Orconomics: A Satire (The Dark Profit Saga Book 1)

by J. Zachary Pike

  “Simple. Neither one will ride behind the other. Is your, er, squire all right?”

  Gorm looked behind him. An Al’Matran attendant was attempting to coax Gleebek onto a trained mule without much success.

  “Gleebek. Get on your mount.”

  “Da nub’hig a’skubber!”

  “None of that. We’re mounting up. On the mule with ye, Gleebek.”

  “Prog da’root spooty! Tib’rin! Da’gub Tib’rin!”

  “No more arguing! Up ye go, on your donkey.”

  Gleebek crossed his arms and muttered something unintelligible, but he allowed an attendant to hoist him atop the mule.

  “You speak Shadowtongue?” Kaitha asked.

  “Not a word,” said Gorm.

  “Then how do you know what he’s saying?”

  “Haven’t the foggiest.”

  “Then how do—uh, hello.” Kaitha was taken off guard by the sudden onset of a bard, clinging to her right hand.

  “My darling, my flower, you are a vision,” said Heraldin. “A sonnet striding among mortals.”

  “Hand,” said Kaitha.

  The bard walked his fingers up Kaitha’s arm. “Your eyes, like pools of jade. Your hair, a cascade of auburn, a fount of autumn hues. Your skin, like almond milk.”

  “Hand,” Kaitha reiterated.

  “Yes, your hands are like doves, gentle and elegant. They said you were a diamond in the rough, a rose among weeds, but their words fell short,” Heraldin said, impervious.

  “Hand.”

  “Nothing could prepare me for this moment—awk!”

  Kaitha moved in a quick succession of maneuvers, a fast and forceful choreography carried out with a precise grace. The bones in Heraldin’s hands crunched, and he sank to his knees, making a sound like a teakettle about to boil over.

  “I guess you weren’t prepared after all,” Kaitha said, giving the bard’s wrist another half-turn. “Gorm, do you know who this is?”

  “It’s our bard. Heraldin Strummons is his name, I think.”

  Heraldin kept making the tea kettle noise, which sounded like “eep.”

  “Well then, bard, as we’re contractually obligated to work together, let me give you a few pointers for the next time our jobs force us to speak.” Kaitha twisted his hand further. “I am direct. If I were interested, you’d know it. As I’m not interested, you should know it. And if you annoy me again, you’ll regret it in ways that you are only now beginning to imagine. Are we reading from the same scroll here?”

  “Eep,” said Heraldin, but this time it sounded like an affirmative “eep.”

  “Good.” Kaitha released the bard’s hands and let him collapse into a ball. “Well, it seems the procession will be moving shortly. We’ll talk later, Gorm.”

  “Aye, good riding,” said Gorm.

  “Eee-aawww—by the bones!” swore Heraldin, shaking his hand. “Did you see what she did to me? I’m going to need a healing potion.”

  “It was impressive,” Gorm admitted.

  “She has all the warmth and friendliness of an ice drake,” Heraldin said. “And here I thought there might be a little fun to be had on this trip.”

  Gorm scowled. The bard’s callous lechery seemed shameful, but in Gorm’s experience, the other races of men did and said things that would make a decent Dwarf blush without a second thought: they talked of love in public; they wore their emotions like clothes, and they wore clothes that hid nothing; and they held huge harvest festivals with flowers everywhere. Living among such wanton debauchery had been a culture shock, as it was for any young Dwarf leaving the mines, but Gorm liked to think he had grown fairly well accustomed to living among non-Dwarves. “Well, I’m sure ye’ll find someone on this trip to keep ye company,” he said diplomatically.

  “A wishful thought. The only other woman in our party is the mage. And it’s no use trying my luck with the pyromancer. I’ve been burned before.”

  “Ha!”

  “It wasn’t a joke,” said the bard, clutching his hand. “It took the temple healer over an hour to regrow my eyebrows.”

  “All the funnier,” said Gorm, spurring his horse on its way.

  The procession of the heroes of destiny left the temple and made its way toward the Wall, where it took the Broad Steps up to the Pinnacle Plaza. Niln led the heroes, while a contingent of Silver Talons marched on either side, with Mr. Flinn and Mr. Brunt following behind them. Mr. Flinn walked with a relaxed purpose, the kind of gait that says move along. Mr. Brunt stamped along beside him in a manner that added or else.

