by Ethan Spears
His elves laughed and jeered behind him. Aoden switched to Orcish. “Are you trying to get yourself killed? I give you this chance to flee. Get out of here and take your child with you before this chance is gone!”
Confusion crept into her angry expression, either because she was faced with the strange sight of an elf speaking Orcish, or because Aoden had used the same condescending tone that he had used in Elvish and it clashed with the words he spoke. The men behind him seemed to be enjoying his insulting tone, regardless of their ability to understand it.
“I’m sparing you. Those behind me won’t think twice about killing you or your kid. Go on! Get!”
“...you green-faced animal!” he added in Elvish.
The orc took a single step back. Yes, Aoden thought. Go. Please flee. With one last indignant glance at Aoden’s face, she turned and ran into the woods, scooping up her child and disappearing.
Aoden laughed as she left, but inwardly he nearly collapsed with relief. He knew the desperate look in her eye: were there a weapon on the ground near her, she would almost surely have attempted to kill him, an action that would have only lead to her own death.
His archers, moments before ready to shoot down the woman, were now sharing with one another the number of orcs they had struck down. By the end, there was an estimate of over one hundred kills. There was some argument over whose arrow had felled which orc, but they were settled quickly and everyone had their numbers with one elf proudly proclaiming eleven uncontested kills. Aoden, though he had not been keeping steady count, could recall at least four of his own, a bit below average. He had, after all, been distracted.
Aoden quickly penned a report stating their success and confirmed kills, handing it to the scout. As he ran off, the Commander ordered his men to disperse and search for anything of value that the orcs may have been transporting. The elves went about the task with enthusiasm, each keeping an eye on the tree line for any more emergent orcs.
Chapter 2
Heart and Fire
A single pyre was built for the one hundred and two fallen warriors.
The orcs wore purple cloaks, the color of mourning, and hid their faces in like-colored hoods. There had not been near enough mourning cloaks for everyone who suffered that day, so many had been quickly dyed, leaving purpled blotches on the ground beneath the mourners as if Aden itself was bruised from the pain of its children.
The loss was felt personally by every orc. Hundreds of them. Though the slaughtered clan had been separate from theirs, the close marriage ties between the two meant that every member of the clan lost a beloved father, brother, husband, or son, and many lost more. They sat on their knees with the tops of their feet, their palms, and the bridges of their nose pressed flat to the ground, all in great concentric rings facing the pyre.
The light and smoke could be seen for many miles. Foragers and traders from nearby tribes would avoid the place, as would the stream of refugees that had been pouring westward over the recent years. A lessening of those trespassers for even one day would have been a blessing had the price not been so grievously steep.
Among the mourners sat Jierta, deep in contemplation upon a blanket on the sun-baked dirt. The blanket wasn’t a proper prayer mat—they didn’t have enough of those either—but it protected her legs as she pressed her head into the dirt, her mouth moving restlessly in silent prayer. Dozens of men, women, and children were around her doing the same, but her mind was closed to them. In her head, she saw only her husband, his throat pierced through with a single fatal arrow, his expression fixed in agony, his eyes vacant and unfocused. It was an expression she had not seen herself, but her nightmares allowed her to imagine. Now his body was ash, burnt upon the great pyre with a hundred and one other warriors who had done no wrong.
Her husband had been of Pon Gundruc—the Deep Root Clan in the Orcish tongue—as were many of those around her, but that clan was effectively dead. With the warriors and elders slain, the women, children, old, and infirm were traditionally left to fend for themselves until some other clan took them in through kindness or need. With all the refugees fleeing Kenta’s fanatics, however, the other clans’ numbers had swelled so dangerously that they could barely sustain themselves anymore, much less several dozen new mouths. It was only due to the level of the catastrophe and the many marriages between their clans that the Pon Gundruc orcs found themselves welcome, albeit reluctantly, among the Mak Vatal, Jierta’s own Silver People. The cost would be heavy in the coming months, perhaps even unsustainable, but if her people had any honor, the close ties between the clans could not go ignored.
