with two hands and at least one leg worked in the forges or the stone yard or down the pit; cooking, therefore, was traditionally the remit of the infirm, the half-witted and the hopelessly unemployable, and tended to consist of porridge. If you wanted anything else, you had to hire foreigners, which generally meant humans, because you’d have to be dying of starvation to eat that Elvish muck, and the associations between goblins and eating that lurked in the dwarvish subconscious were enough to put anybody off his dinner. And humans—well. With an alternative like that, you quickly came to appreciate the finer points of porridge.

  Unless—

  It came flooding back; the reason for the celebration. A contract; a contract of employment.

  He looked round to make sure nobody was about, then backed up and looked at his reflection in a burnished copper pan. His hair was a mess and his beard looked like it should have blackberries growing in it. He wiped his fingers on a nearby pat of butter and did a bit of emergency slicking. Just in time.

  “Your Majesty.”

  She called him that.
He wasn’t the pompous sort, always standing on ceremony, and dwarves have always prided themselves on their sturdy egalitarianism; but after all, if you’ve got a title, it’s quite nice if people use it now and again, as a change from bumface or hey, you. “Ah,” he said. “Yes. Hello. I was just wondering—”

  “Coffee?”

  “Yes, please.”

  “Coming right up.”

  Another thing. Ms. White knew how to make coffee. She ground the acorns herself, knew just the right amount of lamp black and iron filings to give it that subtle boost, and always added just enough treacle. Until yesterday, she’d been head cook in the kitchens of Barn Ironteeth, deep under the passes of the Taupe Mountains. Yesterday, though, she’d put her name to a five-year contract to work exclusively for the House of Driri, starting immediately. It would almost certainly mean war. The first time he’d been over to a feast at Barn’s, the old fool had spent ten minutes describing in loving detail exactly what he’d do to anybody trying to poach his amazing new cook—but what the hell. Dwarves like war, Barn’s lot were rubbish at fighting, and with a bit of finesse and the help of a few Elvish intermediaries there was a better than even chance of selling the Taupe Mountains crowd a few thousand of those substandard mail shirts the humans had sent back the autumn before last. All that and decent coffee, too. No wonder he’d been celebrating.

  “You look a bit under the weather, Your Majesty.”

  Strictly speaking, dwarves are always under the weather, not to mention everything else, but he didn’t correct her on it. “Bit of a headache. Hay fever, probably.”

  “Hangover?”

  “Mm.”

  “Just a moment.” Ms. White went away, opened a few cupboards, mixed a few things and handed him a tin cup that fizzed disturbingly. “Try that.”

  “What is it?”

  “Good for you.”

  Ah well. King Drain hadn’t had an official food taster ever since the last incumbent had shouted, “I’m not eating that” when presented with a plate of human-style lasagne, and stormed off back to the iron-ore mines. He knocked it back in one, and a strange thing happened. Several strange things. His head stopped pounding. The lava flow slowed, then stopped. The coating of potter’s clay that had turned the inside of his mouth into a tandoor vanished, leaving a faint residual taste of apples. “Thank you,” he said.

  “You’re welcome. Breakfast?”

  Two minutes earlier, if someone had told King Drain that he’d ever want to eat again, he’d have pulled their beard out by the roots. “That’s not a bad—hang on.” He pulled a face. “Better not. This diet I’m on—”

  She smiled at him. “Oh yes,” she said. “I was meaning to talk to you about that.”

  A tiny ray of sunshine broke through the gloom that had descended when he’d said the D word. Passing through the lens of Hope, it grew so bright that you could’ve read a book by the glow from his ears. “Go on.”

  “Well,” she said, “obviously I’m not a doctor, and I’m sure this Elf knows his business and is properly qualified and everything, but I took a look at what he reckons you’re allowed to eat, and it did seem to me it was a teeny bit harsh.”

  The way to a dwarf’s heart is not through his stomach. If you’re a goblin, the best bet is an upward thrust to the armpit, whereas humans and other Tall Bastards are recommended to try stabbing down at the small gap between the spine and shoulder blade. That said, I quite like her, Drain thought, even if she is a human.

  “I mean,” she went on, “all this salad stuff. And yoghurt. You do know about yoghurt, don’t you?”

  “What about it?”

  “It’s crawling with bacteria. That’s Elvish for germs. Nasty little bugs,” she translated, “which you can’t see but which eat you alive from inside. Personally, I wouldn’t touch that stuff if you paid me.”

  “But Dr. Glorien—”

  “Yes, well. Where did you hear about him, by the way?”

  “From King Gnorin of the Olive Drab Hills. Recommended him very highly.”

  “Mphm. And King Gnorin is a close friend of yours?”

  Point. It wasn’t all that long ago that the Olive Drabbers had made a concerted effort to muscle in on the corrugated mithril trade, which had been a monopoly of the House of Driri for three hundred years. “Not close, no.”

  “Just as well. Friends like that should ideally be as far away as possible. Sorry,” she added quickly, “I’m speaking out of turn. But when I see people torturing themselves unnecessarily, it makes me so mad—”

  “Unnecessarily?”

  “You’re not fat. Well-built, maybe, but not fat.”