  Onlookers stopped to watch them proceed. The heroes were heckled by a couple of people who had failed, against all odds, to notice Mr. Brunt. Gorm was grateful for the shield the Al’Matrans had provided. It gave him a way to hide his face.

  Heraldin nodded as they rode down the center of Pinnacle Plaza. “Conveniently, our path to the king runs just beside our ultimate foe.”

  “What?” said Gorm. “Where?”

  “Has no one told you?” Jynn asked. “The statue is our nemesis.”

  Gorm looked back at the old statue in the center of the plaza. The sculpture was a tall man, roughly hewn from black granite, beard streaming in a silent wind, sword held at the ready. His stone face was twisted into an expression that could have been horror, or perhaps rage, his gaze fixated on something unseen at his feet.

  Gorm has seen the statue a thousand times before, but had never looked close enough to notice the details of the man. The broad shoulders on such a tall figure, the wide nose, and the flat features of the warrior’s face were unmistakable, despite the fact that nobody living on Arth for over three ages had ever possessed them.

  “It’s a Sten,” said Gorm.

  “That he is,” said Heraldin.

  “How are we to find a Sten? They’re all long dead.”

  “Oh, it shouldn’t be too hard once he comes back to life,” said Jynn.

  “Right.” Gorm sighed.

  “Or perhaps we’re to kill the sculpture if it animates itself,” said Laruna.

  “The Sten were masters of the old magics, Mr. Ingerson,” Niln called back to them. “The magic of stone and bone and blood.”

  Gorm jabbed a thumb toward the grimacing sculpture. “So ye think this fellow is going to come to life?”

  “Back to life,” corrected Niln. “Or return in some other fashion. Yes. The prophet Klinesh says that ‘the thrice-cursed is thrice born, the third time to unmake what was made.’ He is the Dark Prince, the last king of the Sten.”

  “He’s a hunk of granite.”

  Niln didn’t seem to be listening. He stared defiantly up at the Dark Prince’s cryptic visage, and recited another prophecy:

  Blood and tears rain on stones,

  The weeping of light’s children fades

  As the Maiden of Tears sings her dirge.

  This is the music of the Stens’ rebirth.

  The song of Al’Thadan’s rise.

  “So wrote the prophet Asepth,” Niln finished ominously.

  “‘He shall lament the lack of hot beverages,’” recited Jynn. “I’m fairly certain Asepth wrote that one too.”

  Gorm shared a smirk with Kaitha, and a couple of the Silver Talons walking with the company stifled laughs.

  “Yes, well …” Niln shifted in his saddle. “Some of the scriptures are more difficult to interpret than others.”

  “They’re all equally fatuous,” said Jynn.

  Niln straightened in his saddle and spurred his horse forward.

  “Careful, Master Jynn,” Mr. Flinn said from the rear of the heroic procession.

  “Apologies, Mr. Flinn. I had no idea you were such a believer in the idea of an immutable destiny.”

  “Immutable? Oh no, sir.”

  “Master … own … destiny!”

  “Right you are, Mr. Brunt. The choices we make shape our lives. For example, poor judgment can make a life remarkably shorter.”

  “I see,” said Jynn. Not another
word was spoken until they were well inside the High Palace of Andarun.

  The High Palace was set into the side of Mount Wynspar, at the very back of Andarun’s topmost tier. Marble towers and columns seemed to flow from the white stone of the mountain, spilling around and under domes tiled with navy and burgundy. Crimson and blue banners of Andarun hung from the highest ramparts, but below them were a rainbow of banners from all the city-states in the Freedlands, and beneath hung pennants beyond counting: the sigils of all of the various companies of Bannermen.

  The Silver Talons stopped at the courtyard, marching into waiting formations as Gorm and companions dismounted. “Ye leaving us?” Gorm asked Mr. Flinn.

  “It would be above my stature to associate with the heroes of destiny in such a manner,” said Mr. Flinn, though his wry smile indicated that just the opposite was true. “But worry not. Mr. Brunt and I will be in the audience.”

  “There’s to be an audience?” said Kaitha.

  Mr. Flinn only smiled and waved.

