by E. M. Hardy
Hubert’s ashen face turned toward his granddaughter, his mouth opened wide in horror as Kurdan strode forth with a scowl far deeper—and deadlier—than anything the little girl threw his way.
At least that was his intention. The priestess quickly stood up, putting herself between Kurdan and Hubert’s granddaughter. “Mighty chieftain, little Henrietta here meant no disrespect. She—”
Kurdan shoved the priestess aside, his gaze fixed on the little manling. She hid behind her grandfather, who threw his arms wide in a feeble attempt to shield her. “No! Please! I’ll do anything! Just spare her, please!!”
“Hey,” whispered Isiah in alarm within Kurdan’s mind. “Dude. Are you seriously going to—”
“SILENCE, ALL OF YOU!!” bellowed Kurdan, who continued locking his gaze upon the hiding form of the little girl. He batted the old man aside as he reached down and grabbed the girl by the neck. “Finish that chant,” growled Kurdan at Alyon, whose quietly moving lips froze in place, “and I will snap this manling’s neck like a twig right before I snap yours and the old man’s.” The blind priestess pursed her lips, the brows creased in worry above the black strip covering her blind eyes.
“You. Manling. What is your name?” Kurdan loosened his grip on her neck enough to let her breathe normally. Isiah ceased his protests the moment he comprehended Kurdan’s intentions for the little girl.
“Henrietta,” glowered the girl right back, her eyes darting between Kurdan and her grandfather. “Put me down, you big meanie.”
Kurdan grunted and shook the little girl strongly enough for her eyes to spin dizzily but gently enough to avoid breaking her neck. “Understand this, Henrietta. I am stronger than you are. You do not pick fights with those stronger than you are. You will need to grow stronger before you even think of defying me the way you just did. Do you understand?”
The girl’s dizzy spell faded and went back to glaring at him in defiance. “You use too many big words. Just… just stop bullying grampa!” The little girl tried and failed to wiggle free from Kurdan’s grip, feebly kicking him in the chin instead. Kurdan snarled as he brought the girl’s face closer to his own. “Manling,” he growled with as much menace as he could manage. “Stop moving, or I will hurt you bad right before I hurt your grampa even worse.”
Henrietta froze on the spot, her fingers no longer fighting to extricate herself from Kurdan’s grip.
“Please, chieftain, she is just a child!” wailed Hubert, his words coming out through ragged breaths. “She is just concerned for my safety! She meant no harm!”
“She means harm,” Kurdan said as the girl shifted her gaze nervously between Kurdan and her grandfather. “She just does not have the means to perpetrate that harm.” Kurdan gently lowered Henrietta to the ground, letting her go once she found her footing. “This one has spirit,” continued Kurdan as he crossed his arms and studied the little hellion as she scampered away to hug her relieved grandfather. He actually smiled at that, imagining his own brood of orclings growling around and challenging him every opportunity they had.
Images floated within his mind—of carefully beating his orclings down until they submitted, testing their strength daily, watching over their brawls, and beating them down once more when they grew old and strong enough to be a real threat to him. And with Isiah’s help, he could give his orclings the kind of training and education that would make them far stronger than he was right now. He reveled in the dream as he stared at Henrietta from behind her grandfather’s back, then shook those dreams away as he snapped back to reality with a frown on his face.
“But not enough fear.”
He turned his gaze to Hubert, who pulled the girl further behind him. “Old man,” Kurdan said, “Stop coddling the manling and teach her some fear. Beat it into her. Fear is the first lesson every orcling learns from birth, for it teaches them to avoid the dangers all around them. I would have had to kill her if she had attacked me in public, in front of my tribe.” Kurdan’s frown turned upside down, morphing into a wicked grin. “Or you could leave her to continue being defiant. I am sure the tribe will welcome the opportunity to torment a manling to death, especially one that would last no more than a few minutes. They are frustrated with my decision to hold off the torments, after all.”
