They beached the harpoon boat on humanity's western shore in the middle of the night. A gibbous moon painted land and sky in blues deeper than any he'd seen asea. He led them east across the scythed fields of an estate whose yellow windows stared out of the ultramarine like the eyes of a jaguar. Dry stalks from the reaping crunched under his feet and the cool night pricked his skin. They cut south to a hedge and followed it to a dry ditch and followed that to a gate with horizontal wooden slats set across it. On the other side of the gate a shallow stream passed with banks of spindly black trees whose bare branches shattered the sky like so many cracks as if all creation was just a glass globe broken and discarded.

He and Ogaz drank from the stream while the [bosun] squatted and watched. They walked up its flow. Soft mud sucked at their feet. They didn't stop until the coming sun grayed the sky ahead and made everything behind seem all the darker. Orc turned them into the soft hollow of a fallen tree. It took some convincing for Ogaz to allow the [bosun] inside.

He looked across scenery the [brigadier] would've called idyllic. A heavy gold haze held onto the smell of the year's last harvests. The columns and rows all chopped down, beheaded, produce taken elsewhere, skeletal fibers laid bare to sunlight's reduction. Gentle hills rose in all easterly directions as gold as the air that held the remains of their bounty. He closed his eyes and listened for the sea but heard nothing. Not even the movement of the stream for it was flat and dark. He [felt] for the [orcstone]. He couldn’t recall it. He couldn’t even imagine it. How does one imagine what one cannot conceive? It was like imagining the face of someone he had never met. It was blank. Or filled in by the familiar. Both equally false.

He had lost it. Perhaps he had never had it.

He opened his eyes. Some miles distant the speck of a [farmer] walked a row. A burro trailed a few paces behind. He closed his eyes again and slept.

He woke as night fell. Ogaz lay in the hollow with his eyes closed and hands folded over his stomach like the young man laid in marble atop the tomb of the [brigadier]'s husband.

"Wake up one tusk," he said.

Ogaz opened an eye. "Nothing to wake from."

"We're moving on."

"Going where?"

"Inland."

The [bosun] made one of his little croaks. Orc told him they were moving east. The seaway was that way, and Booky's and the brothers' farm and the [brigadier]'s estate and the few other lands he knew. "Unless your folk would have us."

The [bosun] hissed.

"Guessing you didn't spend much time with them."

The [bosun] shook his head and made a gesture that perhaps meant something to humans or to risen but meant nothing to him, then he crept out of the hollow and slid down the bank to the stream.

"What's Orc saying?" said Ogaz.

He told him.

Ogaz blinked at him with his mouth half open. "Orc's mad. Always mad and always getting madder. Ogaz not going to live with dead mens and womens."

"We aren't going."

"Good."

"We need to find the orcstone."

Ogaz swept a hand before him as if throwing seed to sow. "Orcstone can be anywhere, yes?"

"Not anywhere."

"What sight does elf tree show?"

"Trees don't have eyes to see. It showed me in another way."

Ogaz dropped his hand to his side. "Orc's not remembering."

"Not so much a remembering as it is a feeling."

"Orc's never much of a feeler."

"Not now."

"Not ever."

Orc listened to the [bosun] splashing in the stream. "It can make life from unlife," he said.

"Very powerful."

"Too powerful to believe it's truly lost."

"Hidden maybe?"

"Yeah I think so."

"Then Orc goes to powerful places. That’s where it’s hid. Maybe big human city?"

"You mean the new seat."

"Yes. There."

"They'd feather us so thick we could fly over the walls. Except we'd be dead."

The [bosun] returned to the hollow with a flat and smooth stone in his hand. He sat near Orc with [Booky's blade] across his knees and he began to slide the stone across its edge in long strokes that sounded like paper tearing.

"Where else?" said Ogaz.

"The old seat."

"Ogaz already says no. Only thing worse than humans are dead ones not staying that way."

The [bosun] looked at Ogaz and spun the blade and worked the stone over its other edge.

Ogaz sneered at him. "Yes Ogaz meaning you."

"We know a dwarf had it before," said Orc. "Maybe they have it still."

"Beardling lands in mountains, yes?"

"Yes. Across the seaway span."

