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

by J. Zachary Pike

  He had tusks like daggers. He wore a set of banded mail armor studded with a small armory’s worth of blades and spikes. He shifted on his throne as the heroes were assembled before him and rattled the myriad beads and teeth that dangled from his chin-strap, which hung down to his waist. When he spoke, he did so in voice like distant thunder: low and promising coming fury. “I am Zurthraka daz’Guz’Varda, chief of the Guz’Varda Tribe and ruler of Bloodroot,” he announced. “See? You are honored by my presence.”

  “Don’t let them see weakness,” Jynn muttered to Gorm. “They go for the throat when they sense weakness.”

  “Are you not pleased?” rumbled the great Orc. “Perhaps I shall honor you with my axe instead.”

  “Give me my old axe and I’ll honor ye with a few new orifices,” snarled Gorm. “Just say what ye want with us!”

  The assembled Orcs collectively gasped; several rattled their weapons and muttered darkly. Looking unhappy, Zurthraka turned to consult with a thin specimen in long violet robes.

  “What do we do now?” Heraldin asked.

  “Keep your heads about ye.”

  “That is the goal, yes,” said the bard, eyeing a guard with a wickedly bladed halberd.

  “Perhaps they would be willing to parlay,” said Kaitha.

  “Just don’t say anything,” hissed Gorm.

  “You may want to tell that to your Goblin,” said Laruna.

  “Yuggo grong, zug Poobah. Been da’pog’ti da’agga root ra’eddi.”

  “What? Gleebek! Gleebek, get back here!” But by the time Gorm saw Gleebek, it was too late. The tiny Goblin was marching across the floor, the eyes of the assembled Orcs trained upon him.

  “Why do they scowl so, Dengark?” Zurthraka asked his wise-one.

  “I know not, Lord,” said Dengark the Venerable. The wise-one stroked his luxuriant white mustache—the longest in Bloodroot—as he pondered. “Perhaps the weapons should be sharper?”

  “Sharper?” said Zurthraka. “How could such a weapon be? We have sharpened them as the gods must sharpen their own blades. They would cut through the earth when set on the ground if we sharpened them more.” It couldn’t possibly be the weapons. Nor could it be the assembly; the chief had brought all of his family, his most trusted advisors, even his High Council to stand beside him. He’d even offered his axe to the Son-of-Fire. How could he further honor their guests?

  Yet the assembled Lightlings scowled and muttered as if asked to muck the pigsties. The Dwarf was making threats.

  “What is our next step, Lord?” Dengark asked.

  “I was about to ask my wise-one exactly that,” said Zurthraka.

  “A thousand pardons, Great Chieftain,” interrupted a small voice. A Goblin in a white tunic stepped from the ranks of heroes. “Honor me with the chance to speak in your presence.”

  “Hello!” cried the Dwarf. “Hello! Get back here!”

  “You speak out of turn and upset your comrades,” said Zurthraka. “Why should I honor you so?”

  The Goblin tapped his fist to his chest in salute. “Hello, Chief Zurthraka. I am Tib’rin, once of the River Turtle Clan. I fear that your problems with the Lightlings is rooted in misunderstanding, as so often happens.”

  “Hello? What are ye sayin’ to them, Hello?” said the Dwarf.

  Zurthraka considered the Goblin. “Why does the Son-of-Fire keep calling you ‘Hello’?”

  “Alas, Great Chief, as I said before, misunderstandings are common between us and the Lightlings.”

  “Ha!” Zurthraka grinned. “That they are, Tib’rin River Turtle. Very well. I honor you by hearing. First, tell me how it is that you travel among the Pink-skins.”

  “The Son-of-Fire is called Gurm Ingerzon, Lord. He is a gold-hound that saved me from a gold-hound, and got me my life-papers. Now I am honored to be his blade steward.”

  Whispers ran through the assembly as Zurthraka turned to the Dwarf. “Gorm Ingerson?”

  “Aye, what of it?” said the Dwarf.

  “Was it you who struck an Elven guard for offending this Goblin?”

  The question seemed to greatly agitate the Dwarf, who began to curse in the tongue of the Old Empire.

  “He has saved me many times,” said Tib’rin, looking fondly at the Dwarf. “But he is loath to boast.”

