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

by J. Zachary Pike

  She slipped the elixir and the hunting knife from her belt pouch.

  The idea of the King in the Wood made her want to be a better person, but if he was anything more than an idea, he was content not to show it. Every night that she spent imploring him to show himself, the vials in her pack implored her to come and float away on streams of blood and elixir. The man and the bottle, her ideal and her obsession, were pulling her in opposite directions, but only one of them had decided to show up tonight.

  “It won’t be often,” she told herself as she slipped off her bracers. Just a dose now and then. She could spread them out. Maybe stop altogether someday—some distant day, to be more specific.

  “For once, I hope you’re not there,” she whispered to the woods. She must have cut deeper than she thought; the very rocks beneath her seemed to jerk as the knife bit into her wrist. She let the blood pour down her hand and onto the stone for as long as she could stand, and then eagerly sucked the elixir from the bottle and drifted away on a cloud of dreams.

  Gorm found Niln in his tent, still at the side of Tib’rin’s cot, washing the sleeping Goblin’s face with a cool cloth. The patient’s breathing was slow and regular, his eyes sunken in their gigantic sockets.

  “Any change?” Gorm asked.

  “Not yet. But don’t worry. He will awaken,” Niln said. He dunked his cloth into a bowl of cool water and pressed it to the Goblin’s head again. “He just needs time to fight off the corruption. Dark magic bites deeper than flesh.”

  “Ye’ve seen this before, then?”

  “Several times,” said Niln. “I worked with the temple healers during my days as an acolyte, and I know the malady. Tib’rin will be fine.”

  “Good.” Gorm sat down on a stump next to the Goblin. “Kaitha said ye wanted to see me.”

  “I wished to ask whom you plan to give the Elven Marbles to,” said Niln.

  It caught Gorm completely off guard. “I … I didn’t … I’d assumed you’d decided the Elves,” he told Niln.

  “I had,” said Niln. “And now, I would not be so sure. But in truth, it isn’t my decision. The other heroes follow you, Gorm. They tolerate me, insofar as it benefits them. If you and I disagree where to take the marbles, I have no doubts as to who they’ll side with.”

  “But we won’t disagree,” Gorm protested. “How could we? The king gave ye the power, and I don’t have an opinion.”

  “Then you must find one. The mantle of leadership is like destiny, Mr. Ingerson. It chooses whom it will, regardless of the wishes of kings or men, and you cannot give it away should you be chosen.” The high scribe gave a resigned sigh. “No more than you can seize it for your own should you be passed over.”

  “Don’t go blaming destiny again. You’re passing leadership off to me right now.”

  “Am I?” The high scribe’s smile was small and waning. “Have I led up until now? Is the party looking to me for wisdom? Am I letting them down?”

  Gorm thought about it. “No,” he admitted eventually.

  “I wish I was wrong in this,” said Niln. “But you and I both know otherwise. I have many things to decide before we reach Andarun, but the fate of the Elven Marbles is not one of them.”

  “Aye,” said Gorm. His mind was racing; he’d sworn to carefully consider who should have the Elven Marbles, but he’d made those promises secure in the knowledge that his opinion didn’t matter. “I’ll … I’ll think on it.”

  “Good.” Niln took the cold cloth from Tib’rin’s brow and replaced it with a fresh one. “I’ve heard you plan to interrogate Jynn about his past.”

  “Once I can bring myself to look at him,” said Gorm, “and do it without breaking his teeth.”

  “Let me save you the trouble. I’ll provide you with a dossier on Jynn Ur’Mayan’s history.”

  Gorm leaped up so fast he nearly jostled Tib’rin off his cot. “Ye knew? And ye kept it secret from the party?”

  “Secrecy was exactly why Jynn joined our party. You weren’t the only hero who was brought into our company under duress, if you’ll recall.”

  “So ye blackmailed him, just like ye blackmailed me.”

  “No, Mr. Ingerson. It’s very different. You were a criminal with a respectable past. Jynn was the opposite. You gave up a life on the highway for a chance at redemption. He was forced to give up his redeemed life to join the guild that killed his father. I have never felt a shred of guilt, not even a moment of hesitation, for the manner in which you had to be recruited. But for Jynn … yes, I regret that.” Niln gazed through Gorm, staring at something that only he could see. “I told myself it had to be done, but then, I did it for the sake of many things that did not come to pass.

