by E. M. Hardy
In the end though, he eventually decided to do his homework—especially since it was due the next day.
“All these words on war,” pondered Kurdan in Isiah’s mind, “make it sound like you aim to fight one. Why study it? Of what value is it to you? You are worth nothing more than a slave, too weak to even pick up a proper orcbone club—much less a full battleaxe. Besides, I don’t see anyone following you. Do you seek to fight this war all by yourself?”
Isiah snorted as he thought his reply to the orc. “You think I want to do this? I’m only doing it because my teachers told me to, and they’re going to fail my sorry ass if I don’t give them a decent reply.”
“That is a lie,” replied Kurdan, his thoughts low and wily. “You forget that I can see your thoughts. You are far more taken by the idea of war than you admit.”
Isiah grimaced as he forcefully tapped his pen on the desk, its angry taps matching his own rising anger. “Okay, you got me, mister smarty pants. You remember those Golden Sword idiots that just attacked the city where my uncle lives? Yeah, this report helps me understand why the heck stuff like that is happening right now. I’m just a stupid kid that doesn’t have any idea why some guys from thousands of miles away would come over here and start shooting and blowing things up.” Isiah shoved himself away from the desk as he got up and began pacing in his room. “I just want to understand why this stuff is happening, and maybe see what I can do about it.”
The orc laughed cruelly, the tones grating on Isiah’s mind. “Your thoughts and opinions do not count, for you are weak. If you were in my tribe, you would be nothing more than a slave. I would torment you until your flesh falls off, until your bones crack into dust, and you eventually drop dead—incapable of doing anything but feeding the worms in the ground.”
Isiah growled at that—actually growled with his voice—and spat out his answer before he could think twice about it. “Yeah, well who’s the leader of a nothing tribe in the middle of nowhere? If your ‘strong’ tribe was in this world, strutting around like the huge dicks that you are, we’d need just a couple of missiles from a single drone to blast every single one of you into pink paste.”
Isiah was ready with a slew of retorts, ready to point out the miserable state of Kurdan’s tribe. The way everyone walked in their own feces, the way that they squabbled with one another, the way they threw lives away like so much trash, the way nobody ever got anything done because they were too busy measuring dicks—Isiah was raring to bring on a fight. Isiah dared Kurdan to speak up, preparing to throw the shortcomings of Kurdan’s tribe in the chieftain’s face.
Except none of that came. The orc remained silent within Isiah’s mind, not replying at all. Isiah waited a few more moments, wondering if the orc was taking his time preparing something snarky in reply; Isiah only faced silence within his mind.
He was both satisfied and disturbed by Kurdan’s change of heart. He pushed those worries aside as he went back to his laptop, turning its screen on and continued working on his report.
Chapter 04
“Oh, screw me,” sounded the weak, pathetic voice that had taken up residence within Kurdan’s mind.
He pushed away the grogginess, pulling himself up from his sleep-hole while brushing aside the voice of Isiah from his mind. The sun peeked up from beyond the mountains, its rays of lights spearing through the sky and bathing the forests in its warm glow.
“So,” Isiah thought to Kurdan. “Here we are again.”
“Yes. Here we are again,” replied Kurdan within his mind. “Now shut up and let me lead my tribe.”
Kurdan craned his neck once, twice, before reviewing his orcs. Most of the orcs still snored away, with a handful only now stirring to wakefulness.
“BONESEEKERS!” Kurdan roared, causing birds to take flight and orcs to jump in their leafy sleep-holes. “Wake up, get up, and get ready to move out!!” The chieftain did not give any of his raiders a further glance as he picked up his gear and began strapping it to his body. He approached Dulug and her cohorts, who were still wiping the sleep away from their eyes. “You have until the sun passes the tallest peak to hunt. Take four of your best trackers. Get us some meat. Go.”