  “Very loath indeed,” said Zurthraka, watching Gorm tug on his beard and swear. “But tell me, Tib’rin, how have I offended the honor of these mercenary-dogs. I have made every effort to please them. See, I sent them my own son to assist with their satisfaction.”

  “Indeed, Lord Father,” said Char, stepping forward. “And I have followed the way of aggressive sales, just as you have commanded.”

  “And how did you open?” Zurthraka asked him.

  “I showed them our fine assortments of weapons for sale.”

  “A thousand pardons,” said the Goblin. “But it could also be said that you waved your axes at the Lightlings, and took their own weapons from them.”

  “I contrasted our product and disparaged the competition,” said Char. “It is the way of the aggressive seller.”

  “And then we were commanded to follow you,” continued the Goblin.

  “I would not take no for an answer!” Char was becoming agitated.

  “And we were separated from each other—”

  “You were given service at a personal level!”

  “Then were paraded through town—”

  “I showed off our impressive facilities and shopping centers!”

  “Wait a moment,” said Zurthraka, pointing to the Goblin. “Do you suggest that our guests felt too much sales pressure?”

  “No, Lord. I suggest that they think we are prisoners.”

  “What!” Orcs and Lightlings alike stepped back as Zurthraka leapt to his feet.

  “Impossible!” bellowed Char. “I wore green beads over orange, and my beard—”

  “But surely,” growled Zurthraka, “you remembered that Lightlings do not read the beads, and green over orange beads would mean nothing to them.”

  Char faltered. “I … uh … I was true to the path of the aggressive seller.”

  “You failed to establish your value proposition!” Zurthraka roared, shaking his mighty fists in the air. “You have fallen from the way of aggressive selling! One must always announce one’s purpose in the market to the potential customer!”

  “I … I am …” Confusion turned to frustration on the warrior’s face. “And what if I did fail this path? I tire of this folly! Day after day I am forced read your Pink-skin books, and for what? A chance to act as a simpering Halfling for a handful of their gold. In days of honor, I would take all of their gold and keep it in a purse of their scalps!” Char stared daggers at the assembly around him.

  Zurthraka stared broadswords back at his son. “And then you would have a purse full of gold until the gold-hounds came and took it from your corpse. If we follow the ways of commerce, we have our life-papers to ward off the gold-hounds, and we collect a handful of gold from the same Lightlings again and again. It is the path of prosperity.”

  “It is the path of cowards.”

  “It is the path of my tribe!” roared Zurthraka. “And as long as my beard is longest, I will brook no more slight from my own whelp!”

  “Then perhaps it is time for me to grow my beard into that of a chief,” shouted Char. “Perhaps a return to the old days of—”

  Zurthraka didn’t give Char the chance to finish. With an angry roar, he pounced upon his son. The boy barely had time to cry out before he was knocked to the ground and pinned under his father’s massive boot. “I am not so far from your old days that I will not defend my throne. Do not mention your axe unless you mean to draw it,” he growled, drawing his great knife. “And do not draw it until you are fit to rule.”

  “I did not mean—”

  “Silence!” Zurthraka grabbed a fistful of his squealing son’s beard and cleft it from his chin with a few swift strokes. He threw the
hair and beads on the floor next to Char as he walked back to the throne. “You will go and shave your face clean. Your duty is to muck the pigs and walk the wargs until it grows back.”

  Char managed to muster the wisdom to say nothing as he stood, head bowed.

  “In your days of honor, your head would be decorating a pike on my ramparts and I would have one less son,” Zurthraka said, sitting. “Leave, and speak no more of your foolishness.”

  “Your mercy is as endless as legends say,” Dengark told him.

  “It is tried to its very limits,” Zurthraka grumbled, watching Char scurry from the room. He turned back to the Goblin. “You have done us a great service, Tib’rin of the River Turtle. I will grant to you a boon. Think on it, and ask when you are ready.”

  “It was my honor, Great Lord,” said Tib’rin.

  Zurthraka nodded and turned back to the Lightlings. They stood rigid with awe and uncertainty, and wore the expression of those who have escaped the frying pan and now wonder whether the cookfire has been left lit. “And now, my friends,” he said. “It is time to, as you say, clear things up.”