The broken clan brought the story on hands and knees, desperate for aid: Pon Gundruc had been traveling west and north, skirting the lands of those pink-skinned devils, their hated enemy whose names they cursed. Kanok. Genno. Liel.
Elves.
The elders of Pon Gundruc had thought that if they avoided their ancestral forests, the elves would leave them be, but they were mistaken; the elves’ wrath extended beyond even the borders of their lands. They had all learned that lesson. Some had learned this truth harder still. They were only migrating, neither wanting nor expecting trouble. Had they thought they would find any, the women and children would never have been brought along. Then the elves struck, and women and children were all that was left to bring the terrible news back.
Brothers, fathers, and sons lay half a continent away, but duty demanded they be brought back and put to proper rest. Retrieving the bodies had taken well over a month. Sixteen orcs from the Mak Vatal had volunteered. They moved with wagons, no torches, resting and hiding during the day, traveling at night, and sweeping their tracks as they went. Long and bitter centuries of experience taught the people of the Mak Vatal how to hide from even the master trackers of the elves. They wouldn’t risk being spotted again.
Unsurprisingly, the savage elves had left the bodies unburied to rot. The corpses had been feasted upon by wild animals, torn apart, picked fleshless by carrion. The Mak Vatal orcs found what they could, refusing to leave until they were certain they recovered every skull that hadn’t been destroyed or carried off, for that was where the spirit lay. Without the head, they could not be sent on to the great hereafter.
And now they burned. And they were the lucky ones; forty others were never found, head or body, including the women, children, and old men who had run into the woods and vanished, never to be seen again. The dead that were found would at least have a chance to reach the afterlife, but those that were missing never would, their unburnt bodies trapping their spirits forever on Aden, their names long forgotten before prayers could send them on. Many of the skulls were fleshless and unidentifiable, but the orcs prayed anyway, hoping their loved ones weren’t among the unlucky who were missing still. It was an atrocity that would go unpunished and unavenged.
Jierta stayed upon her blanket throughout the day under the scorching summer sun, its heat radiating from the sky above and with equal intensity from the hardened dirt below. Children came by with water and food for the mourners, but she did not open her eyes to acknowledge them and they left her alone.
Then she felt it, just as she had with her daughter. Her body warmed, then chilled, like something had passed through it, and she could sense his spirit rising into the sky, feel Larna slipping away from her, moving on. She had to keep herself from looking up and searching for him, instead praying more insistently, urging the spirit onwards, imploring it to leave this world and find the next and know peace. She could feel him above her, floating higher, disappearing.
And then he was gone.
The sun was hovering over the western horizon before Jierta, parched and weak, gathered up her blanket and wandered away, passing those who were praying, still waiting to feel what she had felt, and knowing that some never would.
She threaded her way through the kneeling orcs and headed towards the village, the pyre and mourning circle having been built well away from even the remotest huts. Still, she wouldn’
t have far to walk, stopping by a large hut on the outskirts, light streaming through where the reedwood planks didn’t meet flush with one another. The voices inside were loud, a mask of cheer over their mourning that made her uneasy. Though she would rather go to her own hut and sleep, she made herself walk up and knock on the door.
Some of the voices inside quieted. She heard a body rise and heavy footsteps approach. The door opened sharply, and before she could see who answered, his arms were already pulling her into a vise-like hug.
“Jiji, my daughter, my heart,” said the large old orc, pressing her face to his chest and kissing her head. “Larna is finally at rest.” It wasn’t a question. They both knew she would be out there still if she hadn’t felt him go.
Jierta tried to mumble something into his chest, but he pressed her face even harder against him. “Tana is already asleep,” he said, anticipating her question. “He’ll sleep here tonight. The boy can sleep through anything. Now say nothing. Come in and be silent, for to hear the hurt in your voice would break this old man’s spirit.”