  “If you must be angry at someone for the secrecy, let it be me.” Niln stood. “Forgive Jynn. The questions he faces tonight will be penance enough for him.”

  “No,” said Gorm. “No, ye talked me out of it. I’ll spare him my questions. Reading his file will be enough.”

  Niln stopped in the tent’s doorway. “I’m glad, Mr. Ingerson, but I wasn’t referring to your questions.”

  Laruna’s knuckles were white as her fists reflexively clenched and unclenched. Her arms were crossed over her chest so tightly that they ached, straining against the fury that she was barely containing. “I’m here.” Her words scraped out between grinding teeth. “What do you want?”

  “I feel like I owe you an explanation,” Jynn said. He looked small and frail, like a frightened animal in the middle of the clearing he’d led her to. Well, that fit the story.

  “There’s no need. I’ve heard the ballads.”

  “Oh, we’ve all heard the ballads.” The noctomancer’s lips twisted, as though he tasted the bitterness in his words. “They don’t tell the whole story.”

  “You kidnapped a princess. You tried to force her to marry you,” said Laruna. “I’d say that’s enough to know.”

  “We d-didn’t k-k-kidnap. Arrgh!” He stopped and collected himself. “All right, look, believe what you will about F-f-father. I was a boy, Laruna, not yet ten years old. What makes you think I’d want to marry anyone? F-father told me I was to be married, and that he had found a princess for me, and I was to be a prince.”

  Laruna faltered. “Well, maybe you could have reasoned—”

  “I’d been on half rations for two years because I kept failing in my studies. I hadn’t spoken to a soul outside of that tower for even longer than that, and then F-f-father was telling me I could have a new life in a new castle. He said he’d be proud of me. Even if I could have seen a reason to tell him no, and even if I wasn’t scared to death of the man, I wouldn’t have refused him.

  “And yes, I was at the wedding. I won’t deny it. But Marja thought even less of me than F-father did. So when Johan came, I took my chance and ran away. Can you say you would have done any different?”

  “I don’t know,” said Laruna. “It’s a sad story, and if it’s true, I’m very sorry for you.”

  “Please believe me. Why would I lie to you?”

  “That’s my question!” she screamed. Her resolve cracked as reservoirs of pain and fury overflowed. “‘Have you ever felt alone?’ I asked. ‘Do you know what it’s like to feel stupid?’ I said. No! Not Jynn!”

  “Laruna, I—”

  The dam had burst. Her rage was rushing out now, and a simple protest would not stop it. Laruna could feel wisps of flame writhing around her fists. “I poured out my heart to you! I told you my secrets, secrets the academy doesn’t know! And all I got was this stone wall, this facade you show everyone else!”

  “I’m sorry,” said Jynn. “I really am. Of course I’ve felt that way. But … there are men who would see me dead just for my heritage. The most popular ballads in the land feature me as a fool. There are drinking songs about how I wet myself on my wedding day.”

  “What?”

  “I believe it’s called ‘Cold Feet, Warm Pants.’ They say it’s very catchy. I spent two decades building a new
life separate from my past. I can’t go around sharing my story with just anybody who tells me theirs.”

  The words shocked her for a moment, but shock was quickly vaporized by white-hot wrath. She saw the flash of fear in Jynn’s eyes, saw him quickly raise an intricate magical shield. But she was not the apprentice she had been, and though the noctomancer’s weaves were far more complex than Laruna could hope to create, she knew enough to destroy them. A quick burst of fire bored through his barrier and blew it apart, leaving him open and defenseless.

  As the remnants of his shield burned away, she slapped him so hard he almost fell. “You weren’t just anybody to me!” she sobbed. “And you made me think I wasn’t just anybody to you!”

  He stared at her with piercing blue eyes, ignoring the red welt rising on his cheek. “You’re not just … you’re very special to me. If you forgive me, I can show you that.”

  “Can you?” she said. “Can you tell me there are no more secrets? Can you say that I know you as well as you know me?”