The she-orc glared at Kurdan, doubtlessly pissed that she was burdened with this task so early in the morning. Kurdan, however, glared right back at her, daring her to voice the dark thoughts bubbling within her mind. She relented though, nodding as she picked out her chosen orcs. A he-orc and she-orc that she selected glared at her with the same hatred she directed at Kurdan. And just like Kurdan, she held their glares until they relented. Soon enough, all five were dashing off into the woods to obey Kurdan’s orders.
“The rest of you!” bellowed Kurdan, eyeing the other raiders with disdain. “Go ‘round the camp and scrounge up whatever food you can get! Roots, berries, eggs, herbs—I want as many edibles as you can scrounge up!” More grumbles sounded out from the camp, no doubt displeased that they had to carry out such menial tasks. The hunters at least would have the pleasure of a kill. The foragers, however, would be doing nothing but looking at the dirt all day.
He pointed to some of the orcs, the last ones to wake up. “You three! You were the slowest of us all yesterday, constantly trailing behind the rest of the raiders. You will gather firewood, as much as you can find. Aren’t you happy you have such an easy job? Perfect for weak, lazy slaves, don’t you think?”
“WE ARE NOT SLAVES!!” They roared in unison, beating their breasts while doing so.
“Then PROVE it to me!” Kurdan roared back, spittle flying out of his lips as he got right in their faces. “Show me your strength that I will not treat you as such!”
The orcs roared back to him and dashed off into the woods without a second thought—no doubt racing to see who could gather the most firewood. Kurdan grunted his satisfaction, allowing a smile to play across his lips. He grunted to himself and trotted off to join the foragers.
“The foragers?” Isiah thought to Kurdan. “After all your big speech about weak and lazy slaves, you’re going to go off and forage on your own?”
Kurdan went silent for a few moments as he kept his eyes low to the ground, looking for food along the way. He spotted a shrub, knelt to check it, and shook his head as he realized its leaves weren’t edible. “Your world is very strange,” he thought to Isiah as he stooped and checked another plant, completely ignoring the human boy’s taunt. The creeper was edible, and Kurdan began to pick off the younger leaves and tender tips of the creeper’s tendrils. “It is filled with soft weaklings such as yourself. Pampered sacks of flesh that would not last a few seconds against even the weakest orc in our tribe. Even you would be no match for one of our orclings, despite the laughable training that your father imposes upon you.”
“And yet,” Kurdan thought, stifling Isiah’s protests before he could even form them within Kurdan’s thoughts. “I see so many things that stir envy within my heart. Food so abundant, so readily available, that you barely think about where your next meal will come from. Wagons that bear you over distances at speeds that even our fastest runners could not match. Little slates that answer any question that your heart desires, let you see events as they occur from hundreds of thousands of miles away.” Kurdan grunted as he pulled an exposed root, brushing away the dirt and inspecting it for parasites. “The insulting thing is that you treat these slates, these oracles, as nothing more than toys.”
“And then there are the weapons that your people wield.” Kurdan eyed the root, snapped off a tip, and put it to his tongue. The numbness spreading from the root’s juices told him that it was poisonous. He spat the juices out as he threw the root over his shoulder, getting up to check other plants. “Weapons that can kill a human even before he knows what is going on. Granted one such as myself would not succumb so easily to such superficial wounds, but it is still a wonder to behold their destructive capabilities.”
Kurdan spotted one of his orcs, who was busy swatting away a
bunch of birds defending their nest. It was a good thing for the orc though, as he reached out and grabbed one of the birds by the legs. He bashed the bird’s head on the tree and tucked its limp body on his belt. The bird’s mate kept squawking but flew well away from the orc as it reached into the nest and pulled out four eggs. The orc noticed Kurdan and nodded to him as he climbed down. Kurdan nodded back before turning in a different direction, spreading out to cover more ground.
“This is why I want to come to an agreement with you, Isiah Hunter.”
“Oh? What kind of agreement did you have in mind, Kurdan?”
“Do you remember what you said before you went to your sleep? About how my tribe is a nothing tribe in the middle of nowhere, and that it would take but a single strike to wipe us out of existence?”