"Beardlings fight mean. Orc needs army of orcs if going to mountains. Maybe we go to camps? Free brothers and sisters? Hundreds still needing help. Thousands maybe."

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He didn't want an army. Invading and taking and killing in his name. "No."

It had grown too dark for him to see Ogaz's expression, but he saw his head turn down then away, and against the indigo sky the black silhouette of his tusk and sloping forehead and long ears and sharp chin.

"Where else?" said Ogaz.

He tried to remember her maps. She had had them all over the place. Hanging from the walls and glued onto spheres on stands and spread across the great table in the dining hall with icons and figures arranged here and there as if it was her old command pavilion.

"Places farther south perhaps. I remember some that she talked about sometimes."

"Pit lady?"

"Old warlady."

"Orc's a dog."

The [bosun] flipped the blade and worked the stone over its bottom edges with the regularity of breath taken and released.

Orc said to the man, "There wasn't much good metal to it to begin with. You keep that up you'll be fighting with a sewing needle."

"Where else?" said Ogaz.

"Well there's plenty of life down beyond the mountains in the green vales, and some sort of power blew open the crater of glass. And there's the black heart of the world, but that's right north of the dwarves."

Ogaz said, "Powerful names. Like maw of mad."

"Yeah."

"Orc feeling anything from names?"

"No."

"And all beyond beardling bridge?"

"Yeah."

"Is good that way. Orc and Ogaz know where to go and how. But Orc's unsure?"

"Yeah."

"Then Orc must stay here in goldlands and free brothers."

"I'm no Glad Nizam."

"Orc Nizam."

He stood up. "Not sure about that. Let's go."

"No saving home at least saving folk. Then saving home and folk together."

He left the hollow to start across the fields. "Come on. We need to use the night while we have it."

They followed certain stars east until a fleet of flat bottomed clouds with heavy tops bore off the sea with blue lightning lancing back and forth across their range and flashing white behind their heads and occluding the stars as they came, and the great black sheet they dragged across the night passed overhead and onward to the eastern horizon. Its underside pulsed white and electric and he watched it as if he stood on the seafloor and watched a great naval battle of cannons roaring and flashing between dueling vessels and men and women dropping from rigging to bounce off the decks like dolls tossed off a roof or plunging into frigid waters that glowed orange from tarfire and red from bloodletting. He rubbed his eyes but it was still there.

"Seeing strange glow ahead?" said Ogaz.

"Yeah."

"What's Orc thinking?"

"Might be straw fired for clearing. Might be a town. We should go around."

"No no. Town meaning food. Ogaz hungry. Long walk to beardling's bridge." He broke into a long legged lope.

The [bosun] chortled.

Orc said, "Don't act like you understand," and he jogged after.

They topped a gentle rise and the source of the glow shone out of the dark gulch before them. It looked like the stars and planets were caught in a nighttime lake and arranged into an order beyond what the gods could manage. Pinpoint lights set in a kind of square with flickering yellow torches at its four principal corners and others burning along each edge in regular intervals. Halfway down the northern edge white lamplight was refracted and focused into a single beam like a lighthouse’s and it swept across the grounds as if hunting for something lost. Inside the square perimeter was dark though he was vaguely aware of several structures within because their peaked roofs obstructed his view of the eastern boundary. Directly above the clouds reflected the deep red glare of the place, their bulks glowed in brighter spots as if swollen from past violence and darker spots as if the light of the ground charred the sky.

"Might be a fort," he said

"Is camp."

He looked again. The beam searched. "You seem certain."

"Ogaz doesn't forget."

"Well. You might try it."

"Because Orc's done so well trying? No. Sometimes remembering is all Ogaz has."

Orc looked at his friend. At the dark shape of his head against the red clouds. "Stay left and high. Don't give that searchlight any chances."

"Orc wants to leave."

"Hell yes he does."

"Ogaz can't."

Orc stopped. "We can't help them."

Ogaz squatted in the shorn field. "Orc doesn't know. Orc can't know. Orc saying Ogaz must go to save folk. Ogaz's folk are there. Saand saying Ogaz must save homeland. Ogaz's home is there. Come now with Ogaz and set free."

Orc stood over the tusker and looked down at the lights. "Say we go to free them and we don't get cut to pieces by that company of screws down there. We don't have anyplace to take them. We've got a boat fit for six if the tide or some kids haven't stolen it off somewhere. Humans are crawling all over the Madlands, and there isn't a thing left to eat there."

