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

by J. Zachary Pike

  Gaist knocked Heraldin’s king over with an air of finality.

  “Is there no way to defeat this man?” fumed the bard. “I was within an inch of victory. Come on, set up the board again.”

  Gorm thanked the bard and sat back to think about the story. It explained the symbol of Project Leviathan—the monstrous, tentacled fish that Gorm had seen stamped on the bottom of the Elven Marble. Perhaps more telling, the Leviathan’s story was about a power that returned from beyond the grave, and such legends drew necromancers like moths to a flame. Yet if there was more than a connection, Gorm couldn’t see it.

  He turned back to reading the file on the Elven Marbles, and continued to study them until an inferno exploded in the night sky. The giant ball of flame cast a light as bright as midday, so that Gorm could clearly see the fireball’s blast wave rippling across the camp. Niln, Gleebek, and Kaitha were lifted into the air by the shockwave. The training golems cried out as every target joint on their wooden bodies triggered simultaneously and blew them apart. Gaist and Heraldin dove for cover as their game of thrones flew away in a cloud of dust and ornately carved pieces. Then a wall of force and heat washed over Gorm, drowning his curses and throwing him back into the dust.

  “Beautiful,” gasped Laruna, staring into the sky. All that remained of the fireball was a cloud of golden embers drifting across the stars above where the mages lay on their backs, side by side.

  “That was amazing,” said Jynn, his voice breathless and full of awe.

  “I never thought I could … I mean, I just didn’t think it could be so … so …” Words failed Laruna.

  “I know,” said Jynn.

  Angry shouts rang out from the direction of the campsite. She could hear Gorm and Kaitha hollering to each other, and recognized Gleebek’s terrified babbling.

  “I’ll see to them,” said the noctomancer, standing. Getting up took considerable effort; Jynn struggled to extract himself from the wizard-shaped crater created when the concussive wave from Laruna’s fireball had blasted the mages from their feet and driven them into the loose earth of the plains. He hollered an apology to the campsite, and was answered by a stream of distant, shouted curses.

  Laruna paid them little mind as she gazed up at the cinders dancing in the wind. She remembered the feeling of the magic channeling down her arms. Her fingers still felt the tiny currents of air Jynn had sent to guide her, as gentle as a whisper, as firm as a touch. Her hands had danced in the breeze he conjured, and under his guidance, she wove sorcery into forms she had never imagined. When she finally released the spell, it flew up to the heavens and unleashed an explosion that dwarfed anything she had ever conjured, anything she had ever seen. It was a power beyond her wildest dreams, and she already possessed it. All she needed to do was learn how to take it.

  “I think I’ve smoothed things over,” Jynn told her.

  From the distant campsite, Gorm roared another torrent of profanity.

  “Mostly,” the noctomancer added, lying back down next to Laruna. “Still, we should probably stay out here a while longer.”

  For a while, they silently watched the sky. Laruna found herself tracing her hands with her fingertips, remembering the caress of the wind. “I burned down my village when I was a girl,” she said softly.

  “I read that in your file when you were before the council for full magehood,” said Jynn. “Nobody blames you. It can be confusing or terrifying to discover the sorcerous gift.”

  “Terrifying? Try wonderful,” said Laruna. “My father used to beat me every night with a reed for being a dolt. The other villagers used to mock me, day in and day out. Everywhere I went, they called me stupid and ugly, always telling me I’d never amount to anything. Do you have any idea what it’s like hearing that day after day?”

  “I can imagine,” said Jynn.

  “Finding my gift was the second-greatest thing ever to happen to me. The best was my father’s face when I burned his hovel to the ground.” She could still feel the rage and exultation of that moment; just the memory of it was enough to send errant sparks from her clenched fists. She opened her hand reluctantly. “Call it blame or call it credit, but I’m the one who torched every single building and left those buck-toothed cow-herds behind with the ashes. But…” She trailed off.

  “But their words always haunt you,” Jynn said.

  “Yes,” said Laruna. “I guess I always just assumed the townspeople, my father, all of them were right: that I didn’t have what it took be a real mage. That the gift was all I had. But now, that fireball … I can weave.”