“Um. Did I say something like that?” Kurdan waited patiently, turning over a fallen tree trunk and picking out large grubs from the rotting wood. “Okay, yeah, I kinda remember saying something like that.” Isiah seemed to mumble his thoughts, unwilling to attach any conviction to those thoughts. “But hey,” he thought, perking up all of a sudden, “why the sudden change of heart? Weren’t you all ‘weakling here’ and ‘pathetic there’ just a few moments ago?”
Kurdan tightened his grip on the branch he was holding on to, causing it to crack and bend as it snapped in two. Kurdan ground one tusk against his canines, causing vibrations to travel up his skull. Isiah got the point and promptly shut up. Kurdan released the branch and flicked away the shards that tried but failed to penetrate his thick hide.
“Because you were right. My tribe is just one among many squabbling tribes, and could be snuffed out in the snap of a finger. It is indeed nothing… at least compared to what I saw in your world.” He curled up a hand into a fist and tightened it with as much effort as he could, savoring the energy that flowed through his chest and into his arms. “This is why I want to turn my tribe into something more, and I will need your help to do just that.”
***
“Kurdan.”
Kurdan pretended not to hear the orc as he untied his bundle, adding his foraged herbs, grubs, and mushrooms to the pile. Someone behind the offending orc grumbled and shoved him violently. The orc snarled, then backed down as he realized he was grossly outnumbered.
“Chieftain Kurdan.”
Kurdan took his sweet time placing his greens along with the other greens, his mushrooms with the other fungi, and his grubs with the other bugs, before standing up and facing the orc. He craned his neck once, twice, before speaking up.
“Urgan.”
Urgan widened his stance and crossed his arms, the challenge plain on both his face and his body. “We brought more than enough nuts, berries, and dried meats to feed ourselves on this raid. Why are you wasting valuable time having us gather even more food? Do you intend to fatten us up like grubs on this raid? Did you work up an appetite, what with the she-orcs scrambling to impregnate themselves upon you?”
The she-orcs growled at Urgan while the other he-orcs beside him inched away from where he was standing. He ignored them all as he kept his gaze locked steadily on the chieftain. Kurdan narrowed his eyes, realizing that such brazen defiance could only mean one thing.
“I take your words as a challenge. Are you prepared to challenge me for the title of chiefhood, Urgan?” Kurdan cracked his knuckles and willed the blood within him to boil. His twin hearts beat faster, pulling the energy from around him to bolster the liquid life coursing through his body. His eyes reddened, his muscles swelled, as he pulled more and more energy within himself.
Urgan kept up a brave front in the face of Kurdan’s deadly bloodlust, attempting to laugh it off. It was a bit too high-pitched though, and he sounded like he was tittering in fright instead of laughing in defiance. “No, chieftain. I am simply wondering out loud why you would have us stockpile so much food that we do not need. What are your intentions?”
Kurdan was tempted to ignore Urgan’s deflection. However, such a subversion of his authority was something he could not ignore. The upstart orc backed down from a direct challenge, but his defiance still undermined Kurdan’s position.
“Tell me, Urgan,” Kurdan growled, his voice dangerously low, his body pumping activated blood through every available vein and artery. “What are my intentions? What sort of selfish reasons do I have to waste our precious time to gather extra edibles? Go ahead, make a guess.”
That threw the orc off-balance. He was probably expecting excuses or explanations, but he did not expect the chieftain to throw the question back at him.
Urgan gulped and stepped back in the face of Kurdan’s glower. “I do not know, chieftain.” Finally relenting, the orc lowered his gaze and turned away—submitting completely to the chieftain’s authority. “I merely wish to know the purpose of our hunting and foraging. We could have run a fair distance if we—”
“Yes,” barked Kurdan. “In your feeble little mind, my decision makes no sense. But that is exactly why I am the chieftain and you are not. As it is, we are wasting even more time with your useless prattling. It ends now.” Kurdan turned to the rest of the raiders, who watched the entire exchange with curious eyes. “ALL OF YOU!” he said, “Pack your edibles. String them up, tie them to your packs. We bring them with us as we raid.” He turned to the three orcs that had collected firewood. He studied the impressive piles of twigs and branches set at their feet and grunted in satisfaction. “Build a shelter for that wood and mark the location. We will need that when we are done raiding.”
