by J. T. Hartke
He spat one last time, and then passed back into his chambers. Tealla stood there with a silver cup filled with chilled goat’s milk. He downed it and handed the cup back with a smile.
“Your smile is so handsome,” she commented. “I see it so rarely these days
Slar barked a laugh. “A chieftain rarely smiles, and a Warchief even less.”
Tealla turned to set the cup down next to a massive chest. Heaving it open, she pulled out a piece of twisted silver and flashing opals. “Does not the crown of your enemy make you want to smile? Or perhaps we could stroll down and view his head where it rests on a brand new spike?” She dug further in, lifting up another piece of twisted metal, this one set with a diamond and hung upon a snapped leather thong. “Or this medallion, taken from the vessel himself?”
Slar grabbed her wrist and she dropped it back into the chest. “You should not speak of such things out loud. The vessel is not to be announced until after the joining.” He shook his head. “The people will not follow a human until they witness Galdreth’s power within him. I should not have told you.”
Tealla lifted her other hand to caress his cheek. “You should tell me everything, for I will tell others nothing, and they think that’s all I know. I am the only counselor you have with no possibility of replacing you.” She leaned her head against his chest. “I’m the only one you should completely trust. You lifted me up when none other would.”
“I can also trust my son,” Slar whispered, watching on the exit from his chambers.
Leaning back, Tealla looked up at him. “I think so – for now. But sometimes sons can become ambitious, with hopes of replacing a powerful father too quickly.” She patted his chest. “I do not think Sharrog is that sort by any means, but men can change.”
Slar nodded. “You offer wisdom. That is another reason why I trust you with so much. Only one of my wives ever offered good counsel, and she is long passed on to the Halls of Fire.”
An enticing smile curling at her lips, Tealla ran a red-lacquered claw along his cheek. “I can only hope you honor me someday by making me your wife, but know that I am forever content with just having you.”
Slar leaned in to kiss her with a deep passion, and then nip about her ears. They collapsed onto his fur-stacked bed and relieved each other of the tensions that had built up within them. Almost an hour later, they still lay there, peacefully at rest and in each other’s arms.
Staring at the painted flames upon his ceiling, Slar’s thoughts drifted to the chest, its various contents, and the prisoners far below who owned them.
“I must speak with them,” he said to Tealla, though he was not certain why.
“Who? The shamans?”
He gestured toward the chest. “The humans who carried those treasures.”
Tealla rose up on one elbow. “Do those trinkets haunt you the way they haunt me?”
His inner doubts rising at her words, Slar tilted his head at the woman. “What do you mean?”
She flashed her claws through the air. “Are they worth all the deaths dealt to get them? Are they worth one of your sons, your friend, my father, and my brother?”
A flash of anger rose in his heart, but it quickly faded as he looked at her sad eyes. He glared at the chest. “I will return before the ceremony.” He jumped up and threw on his leathers and boots.
Tealla watched him with a fur pulled up over her chest. “May the Fires guide you, my Warchief.”
The network of stairs honeycombed Dragonsclaw, and Slar followed them down through their fresh-hewn channels. He passed dozens of warriors, workers, and shamans of all the clans. They saluted him, and he offered short replies. He passed through a barred door with two guards, then an even thicker one guarded by four warriors. He twisted his way down to the dungeons.
Behind the last door of banded iron, Slar took a deep breath. It smells too clean in here for a proper dungeon. After a few more years, it will have a properly rancid stench.
The second door on his left held the beginnings of that stench. He turned a key in the heavy lock and opened it.
“Greetings again, Captain,” Slar called into the near darkness. He lifted a torch to see a tattered blue tunic on a human with a scruffy beard. “Despite your usual silence, I thought we might talk further. You cursed me for the deaths of your friends at Highspur, yet you never wondered if I might have lost anyone there.” Ghosts of Grindar floated through his head. “Did you know that almost forty thousand of my kind died there too?”
