by E. M. Hardy
Kurdan, however, simply continued scowling as he surveyed the scene before him.
“Chieftain,” Shelur grunted in reply to Kurdan as she stepped in beside him, preparing her report. “Final numbers are in: five hundred, thirty-two humans in total. Three hundred and eighteen he-men, two hundred and fourteen she-men. Four hundred, eighty-six adults in total, with forty-six manlings. Of the total, we managed to capture eighteen priests and six mages.” Shelur shook her head as she turned around. “It’s… it’s unbelievable, the number of humans that we managed to capture.”
“We could have gotten more,” grumbled Kurdan. “If only I didn’t underestimate the humans.” Shelur craned her neck to look at her chieftain, her face contorted in equal parts awe and fear. Kurdan’s ambition shone so bright she was afraid he would blind her. Yet that same ambition made her stomach churn with fright. A great victory, a glorious achievement no other chieftain had ever attained, and it still wasn’t enough for him? Shelur lowered her head, ducking down to hide the tight knot in her stomach as she wondered where their Overchief was taking them all.
As for the orc who had yet to hear the new title the orcs were giving him, he simply shook his head at his own stupidity. He had expected to capture far more than a mere five hundred slaves. He knew that Greenhold was a garrison town—not a full human city. The vast majority of its occupants were soldiers, priests, and mages tasked with penning the orcs inside their forests. No surprise then that most of its occupants had died fighting off his raiders, which was well within his expectations. Once he had cleared the walls, his orcs could simply swarm the keep, breach its gates, and claim the humans cowering and seeking shelter within its stone walls.
What Kurdan did not expect, however, was to find a secret tunnel in the keep.
His slow, methodical advance on Greenhold had given its occupants plenty of time to escape, especially when it was clear that the town was going to fall. Fortunately for Kurdan, or unfortunately for the people of Greenhold, the escape tunnel was tiny. It was designed for couriers to sneak away and deliver messages during a prolonged siege, not facilitate the escape of hundreds of civilians after the walls fell in under half a day. It could accommodate only a handful of people at a time, and they would have to move at a snail’s pace within the winding tunnels. This was the only reason that his forces were still able to capture slaves—catching up to a few more as they followed the tunnels and sent hunting parties to round up those they could.
Isiah had warned him about such a possibility. He had said that human keeps often built tunnels leading away from the fortress itself. Kurdan, however, had been far more interested in suppressing the defenders of the keep than spreading his forces out to watch for tunnels that might not even exist. He had reasoned that he only had a thousand orcs, and he wanted them focused around the walls of Greenhold. He had made the excuse that he didn’t want to tip the humans off by sending orc scouting parties, that he wanted to shock the humans with a sudden charge of hidden reinforcements when the walls were nice and suppressed.
If only he had listened. If only he had taken his finest, stealthiest hunters and had them scour the woods around Greenhold in advance. Maybe they could have identified the tunnel exit for him, sealed it up to prevent escapees. Maybe Kurdan would have two, maybe three thousand slaves instead of just five hundred. Maybe he wouldn’t have given the humans time to evacuate if he had just commanded his orcs to scale the walls.
Then again, Kurdan may not even have five hundred slaves if he ordered his orcs to fall upon the walls of Greenhold in a frenzied charge. Furious, blooded orcs tended to leave little once they gave in to battle lust.
He sighed in resignation, banishing his frustration with a shake of his head. He wanted to send more raiders to chase after the fleeing humans, but he didn’t want his orcs getting penned in by the human horsemen from the military garrison a day’s ride away. Even now, his scouts were on the lookout against a possible reprisal. The humans didn’t often intrude into orcish territory, but Kurdan was not going to take any chances. This raid was larger than any seen before, and he was not entirely sure how the humans would react to him attacking a hardened frontier town. Maybe they would abandon Greenhold altogether, round up the escaped humans and bring them back to their garrison in Witherwatch to lick their wounds. Maybe they would ignore the dangers of the forests and attempt a raid of their own.
Alyon gasped, bringing her hands to her mouth while doing so. Her sudden outburst broke Kurdan out of his reverie, bringing him back to the present. The blind she-priest broke off from Kurdan’s side, her patched robe fluttering behind her as she followed a familiar aura that called out to her from within the downtrodden mass of slaves. Kurdan waved off the orcs beside him, silently sending a signal to the Snipers up in their towers to hold their bows. Bartholomew was confused by Alyon’s sudden outburst at first. As he followed her blind gaze, however, his own seeing eyes widened in alarm. He turned a questioning gaze toward Kurdan, who simply nodded in approval. Seeing the chieftain’s gesture of holding his bowmen at bay, Bartholomew turned on his heel and followed the she-priest toward their mutual acquaintance. He held her gently by the arm as he guided her down the palisade and toward the two orcs guarding the gate.
“You are not supposed to be here,” spat one of the orcish guards as he stepped in, checking Alyon’s advance with his massive body. The impact caused the she-priest to remember herself, to remember her position as a slave, and she cast her sightless gaze around.
“Bart,” she pleaded, her tone strained and filled with worry.