  “You can weave,” said Jynn. She couldn’t see his face, but she could hear the smile in his voice.

  “This is why you didn’t vote for my ascension, isn’t it?” she asked him, pointing to the last embers drifting across the stars. “This is why you kept me an apprentice.”

  “It certainly wasn’t because you burned down some shacks and frightened a bunch of farmers,” said Jynn. “You could have stumbled upon such a spell by yourself. You might have discovered how to start a powerful weave, but not how to tie it off. A mage must have power and control. You had one.”

  “I don’t think I’ll ever have control like you do,” she told him. “I mean, you practically wove that spell for me using my own hands. Bones, Jynn, where did you learn to weave like that?”

  “When I was a boy, I had to weave well to please … to please my master,” he said. “As I got older, I realized I needed to weave twice as well than most mages if I wanted to succeed, because I can channel half as much. I learned to compensate. But you, you don’t need to control magic as well as I do. With the power you wield, you’ll be besting Archmages in duels before you have half my skill. You will be a greater mage than I.”

  She reached across the space between them and touched his hand. “I may be more powerful someday, but I will never be greater.”

  He took her hand in his own. Together, they stared up at the ash cloud swirling in front of the moon. Laruna took the chance to silently revise the list of the best things ever to happen to her.

  Niln sat in his small tent, holding his quill above a page as he waited for scripture to appear. The lantern was dry and dark. Flecks of ash and sear marks on his sacred stone were the only remnants of his consecrated incense. He was on his last candle; the rest had been reduced to dribbly piles of wax over the course of the night. Now, in the early hours just before dawn, even the crickets and nightfrogs were silent.

  The page beneath his quill was blank.

  Sweat beaded the high scribe’s brow. He had prayed tirelessly. He had imbibed holy tea and inhaled the fumes of consecrated incense until his head spun. He had meditated, chanted, sung, studied the scriptures, and prayed some more. Muttered prayers, silent prayers, spoken prayers, sung prayers.

  The goddess was silent. There were no words from her, no sense at all of her presence. It was just him, sitting alone in the cold darkness of the plains, surrounded by heroes who had put aside their skepticism to join him out here, with their lives on the line, because of his words, his prophecy, his faith.

  The same faith that had brought him to the middle of nowhere.

  Niln had experienced silent stretches before, of course. Even a prolific high scribe still had more nights without divine intervention than with it. The problem was the final line of the Second Book of Niln, which was relayed to him the evening after their day in the Myrewood. It sat at the bottom of his last page.

  And the work of High Scribe Niln was complete.

  Years of training to be a priest and then an acolyte. Countless hours of prayers and study. A massive initiative and campaign within the temple, diplomacy and bartering with the Temple of Tandos, two failed recruiting efforts before the current strategy. He had spent all of his life in preparation for this quest, this work.

  And the work of High Scribe Niln was complete.

  He’d had doubts about his capability, to be sure. There wasn’t a single aspect of professional hero
ics that Niln could perform with a shred of confidence. The other heroes looked to the Dwarf for leadership. The wizard was more knowledgeable. The training dummy could still best him in a duel. Yet in the face of all this adversity, Niln had always had his faith to guide him. He’d known that he was the Seventh Hero, even if all of the facts said otherwise.

  And the work of High Scribe Niln was complete.

  He pulled his robe tighter around him, trying to ward of a chill that bit deeper than the deepest winter. Had he misinterpreted the scriptures, or were they wrong—the madness of Al’Matra as so many contended? Had the scriptures been the words of Al’Matra at all?

  Dawn’s light crept beneath the flaps of his tent. After a long night wrestling with the silence, he still had nothing but a blank page and a pain in his head that made it throb like a beating drum. Niln put his paper and quill away and stepped out of the tent. Gorm was tending the cookfire. Heraldin was attempting to toast hardtack over it. Neither noticed the scribe slip to where the horses were tied and grab a satchel from the bags of gear.