The Bluecloak held his hand up to shade the light of the torch. “You are the ones who came to attack us. Your people would be alive if they had stayed at home. So would my friends.”
Slar stared at the human’s strange, gray-green eyes. “It was your horsemen who came into our lands first. We ran them off and, tired of interference in our affairs from your fortress, we at last destroyed it.” His temper began to rise. “For hundreds of years our people have been harried and harassed by your soldiers at Highspur. It will happen no longer.”
The human sighed. “We raid you, you raid us. We invade your lands, you destroy our fortress. If we go back far enough, we might never know who killed who first, but there comes a time to stop or eventually we are all dead.”
Slar narrowed his eyes and leaned in closer, holding the torch close to the Bluecloak captain. The human’s face had purpled from bruises, and he cradled a broken arm. “After all those you know have died – after all that has been done to you – you would still hope for peace?”
A cold, dead laugh escaped the human’s lips. “I just want to go home. I never thought I would miss that damn old inn, and right now, there is no other place I’d rather be.” The captain sneered at Slar. “I want you to know that Tallen is stronger than I am, and he will fight you to the end. Your dark spirit may try to take him, but I would not count on it.”
His rage was so pure, the day I figured out he is the vessel’s brother…
Slar offered the man a laugh in return. “I will admit you are clever human. You suppose much and even know some. But you have no idea of Galdreth’s power. Your brother is as a fly on a dragon’s back.”
The Bluecloak smiled, showing a broken tooth. “Then why does this Galdreth need him so badly? A dragon does not need a fly.”
Rage and embarrassment fighting to take control of him, Slar glowered at the human. But the soldier turned his face against the wall, a hint of the smile still on his lips. The knot of pain in Slar’s gut flared up, and he stepped back out of the cell, closing it behind him. The human’s words and the confidence in his stare haunted Slar even as he moved on to another cell several rows deeper into the dungeon.
Pushing away his disquiet to sit upon the pile with the rest, Slar used his key to open the lock, and then lifted the bar. The torch lit the cramped cell and the tall human who sat folded in one corner. His black beard had grown thick, with only a few rogue strips of gray, but the blue eyes pierced through the darkness.
“My Lord Earl…” Slar even gave him a mock bow. “It has been too long since we have spoken.”
“What do you want, orc?” the man barked.
Slar scowled. “And here I offer you the honor of your title, Earl Boris of Mourne, bastard of Arathan, and you spit my race at me.” He shook his head. “Your arrogance is your great failing, you humans. You think you know so much more than anyone else, and you assume that we can know nothing.” A chuckle escaped his lips. “You also have no idea how quickly one of your own kind will tell a stranger anything for a handful of silver. No orc would ever betray so cheaply.”
The dark-haired human let his head rest back against the wall. “Well then, you just might as well cut my throat, Warchief. I will betray nothing to you.”
His interest piqued, Slar leaned against the doorjamb and took another direction. “I have heard a story that among humans, the fact that your father and
mother did not go through marriage rites means you have no claim upon your father’s honor. Yet if they had, you would have every claim to his right to rule over all your people. This sounds very barbaric to my ears. Is this true?”
The nobleman lifted his chin. “How do they do it among the civilized people of the clans, then? Was your father not Chieftain of the Boar Clan?”
Placing a hand on the scimitar once carried by his father, Slar curled his other into a fist. He took deep breaths to control his rising anger. “My father was Chieftain and a great warrior. He led his people to glory. When he died, another from a different family rose up to replace him – Lagred son of Shog. I served Chief Lagred faithfully as a captain, until Galdreth elevated me directly to Warchief of all the clans. I was never Chieftain of the Boar. My son Grindar might one day have succeeded Lagred, maybe even become Warchief, but your men killed him at Highspur.” He grit his teeth. “I still have more sons.”
The human tilted his head forward to peer at Slar. “Well I have none, Warchief. So it seems to me you have two choices. Kill me, end a line, and create a blood feud with Gannon that could last for a century. Or you can let us go, and I will return to my people to argue that war with the Northlands is too costly. We will harden our borders to you, but we will not return to take Highspur.”
