He hung over the oarlock of the little harpoon boat and looked straight down into mile deep water. The sun was high and it beamed through the rough geometries of the surface and rendered prisms beneath. As if the light compressed the salt and water into a thousand crystalline panes. No matter how he moved his head they angled away as radii from the center of its shadow so that it bore a halo like one of the martyrs in the chapel on the [brigadier]'s estate.

He looked away. Out where the horizon should be the water seemed to go on forever, merging into the great dome of the sky as if it was just a vast mirror reflecting the spread of ocean. He searched its heights for another harpoon boat carrying another orc and tusker and dead man across its unending surface. Like the twin of the world that human sages say hides always behind the sun. He daydreamed of this and other things until the [bosun] guttered some noises and swung the canvas sail around to block the sun and then crossed the narrow bottom to sit next to Ogaz on the far side of the craft.

Ogaz crawled away from the risen to sit on the thwart behind Orc. The whole boat shifted and the seawater ran close under Orc's elbow and he extended his arm to touch it with his fingers. Cold and clean and toxic.

"Orc thinks maybe now he’s free he pairs someday?"

He drew serpentine trails in the water. "Don't know what that is."

"Playing dumb now. Making pairs. Finding strong sow, making handsome cubs."

He withdrew his fingers from the water and watched the drops roll off of their tips. "No."

"Orc lies now."

Orc shrugged. "Not many sows left to choose from."

"Plenty left in camps."

Orc looked from the water to the tusker. "I thought Glad Nizam freed them all."

"Glad Nizam frees only half maybe." Ogaz watched the [bosun] work the tiller. "Still others north near rising lands. Some far south also."

"Well their sows aren't exactly available."

"Others too. Others living."

"Don't think they're for me."

"No? Saand maybe?"

"Saand?" He stopped watching the water and looked at Ogaz and at the way he ran his finger over the point of his good tusk. "Guess you've been thinking of it."

"What?"

"Pairing."

Ogaz grinned. "Maybe."

"You should've tried while you had the chance."

"More chances coming. Always more chances."

"Til there aren't."

Ogaz shrugged. "Then not mattering."

Orc watched the [bosun] also. His smooth pallid fingers clenched tight around the tiller and tighter around the mainsheet. There was a cleat nearby yet he held onto the line for some reason. Perhaps to better feel a boat he'd just met.

"They shot her," said Orc.

"One arrow's nothing to Saand. She's strong."

"They probably took her. They probably took all of them."

"Then maybe they bring her where we go. Back to camps. Camps we later free."

"I doubt that."

"Ogaz likes strong. Strong and big. Ogaz thinks Orc never knows strong sow."

"Ogaz best stop thinking."

Ogaz smiled. "Orc only knows weakling womens."

"Sure didn't."

Ogaz laughed. "Old warlady? Pit lady? Which?"

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

Orc shook his head. Now the [bosun] watched them and listened with his upper lip turned upward into a grotesque smile as if he understood the tusker's words and intimations.

"Old warlady oils old leathers. Suppling for big strong Orc."

"You've given this some thought."

"Pit lady chains Orc down so he's not bouncing off ceiling."

"The pit didn't have a ceiling."

Ogaz laughed again.

The [bosun] made his throaty noises and pushed the tiller away and they ducked as the boom swung across the benches. The [bosun] squatted beneath it and with a hand balanced himself on Ogaz's knee and sat on their side of the boat.

Ogaz made a horrified face at his ratty pant leg where the dead man had touched, as if he expected his skin to bloat up and shrivel like something rotting. Again he crawled to the opposite side of the boat.

The [bosun] wore his little half smile and looked at Orc with a glimmer in his eye. In that moment he looked almost alive but for his hanging jaw. His hands gripped tiller and mainsheet and he lifted the sheet toward his mouth and tried to bite the line as if from habit but his jaw didn't work so he wrapped the line twice around his neck and reached forward and across the boat to loosen the jibsheet and the jib flapped across the foredeck making the most noise that part of the sea had ever heard. He secured the jibsheet around the cleat and unwound the mainsheet from his neck with a bony hand and gestured his forehead at Orc then at the tiller.

Orc took the offered tiller and watched the [bosun] make his hand flat and chop it directly ahead then slightly out of the wind then directly into the wind as if he would know what such gestures meant. Then he watched the [bosun] reach his free hand into the inside breast pocket of his jacket and draw out a leatherbound book and pencil of dwarven make.

