Chapter 89

Hawkin in the Mountains

Ogo

Aerie high, at new altitudes, I slept. I slept for 3 days. When I awoke, I found that I was the first to wake. My orcs were sleeping upon down filled hide by tended fire. I had not believed the greffles when they said they’d tend the fires, but the warmth of the cave proved that they had. There was one arriving with a 20 foot wingspan. It alighted at the mouth of the cave. The cave went dark in its shadow. Its talons dropped logs which clattered about.

“The Ogo is awake,” it said.

“Kloklak?” I said.

“Orcs sleep long time.”

Kloklak turned her wings in. Her gray plumage rustled. With her talons, she tended the fire with the new logs. The cave filled with light.

“Hungry?” she said. “For rabbit? Raw.”

“I will eat,” I said.

“Come.”

We left the cave. The wind held flakes of ice in it and it scratched my skin and pinged against the ring on my tusk. I could hear the ice pitter on her long crooked orange beak. The mountainside terrain was rough. I could only traverse using both hands, almost crawling along. Kloklak leaped from boulder to boulder with a few flaps of her wings. The sun spilled over the eastern ridge and filled the corrie far below. But the sun would rise above almost black clouds in less than an hour. Snow fell.

After a short climb, we arrived at a peak which held gargantuan nests made of the bones of animals and monsters—and I thought the mountains had been snowcapped. We entered through the ribs of one shelter and into the heart of the dwelling.

Kloklak and I sat across each other from the hearth.

“I am the matriarch,” said Kloklak. “This is a good time, yes? To continue our transaction?”

“I figured you held authority. Yes. Your shelter and warmth was what we needed.”

“We enjoyed the beer.”

“I’d prefer to trade for coin.”

“What do you think we do with coin around here? No, we have bones; we have moss.”

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“Bones are useless to me.”

“Not for house? Not for weapon? Not for broth, for mineral?”

“I don’t want to trade for moss.”

“Bryo moss is the best moss Better than good-moss.”

“I can’t sell it. I need obsidian or pearls at least.”

“No pearls. No Obsidian.”

Kloklak regurgitated three dead rabbits. She caught the first one and tossed it to me over the embers of the hearth. Like unspooling thread, she peeled off the fur and pecked at the meat.

The hide was easy to puncture over a tusk. After that it tore easily. We chewed in the dawn light that made the bones of the dwelling seem to glow.

“Take the moss, orc,” said Kloklak. “Trade it with the golems. They have obsidian.”

“So it’s true. The orcs will trade for moss. The tzards were honest.”

“The tzards are delicious, goblins too. Have you goblin meat?”

“That’s why you like the beer. There’s some goblin in it.”

“Oh, the beer is good.”

“For one barrel, how much moss?”

“Ten platforms.”

After our meal, Kloklak escorted me back outdoors. We traversed more inhospitable mountain terrain until we arrived at a chasm filled with moss. By Kloklak’s command, greffles gathered enough moss to form a single bale—ten platforms worth of moss. It was more moss than the tzards had traded us.

With the amount of beer the greffles wanted, I would be taking on a huge gamble with moss. What reason would both the greffles and the tzards have to lie about moss? With so much moss, I could trade with the golems for obsidian, then trade obsidian with the quarottes for coin. What other way was there?

“Where are your legkeds?” said Klaklok.

“Legkeds?”

“You couldn’t have braved here without the speed of legkeds. You will be crushed by the winter.”

“How can weather crush an orc?”

“I have seen it crush many things with lips and noses.”

“You’ve never heard of mighty orc, Hin. He sleeps beneath Mount Juhty.”

“I don’t believe it.”

“When it rumbles, it is because he snores. And when the earth shakes, it is because he is hungry. He coughs ash into the sky. His tongue erupts from the crater and rolls down the mountain side as fast and as red as magma. He eats everything with his tongue. He sleeps with his belly full and the mountain never crushes him.”

“Let’s say that explains one volcano. Orcs sleep beneath the other volcanoes?”

“They are Hin’s brothers and sisters. It runs in the family.”

Kloklak became enamored with the lore of orcs. She asked about the birth of the sky, and I explained that the first orc, Wom, opened an eye one day, and from then on, we could see the stars at night. And the sun? Well the sun was punched by Dak. The punch was so filled with rage, that the sun took the brunt of that rage and burns in it.

“Ah, but that isn’t possible,” said Kloklak.

“Yes, it is.”

“No, because the sun is Poktak, the brooder of greffles. Poktak was born from her own skull. During the day, she preens her coat. As she rustles her plumage, the warmth of her brooding falls on the world.”

Back and forth we went, sharing lore, eating raw rabbit, and drinking goblin spit beer. By mid morning, orcs and greffles filtered in to listen, eat, and snooze. Much laughter shook bones.

By afternoon, barrels of beer were unloaded from our carts and hauled up the mountain. Moss was flown to our carts and stacked by the bale. One by one, Hawkin’s branded name speckled the mountain crags and chasms with ethereal colors. The mountain went from bone-capped to glistening with weird colors in fish scales patterns.