“I know,” replied the he-priest as he softened his grip on her arm. “Let me talk to Kurdan first. Maybe he’ll—”
Bartholomew was so focused on guiding Alyon, making sure that she didn’t hurt herself, that he didn’t even notice the orcish Overchief stalking after him.
“Step aside.” Kurdan growled out the demand to the guards as he fell in behind Alyon, his voice rumbling in displeasure. The two orc guards stiffened as they saw Kurdan, immediately giving way.
Alyon stepped back, surprised at the aura of the orc following her. He radiated annoyance, irritation, impatience… and curiosity. She always spotted a hint of deeper thought within Kurdan’s aura, but this was the first time she identified such an emotion from the normally standoffish orc.
It was at that moment of lucidity that she remembered something important: she didn’t ask for permission to leave his side.
“Um, mighty chieftain, I—”
“Prisoners!” Kurdan bellowed, pushing both Alyon and Bartholomew forward with one hand each. His shout caught the attention of the humans penned inside the stockade, who began shivering in fright at their fate. “Etch the faces of these two priests of Galena into your minds, for they are your overseers!”
The two priests jumped up in fright as hundreds of pairs of eyes swept over them. Now that he had everyone’s attention, he promptly slapped Alyon. Strong enough to send her tumbling to the ground, but not strong enough to shatter the bones of her face.
He pulled her up from the dirt, bringing her face closer to his own. “Do not forget your place, slave.” He murmured the words low but loud enough for the nearby prisoners to hear. He then shoved her toward Bartholomew, who grimaced at Kurdan with murder in his eyes. “See to your fellow prisoners,” Kurdan commanded loudly, “Make sure they are made aware of what is expected of them, as well as what will happen should they do anything but obey my directives.” He ignored Bartholomew’s scowl, focusing instead on sweeping an imperious gaze over the humans. Some avoided his gaze in submission, given up to the despair of their captivity. Others met his gaze, projecting as much defiance as they could get away with. Still others kept their eyes focused on the blind she-priest still dazed from the impact of Kurdan’s blow.
Soon enough, both Bartholomew and Alyon regained their bearings and began talking to the other slaves around them. After checking in on Alyon, Bartholomew broke off and coordinated
with the other slaves already in Kurdan’s camp. They brought pots of steaming stew and bundles of bedrolls to the new prisoners, all eagerly crowding around Alyon as she explained the rules of the camp.
“Dude, that was totally uncalled for,” Isiah thought, interrupting Kurdan’s own train of thought as he surveyed the scene before him.
“What are you referring to?” Kurdan replied as he walked back up the small hill overlooking the palisades penning the prisoners in. His lieutenants—Gnadug, Shelur, and Urul—nodded their greetings to him, which he replied to with a curt nod of his own.
“You didn’t have to knock her around. I mean, the lady probably saw a couple of her priest-friends and was just worried about them.”
Kurdan turned around when he reached the top of the hill, picking out his priests among the crowd. Alyon and Bartholomew were now clustered around the newly-captured priests, tears flowing as they exchanged greetings and regrets with one another. One of the captive priests brought a hand toward Alyon, intending to heal the damage done to her face. She fiercely shook her head, pointing instead toward the injured prisoners around them. The priest smiled sadly, apologetically, before he organized the other priests and spread them out.
“What is the saying in one of those television shows of yours? Good cop, bad cop?” Kurdan thought to Isiah.
“What? What do you mean… oh.”
Isiah caught on quickly as Kurdan shifted his gaze toward the other prisoners around the priests. Their own eyes were red with unshed tears as the priests began healing injuries. They shared their fears, anxieties, and miseries with the priests—including Alyon and Bartholomew. They and their fellow priests listened to Alyon as she explained how they would live their lives from that point on. She outlined the rules of the camp, the duties that were expected of them. Bartholomew chimed in once in a while, pointing out the details that she missed out on. The slaves would throw occasional glances toward the orcish chieftain, the new Overchief, who simply gazed on with a sneer on his face.
“You want them to know that Alyon and Bartholomew are one of them—slaves under your rule. You want them to pity her so she’ll have an easier time getting them under control.”
“Something like that,” Kurdan thought as he grunted to himself, ignoring the queer looks from the orcs around him. “I need those two priests to integrate these new slaves as quickly as they can. I need more farmers producing food, more researchers discovering the secrets of the world, more builders beginning work on building infrastructure for the tribes. I need it all done as soon as possible, which will be a lot easier if they love her and fear me.”
“Yes,” chimed in Isiah, adding a sneer to his own thoughts. “Before the rest of the humans wise up, stop dicking around, and send a whole army to beat you down.”
“There is that,” Kurdan admitted hesitantly. “The sooner I free up the other tribes from having to hunt and forage, the sooner I can start training them as a fighting force. I need disciplined troops to deal with the humans and their mages, not an unruly mob that only knows how to attack head-on. And even if that were the case, I would rather have them trained as Berserkers. At least then they’d last longer under the onslaught of human spells and lances.”