Hubert’s face turned an even lighter shade of white as Kurdan’s words penetrated his soul. He gripped his granddaughter tightly, and she gripped him tightly in turn. “Go,” Kurdan barked before turning around and strapping his weapons to back and hips. “The hunters will return soon with more samples for you to experiment with. This gift of yours has ensured my full and focused protection for both your oldings and your manlings. Continue being useful, and you continue enjoying that protection. Defy me or fail to produce results, and my tribe will have the playthings that I have taken away from them.”
A few shuffles and the flapping of leather skins was all the response that Kurdan received. He worked on his club, tightening the strap to his belt before slipping his massive battle-axe on his back. He was going to lead the drills today, and he had to come fully prepared. Gnadug was skilled enough in the basics—fists, axes, clubs, and daggers—but he had difficulty understanding spears and formations. The job of drilling his warriors and bullying the lessons into their stubborn minds fell to Kurdan.
He was pleased that Gnadug had changed his mind. The big orc had been surprised enough that Kurdan had spared him, especially since duels usually ended with the death of one or both orcs in mortal combat. Kurdan thought that Gnadug would be defiant to the end, but he eventually decided that he could at least throw his strength with the tribe. He then accepted Kurdan’s invitation to remain his Axe and lead the warriors in combat, though he still didn’t fully agree with the direction Kurdan was leading the tribe into. In the end, Kurdan was relieved that he didn’t have to put down his friend—a fact that he would never admit to any other orc within the tribe.
And he would need Gnadug’s aid soon enough. His scouts had found traces of other orcs intruding around the edges of his tribe’s territory. The other tribes must have gotten wind of old Zurgha’s death. The scent of his tribe’s blood was in the air, and no doubt opportunists from the larger tribes would come sniffing around for the carcass. He needed to prepare his orcs for the inevitable raid. If he was lucky, he would only deal with a party of exiled orcs looking to redeem themselves with a brave but foolhardy attack on his small tribe. If he was unlucky, he would have to beat back an entire warband from one of the larger tribes seeking to expand their territory.
He grabbed the spear resting on the side of his bed and turned around. He raised a brow as Alyon remained where she had been standing, hands clasped on her lap.
“Why are you still here, priest?” Kurdan growled in warning.
Alyon tightened her hands together as she hesitated. “I do not wish to challenge your authority, chieftain. You made me leader of… of your slaves.” Her shoulders drooped at that last comment, the weight of her responsibilities pulling them down. She gathered her resolve after a moment and straightened her shoulders as she steeled herself for what would come next. “I have questions that I need answered. The knowledge will help me to better conduct myself in this role I find myself playing.”
Kurdan scowled, hiding the fact that he was pleased by the way the she-priest conducted herself this time around. “Ask your questions, then,” he rumbled.
Alyon exhaled in relief. She remembered herself then and resumed her stoic posture. “How exactly do you want us to behave around you and the other orcs?”
Kurdan narrowed his eyes threateningly, at least until he realized the she-priest could not see him doing so. She had ways of sensing the world, true, but she could not see the world as he saw it. “Explain,” he rumbled once more with the same bluntness as before.
“We try to act as submissive as we can,” she said, gripping her hands tighter on her lap. “Yet many of us do not know the difference between being submissive
and being cowardly. I am worried about our inability to grasp the difference, especially if it means the difference between life and death.”
Kurdan chuckled, causing Alyon to jump up in surprise. “A good question. And fair, given your current circumstances.”
Alyon’s surprise doubled at Kurdan’s choice of words, her brows going up as high as they could. He silently berated himself, realizing that Isiah’s manner of speaking was starting to rub off on him.
“Right now, you are slaves. Your role is to obey my orders without question, without distraction. If I tell you to do something, you will see it done as completely and as competently as you can. If I ask you a question, you will answer it as thoroughly and as accurately as you can. Do not make excuses. Do not cower. Do not grovel. Do not waste time begging for mercy or simpering like a fool. There, is that simple enough for you to understand?”
Alyon went silent for a moment. Kurdan groaned, unable to believe that the she-priest had difficulty understanding even these dumbed-down instructions. He was busy thinking up an even simpler explanation when she finally spoke up. “We are slaves… right now?” She gulped, unable to contain the tremble in her voice. “Does this mean… does this mean we might not be slaves? Sometime in the future?”