Slar leaned forward. “You too, eh? Humans are quick to find words of peace, but hard pressed to take the actions of it.” He straightened and turned to leave the cell.
“How many more of your sons are you willing to sacrifice for this Dragonsoul?”
Slar spun on his heel and struck the human across his jaw with a clenched fist. The back of the man’s head thumped against the stone of the cell’s wall. Pain shot up through Slar’s wrist. The human shook his head in confusion, and those blue eyes took a moment to refocus.
“Now you have gone and made me strike you.” Slar shook his hand. “That was not my intent Earl Boris. You have done me a dishonor in forcing me to dishonor you. I can assure you I will pay my penance. How will you pay yours?”
Slamming the door behind him, Slar locked the bar in place and left the cell.
“Curse that human to drown in the Waters,” he muttered, stalking several cells deeper into the dungeons.
He stopped outside one where the stench had not developed as much as the others. When he opened the door, a boot smashed into his nose. The sharp pain blasted into his senses, momentarily blinding him and causing him to take a step back. He heard the human female charge forward, but her chains clanked as they reached their limit.
Slar held his nose, waiting for a trickle of blood that did not come. “You are a feisty female, I will grant you that. I had always heard the opposite – that human females were docile sheep to be ordered about by the males, especially when it came to matters of the…bedchamber.”
The young woman glared at him, her complexion turning a brighter pink than was usual among her type of human. “You’ll learn nothing of that, Orc. I have far deadlier weapons than my boots. I am a trained healer, and I know secrets of how my kind can use their Talent to kill.”
An urge to laugh rising in his throat, Slar reached out to hold the torch closer. “Then why have you not done so already?”
She shaded the torch from her eyes with one hand. “Because I want to give you a chance to let us go first.”
Unable to contain it any longer, at last Slar chuckled. “I think it is because you are bluffing.”
She stared daggers. “If you harm Tallen, there will be nothing in this world that can stop me from killing you. I have seen those powers at work, and I can learn them if I force myself into the slimy pool of their power.” Her lips barely moved as she spoke. “And I will do it if he comes to harm. You can count on that.”
The fierceness of her voice took Slar by surprise almost as much as the boot had. He reassessed his evaluation of human women. She means it. She would do anything to save her mate.
“You remind me of an orc woman – one in particular.” Slar stepped back out of the cell. “It will not be me who harms your mate, woman, but I cannot say the same for Galdreth. Our master’s plans are deep and complex. It is doubtful you would understand it.”
“I understand madness,” she said. “That is all I see in your master. And in my world, only a slave calls someone that name.”
Slar slammed the door shut before he stained his honor again with another rash strike. He stomped back up the passage out of the dungeon. Unnerved by the words of all three humans, he felt no desire to speak with Galdreth’s vessel too. The shamans will be preparing him for the ceremony tonight. I should go back to my chambers and do the same.
The salutes he returned on the way up from the depths of Dragonsclaw held less enthusiasm than his responses on the way down. The words from his prisoners weighed on his thoughts, while the ghosts of Grindar and Radgred chided him in his mind. How I need counsel from either of you right now... Yet it is your deaths that push my thoughts down these strange paths. Your deaths, and the deaths of thousands more.
Tealla greeted him with iced wine, a deep red taken from stores at Highspur. He sipped at it, easing his thirst from the long climb. Pains ached in his lower back, reminding him of his coming nameday. Forty summers carry their toll.
Tealla helped him remove his goats wool tunic. “Did you find what you sought among your prisoners?”
Slar shook his head, her words the only thing that pierced through the swirl in his mind. “I found no answers, only questions.” She rubbed his shoulders, her strong fingers finding his many deep knots. He sighed. “If only you could ease my stomach.”
Tealla reached away with one hand then gave him iced goat milk. “Try this.”