Ogaz didn't say anything.

"I just don't know what we'd do with somehundred orcs starved seven eighths to wormfood."

Ogaz stood up. "Free them."

"You tried that once already. We don't have food for one between us and who knows how many they've got fenced in down there. In a week not even the worms will want them."

"Orc not understanding. Better dying free than living unfree."

"Boy that sounds good but them who might object to the notion sure can't say otherwise."

Ogaz's eye's glinted red from the glow. "Ogaz isn't boy."

"I didn't mean it like that. Look. Glad Nizam freed three thousand and only two of them are still around to talk about it. And she had a plan and inside help."

"What meaning? What help?"

"Something she said before they shot her. It doesn't matter."

"Orc tells."

He looked back down at the camp. "She said humans opened the fence."

"Orc lies."

"Just saying what I heard. But you were there for it. You'd know better than me."

Ogaz turned back to the camp.

Orc said, "A lot of orcs died for Glad Nizam's dream. Humans too, though they sure deserved it. I just don't want to tally the last two still standing. I'm sick of the killing."

Still Ogaz said nothing.

"If you want to go then go." He offered the [Skyshard]'s handle. "Take it and see what you can do."

Without a word Ogaz walked away from the camp. After a moment Orc lowered the [Skyshard] and walked after. After they had passed by the camp Orc said, "We'll do what we can when we come back this way."

"Much suffering between then and now," said Ogaz. "Maybe Orc isn't orc after all."

"You aren't the first to think it."

Hours later the red-bottomed clouds were hidden behind the tops of the undulating hills and ahead of them splotches of the eastern sky turned a shade above black. They found a place where a narrow stream dropped three yards over the sharp lip of a rocky outcrop. They wedged themselves under the outcrop and watched the day form around them. Water fell to rupture itself and foam and ripple outward to lap the sandy banks where cattlesign came right up to the water's edge.

Orc nodded at the prints and patties. "Perhaps breakfast will come to us."

He took the first watch. The sky went all gray but the sun never showed. Neither did the cattle. Past noon he woke Ogaz and gave him the [Skyshard] and went to sleep. He dreamed of a great river pouring into Booky's pit with him at its bottom and as the water filled the pit it carried him closer and closer to the metal grate. When he was close enough to reach it he tried prying it apart. It held fast. The water kept coming. He woke as he drowned.

Night was falling. The [bosun] stood down at the side of the pool watching the water churn and swirl. Ogaz was gone. The [Skyshard] lay where he had sat.

"You let him go," said Orc.

The [bosun] looked at him.

"Least you could've given him the ax. Or Booky's blade."

The [bosun] shrugged.

"He's going to get himself killed."

The [bosun] shrugged again. He jumped across the stream and started east.

Orc rushed after him and smashed him onto the close cropped ground. The dead man's eyes went wide and a cold hand scrabbled for [Booky's blade] but it had fallen out of reach. Orc plucked it from the earth and threw it across the stream. He grabbed two fistfuls of the [bosun]'s collar and shouted into his face. "Don't follow me. You want to pay someone off then go and pay off that tusker. He'll be back at the camp dying to save the ones you sons of bitches locked away. Go and die with him and you best stay dead or pretend to because if I see you again I'll separate you into a thousand bits and feed you to a fire one piece at a time."

He threw the [bosun] against the ground and turned and strode upslope to where Ogaz had last sat. He picked up the [Skyshard] and walked away without looking back. He'd lost the [orcstone]. He'd lost his friends. All he had were his debts and he was sick to death of them. He sure wasn't going to carry another's.

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> -1 [Awareness]: ...the dead know somethin the livin don't. You only stop changin when worms start nestin inside your brains. Up until then you got to be prepared for anythin, and not a one thing about yourself is permanent. Hell, even then ain't nothin is permanent neither... (5/10).

> +1 [Renown]: That was the first time anyone called him Nizam. He shoulda took the name but that ain't never was his way... (3/10).

> -1 [Rage]: An orc who doesn't fight is like a man who doesn't lie. You think it makes them safe somehow and in so doing you overlook their abominable nature. How can you ever trust someone whose mere existence is a contradiction... (7/10).