Kurdan cursed himself for the slip-up. Here he was, preaching about competence and accuracy when he was the one revealing more than he intended to.
“Hey,” whispered Isiah within Kurdan’s mind. “Fear isn’t the only way to get people to do what you want. Hope is just as effective, if not more, than fear… at least when it comes to us humans.”
“Yes,” he replied out loud to Alyon as he huffed in annoyance, slowly shaking his head from side to side as he lowered his voice. “You guess right. My plan, however, will only work if you are able to prove yourselves useful enough that the rest of the tribe sees you as assets to treasure rather than livestock to abuse.” He grimaced as he stepped closer to Alyon, lowering his voice even further while the priestess trembled. “My orcs will accept many things as long as I emphasize strength and superiority. They will follow my orders if I keep to this belief. Viewing your kind as anything more than servile beasts of burden? I am already stretching the limits of what is acceptable by keeping you as slaves of burden, not slaves of torment. They will not, however, accept humans walking freely among them. At least not right now. I will eventually attain enough power, enough achievements, to force every whim, every desecration upon my tribe. Until that day comes, you will keep all this to yourself. Am I understood, she-priest?”
Alyon nodded, trembling even harder now. Kurdan was not sure, however, whether the priest trembled out of fear—or excitement.
Chapter 13
Isiah stared at the screen, slack jawed. It had only been a few months since the attack on various major cities around California, and now there was another attack going on in Ohio—this time, in the city of Lorain. The TV showed shaky amateur footage, the cameraman hiding from a window as masked gunmen traded shots with woefully underequipped police officers. The phone-captured footage had been taken during the early phases of the attack though, and the TV switched to a more recent clip showing SWAT and Homeland Security surrounding a building where the Golden Sword terrorists holed themselves up in. It was exactly like what had happened in California, down to the execution of hostages, but on a much smaller scale.
Isiah’s mom shook her head, her brows furrowed in outrage. “Lorain? Where the heck is Lorain?”
“Ohio,” Isiah answered emptily as he glued his eyes to the screen, which switched over to pundits who tried talking over one another with their theories and suppositions.
Isiah’s mother shot an alarmed glance at Isiah, noting the lack of vigor in his voice as well as his intense fascination with the attack. She picked up the remote and turned the TV off, shaking her head. “Right. Enough of that now. Time for you kids to go off to school. James! Soo-Young! Stop horsing around and come on down! I’m driving you all to school today!”
Isiah rolled his eyes. His mom had a right to be worried, but driving them all to school? That was just going overboard. “Oh, come on, mom. We’ll be fine. I doubt some GS douchebags are going to hit our bus for the heck of it. And besides, there’s nothing you can do if they decide to hit our school.”
His mother rounded about and glared at him, then deflated as she exhaled. “After the whole thing in California, when I thought I lost Chunso because of those bastards?” She buried her face in her hands as she continued. “I just… I just can’t stand the thought of losing you three as well.” She lifted her head out of her hands, a deep frown engraved on her face as she found herself lost in thought. “You know, I think it might be better if you stopped hanging around that one friend of yours.”
Isiah stared at his mother, taken aback by the abrupt shift in topic. “What? Where’d this come from?”
“That Muslim one… Hasan, I think?”
Isiah’s eyes widened in alarm, which gave way to seething fury as he realized that his mother was being dead serious. “Mom. Are you seriously going there?”
Isiah’s mother jumped up in surprise at the hostility rolling out from her son’s grimacing face. “I’m not trying to be racist or anything, but you cannot change the fact that these Golden Sword attackers are Muslims from the Middle East! What if he’s secretly one of them!?”
Isiah’s anger only deepened, his scowl widening in menace. “You have no idea what you are talking about. Hasan and his family are refugees from Iraq—victims of the Golden Sword. They lost family and friends to the purges, and now you think that Hasan has something to do with the GS just because he looks like them!? Dammit, mom, I was expecting this kind of bullcrap from crackers like Blevins, but from you? You of all people should know what it feels like when you aren’t being American enough to make up for your Korean blood!”