He released her from his hug and guided her inside with a hand on her shoulder. Many of his old friends were sitting in a circle in the central room sharing beer, food, and stories, mourning the men and elders they knew who had passed. Empty flatware had been put off to the side to signify those who could no longer join them, including the red-dyed dish that had traditionally been Jierta’s mother’s, spotless from years of disuse.
“Daughter,” called some of the old men, many of whom she had known since she was an infant. “Jiji,” called others, offering sympathetic smiles or lifting their crock mugs and taking a drink to her health. Only her younger brother, who sat to her father’s right, called her ‘Jierta’ as he enfolded her in an embrace far gentler than the one her father had greeted her with.
Jierta nodded mutely back at the many greetings, working hard to keep herself calm. At a time when she wanted to be alone, the presence of all these men and their attentions made her feel faint, but she bore up under it as her father led her to a place to sit.
Jierta could tell she was the last to arrive, for as she lowered herself into her seat, her father waved for quiet. The voices died down as her father strode to the center of the circle of sitting men, walking about and meeting each eye.
“Life,” he said thoughtfully, using the poet’s voice he had cultivated over his long life to give the word a musical lilt. “Birth. Growth. Love. Injustice. Death.” He paused and lowered his eyes theatrically. “Friends say farewell, brothers lay buried, and lovers are lost.” He spun in a full circle on the balls of his feet, stomped, and looked upwards with arms extended. “Where does time go when it dies? Does it too wander like a spirit? Does each second mourn each second passed? Or does it celebrate every second that was used to its fullest, partaken by every living thing to grow and live and love?
“We’ve lost much, but we are not lost ourselves, my friends. You still control your life and your time, and you have chosen to use that time, those precious mortal seconds, to come to my home and share my food, and I thank you and say bless you.”
The circle of men slapped their palms to the ground. A few voiced their appreciation, and some drank, until silence and stillness again descended.
“Let not the spirits of those departed look down upon splintered hopes and broken people,” her father continued, clasping his hands over his heart. “Let them look down on lives of joy and happiness, lives that have meant and continue to mean something to those who partake and share in them. Our suffering will be their suffering, so let us suffer on their behalf no more. Let us love, let us live, and let us sing.”
He lowered his head and the others following suit. Jierta lowered her head and listened in silence as the men intoned the mourning prayer of her people, their deep voices joined together reverently.
Father, upward, turn your eyes
Pray as lost souls fill the skies
Blessed fire, sacred earth,
Bring them skyward for rebirth
Wind upon the sandy way
Don’t allow the souls to stray
In the heavens, give them breath
Laugh into the face of death
Father, mother, hear our cry,
Now unto the day we die
Let us reap whate’er we sow
Let us prosper ere we go.
The men again slapped their palms on the ground and drank, tears flowing freely as their voices rose again and they sang and called out and told stories. Jierta’s father sat next to her, his arm wrapping around her and drawing her close.
“My heart breaks for you, Jiji,” he said in a close whisper that cut sharply through the noise as he shook her by the shoulder. “It breaks for you, but it breaks for me as well. I loved your husband like a son and was prepared to cherish your daughter, I do not doubt. Such losses can never be recovered, be replaced, be mended, but we can build anew over the ruins. Do this, daughter, and be strong.”
His eyes brushed over the faces of the men in the room. “I know you wish to be home, daughter. Give them a few polite minutes of your time, then go and sleep. We can talk tomorrow.” He then released her and turned to her brother.
