The Game of Fates

by Joel Babbitt

  ‘Great, now I’ve been sold to another orc. Well, at least I’m a slave now, so they probably won’t be eating me anytime soon,’ he thought wryly.

  The new orc took Trallik to the back of the hall, through a crudely constructed wooden door, and into a smaller chamber. There he bent down and arranged a couple of bulky things with his other arm then, standing up again, he dropped Trallik to the ground, on top of a couple of sacks of grain. Trallik would have grunted, or at least groaned, but he was too sore.

  The tall orc loomed over Trallik for a few moments, then apparently after deciding that Trallik had been beaten into submission, he reached down and cut the crude thongs off of his hands and feet and threw them off to one side. After a moment or two of looking at the listless kobold, the orc poked him with one booted foot. Getting no noticeable reaction, the orc said something unintelligible, presumably to someone else in the room, then turned and left.

  A distinctly feminine kobold voice answered the orc in its own guttural tongue.

  While this was all very exciting, Trallik’s body decided it had had enough excitement for the moment and promptly slipped back into unconsciousness.

  Manechar Shaman of Fire stood with a scowl on his face considering the report that the warrior the others had taken to calling ‘Skunk’ was giving him. If he was to be believed, what was obviously a magical talisman of great power, indeed the very Kale Stone itself which was one of the five original kobold stones of power, had been found on a lowly warrior who had been trying to join the riff-raff that passed around here for kobold mercenaries. Not that Skunk had any idea of what he’d found…

  “You say he have sword mark on chest?” the powerful shaman asked the quivering mass of muscle and armor who stood in front of him.

  “Yes, master,” Skunk answered meekly, almost repentantly.

  “You sure there no tower with eye on him or stuff?” Manechar pressed.

  “Yes, master… uh, no, master… uh, he no have tower mark.”

  Skunk was already scared, and now he was growing flustered as well. Manechar would use this to his advantage. “Good. I take stone. I make it not angry with Skunk for steal it. I have slaves take away rest of stuff.” Manechar looked down at his desk as though he were actually bothering to paw through the various belts, pouches, bags and knives that the orc had brought him. After a couple of moments, he could tell that the subtlety of his dismissal was lost on the orc warrior.

  “You go now,” Manechar spelled it out for him.

  “But, but, monies?” Skunk finally spat out.

  Manechar considered intimidating the towering mass of brainless muscle out of any coins for a moment, then reconsidered. After all, this stone was the find of his life so far, and he wanted to ensure that the rabble that composed the rank and file of Shagra’s following continued to bring him anything interesting they found.

  “Here, two gold coin for you,” he said as he tossed the pair of gold coins at the quivering warrior. “That buy you much chew weed for weeks.”

  Skunk was very grateful and showed his gratitude by groveling all the way out of the shaman’s chamber.

  Now that Skunk was gone, a joyous smirk spread from one side of Manechar’s face to the other. Already he had bent the stone to his will, forcing it to tell him who it was. Kamuril it had answered, the Kale Stone. Now that he was alone, Manechar took the stone in both hands. It seemed to almost squirm in the grip of the magic wielder.

  “Tell me you secrets,” Manechar hissed as he gripped the stone tightly, forcing his will on the stone as it tried to resist. Suddenly, all resistance disappeared and the stone seemed to lay itself bare before Manechar’s powers. Ceasing his struggling, Manechar cast his consciousness around inside the stone, but strangely enough there seemed to be nothing there. It was empty… or perhaps it was hiding.

  “Play hide and seek, eh?” he muttered to no one in particular. “Yes, I play you game.” With that Manechar refocused himself and drove his will deeper into the stone.

  Trallik had never really developed much of an affection for dogs, especially the yappy, licky variety which some of his home gen’s patrol guard warriors had taken to breeding to serve as watchdogs out on their gen’s picket line. Besides, they didn’t taste all that good either. It was perhaps because of that lack of affection that he wrinkled his snout and swatted at what he thought was a dog trying to lick his nose.