  Taking his staff in one hand and the bag in the other, Niln made his way out into the field, well past where he and the Goblin had sparred the night before. When he found a suitable spot, he opened the satchel and removed a wood and iron box. He placed it carefully on the ground, took a step back, and rapped his staff on the ground. “Let us begin,” he said.

  The training golem unfolded like a clockwork blossom and drew itself to its full height. “Greetings … honored foe! Command?”

  “Duel mode. Easy—no, medium difficulty.”

  “A fight … then!” said the golem, jerking into a combat stance. “Well … then! Have … at ye knave!”

  Niln lunged, and got a blow to the ear that knocked him to the ground. The golem’s sword was a wooden dowel, but Niln could already feel the welt forming along the side of his face. He stood again, and resumed his attack with all the desperation of a man with nothing left to lose.

  The first three blows never even touched the golem. But on the fourth try, his staff landed on the automaton’s right arm. Soon, his strikes were reliably connecting, and he even managed to parry a few of the golem’s counterstrikes.

  “A worthy … foe!” said the golem.

  Niln grinned. “I think I’m starting to get the hang of this.”

  Something breezed past the high scribe’s ear. The golem jerked to a halt as its wooden face was split down the middle by a hefty axe. “Well … fought …” the golem said, its voice warped as it fell to its knees and slumped forward into the dust.

  Niln turned, trembling, to face a band of hulking figures, their faces ranging from a mottled olive color to bright emerald. They wore leather armor and sharp-tusked grins, and carried an assortment of axes, cleavers, and long, cruel knives. Orcs.

  The Orc in the lead stepped forward. “I am Char, of the Guz’Varda Tribe. You will come with us,” he said.

  “I’d rather not, if it’s all the same to—”

  “Your wooden stick is feeble and tiny,” roared the Orc, pointing at Niln’s staff. “My blood-brothers have many blades, sharp and deadly. You would do well to consider this!”

  Niln considered it, and dropped his staff. “Where shall we go?”

  The life of an NPC was more difficult for Orcs than for most other Shadowkin. Andarun, indeed much of the Freedlands, was like a great, cultural melting pot, but Shadowkin had a tendency to sink to the bottom. Gremlins and Goblins and Kobolds had no qualms about eking out a meager existence on the margins of society; long histories of serving as cannon fodder in the armies of darkness had bred them for a life underfoot. Orcs, however, were once the most elite warriors of Mannon, and Orcish pride could seldom tolerate the jobs and stations afforded an NPC.

  Instead, Orc NPCs tended to form their own communities. They traditionally lived in an honor society, and as is often the case with honor societies, their tradition had less to do with noble codes of chivalry and more to do with chopping people’s body parts off for perceived insults. The blend of Freedlands law and Orc custom that governed NPC Orc settlements usually meant they paid taxes but kept the public maiming, frequent duels to the death, and remarkably common executions that were the hallmarks of Orcish society. Worse, from the outside, these NPC communities were virtually indistinguishable from the tribes of Orc foes, wherein not being an Orc was a capital offense. So it was always wise to view an approaching mob of fifty or more Orc warriors with a healthy degree of caution. Gorm found that the healthiest degree was to draw his weapon and shout for the other heroes when he saw the warband marching down the road.

  “I am Char of the Guz’Varda Tribe,” announced the foremost Orc as the warband drew close. Beads and teeth, many more than those worn by the others, dangled from his long chin-curtain beard. “You will come with us.”

  “We’re on our way to Bloodroot,” said Gorm. “One-of-Each Magrash sent us.”

  “Excellent,” said the Orc. “And we will take you. Cast aside your weapons.”

  “And why would we do that?” asked Gorm, as the other heroes assembled behind him.

  “Your axe is small and dull!” roared Char. “Your feeble weapons are worthless. You will come with us. I have many men, with many sharp and mighty axes and blades! And in my fortress, there are hundreds more with even greater weapons!” The Orcs behind him brandished an impressive array of implements.

  Gorm’s grin was more snarl than smile. He didn’t want a fight, but not as much as he didn’t want a public beheading. “I’ll take me chances with this old axe. Move along if ye don’t want trouble.” Behind him, the other heroes displayed their own weapons.