She did as she was instructed. As one of the youngest mourners in the room, she was expected to wait for those older and more experienced with loss to come to her to offer sympathy, waiting quietly as men lifted their cups to her or went up to tell her that they shared her pain or tell her of their own. She nodded and smiled and sighed where appropriate but kept her words to herself. One man she called uncle walked up to her with a solid stride, but when he tried to speak, he couldn’t staunch the flow of tears and went away without uttering a word. Before too long, the men stopped coming up to her and she might as well be invisible to them. They too were giving her their tacit encouragement to leave, so she took that to be the proper time and stood to excuse herself. Her father was tactfully distracted with another conversation, so she could slip away without needing to draw his attention, and though he would be keenly aware of her leaving, he would pretend not to be for her sake. She let herself outside where the sun had sunk beyond the horizon but whose light still painted the ground a ruddy color.
She trudged back to her house with a heavy heart. Her home was made of reedwood, little more than the bark and outer layers stripped from what few reedwood trees there were in the area. Small, round, and it let in the rain; it wasn’t much, but her clan had done their best to provide for their returning daughter. There were no windows, a rough grass roof, and a reedwood door that now stood ajar.
She removed her sandals and placed them outside on the dried grass mat, seeing another pair there already. She stepped through the open door and looked around the hut as her eyes adjusted.
Now that Larna’s spirit was sent on and truly gone, her hut felt immense, larger even than her father’s spacious house. Against the far wall sat her bed, its frame actual reedwood instead of just bark scrapings, with a mattress of plainsrunner feathers and a heavy woolen blanket kicked askew after a restless night. At its foot lay a wicker chest, open, its contents scattered on the floor and bed; socks and thick gowns and spare bits of wool and fiber for patchwork. To her left lay the hardened clay washbasin, a gift from her family they had used for bathing and washing clothes and earthenware dishes, now filled with water blackened by ink. She doubted the ink stains would come out. To her right was the desk. Larna’s desk. He had sat at it more nights than not, reading from scrolls borrowed from the elders. An orc sat at it now, but it wasn’t him.
The orc hunched over thick tomes, sheets of parchment and ink at the ready as she closely examined each line before her. If she noticed Jierta entering, she showed no sign of it. When Jierta closed the door, the orc grunted in annoyance and pulled the candle on the desk closer.
“Mergau,” Jierta said, her voice as dry and cracked as the earth outside.
The orc reached for a waterskin, tossing it to Jierta without looking back. “Dr
ink. You sound awful,” she said sternly. Jierta obliged, realizing her own thirst as soon as the water touched her lips.
She drank greedily, nearly draining the skin before she stoppered it. She sat on the ground and leaned against the wall, placing the skin carefully down between her legs. “Mergau,” she said again, “you should have been praying for Larna as well. He had no other family to guide his spirit.”
Mergau turned the page of her tome and did not answer. She scribbled a note on her paper in earnest. Jierta knew she should be angered for being ignored, but she was too exhausted, both physically and emotionally. She curled up her legs and smooshed her nose into her legs. The hut’s smell reminded her of her husband. She hated it. Minutes passed this way as the last light of day vanished.
“I wanted to avenge him,” Mergau said finally, her quill suspended over the desk in the middle of a stroke. “His murderer was right there, and I could do nothing.”
Jierta was silent. Mergau stood suddenly and turned towards her. “I could’ve killed the elf right then and there, but I didn’t. I didn’t have a weapon.” She shook her fists in frustration. “I failed Larna.”
“Stop blaming yourself,” Jierta mumbled into her knees, a phrase rendered half-hearted from being used so frequently over the past weeks.
Mergau straightened sharply as if expecting a blow. “Then you must blame me.”
Jierta sighed. “No, I will not.”
“Why? Why not?”
“You’re not a warrior, Mergau. It isn’t your place to seek vengeance.” With some irritation, she tried to remember if they had this same conversation yesterday or the day before yesterday.
“I’d gladly have thrown away my life to avenge my brother.”
Jierta stood now, her temper flaring. “And what? You would’ve left my son out there to die? No, because you lived you were able to bring him back safely. You may hate yourself for it, but you made the right choice.” Her anger ebbed as quickly as it had come and she was tired again. “Why can’t you accept that?” she whimpered, sliding back down the wall.