  A contingent of palace guards, decked in shining steel armor and blue and red livery, took the Silver Talon’s place as heroes were marched through the palace to the throne room.

  The throne room was a long hall, with high, arched ceilings and marble floors that were packed with nobles and servants of every race. There were Elven Lords and Ladies, Dwarven Fathers attending a prominent Ancestor, the Dukes and Duchesses of the Human nobility, Halfling emissaries, Tinderkin ambassadors, and representatives from the other clans of Gnomes. Gorm could feel all of their eyes fall on him at once when the crier announced that the Heroes of Destiny had arrived.

  “I guess this would be the audience,” said Gorm.

  “It’s more like a funeral for our careers,” said Kaitha, trying to cover her face.

  Gorm recognized the polite smirks on the faces of the lightly applauding nobility. It was an expression common to the successful playing host to failures: trying to keep up the appearance of manners while simultaneously hoping for an amusing disaster. Above the cruel crowds, a vision of shining armor and gleaming teeth stood before the thrones, clapping loudest of all. Johan. The greatest hero of the age, the slayer of Az’Anon and Detarr Ur’Mayan, the savior of Hap’s Bend, the Champion of Tandos.

  “Didn’t know they’d bring in Johan for this,” said Gorm.

  “Nor did I,” said Jynn, hiding his eyes.

  “They had to bring in the guild’s top hero?” said Laruna. “It wasn’t enough to embarrass us in front of the king and queen?”

  The king and the queen had been prince and princess the last time Gorm had seen them. The years had weathered King Handor from the plump and pleasant prince to a leathery scarecrow in fine robes. Time had the opposite effect on Queen Marja; she could barely fit on her throne. The crowd fell silent as Handor stood.

  “All rise!” called Johan. “The Crown now calls the Champion of Al’Matra, the Seventh Hero of the prophecy, and his valiant companions to come before the court!”

  “Here we go,” said Gorm. The ceremony began.

  As far as Gorm was concerned, a ceremony was the most efficient way to expunge the joy and excitement from any event, refining it into the purest tedium. It was like watching a play that he already knew the ending to, only with more dialogue and usually less swordplay. He wasn’t sure what quality of a ceremony invited people to speak at extreme lengths on subjects that everyone was already familiar with, but it was probably the same force that invariably compelled some participant to wave a stick or a sword over a small fountain, or a cup of wine, or something extra symbolic.

  The ceremony kept going.

  Gorm had stopped paying attention around the point when the king had admonished the crowd about the importance of believing in your own heart or some other such nonsense. The audience’s attention was drifting as well; their interest had waned once it became clear that the heroes weren’t going to do anything spectacularly embarrassing, or at least nothing beyond showing up in the Al’Matran party. By the time Johan waved his sword over a horn of ale, the air rustled with the sounds of an anxious crowd.

  Gorm glanced at Niln. The boy drank in Johan and Handor’s grandiose words; his chest seemed to swell with every mention of honor or destiny. There may have even been a tear glistening in Niln’s eye.

  The ceremony’s end was long and laborious, like a dying beast that refused to be put down. Johan finally ended it with a sharp, decisive declaration that the Seven Heroes of Destiny were officially commissioned, prompting a smattering of applause and a stampede for the door.

  To Gorm’s surprise and dismay, the heroes weren’t allowed to leave with the rest of the crowd. Instead, they were ushered through a small door behind the thrones, to a small stone room with a round oak table. Gorm and his companions sat around the table, and then rose as Johan entered. They immediately dropped to their knees when King Handor strode in behind Johan, flanked by several attendants.

  “Oh, none of that, none of that,” said Handor. He looked far more relaxed than he had on the throne. “Look, the big one has the right of it,” said the king with a nod to Gaist, who hadn’t sat, or kneeled, or acknowledged the king addressing him. “On your feet, or in your chairs. It matters not. The ceremony is over, and we have business to attend to. Johan?”

  “Your Majesty!” said Johan. He pulled a velvet pouch from his belt. It contained a single object: a large, milky-white stone. He placed it on the middle of the table, where it stared at Gorm with the weathered remnants of tiny eyes and menaced him with a tusked grimace.

  “This,” said King Handor, “is one of the Elven marbles.”

  “It’s an Orc,” said Laruna.