“Lower you voice, son,” interrupted Isiah’s father as he rounded the corner, Isiah’s siblings James and Soo-Young clutching their father’s pants in fear. “Your mother may be wrong in this matter, but she still has your best interests in heart. Give her the respect she deserves.”
“But dad—”
“Do NOT make me repeat myself, Isiah Hunter,” warned Bradley Hunter, his stiff voice a distant break from his usually tolerant and indulgent tone.
Isiah bit his tongue as he glared at his father. He turned away after a moment, fighting back the blood that threatened to boil at the dominance his father was asserting. He inhaled and nodded sharply, forcing himself to dissipate the anger that he felt.
Isiah’s father nodded in return before turning to his wife. “Hwa-Young… love… our son has a point. The Golden Sword wants us to hate one another, to drive a wedge between us.” He turned on the TV and set it to mute, nodding toward the pundits waving their hands about and silently screaming at one another. “Insurgency 101: create a minority that the majority fears. Ensure the minority is oppressed, restricted, discriminated against, and you create a willing pool of recruits to tap into. It’s a formula that Al-Qaeda used to full effect after 9/11, one that many successor groups like the Golden Sword are replicating with disturbingly effective vigor. We need to fight that as much as we need to fight the GS off with guns and bombs of our own.”
Hwa-Young could only bow her head in shame, bravely fighting against the tears that threatened to spill from her eyes. Bradley’s expression softened, and he moved closer to envelop his wife in a hug. James and little Soo-Young joined in the embrace, with Isiah standing awkwardly away. Bradley raised a brow at his son, tossing his head in a quick invite. Isiah sighed, smiled sadly, and joined the group hug.
“Hey mom,” Isiah added as he tried and failed to cover a smirk over the awkwardness of the hug. “If it’ll help… you have my promise that I’ll snap Hasan’s neck the moment he tries something stupid like shoot up the school with bombs strapped to his chest. Until then, is it okay if I call him and the other guys over on gaming nights?”
>
He meant it as a joke to reduce the tension, to reconcile with his mother, but his mother only glared at him in disapproval before rapping his head with a knuckle and pulling him tighter into the family hug. Isiah’s father, however, crinkled his brow in worry at Isiah’s choice of words.
***
“Your mom said WHAT!?”
Isiah shrugged, sipping from the carton of apple juice while Hasan stared at him slack-jawed.
“Jesus, Zeyah. I thought Missus Hunter was a bit cooler than that,” commented Bernabé, slowly shaking his head this way and that.
“Hey,” whispered Eddison. “Missis H ain’t so bad. I mean, what she did wasn’t cool, but she’s not trying to be intentionally douchebaggy or something.”
Hasan stared at his school lunch, playing with a few peas before spearing one with his fork. “Huh. So does this mean… does this mean I won’t get to stuff my face with those delicious kim-bap rolls she makes anymore?
Isiah ducked to the side, grimacing as he dodged a squirt of milk that shot its way out of Abigail’s nose. “JESUS!” Eddison barked out, unable to move fast enough to avoid the spray that Abigail directed his way. The crowd around them chortled and pointed as Abigail tried and failed to contain her laughter.
“Hasan, you gluttonous ASS!” she barked out, accepting a handkerchief from Olivia that she used to wipe away the milk that dripped onto the table. Fortunately for her, she managed to direct the spray away from her clothes—and into Eddison’s.
Hasan chuckled, though he could not completely quash the pain and sorrow hiding behind his eyes. “Hey,” he said, reaching out to offer his own handkerchief along with Olivia’s. “Gotta look at the bright side, yeah? But seriously,” added Hasan as he turned to Isiah, “Am I like banned from your house or something?”
“Nope,” Isiah replied while shaking his head. “Dad got her to change her mind. She was just scared, you know. She didn’t really mean it.” He allowed a wry smile to form on his lips just then. “And yes, she’s making them rolls on Friday. A huge batch of them for all of us—you included.”