  As the heroes followed the chieftain down the thoroughfare, Gorm was reminded of the days when Gnomish eyeglasses had been a favorite toy for all the lads in his mine. His father had given him a pair for his eighth name-day, a tiny pair of handcrafted goggles with cheap leather straps. When young Gorm had put them on, the mine suddenly became a fragmented swirl of sapphire, topaz, and emerald—an entirely new world of wonder and color.

  In a similar way, a cordial discussion with Chief Zurthraka had let Gorm see their circumstances through a different lens, and now the heroes were walking through an entirely new Bloodroot, although it was still predominantly brown and green. The bustling Orcs put Gorm in mind of the industrious Scribkin villages of the Ironbreakers. Shopkeepers smiled from every stall, silently inviting them to view their wares. The Orcs sang as they worked, chanting to the beat of a musician’s drums, and the song seemed familiar to Gorm in a way he couldn’t describe.

  “The chief tells us we have ye to thank for this,” Gorm told Gleebek—no, Tib’rin—as they walked down the street.

  “Grot?” said the Goblin.

  One of the Orcs in Zurthraka’s retinue kindly translated. When Tib’rin chittered something back, the Orc told Gorm, “He says he owed you a blood debt. You saved his life.”

  “Do me a favor and tell him we’re even,” said Gorm.

  The wargs were loosed when the heroes passed their cages. The massive wolves ran barking and baying from their pens, only to flop down in front of the heroes and refuse to move until their bellies had been sufficiently scratched. Given the quantity of wargs in the pack and the impressive size of an average warg belly, it took the heroes considerable time and effort to extricate themselves and continue on their royal tour.

  Zurthraka’s tour continued with a walkthrough of one of several factories in Bloodroot. A sign outside identified it as a sword smithery for the Vorpal Corp, a well-known manufacturer of exceptionally sharp blades.

  “I didn’t think Vorpal swords were made in a factory,” said Laruna, as the heroes and Zurthraka’s retinue crammed into factory’s entryway. “I always assumed they were crafted by that smith who’s pictured on the crates they come in.”

  “Right, the one with the picturesque mountain village behind him,” said Kaitha. “Everyone wants a sword crafted by an old master.”

  “Marketing is its own kind of magic, is it not?” said Zurthraka. “An illusion that men pay to be fooled by.”

  He pushed the doors open and showed them a nightmare.

  Waves of heat and choking smog washed over the heroes. The factory was a termite mound of steel and stone, swarming with bare-chested Orcs. Some worked over pools of molten slag, standing tenuously close to the edge and stirring it with long metal rods. Others stood along glowing tracks, crammed shoulder to shoulder, their hands gliding faster than sight over streams of weapon parts that bobbed down the line on currents of magic. Swords were assembled from their base components: gems and pommels, crossbars and grips. The Orcs went about their work with dull eyes and blank expressions.

  “Bloody ashes,” whispered Gorm.

  “But … but how can this be?” Heraldin asked. “Every Vorpal sword is made with rare ingredients. They’re made with the blood of a Flame Drake and the teeth of a Diamondfang Skarg.”

  Zurthraka pointed to an emaciated figure in a suspended cage near the upper catwalks. “They are.” Through the smog, Gorm could just make out the crimson-scaled body of a Flame Drake; its breathing was slow and labored, and thick tubes were stitched through its body.

  “They are forced to drink your elixir to keep them alive, but their bodies are ever harvested for the components to craft the blades,” said Zurthraka. “And my tribe is not treated so much better. Daily my tribesmen lose hands and fingers to the river of blades, but they are given a potion and told to get back to work. Day in and day out, they bleed and drink the potions and bleed again.”

  “Are you all right?” said Laruna.

  “Hmm?” said Kaitha.

  “It almost sounded like you said that sounds nice.”

  “What? No! Ha ha! That’s funny. No. I said that’s not right.”

  “It is not right,” agreed Zurthraka. “It is an abomination. But it is what the Vorpal Corporation demands.” He nodded to a small group of Humans and Gnomes in smart suits, who supervised the factory from the top of the catwalk.

  “So why do ye do it?”

  “It is better to bleed than to die, is it not? These factories gave us life-papers and jobs when we had no other path. Our wages let us build this city. It was a high price to pay, but now we have a foundation to build a dream.”