  “Indeed it is,” said the King. “It was likely carved by ancient Orcs in the Fourth Age.”

  “So why do they call them the Elven—”

  “The marbles were ripped from the inner chambers of an Orcish temple by the Elves of House Tyrieth during the sack of Chief Ug’Ruck Big Tooth’s fortress,” said King Handor. “This was at the end of the last age, in the days before Orcs could obtain noncombatant papers, you see. You’re familiar with this sort of problem, I’m sure.”

  Gorm nodded. Tens of thousands of Orcs, Goblins, Gremlins, and other Shadowkin had decided that it was better to join the margins of society as NPCs than to become a footnote of history. With a growing multitude of reformed monsters walking the streets of the Freedlands, increasingly often a Shadowkin would notice a sacred relic or holy weapon long lost to their people displayed in a shop window or hanging from some nobleman’s wall. The town criers were particularly enamored with a story about the urn of a revered Kobold ancestor that had been repurposed by the High Clerk of the Scorian Heroes’ Guild as an ashtray.

  “The Orcs and the Elves nearly went to war over it years back, in the reign of my father,” said the king. “The Orcs took the Elves to court over it, and most scholars agreed they had a chance of winning. But three days before a verdict, the marbles disappeared, and each side accused the other of the theft. The Orcs went mad—totally mad. You had NPCs defecting and riling up the Orcish tribes over the marbles. We had to put whole armies of them down, all for some rocks that went missing.”

  Gorm remembered it well. In prouder days, he’d led the party that had dispersed the portion of the Iron Bone Tribe. He’d even struck the killing blow against their chieftain.

  “Those statues brought my father nothing but trouble. So I’m sure you can imagine how unhappy I was when the marbles turned up in a wyverns’ hoard a few weeks ago,” said the king. “And how much more so when most of them went missing en route to Andarun.”

  “Ah,” said Niln. “Yes, Your Majesty.”

  “The Freedlands exists because of one thing,” King Handor said, leaning forward. “Stability. The people in the streets claim their freedom or their virtue binds our kingdom together, but in a famine you’re only free to starve, and in a drought there is no virtue but survival. No, liberty and piety are well and good, but a kingdo
m needs stability to survive; a healthy stalemate wherein every people, every faction, every city finds the status quo preferable to the price of change.”

  “Yes, Your Majesty.”

  “I will do anything to preserve that balance. Anything. This theft, this intrigue …” Handor shook his head as words failed him. “There are tens of thousands more Orcs in Andarun than there were twenty years ago, and already their leaders are wondering aloud who has taken the stones. The Elves of House Tyrieth have skipped questions altogether and are making bald accusations against the Orcs. It is imbalance. It is strife. It is the first crack in my kingdom’s foundations. I will not have it.”

  The king stood. “This, then, is your quest. I charge you to find the marbles and return them to their rightful owners. I care not who those rightful owners are; give the stones to the Elves, or the Orcs, or to the wyvern’s corpse, so long as this matter is done and settled and my kingdom is stable once more.”

  “We won’t disappoint, Your Majesty,” said Niln.

  The king smiled. “I know,” he said. He nodded to Johan, and took his leave.

  Johan put the lone Elven Marble back in the velvet pouch, took a small maroon binder from a waiting attendant, and handed both to Niln. “This is the first of the Elven Marbles, and the file with all of our information on the missing four. You will reunite the set and put them in their proper place. Wherever that is.”

  “I accept this quest,” said Niln breathlessly, his face rapt and reverent as he accepted the marble and the documents.

  “Ha ha! I like your spirit. I wish I could stay and chat, but you know how it is,” Johan said. “It’d be good to catch up with a few of you. Gorm and Iheen, I’m looking at you two. It’s been too long guys, really. Let’s have lunch after all of this. And you. What was your name again? Is it Keetha?”

  “It’s Kaitha.”

  Johan shot her a wink and a winning smile. “You and I should definitely get better acquainted. Sometime soon. Great ceremony. Great team. It’s gonna be great. I know it. Tandos bless you. Ha ha!” With a swirl of his crimson cape, Johan was out the door.

  The seven heroes, plus one Goblin, sat in a perplexed silence. Even Niln looked puzzled, the awe and wonder draining from his face as they sat quietly. “Is that it?” he asked.