They called themselves [soldiers of the king]. A lie within a lie. Down from the rising front they came wearing dyed cloth over steel mail over tanned hides over soft skin with blood in their eyes and on their tongues. They crowded around Booky's pit like swine to the trough. The lords on the rim cleared out but the poors in the rafters stayed to watch what was coming.

Orc squatted in the pit and waited.

The soldiers of the king wanted food and drink and death.

Booky said, "Deathmatches are on Fridays, boys. Tonight's three goblins and an orc. Last one standing. It's a real show and I know y'all will enjoy it."

They offered five gold for a dead greenskin.

"Y'all don't understand that these are highly trained assets. Each of em's worth more than whatever y'all brought."

They offered ten.

She looked at Orc through the grate, then at her book, then back at him. She closed her book.

He saw their [sergeant] appear beside her. Dirty cloak, white once. Leather and mail and a sheathed [shortsword] and a trimmed beard. Orc listened to the man apologize for his men's drunkenness and he watched him turn to address the soldiers. "Good men, good soldiers of the king, this woman provides an honest service for this province. You would rob her of her livelihood. You would slay her stock knowing where we go and why. Wherever would she find more?"

The soldiers laughed and jeered.

"No. You dishonor us."

The soldiers quieted and cast their eyes down as if in shame but Orc could still see their shifting sidelong glances and the fear and the hate in them.

The [sergeant] turned to Booky. "Fifty."

She didn't even look at Orc. Her book snapped open and the men roared.

The [sergeant] handed her some coins. "Scrip for the rest."

"Scrip?"

"Scrip of the king. Good as gold."

She shook her head. "Pulp ain't gold. There's an ogre down there, a mean one. What good's scrip if y'all go a dying? King imself gonna wheel on out and pay me?"

"You can take scrip or you can write your name beside that ogre's."

"What? What for?"

"For harboring the king's enemies from his justice."

"Ain't no justice here. Ain't no enemies neither."

The [sergeant] looked at Orc. "I'm looking at one."

"Just an orc," she said. "Don't waste y'all's scrip on him. Ya said ya wanted a goblin. Fine. I got three. But if ya don't want them then maybe it's best if y'all go a challenging each other instead. Feats of strength and the like. I even got some rubber swords y'all can thump against each other. Come on, let me fix ya up."

"Why do you think we're here?" said the [sergeant]. "The armiger's orcs gone and killed their bosses. Three thousand of them are bringing up devils from the camps to the sea."

She snapped her fingers under his nose. "Devils. Fine, that's fine. But devils or no, that orc's bought. Y'all don't want him. Y'all want him go get the magister, but ya don't. Truth is he's lame. And thick. No good to anyone. No sport to y'all. Now I'd say take him but I feel bad for him. He's just my mucker. Mucking the cell and the toilet and hauling thems that go and get killed. He'd stab hisself fore he figured which side of y'alls swords is for holding."

"Who wants him?" called the [sergeant]. "Hicks, you want him? Take him. First blood for your old man."

Orc couldn't see Hicks. He watched Booky. She flapped her arms a little and said, "But he ain't for killing," but they didn't care. She'd gone as high as humans let their women go. If she went any higher it would mean taking something from men, so they turned to threats of violence as men do, and they blamed her for it as men do. He'd watched the [brigadier] live that story. Now Booky was having her turn.

"Go on and make him weep," said the [sergeant]. "Wait. Give me your scrip."

He saw Hicks, then. A lean fellow holding a flat tipped [longsword] over his shoulder like a nightsoilman with a shovel. Stringy yellow hair tied behind his head. A young man's mustache to show he wasn't his father nor was he his father's boy no more.

The [sergeant] handed some paper to Booky. "Here. Now give us odds. Six to one against."

Hicks laughed. "Gonna clean her out all at once?"

A regular called down from the rafters, "A silver on Orc."

Hicks laughed again and his comrades jeered and one threw a pewter tankard at the rafters that bounced off and clanged out of sight.

Booky squinted at the rafters and penciled in her book. "That you Leeroy? A silver on Orc."

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

Hicks whipped his sword down and around in a wide arc then tossed it hand to hand and swung it the other way. "That kid even have a silver? Hold it up. Alright. Next round's on him, boys."

The [sergeant] sent a serving boy up to the rafters with a handful of coppers as if the bout were already decided, then he gave Booky a bag of gold. "Their scrip and my fifty on Corporal Hicks."

His men cheered and laughed and rubbed their hands together.

Booky's shoulders sagged as she wrote it in. She closed her book and looked down at Orc and pointed her pencil at the door to the cell. He walked through to the dark little room with its bars and the ogre sleeping sitting up with their back against the wall and chins on their chest and fleshy flabby gut on the ground between their legs, and some greenskins and the dogman squatting together drawing crude figures in the sawdust.

He waited at the bars as she came down the stairs. She drew down to him revolting as ever, [blade] on hip and old trousers and tunic all done up tight like she feared they'd fly off and never come back. She looked up as she took the last stair. "Hey, Orc. Member when we started? Eating mush and straw. If it cost a copper to go round the world then we couldn't get outta sight. Lookit us now. When's the last time ya had to eat mush?"