  King Drain gazed at her for a moment. A human could never be beautiful—skinny, tall, clean-shaven—but there’s such a thing as a beautiful soul; and as far as he was concerned, her soul was centrefold material. “My mother,” he said, “used to say I had big bones.”

  “There you are, then.”

  Mostly in his head, was what she’d actually said, but no need to elaborate unnecessarily. “So all the lettuce and stuff—”

  She frowned thoughtfully. “If I had a suspicious mind,” she said, “I’d be wondering if it wasn’t all part of a plot to sap your strength and diminish your standing in the world arena. If you ask me,” she went on, “what you could really do with is feeding up.”

  “You think so?”

  “Definitely. A man in your position, after all, at any moment you might be called on to defend the Mountain against Mordak and his evil hordes. You can’t be expected to do that on a few scraps of dandelion leaf and a chive.”

  It was in his mind to say that, actually, King Mordak wasn’t all that bad once you got to know him, and these days the goblins were probably the least of his problems. Something told him, however, that Ms. White wouldn’t approve of sentiments like that. Maybe it was the look of loathing that had contorted her face when she mentioned Mordak’s name. You learn to pick up on subtle little things like that when you’re a king. “Quite right,” he said accordingly. “Um, you’ve come across King Mordak then, have you?”

  “Him?” She scowled. “No, and I wouldn’t want to. Would you believe, his lot actually had the nerve to offer me a job, when I was still with King Barn? Head cook and royal housekeeper. I told them what they could do.”

  “Really.”

  “Oh yes. Well, for a start, head cook—you know how literal-minded goblins are. And cleaning up after those horrible creatures, I’d rather not think about it.”

  “So you came here.”

  “Yes. Maybe I’m old-fashioned, but I like to work for people who have standards, you know?”

  A bit of a non sequitur, that. True, he had standards, loads of them, mostly topped with goblin skulls or the Iron Fist of Driri. Just one more thing to dust and iron, he’d have thought, but maybe she enjoyed that sort of thing. You could never tell with humans. Gentle seismic activity in his stomach reminded him that he was drifting away from an important issue she’d flagged up earlier. “Breakfast,” he said.

  “Yes,” she replied crisply. “How about sausages, three fried eggs, a dozen rashers of streaky bacon, hash browns, mushrooms and two slices of fried bread?”

  Tautology; but he didn’t mind that. “And coffee.”

  “Of course coffee. You like it extra strong with treacle, don’t you?”

  There were six other dwarf-lords in the Realms, but the King under the Mountain was reckoned to be equal in wealth and power to the rest of them put together. All of which wealth and power, Drain vowed silently, he would unhesitatingly spend, down to the last man and the last grain of gold dust, to keep any of those six thieving bastards from doing to him what he’d done to that pinhead Barn. “Ms. White.”

  “Yes?”

  “I don’t think I quite caught your first name.”

  “Um.”

  “Excuse me?”

  She flushed slightly. “It’s Snow.”

  “Snow White?”

  “Yup.”
/>   “That’s an unusual—”

  She looked at him. “It’s short,” she said, “for ‘S-no-business-of-yours-what-my-first-name-is. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have sausages to fry.”

  His mouth had fallen open, and it took him time and effort to get it closed again. He’d offended her, he could see that, but how? Still, that’s humans for you. He remembered King Gnuin telling him once about a human he’d met at some function. “Lovely weather we’re having,” Gnuin had said, knowing that humans are interested in all that climate stuff, “absolutely glorious sunshine again, that’s three days in a row, most unusual for the time of year”; and the human had burst into tears and rushed off sobbing. Turned out he was an ice merchant, and all his stock was held up in a bonded warehouse somewhere, quietly melting. Moral: to avoid embarrassment, never say anything at all to a human if you can possibly avoid it.

  Barry and Patricia Lushington were just beginning to settle in to their new home, after a shaky start. The word shaky is used in its literal sense. Two days after the furniture arrived, the walls started to wobble and they found the master bedroom lying in heaps on the games room floor.

  “You’ve got to expect a bit of subsidence in these converted mineworkings,” the agent had told them, when they Skyped him to complain. “The place is ten thousand years old, after all. It’s there in the surveyors’ report, if you care to look.”

  The trouble was, Barry and Pat had fallen in love with the place when they were first shown round it, and had therefore read the report with a certain degree of optimistic scepticism. They’ve got to say that, Barry had said more than once, to cover themselves. After all, Pat had replied, it’s been there ten thousand years, it’s not going to fall down now, is it?

  Indeed. For nine thousand of those years, of course, it had been empty, ever since the previous occupants moved out in something of a hurry. Aggravation from the neighbours, the agent had explained; but that was all a long time ago, you shouldn’t have any trouble on that score.

  So they had the tunnels shored up and the pit props replaced; and it was great fun, because round every corner there was a new Great Hall or guard house or throne room waiting to be discovered, and, once the electric light was working and Pat had got some carpet down in the Chasm of Mazar-Glûm, it wasn’t long before the place started to feel homey and lived-in. It was exciting to think that their water came from their own artesian well, and they relished the thought of the savings they would make on their energy bills, thanks to the geothermal generator—