He lifted it to his lips and smelled the spearmint. It eased his knot of pain far better than wine.
A heavy knock rattled the door.
“Come,” Slar called.
Sharrog took several steps into the chamber. He wore his most formal armor and had strapped his tournament sword to his back. He glanced back toward the hall, and a tightness gathered in his features. “Father, things have begun to move ahead of us. Shamans from Mammoth and Bear clan are attempting to begin the ceremony early. They are on their way down right now to take possession of the vessel.”
Slar nearly vomited up the goat milk. Rage and an unwelcome fear fought within his mind. “We must find Brother Or—”
Chaos exploded around him. Five bodies charged into the room, carrying curved daggers and kicking about the room’s furnishings. Slar only had time to notice that his son had drawn his weapon before he shoved Tealla toward the back of the room and pull his own sword.
The other warriors moved fast, like men trained not for the battlefield but for assassination. Slar spun, flashing his scimitar about. He used his strength and the size of his weapon to gain an advantage, thrusting through one enemy’s neck to end his attack. The second came upon him suddenly, and Slar almost lost his balance.
Tealla threw their porcelain chamber pot, which crashed into the head of one assassin. Slar swung in a vicious arc and removed the attacker’s head. He met the third before taking a chance to find where Sharrog stood.
“No!” he cried when he saw the dagger planted in his son’s back. Blood squirted from the wound in an arc that shook Slar deep in his bones. He could already see the lag in Sharrog’s steps. The world stopped around him, and then crashed forward in sudden realization. The assassins moved to finish their devastating task.
Raging incoherently, Slar threw himself at his enemy, heedless of his own defense. He lost himself in a blood rage, like none he had known before. The ferocious onslaught threw his opponent off guard, and Slar slashed away half the attacker’s shoulder, leaving him to blink at his mortal wound in surprise. Slar looked up to see one enemy felled by his son, while the other took advantage and tried to catch Sharrog while extended in his killing
thrust. Slar gave him no chance and ended the assassins attempt with a sure strike.
Sharrog collapsed in front of him. The blood, once spurting, now trickled in a steady flow. Slar dropped his sword with a clatter and sprang to grasp his son as he fell.
His youngest son settled into his arms, but his breathing became shallow. Tealla appeared from nowhere with a handful of towels, which she helped Slar use to staunch the bleeding. The color still faded from Sharrog’s lips and face, and his movements became furtive.
“The blade…it was poisoned,” Sharrog wheezed. “I can feel it burning through my body right now. You…you must go, Fa—Father.” He grasped at Slar’s chest, much as Grindar once had. “I can’t…I cannot go w...with you.”
His eyes turned blank and his hand dropped away.
A hollow pain smashed Slar’s heart, shaming the knot in his gut for its agony. His hands shook, covered in Sharrog’s blood. My Midsummer boy!
A howl rose from his lips, one wordless shout of sorrow. Tealla leaned against him, murmuring soft, sad sounds. Slar felt the world spin, and he feared he might sink into madness to avoid facing the truth – the truth that one more son lie dead before him, this son dead at the hands of orcs.
He grabbed at the assassins’ bodies, tearing apart their clothing in search of clues. Mammoth tusk tattoos marked more than one of them, while a bear carved dagger had fallen from another’s hand. The emptiness that had been left in his heart by sorrow disappeared, filled with a rage and eagerness for vengeance. A thousand ideas passed through his mind, most ending with his own death. Until he looked at Tealla.
Her deep, crimson gaze fell on him, full of passion, pain, and sympathy. Her words, above all others, echoed inside his head. Her words about her father’s and brother’s death rang most true to his feelings about his sons. Slar took Tealla’s hands and kissed them.
“They have more warriors and more shamans than we could ever hope to fight. I have only one choice.” He squeezed her fingers. “Gather two packs of supplies – food for the two of us for a long journey. Take them to the east gate and wait for me behind the stone where we watch the sunrise.”