  He winced at her question but recovered quickly. Some of his old self returned as he straightened, and he gave her a small, brave smile. “Could you believe me if I did?” he asked.

  They both knew the answer, and so they both walked away.

  The sun had long set before the Elf stood again, wobbling and giddy. She cleaned her hands and wrists with an old rag before she fumbled her bracers into place. The warm glow of the distant campfire guided her as she staggered back to camp, leaving behind a blood-spattered pile of rocks that waited until she was well out of earshot before transforming into a blood-spattered Troll.

  A tear ran down Thane’s face as he watched her go. He looked around the clearing, as though dazed, and his eyes locked upon something that gleamed in the faint moonlight.

  He picked up the small, empty vial etched with an ornate spiral pattern. He considered the bottle sitting in his palm, a tiny drop of glowing amber swirling around its base. And the longer he considered the bottle, the more ragged his breath became, and the more his face hardened into a determined grimace.

  His hand closed around the bottle. With a trembling fist, Thane slowly, deliberately ground the vial into crystalline dust.

  One by one, the heroes shuffled off to their tents for the night. The moon rose high above the pine tops, washing the forest in pale azure. The fire died to a few glowing embers that sparked in the cool night. Gorm remained by Tib’rin’s side, lost in thought.

  Of course he should give the Elven Marbles to the Elves. It had been all but a foregone conclusion a few days ago. The gratitude of House Tyrieth could prove invaluable to Gorm’s professional comeback, and their spite could be damaging in equal measure. If he thought at all about his career, there wasn’t really even a choice.

  Besides, there was a long tradition of looting for all the races of Man. Orc fortresses had been built with plunder from Elven cities; in the old days, powerful Orcs had worn necklaces of Elven teeth and ears to prove their might. Likewise, the Elves took the marbles, or the burial stones, or whatever they were, and carted them off to display them as a source of national pride. That was how everything had always worked. Loot was the prize, the goal was to take it, and the Elves won. It wasn’t fair for Shadowkin to fault the Elves for playing the game just because the Orcs lost.

  Burt’s tiny canine voice rang out in Gorm’s memory. “Shadowkin never win, Lightling. We can’t win.”

  Gorm remembered the Orcs of Guz’Varda Tribe, toiling every day for the dream of a life that he had taken for granted. The return of their sacred burial stones would be more than a gift to Bloodroot; they would be a beacon of hope for Shadowkin everywhere.

  The smart thing to do wasn’t the right thing to do. If he did the right thing, he’d probably be laughed right back into the gutter, and there’d be no returning to the glory days. If he played it smart, he could have his old career back. But he’d never be the same Dwarf he was twenty years ago.

  “I guess ye really can’t go back,” he whispered to himself.

  “Gurm Ingerzon?” said a weak voice.

  “I’m here,” said Gorm, relief washing over him.

  The Goblin tried to push himself to his elbows. “Grot? Whut?”

  “Nay, nay, lie down. Niln is fine. He’s good, see? Sleeping in his tent. Sleep, aye?” Gorm pantomimed a person sleeping, unsure how much Imperial the Goblin had actually picked up.

  Tib’rin nodded with an awkward “Ayiee,” and fell back on his cot.

  “Ye saved the high scribe again,” Gorm told his bedridden squire. “And all of us, really. If Niln died, we’d all be for the hangman’s noose.”

  Tib’rin managed a wan smile. “Gurm Ingerzon … frand.”

  “Aye, we’re fast friends,” said Gorm. And he knew then that he’d always known, deep in his bones, what he was going to do with the Elven Marbles. It just took the friendship of a Goblin for him to accept it.

  “Gurm Ingerzon?”

  “Aye?”

  “Hangry.” The goblin pointed a spindly claw at his open mouth.

  “Aye, of course ye are,” laughed Gorm. “Never change, lad.”

  Chapter 17

  A flash flood of celebration rolled through the streets of Bloodroot. The streets filled with thousands of Orcs of all shapes and sizes, bedecked in ceremonial paints and teal and sunglow beads. Spontaneous choruses formed in the streets and burst into song. The factory floors emptied, the shouts of the workers drowning out the protests of their managers. Warriors delivered great ululating cries that rose above the roar of the crowd.