"This morning."

She kept on as if she hadn't heard. "These here soldiers are mad. They's bored, and they's mad. They's gonna kill ya. They's gonna kill all y'all and nick everything ain't bolted to my floor. Hell they'll nick the bolts, too. Fifty down on six to one. Shit. They’ll never fight ya fair. They’s gonna murder ya. All y’all."

"Hurry up, woman," came from above and laughter came after.

Booky edged a little closer to the bars and talked a little quieter. "Ya heard em say what's happening? There's a rebellion a coming. Orcs and the like. Bunch of the armiger's workers busted outta the camps and are fighting their way to the sea. They say they's heading back to where y'all came from. Back to y'alls home."

"I thought here was home."

"Bugger you did. Don't play them games with me now. The armiger posted these men here figuring orcs'll just go around town if town's got some swords in it."

"Or they'll come and take them," he said.

"Ya think?"

He shrugged. "Never known an orc."

Someone shouted, "Get him out."

"Just a minute," she yelled. "He won't go out."

"Hicks, go on down there and get him out. But don't do him until you're down where we can see."

He heard the scrape of a heavy tread crossing overhead. Booky looked at the wooden ceiling and at the little trails of dust falling from the seams in the floorboards. She stepped even closer. The key to the cell in her hand. "Look, Orc. Haven't ya ever wanted to go home? To y'alls real one? Y'alls kind are coming this way. They'll know y'alls talk and stories and such. They'll know who ya are and maybe who ya matter to. Hell, ya matter to me, but I ain't no orc. Haven't ya ever wanted to be with them?"

He looked at the key. Be with his folk? Such wants were best left for dreams.

She smiled. Her eyes were wet. "I told ya you wouldn't die in no pit. Now get off and don't ya never tell noone I helped ya."

Her hands shook and as she aimed the key into the lock it rattled. At that moment two sets of footsteps thumped down the stairs and she dropped the key into the sawdust.

"Shit," she said.

Hicks and another [corporal] crowded into the chamber behind her with their naked [longswords] before them.

Booky stepped on the key and turned to the soldiers. "Look he don't understand what's happening. I told ya he's thick."

"Shit Hicks look at that ogre," said the corporal.

"Out of the way maam," said Hicks.

Booky stepped away from Hicks until her back pressed against the bars nearest Orc. She knew better.

"Look here, sir Hicks," she said. "He's a cowering. He doesn't understand."

Hicks came around her to see. With one hand Orc drew [Booky's blade] through the bars and with the other he reached through and pulled Hicks close and his [longsword] clattered on the irons and his body and his cheek bulged through the gaps between and his eyeball was wide and white and it followed [Booky's blade] as it entered his armpit between the ribs. Orc saw the youth behind his mustache and in his eyes. [Booky’s blade] wasn't but eight inches long yet this was long enough and he pushed it in until his fist jammed the bars.

Hicks fell.

The [corporal] shouted and tripped over himself backing away and he went up the stairs on hands and feet.

Booky dropped to her knees and sifted through the sawdust and pushed her fingers under Hicks. "Shit I think he's lying on the key."

Orc turned and kicked the ogre in their fatty stomach. Two heads rose and four eyes opened. The greenskins and dogman moved out of their way as they stood up. Sand and sawdust stuck to their belly and the backs of their legs.

"Orc," said left, and he smiled.

"Orc," said right. "What doin?"

"Get ready to fight," he said.

"No," said Booky. "Y'all gotta run."

From upstairs came raised voices and heavy footfalls and the scrape and crash of furniture.

"Open the cell," said Orc.

"I can't find the goddamn key."

"Ogre," he said.

"Ogre," said the ogre. They leaned past him and one by one tore the iron bars from their foundations as if picking garden weeds. When two were out the greenskins slipped through and skulked up the stairs. Three was enough for the dogman to go with a bent bar clamped between his jaws. At four Orc stepped through and faced Booky with her [blade] in his bloodied hand. He could have put it in her gut.

"Hell," she said wide eyed. "Y'all could've left whenever ya wanted."

"There wasn't anywhere to go." He offered her the [blade]'s handle.

"Keep it. Y'alls pile's gotten bigger than what that's worth and it'll help ya member where ya come from, if any of it's worth membering. The whole world's a shithouse Orc. Y'all make sure and take anything and everything it gives ya. If it don't give ya nothing then promise me you'll spark flint against that steel and burn it all down."

He promised nothing and said no goodbyes. With [Booky’s blade] in his hand and the ogre right behind they took the stairs two at a time and two at a time they cut through the [soldiers of the king].

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> +1 [Rage] ...they also say the beastly are debased of souls altogether and they say their poverty is plain to anyone who has observed them from outside the wire. But I have been inside, and I know the wealth of these creatures who we've made to serve and slaughter... (4/10)

> +2 [Renown] ...one night I seen him bloodlet an entire garrison and after yew'd think that old pit was a wishin well for leeches. He started with this idiot kid and boy once he got started yew'd be thicker than tar to try and stop him. Yew know how he was. He got to draggin the rest of us into it and boy it never felt so good cuttin up them humies after all they did to us... (4/10)

> Gained Item: [Booky's Blade] Carbon steel