Kurdan then caught Isiah off-guard with a mischievous grin. “To be completely honest though, I just really want to hit the humans first before they have a chance to hit us back.”
The orc expected Isiah to counter with something witty, maybe a jab. It could go the other way, with Isiah groaning out a complaint that Kurdan would quickly shoot down. What he did not expect was the weight of emotion that washed over his connection to the human boy.
“Why are you so scared?”
That took Kurdan back, causing him to look around. He saw his lieutenants pretending to look elsewhere when he caught them staring at him. The other orcs passing by, however, looked up to him with respect and reverence all over their normally-hostile faces. Even the normally-abrasive Urgan no longer tried to challenge his rule, taking to his tasks and orders without so much as a side comment. To them, he was the Overchief—a mythical figure that had brought the orcs the greatest victory they had ever known.
And yet all he saw were bundles of rage and violence waiting to be unleashed upon their next victim. He could not see his people building anything with their hands, discovering anything about their world, or creating something that the world had never seen before. Even the ‘innovations’ that allowed him to rise so far up were stolen from a people not of his own. The inventions from Isiah’s world coupled with the discoveries of his slaves, those were the real keys to his success.
It came as a surprise to him that he viewed his own people with contempt; disgust, even.
“We orcs are driven by the need to prove our superiority through conflict and violence,” explained Kurdan. “My people would love nothing more than to just run, rut, and die in these forests. We pride ourselves over our ambition, of standing over the corpses of those we have defeated. Yet the orcish ambition is narrow, only seeing the obstacles before us. We never see the challenges over the mountain until it comes rolling over our heads and crushes us down into the dirt.”
Kurdan inhaled deeply, steeling himself for what he needed to admit to Isiah. “You have shown me how dangerous humans can be if left unchecked. Even now, we are nothing more than annoying pests on the borders of human territory, loud and dangerous but ultimately nothing more than annoyances. If they would ever stop warring among each other like we do, maybe if some human king comes along with enough power to unite them all, then their combined armies would easily crush us with spell and lance. They could simply rain down fire upon this forest, burn it and everything in it to the ground.”
Kurdan tightened the arms crossed over his shoulder, tensing his shoulders while doing so. “This is why I need human slaves—no, why I need humans. We orcs are good at what we do, but I need a people that are willing to build, to create, and not just destroy. I need more Isiahs among my tribe.”
The weight of Kurdan’s words settled within his mind, and he did all he could to hide the shame that crept into his face.
“Right,” Isiah thought after a moment of silence, huffing away his own embarrassment. “I guess I see where you’re coming from. I’ll help out where I can, how I can. We do, however, need to work on one of your weak points—one that could kill your entire cause in the long run.”
Kurdan jerked ramrod straight, taken aback by Isiah’s sudden declaration. The orcs around him jerked their own heads up in surprise, eyes dancing around for the threat that caused such an outburst from the Overchief himself.
“What is this weakness?” he growled to Isiah, eyes smoldering with alarm and concern.
“Diplomacy,” the human boy said, shaking his figurative head inside Kurdan’s mindspace.
Chapter 27
Isiah wanted to try solid paper books for once, taking the time to pick out ones covering historical treaties, diplomacy during warfare, and a couple on cultivating anger management skills.
He wanted a quiet, private place where his friends wouldn’t badger him so much with their incessant questions about orcs and magic. He especially wanted to avoid Bernabé’s teasing. This was why he went to the floor containing shelf after shelf of the library’s older, more academic books. Most kids would rather just do their research on their laptops or on the tablets that the school joined to the tables. They were off in the main lobby where most of the tablet-tethered desks were clustered. This privacy was why people either came to get away from the noise or to quietly make out—especially after they learned that the security cameras on this floor were old and busted.
This was why Isiah’s blood ran cold as he recognized the voice calling out to him—one that caught him alone in the library without his friends.
“Isiah Hunter.”
Only a handful of people were on the second floor, holding the few remaining paper books in the school’s library—and nobody
was hanging around the corner that Isiah trapped himself in. He doubted that Blevins would be brazen enough to lay the beatdown out here in the open, especially on a supposed cripple whose legs were still in casts.
He swiveled his chair around, pulling blood into his bones and flesh. He wouldn’t fight back now that he was pretending to be injured, but he could at least pop off a few ‘lucky’ shots that would leave a lasting impression just in case the idiot tried something stupid.
Isiah turned around expecting to see the sneer that Blevins usually wore when he went off on his tirades. That sneer, however, was only half-hearted—nowhere near as ferocious or malicious as he expected. It was awkward, forced… and almost sheepish.
“Is your father’s name Bradley Hunter?”
Isiah’s face immediately darkened as it settled into a deep frown. The last time Blevins brought up the topic of fathers, he ended up throwing around baseless accusations and getting Hasan’s dad all messed up by immigration. He threw aside all thoughts of hiding his injuries as he stood up and glared at his tormentor, ready to pop his neck off.
“What did you do, Blevins? If you pulled another stunt like the one you did with Hasan’s dad, I am going to smash your face into the floor so hard you’ll never be able to talk straight again.”