"Where'd you dig them up?" he said.

The sailor set the book on the bench beside him and flipped it open with his thumb and held it open with the heel of his hand. Its first pages were filled with sketches of stones and of carvings and several portraits of a sharp featured woman engulfed in fire. He flipped to a blank page and wrote in a child's blocky script: your dwarf friend.

"You know about her."

I stowed aboard on her voyage over. I listened. She wants the ax back. She hunts you.

Orc glanced at the [Skyshard] lashed under the forethwart. "She isn't the only one."

I'm here for different reasons. To help. Repayment.

“Repayment.”

The man nodded.

"I didn't give you Booky's blade so you could put it in my gut."

The [bosun] made a hideous clucking sound that must've been laughter and threw his head back but his jaw stayed in place resting against his neck and the sight of it stretched open made Orc feel seasick.

He said, "You don't owe me anything. Last I counted I owe you twice."

The [bosun] shook his head. You saved three lives of mine. I owe one more.

The [bosun] held up the finger that clasped the pencil to his thumb.

"I didn't save any lives of yours. This isn't some sort of religious thing, is it?"

No religion. My wife and boys.

"The ones you were beating on."

The [bosun] lowered his head and shook it from side to side. His jaw flapped back and forth and Orc had to look away. When he turned back he saw the man writing so fiercely that the paper tore under the pencil's tip and with one hand he shoved the book against Orc’s chest hard enough that Orc fell over backward into the bottom of the boat. The [bosun] secured the swinging tiller and cleated the mainsheet and swung under the boom to the prow of the boat and sat forward with his forehead thrust into the wind.

Orc lifted the book off of his chest and saw the spot of sunlight shining through the tear and the word written there. NO.

He sat up and closed the book and set it back on the bench then found the pencil rolling around the boat's bottom and slipped it between the pages.

"Orc upsetting new friend," said Ogaz.

"Seems so."

"Maybe Ogaz sends overboard?"

"Not yet."

"Please?"

"No."

"Hope Orc isn't trusting. Dead man is still man."

"I about wrapped his jaw over his scalp trying to wrench his head off. You can't trust someone you've already killed. Not unless they stay that way."

"Good. Orc and man having old history. Long history. Long time for planning revenge. Long time for getting things just right. He waits. Orc sees soon. He waits. Better to throw overboard now."

"No."

"Orc sees what men do to orcs back at battle. In lady’s pit."

"Not this one."

"All men are same."

"That's what they say about us."

Ogaz huffed and looked forward toward the [bosun]. "Orc making Ogaz watch two backs."

"You've got two eyes."

"Fine. Then Orc checks baits."

"Fine." He turned around on his bench and checked the few rods and lines hanging over the stern of the boat. The [bosun] had shown him how to bend and barb scrap tin into a hook and how to bait it. He had shown him how to sink it to different depths and how to watch for a bite and how to set the hook and bring up the fish, provided there was a fish to bring up. In this fashion he had taught Orc how to fish. Perhaps not in the manner of scalers, yet it still made him feel a little more like one. Perhaps too late to help his folk but not too late to help himself. For a moment he marveled at who he might've been had the [brigadier] not done what she did. At who he might still become. Perhaps more than any other reason this was why he trusted the man he had slain once already.

He sat back and looked at the sky and thought about things. Just a few days ago he had [known] how to find the [orcstone] in the same way he knew how to find his elbow. He had [known] where it was as if it were a part of his body, and for a time after he had emerged from the [mother] he felt like he could almost grab it out of the thin desert air. But the [sensing] had faded like the recounted scent of the [brigadier]'s favorite vintage, or its tannins of cherry and forest floor, or its lightheadedness and free spiritedness. Or the sound of her voice. Now he [felt] as though the [orcstone] was farther away despite his drawing closer to it. He worried he was losing it.

He reached down to check the rods again and reached out to feel the tension on the lines again, and he watched the wake trail slightly to windward and fade into the blue as if no boat had ever passed that way. He heard Ogaz make a disgusted noise behind him. He saw the dwarven book fly end over end and splash in their wake.

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> -1 [Awareness]: He didn’t understand what I tried tellin him. Maybe he just didn't care... (6/10).