Ogaz sat above him with shoulders and chin and broken tusk silhouetted against the sky. Three pinprick stars drew slow circles around his head like an intermittent halo. Orc heard water rushing somewhere and he watched the stars and felt the fullness of his cheek. Dried blood prickled his neck as he turned his head. Water sloshed. The stars stopped their circles and were motionless and silent and the black earth occluded them as if the world was a creature of night that devoured the heavens at every turn to birth a new sun from their consumed brilliance.
"He stirs," said a deep voice.
Ogaz's head bent slightly. "Resting now, Orc. Sleeping and resting. Ogaz has you."
He closed his eyes.
He dreamed of urgent voices and heavy breathing. Of the blue moon and a strip of a thousand thousand stars bright and strong and staring at him from the bottom of the furrow he plowed. Of sweat running up his back and a seedling growing from where the [brigadier] kissed him goodnight and goodmorning. Of the stars rocking back and forth with the white painted crib and its tall thin wooden bars and sweet smelling sheets. But she wasn't there. Their bond was severed. And him cast into a profiteer's pit to make murder. "One must be violent," she said, "lest one fall victim to the violent." The seedling withered where it grew. Rotted at the root in his cheek. It splintered when he touched it and its leaves broke in his hand and blew away in the slot's warm breeze.
He sat up in the boat.
"Easy," said Saand. She held an oar over the stern as if for steering.
"I was shot,” he said.
"You were."
"Tell me what happened."
"You saved me and mine, so I saved you and yours."
"And the Mad?"
She took a hand from the oar and gestured ahead. "Free."
He turned forward and saw the maw of the Mad open before them to reveal the eastern sky and its galaxies of red and blue and yellow stars winking as if knowing. The sea's cool exhalation shattered faint crests of its swells and the empty masts and spars of the human ships waved like the snags and branches of trees ready to fall.
They passed through the maw. A bonfire far down the strand lit the side of Saand's face. She smiled at him and said, "Welcome home," as if home was so easily found. This place was hers, not his, and he had no idea how to change that.
He watched her lean forward intently and look past him at the four tall ships and at the thousands of orcs gathered along the strand. "Horn and hoof," she said. "You brought an army."
"As Ogaz says," said Ogaz.
A figure waded from the strand into the Mad and arrested their little boat with a massive hand.
"You," said the figure. It was Glad Nizam. She was waist deep in the Mad with her shorthorn beside her. "You did this."
Orc nodded. "Yes."
She turned to Ogaz. "And you?"
"Ogaz doing as Glad Nizam asks."
Glad Nizam dragged the boat to the shore of the new old river. The tusker [weird] knelt there watching with hands on knees and elbows out so the squares between elbow and hip made two black holes to nowhere.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.
Glad Nizam looked at Saand. "You I don't know."
Saand shrugged. "Nor I."
"She helps Ogaz and Orc," said Ogaz.
"You be living here then?" said Glad Nizam.
"Not far from here."
"There be others?"
Saand shrugged.
"Them men who be guarding the camps said all orckin here be wiped out. Yet here you are."
"I go where the river wills."
Glad Nizam grinned. "And it has willed you to me."
Saand nodded at the bonfire down the strand. "How many are you?"
"Twenty five thousand," said Glad Nizam.
"There are not so many orcs in the world."
"You can trust her," said Orc. He turned to Saand. "Twenty five hundred gather here now."
"There be more yet coming," said Glad Nizam. "Three thousand followed me from camps I freed."
"Then you are Glad Nizam."
"Yes I be."
"Ogaz told me of you and of your promises to they who followed you across the sea. Listen. This land has suffered. It will not sustain twenty five hundred."
"Such things we shall discuss later."
"Not later. Men stole what bounty they did not flood. Your twenty five hundred will spoil all that remains. Use your big ships and go down the coast. Give the river a chance to cleanse himself and restore his land."
"But it be my land, eh? Three generations we starved in the camps. If you think I'll ask my brothers to leave off some boars for the sake of some boars then you been drinking too deep. No. Stop talking, shorthorn. Orcs be here now and orcs will take care of what be needed. I thank you for whatever aid you gave mine, but now be your time for resting."
Glad Nizam now turned her gaze to Orc. "I thought you'd be gone for good."
He didn't know what to say to that. He was here because they were here. That was the only reason. To be with his folk. But instead of saying those things he said, "There's nothing out there but desert."
Glad Nizam reached her huge hand into the boat and placed it against his chest. "And in here?"
He felt Ogaz and Saand watching. He felt the [weird] and the guard watching. He wanted to say something but he didn't know what or how. He felt like he was back at the [brigadier]'s on their last day together. He felt like he'd never know how.
Ogaz said, "Glad Nizam saying new world is for all orcs. No matter their pasts, all are welcome."
"Yes. All be welcome. Even musheating red blooded woman cubs. But he must be wanting the welcome. He must be orc inside."
"I am," said Orc.
She shook her head at him and lifted her hand off of his chest and lightly touched his chin with her thumb and turned his face. "You be shot."
"It's nothing."
She grinned at him. "Save some grit for the rest of us."
He shrugged. "All I did was swing that beardling ax. Its metal's what did the work."
She withdrew her hand. "Did you find my scout?"
"Dead."
"Humans?"
"Humans."
She spat on the ground.
"The whaler ever come in?" he said.
"Not yet, but we will worry about that after we celebrate this." She offered her hand. "I be proud of you musheater."
Orc clasped her arm about the wrist and she clasped his. She lifted him out of the boat and onto the sand. He felt the power and strength there, and for a moment he thought he felt something like kinship.
"I never expected it'd be you," she said. In her bad eye the bonfire twinkled. "This be a day of glory for us. The day orcs reclaimed what always be theirs. You want to be part of it musheater?"
"Yes."
Glad Nizam nodded and Orc saw her greenskin emerge from the dark and he felt the little claw wrap around his wrist and tug him toward the shore.
Glad Nizam looked toward the fire. "Then come and be burned."
----------------------------------------
> +2 [Rage] ...anyway it was my fault. What happened then and what happened after, and I am pleased to take credit for it... (8/10).
> +2 [Renown] ...yew couldn't stop him for makin a name for hisself. He couldn't help it. Yew ever seen a grizzly get a taste for man? Well I have and so has he and that's just how he was. Hell Booky made me share a cell with both of em and it weren't no bigger than yer little stone shitter over there... (8/10)