  “Now, now. Let me clean the blood off,” the distinctly female kobold voice he’d heard before slipping into unconsciousness said as someone gently pushed his hand away from his snout.

  Trallik woke up with a start and was pleasantly surprised when both eyes actually decided to open, partway at least. He was laying on his back on something soft, hay or straw he thought, and was looking directly up into… Trallik blushed and turned his head away from the female kobold who was leaning over him trying to wipe something off of the other side of his snout. The cut of her tunic was certainly less modest than those of the females in his home gen.

  She didn’t let on whether or not she had noticed the embarrassment brought on by how close her chest was to his snout, but mercifully she sat back and stopped trying to get that last spot of blood off the far side of his snout.

  “Well, hello. Welcome back to the land of the living,” she said in a voice whose timbre was almost sultry, yet whose inflection was perkier than perhaps anyone else Trallik had ever heard, the contrast being only enhanced by the fact that his own perkiness was probably at a lifetime low at the moment.

  Trallik painfully raised himself up on one elbow. “Unh… Hi,” he eventually spat out through a swollen face, several loose teeth, and a partially strangulated throat.

  There kneeling next to him was one of the prettiest females he had ever seen, her smaller, smooth scales were a subtly darker shade than his, her dark eyes were large, deep, and full of… was that interest in him? Suddenly, almost as if she’d noticed what she was emoting, her eyes began to reflect a deep concern.

  Though Trallik tried not to notice, the sharp features of her face stood in sharp contrast to the gentle curves of her rather trim feminine form. It was enough to distract the young warrior horribly. For a moment Trallik almost thought he’d died and received a much better reward from the Creator than he deserved, though the pounding of his head confirmed he was still very much alive. The moment was only accentuated by the involuntary movements of her tail that lay curled around her legs, the tip twitching nervously, revealing her hidden anticipation at his waking.

  Suddenly realizing how horrible he must look, and feeling dizzy from the combination of her beauty and the effort of trying to sit up, he fell onto his side then rolled onto his back, groaning as he ended up back where he had been.

  “Oh, don’t get up,” her perky, yet sultry-sweet voice pled with him. “You’re in no condition. Trikki’s here to take care of you. Here, I have water. Let me put this nice, cool cloth on that swollen eye of yours.”

  Smiling for no apparent reason, Trallik lay still for some time as she gently caressed him with the cool, damp cloth. At some point he drifted off into a deep, dreamless sleep.

  Shagra considered Mushrat’s report with an almost idle indifference. The summons from his father had been clear, Come to big bird head rock. The fact that the shaman his father had sent to babysit him and his warriors didn’t want to make the climb all the way down the Wall and back up again as soon as Shagra’s father decided to move south didn’t really bother Shagra.

  “Yes, we no wait then,” he told the big oaf of a warrior, “Shaman stay here and watch gold. Tell sub-leaders to get warriors up to top at bridge. Tell them bring food. Leave one manies of warriors for watch slaves and mercenaries,” he counted off two hands worth. “Chief no need see slaves and mercenaries. All others go now!”

  “Yes, master,” Mushrat said, quickly turning to leave.

  Shagra had had very little use for this Manechar, though the healing elixir he’d gotten from him had done wonders for his a
rrow wound. To Shagra, the dealings of shamans and really any wielders of magic was beyond him. He didn’t understand them. However, unlike most of his fellow warriors, he did not fear them. He saw how his father used them. They were his eyes and ears, their powers granting them something of an exception to the normal rule that the stronger rule the weaker. Certainly this Manechar wasn’t strong or skilled with weapons, but none of Shagra’s warriors would soon forget the fire that had flown from his fingers to devour the orc who had challenged his authority. Shagra hadn’t been there to see the actual event, but he’d certainly seen the charred remains.

  Outside the entrance of his room warriors began to trickle past alone or in pairs. The laughing and crying of concubines could already be heard in the common chambers, glad or sad as they were that the warriors would leave them alone for a time. There would be no beatings or botherings for them until the warriors returned, whether they considered that a good thing or not didn’t matter the slightest to Shagra. To him, females were a necessary thing, but their uses were very limited in the tribes.