The three orcs did not need to be told twice. They simply obeyed, determined to win back respect in the eyes of their chieftain. Kurdan nodded and proceeded to pack his things, joining the other raiders as they prepared to move out.
Chapter 05
“So let me get this straight,” Isiah thought to Kurdan as he disembarked from the bus while rubbing the sleep away from his eyes. “Your people only need one night of sleep for every three days you’re awake?”
“No, not really,” replied the orc from within Isiah’s mind. “We feel the pull of sleep as much as the other creatures on the first night. The only difference is that we have trained ourselves hard, pushed every generation of orc to resist weakness at every turn. This includes the Sleep. Some of our younger orclings can even manage to reach the dawn of the fourth day before the Sleep takes them. They become weaker on the following days, but that is a weakness we will eventually wipe out with enough broods of orclings.
“From my point of view, it is strange that every other creature we know does not resist the call of sleep.” The orc grimaced, sour thoughts bleeding from his thoughts into Isiah’s. “We see it as laziness, as an unwillingness to fight your natural instincts to become something better.”
“That’s crazy,” replied Isiah. “You do realize that not getting enough sleep leaves you weaker, right?”
“Hah,” grunted Kurdan. “The same can be said for bodily exercise, until you wake up one day feeling far stronger than when you first start. The same applies for food and drink; train yourself to abstain, and your body learns to go without.”
Isiah couldn’t fault the logic of Kurdan’s argument, though he was worried that the orc was going about these things in the wrong way. “And what happens when your mind and body breaks from the abuse? What if you die from it?”
“Then you die,” the orc huffed dismissively. “The weaklings perish, and only the strong remain.”
“And that’s the first thing you need to unlearn,” lectured Isiah. “If you want your tribe to be more than what it is now, you need to make sure that even the weak have a place in the tribe.” Isiah pulled out his phone, twisting it this way and that as he looked at it. “You see this phone of mine? What you call an oracle? It is not just one thing. It is composed of thousands of smaller components that each play a role in its function.” He tapped open a web browser and began scrolling through the websites he had bookmarked on it. “And beyond the pho
ne itself is a realm chock-full of information. That information, the knowledge it contains, wasn’t collected by a single all-knowing entity. It is the result of millions upon millions of people contributing their thoughts, opinions, and experiences to the pool of shared knowledge. That shared burden allows the weak to contribute. And it’s not just from the smarter ones in my people. Even random idiots like myself can add a thing or two. Get enough of us random idiots working together, and we can create things that can help our entire people as a whole. Yeah, there are a lot of parasites and douchebags out there, but the contributions of the good guys far outweigh the draws of the bad guys pulling down the—”
A solid bump cut short Isiah’s lecture. “Oh, crap. Sorry dude. I—” He drew his attention up and paled as he realized that he had run into not just anyone. He had run into one of his most notorious tormenters: Charlie Blevins. The freckle-faced young man sneered as he looked down on Isiah, his four goons and suck-ups throwing their own sneers at Isiah’s direction.
“Watch where you’re going, twerp.”
“Uh, yeah. Sorry about that. I’ll just go over there and—”
“Hey, we ain’t done with you yet,” said one of Blevins’ followers while two others hoisted Isiah up by the arms.
“Hey! C’mon guys, do we need to do this all over again? I already said I’m sorry!”
“Sorry won’t cut it,” another goon said as he got between Isiah and the onlookers. Isiah cast his gaze left and right, but the other kids just looked away and walked on. After all, it wasn’t good for your health to get in the way of Congressman Blevins’ son. That, and the son himself was a right terror if you got on his wrong side, especially since the faculty seemed to keep turning a blind eye toward his misdemeanors. Isiah swore he could see one of the teachers stop on her heels and turn around, probably pretending that she forgot something at home.