  “I suppose,” said Gorm.

  “Come,” said Zurthraka. “I will show you a dream that is worth our blood.”

  He led them from the factory, through the streets, to a small alley littered with anvils and forges. Amid the orange glow of the coals, blacksmiths hammered glowing metal to the rhythm of their ancient chant. Around them, Orcs carefully polished and packaged the product of the blacksmith’s labors: weapons and armor, but also plowshares and farming tools, candelabras, ornate gates, and even an angular sculpture of a dancing Orc.

  “This is the future of the Guz’Varda Tribe,” Zurthraka told the heroes. “My kin craft weapons and armor of the finest quality, in the old ways of my people.”

  “And they’re as good as Vorpal blades?” Jynn sounded doubtful, and Gorm was inclined to share his skepticism. Everyone knew Vorpal made the sharpest, finest blades possible.

  “As good?” snorted Zurthraka. “They’re better! Corporations like Vorpal or Plus-Five know nothing of the proper heft of a blade or the right curve of a crossguard. They talk only of sharpness and magical flame on the blade or the gems on the hilt. What good is a blade that shoots lightning if you cannot strike your foe with it?

  “We shape the steel as our ancestors did, when every Orc smithed his own blade, and our greatest craftsmen were our greatest warriors. Our weapons are balanced by hands that know how they should swing. Our ancestors lived and fought and died for ages of unceasing war, and we fold their knowledge, their curses, their spirit, into our steel. Our blades are forged in the fires of our history. They are peerless.”

  “The secret ingredient is bloodlust,” said Heraldin.

  “Here,” said Zurthraka. He selected an axe from a weapons rack and handed it to Gorm.

  “Oh, I couldn’t—oh.” The weight of the weapon surprised Gorm; he could feel the heft of its head, but somehow it seemed easier than lifting his own. His old weapon was well-balanced and sufficient, but this was perfect: an extension of his arm from the moment it dropped into his hand.

  “It’s … it’s amazing,” said Gorm, giving the axe a test swing.

  “It is, and what is more, it is an opportunity,” said Zurthraka. “Asherzu, present the opportunity!”

  An Orcess
in harvest gold and lilac wrappings stepped forward, holding up a set of charts painted on a lambskin. “I am Asherzu Guz’Varda, second daughter and fourth child of Zurthraka Guz’Varda! Our research makes clear that Lightlings want handcrafted, traditional goods, and perceive their superior quality. If we strike now, we can establish a brand to rival the Vorpal Corp. Our product lines shall have much glory and honor, and also a premium price.”

  “Once we have built our brand, that is. For now, we sell them cheaper than a sword by Plus-Five,” said Zurthraka. And then, in the manner of his so-called Path of the Aggressive Seller, he added, “How many shall I package up for you?”

  Gorm bought the axe; it would have been foolish not to, at that price. Kaitha found a hunting knife that suited her. Heraldin picked up a pair of daggers. The Orcs were pleased with those sales, but they were unabashedly thrilled with Gaist. The weaponsmaster bought a small battalion’s worth of concealable weapons as well as a great two-handed sword to strap across his back. He also proved an excellent haggler; Gaist placed a bag of giltin on the table and stared straight ahead, unflinching at the exhortations and gyrations of the desperate sales Orcs around him, until they finally, brokenly, scooped up his offered price and limped away.

  Niln alone was unhappy about the transactions, although that was entirely because he was bankrolling them.

  “The temple has already spent incredible amounts of money on weapons and armor for the party,” he argued. “Don’t you think we should save some of the quest’s budget for other things?”

  “I don’t understand your question,” Gorm told him.

  “What else would we spend the money on?” asked Kaitha.

  “Lots,” said Asherzu with a smile.

  They toured several more shops offering exotic treasures. Clothiers offered them brightly colored shawls and strings of intricately carved beads. Furriers hawked coats and gloves and bedrolls made from the furs of yaks and wargs. Steaming legs of yak and ram drizzled with spiced honey sizzled over fire pits, and for tuppence, a wiry Orc shaved several thick, juicy strips off any meat the heroes wanted. There were tools and toys, produce and pottery, cheeses and wines—a wider array of products than Gorm had imagined any Orc would use, let alone create.