  The kobold slaves seemed to treat their females almost as equals, which clearly showed their weakness. His twenty years of life had shown Shagra that females were property, nothing less, and certainly nothing more. He ensured his concubines knew their place. In the other room his six concubines shrank in fear when he entered. His oldest sons had taken to treating the concubines and their sisters the same as well, which made Shagra proud. In his mind they could only be proper killers if they first learned to throw away the feelings for those who gave them birth and dominated their weaker siblings.

  “Concubine,” he called out. After a moment one of them entered the room. It was a point of pride with Shagra that he never called them by their names. “Get food for me in backpack. Put foods for this many days,” he said, holding up his hand.” Shagra looked down at the fat female. She was healthy enough and had given him three children already, but they were all females.

  The blood from the last birthing had staunched. “And we breed again when I come back. It long enough now.”

  He would try again with her. If she gave him another female child, then he would trade her away for one that would give him sons… or maybe for good sword, he thought as he remembered the sword he’d lost in his desperate run from the ants, or was it in his flight from the kobolds who had given him that arrow wound?

  Shagra shook his head. The fever he’d had following that episode had wiped much of his memory of the incident away. It was a good thing that the shaman had that healing elixir, elsewise Shagra might have died.

  Picking up his great axe and substitute sword he noticed that his concubine was still standing there. Annoyed, he shooed her away then picked up his chain mail shirt and started shaking it out, looking for the holes where his head and arms should go.

  Mushrat stormed quickly into the room. Startled by the sudden entrance, Trikki almost dropped Trallik’s head out of her lap. Leaning against her back, Klimer, the younger kobold she called cousin, jumped to his feet ready to run at a moment’s notice. Seeing it was Mushrat, and that he wasn’t drunk but rather distracted, Trikki put a calming hand on his leg.

  “I go now. You stay here,” he said in broken Sorcerer’s Tongue. What he’d said had been almost the extent of his vocabulary, but it had taken quite an effort for Trikki to teach him that. She thought it strange that he had pressed her to teach him, but then orcs were surely strange creatures; easy enough to figure out, but yet primordially strange at the same time.

  “Yes, we stay,” she replied in the same tongue. “Why you go?” she asked in the simple grammar of the orc tongue using her own tongue’s words.

  Mushrat threw some rations into a backpack and threw it over his shoulder, then hoisted his great axe over his other shoulder, all the while struggling desperately to come up with the words in the kobold’s language to answer the little slave. Finally, he came up with the words. “I go kill… Kale Gen now,” he said, pleased with himself that he had gotten out an entire sentence—including a name in kobold! Ready to head out the door, Mushrat shook his head. “Goodbye,” he finally said as he left, having now pretty much exhausted what he knew of the kobold tongue.

  “Be careful!” Trikki called after him. As orcs went he wasn’t a bad master. Besides, he was easy enough to manipulate and unusually talkative for an orc. This news that they were finally going to launch the attack that he’d been talking about ever since they got here made Trikki frown, however.

  Trallik began to stir, finally beginning to awaken as things began to quiet down again. Sitting up and rubbing his eyes, the former Kale Gen warrior noticed Klimer standing as if something had just happened, and with hidden delight noticed that his head had been resting gently in Trikki’s lap. Again, that silly smile appeared on his face for no apparent reason.

  “Hi, I’m Trallik,” he said, slowly in case they didn’t speak Sorcerer’s Tongue well.

  “Hi Trallik,” Trikki said with a warm, inviting smile. “You’ve been asleep for a long time. It is good to see you finally awake.” Her musical voice drown out any thoughts other than her face. “My name is Trikki, and this,” she said pointing at the dark-scaled male kobold who was only a couple of years younger than both Trallik and Trikki, “is my cousin Klimer.”

  Trallik gave something of a submissive nod to the pretty female who spoke so clearly, hardening his gaze somewhat to nod at the whelp.

  “How is it that you speak The Sorcerer’s Tongue, yet your scales are darker than mine?”