  Gorm caught only flashes of the festival erupting around him. He remembered Zurthraka announcing that the burial stones of Ogh Magherd had returned home, and a great blast of drake-horn trumpets announcing the decree. He recalled carrying one of the stones through the dirty streets, Orcs cheering and jostling for a better view of the sculptures and the heroes who had saved them. Vendors pressed through the crowds to press gifts into the heroes’ hands: braised meats, strings of beads, intricate knives, and other trinkets.

  They were led atop a great platform at the center of town, where Chief Zurthraka placed the miniature death masks on each of the marble heads. One by one, the names of the ancestral warriors were read aloud by Zurthraka’s children, and the entire city roared the names in reply. Then the ceremony ended, and the celebration began in earnest.

  At the festival’s zenith, Gorm stood with the other heroes in the chieftain’s tower, watching a tide of green flow to the rhythm of the band’s frenetic drumming.

  “Tomorrow will be a new day,” Zurthraka told them.

  “What will happen tomorrow?” Gorm asked.

  “We will go to work.”

  “That sounds a lot like yesterday, actually,” said Heraldin.

  “But tomorrow, we will have the stones. We’ll be that much closer to the dream.”

  “I don’t mean to be rude,” ventured Heraldin, “but I’m still not seeing much difference.”

  “The change we seek will not come all at once,” Zurthraka reflected. “It may not come in my lifetime. But when I was a whelp, our tribe was starving, and today, I bounce fat grandchildren on my knee; tomorrow—who can say? My grandchildren’s grandchildren will have riches that my people can only dream of, and they will know that we built their inheritance slowly, day by day, brick by brick.”

  The chieftain nodded at the raucous crowd in the streets below. “The stones are a very big brick.”

  “I suppose they are, my friend,” said Heraldin.

  Zurthraka turned to Gorm. “A bigger question is: what will you do tomorrow?”

  “The guild has an office in Haertswood, not three days west of here,” said Gorm. “We’ll go to turn in the quest there. And after that, well…”

  Niln seemed far less insistent that the heroes track down a long-dead Sten, and Johan had seemed certain there wouldn’t be any more assignments coming from the Temple of Tandos. It was likely that the Heroes of Destiny woul
d take a hiatus. Perhaps he could make the Festival of Orchids after all.

  “Who can say?” said Zurthraka.

  Gorm smiled. “Who can say?”

  Yet regardless of how long the party would stay together, one member wouldn’t be joining them.

  A crowd of admirers parted as Gorm approached the table where Tib’rin was attacking a pile of spiced meats and roasted tubers. “Well, seems like ye’ve done pretty well here for yourself,” he said.

  “Aiyee,” said Tib'rin, grinning up from a half-eaten pig haunch.

  Gorm requested a word alone with his squire. The Orcs reluctantly left them, save for a wise-one in crimson robes, who had been designated as Tib’rin’s translator.

  “Tib’rin, you’re a great friend, and we owe our success to ye. But I’ve been wanting to tell ye something for a while now.”

  “Yas?”

  “You’re absolutely rubbish as a squire.”

  “Grot?”

  “He say, ‘What?’” said the Orcish translator.

  “My gear would fall apart if it wasn’t for me taking care of it. Ye ate half me supplies, and I wish I were talking about me rations. You’re too short to saddle the horses, and they’re frightened of ye anyway. I’ve never heard of a squire half so bad as ye. And I thought ye’d improve, but if anything, you’re getting worse. I don’t even know how that’s possible.”

  The Goblin looked crestfallen as the translator conveyed Gorm’s message. “Tib’rin Fa-eet?”

  “Aye, ye can fight better than some, but a squire ain’t supposed to fight. Ye keep on running into trouble and saving our lives.” And miraculously surviving certain death, Gorm mentally added. The problem was that you might get a miracle one time for every twenty desperate situations. A professional hero couldn’t rely on luck alone to survive, or to keep a friend alive.

  “You’re fired, Tib’rin.” Gorm dropped a pouch of giltin on the table. “Here’s your back pay. Plus severance. And, coincidentally, a job offer from Chief Zurthraka.” He presented a piece of paper covered in jagged glyphs.