  The Orcs began to mutter to each other in the low, guttural dialect of the Shadowkin tongue. Char seemed taken aback by the Dwarf’s defiance, but he recovered and tried a different tack. “Ah, but your friend here has already agreed to join us,” he said. The mob of Orcs parted behind him, revealing a slight figure in formerly white robes.

  “Hello, fellows,” said Niln sheepishly.

  “What say you now?” asked the Orc.

  Gorm maintained a stoic silence. Inside, he was a storm of creative and energetic cursing.

  Kaitha leaned close and whispered in Gorm’s ear. “Even if we could take on the whole warband, we couldn’t stop them from slitting his throat.”

  “I know,” hissed Gorm.

  “They might kill him anyway. Look at the bruises on him,” Heraldin whispered, nodding to the welts on the high scribe’s face. “We’d be surrendering for nothing.”

  “Even if we could leave Niln, the guild will hang us all if we return to civilization without him,” Laruna countered.

  “Well,” Char said. “You made your choice?”

  Gorm gritted his teeth. There wasn’t really a choice at all.

  Chapter 14

  Dwarves’ starchy standards of decency and their belief that baths are best saved for special occasions prevent them from disrobing often. Even in those rare moments when a Dwarf is nude, however, he usually carries an axe or small hammer with him, just in case. So when the Orcs took Gorm’s axe, with grinned assurances that he wouldn’t be needing it anymore, he felt more vulnerable and exposed than he had in his entire life.

  They were separated and marched in single file down the road. The Orcs hounded them constantly, boasting about the deadly nature of the various weapons they carried, or hewing tree stumps and rotting logs in two to prove their worth. They walked for the entire morning and past lunchtime.

  Gorm’s mind raced as he and his handlers plodded along, but his handlers left no chance for escape. There was no sign of Thane swooping in to save them either; the Troll seemed to have vanished into the night. Some good the deal had done him. Gorm had half a mind to tell Kaitha the whole story of the Troll as soon as they made it out of this.

  If they made it out of this.

  The fortress that was Bloodroot sat just off the road, like a great beast lurking in the tall grass. A ring of sharpe
ned pine trunks formed its walls, divided by four watchtowers and split by a massive, well-guarded gate. Beyond the wall, a sprawling assortment of mud and wood huts spilled onto the landscape. Orcs hustled and hollered through the dirt streets, carrying baskets of food, dragging racks of weapons and armor, herding disagreeable-looking pigs around, and baring their teeth at the heroes as they paraded down Bloodroot’s thoroughfare. Deep chanting reverberated through the village, rising and falling with the rhythm of a distant drum.

  Gorm had been through Orcish settlements before, though he had always been pillaging or torching them at the time. There was something different about Bloodroot. Orcs and Orcesses alike moved with industrious purpose. They manned long stone factories that belched violet smoke into the air. Some smithed and wove and butchered in shops and shacks along the streets, but others carried briefcases and folios to and from some meeting or another. Gorm saw one Orc before a gathering of blacksmiths and tanners, pointing to a graph painted in crude slashes on an animal hide.

  The Orcs also tended kennels full of huge wargs; the great wolves barked and slavered as they beat themselves against the wooden posts of their pens. “Don’t worry,” Char told the wargs, as the heroes marched past them. He shot Gorm a fanged smile. “You’ll have a turn with them after the chief.”

  At the center of Bloodroot, they reached a squat, round tower draped in crimson and emerald banners decorated with crude skulls, axes, and wolves. Guards nodded to Char as he, and a select few of his retinue, led the heroes up the steps inside the tower.

  The hall at the top of the tower smelled of pine and musk. Animal furs and vivid tapestries hung from the walls. Strings of hanging beads shaded windows that overlooked Bloodroot in all directions. Opposite the top of the tower steps sat a great throne of ivory and stone, flanked by a motley assembly of Orcish guards and dignitaries. Atop the throne sat the largest Orc that Gorm had ever seen—more like a lime-skinned war elephant than a man.