  Trikki seemed almost to blush a bit. “My mother was Kale,” she said. She insisted that I learn how to ‘speak right’,” she said, rolling her eyes somewhat at the memory. “She always said it gave one respectability. She was never very accepting of the northern gens, as she called them.”

  Trallik couldn’t help but smile at her animated movements and energetic mannerisms. It was all very intoxicating to the young warrior, the effect of it only enhanced by a subconscious understanding that the rules of his world had changed. And he had yet to figure out what exactly that meant when it came to females.

  Realizing the conversation had paused awkwardly, Trallik came back to reality. It was then that he noticed how hungry and thirsty he was. First things first, though, he thought.

  “So what are you doing here?” he asked, then realizing he’d ignored her cousin, he added “I mean both of you.”

  Trikki giggled, seeing clearly how smitten the young warrior was.

  “We’re Mushrat’s property, just like you,” she said.

  That news stopped Trallik cold.

  “Property?” he squeaked.

  “Yes, silly. He bought you from Skunk. Something about you making Shagra mad,” she explained, her voice growing more serious as she saw that Trallik’s mood had changed.

  Trallik’s face clouded as he turned away from the pair. He was having a hard time coping with the confirmation that, indeed, he was a slave. He’d just been a mercenary, or at least was going to be. Thinking back over the last few things he could remember, a sickening feeling came over him.

  While strapped to the back of the wolf a few days ago, he’d heard his fellow warriors talking about fighting orcs. Looking down at himself for the first time since coming to, he noticed that all of his gear was missing, even his crossed shoulder belts that had clearly identified him as a Kale Gen warrior. Casting his eyes about the small, cut stone room in which he found himself, Trallik saw no sign of his gear.

  “Oh, what bad luck!” Shaking his head, he looked back at Trikki who didn’t understand. “I was wearing my crossed shoulder belts when the big orc at the bridge saw me.”

  “You’re Kale Gen, not Krall?” she asked, somewhat surprised. “Then why were you at the bridge? Were you with one of their wolf patrols?”

  “No, I’m not Kale… not anymore at least,” Trallik confessed.

  “You’re not welcome in the Kale Gen anymore?” she asked tenderly, seeing it was a difficult subje
ct for the young warrior.

  Trallik winced as Trikki hit so close to the mark.

  “I…” Trallik began, then paused. “I am an outcast, though I would give anything to not be. Now that I have lost my friends, I truly miss them. I valued their friendship too little… and power too much.” Then, with a note of finality, he bowed his head as tears again began to roll down his cheeks. “I am guilty of being a conspirator against the lord of my gen. For this, I am cast off.”

  Trikki couldn’t help herself. The Fates had truly thrown a lot her way in this young warrior. “Don’t be sad, Trallik,” she said, gently lifting his eyes up to look into hers. “We’ll be your friends now.” Behind her, Klimer casually lifted an eyebrow in passive agreement.

  “It doesn’t matter to you that I was exiled?” Trallik said, hope fluttering in his chest only slightly louder than the raging hormones.

  Trikki and Klimer both laughed at the same time, Trallik’s question clearly reminding them of some inside joke between the both of them.

  “Trallik,” she said earnestly, “My mother was an outcast from the Kale Gen. I never knew my father. Klimer here is a descendant of outcasts, the most recent one being the grandfather that Klimer and I share, who was outcast from the Nipjik Gen.”

  Surprised yet again, this time pleasantly, Trallik smiled with the realization of what that meant. What he had thought would be a permanent stigma for the rest of his existence didn’t matter to this beautiful female… or to her younger cousin, not that he mattered.

  “Well, I guess we’re all outcasts together,” he said, basking in the warmth of her smile.

  “Oh, how unlucky of you that Shagra found you wearing Kale Gen belts,” she changed the subject. “Shagra hates the Kale Gen. Some of their warriors gave him that wound in his side. In fact, Mushrat says that’s why Shagra brought his father’s tribe from the Great Forest to attack the Kale Gen’s home caverns instead of going after the Krall Gen.”