Within the ruin of the elven forest the snags of the burned out trees stood silently as if waiting. Up and down the slopes of the cemetery that was their nursery they endured, refusing to fall as if refusing to die. Refusing to admit they were already dead. As if they would stand forever, immortally charred to blackness and silence on the gray and black ground and thrusting into the air as if daring the next storm to come. Standing and waiting for an answer to their challenge.
He knew better. Their [mother] had shown him how the eldest keep their moisture. How their resins are saved in roots too deep and too stolid to be troubled by even the hottest hellfires. Their children might fall to ash and their tops might crack and shiver their bodies to stumps, but those stumps had a clear view in every direction and no thirsty offspring clamoring for water and light. They would eat their young. Drink the bounty of sun and sky. Stretch new arms aloft. It was only a matter of time. Time and water and sunlight were the only magic they needed, and they weren't magic at all.
Ogaz laid a hand on him. "Orc's careful, yes? No dying second time."
He looked from the corpses of the trees back to the campfire and his friends gathered around it. "Don't worry," he said.
Saand took both his hands in her massive ones. "You think it is best to trust her?"
"You said yourself she freed you."
The greenskin said, "Maybe. Maybe yew stay and lead instead? Orcsies who're left'll follow big orc that killt stupid armiger. Yew new Nizam now."
He looked into the fire. He didn't say anything for a long time. The flickering light of the fire dimmed and he let the shorthorn hold his hands. He watched the fire and everything in its ring of light faded into the background. The wide snags of burned trees and the blackened ground and the little smokehouse that smelled of fish and charcoal and whale oil. He thought of the humans to the south and the humans across the sea. About who had what among them and who had nothing. About the [king] at the center of it all.
He shook his head slowly. "There's still shit that needs burning."
"Going south across sea?" said Ogaz. "Other camps for freeing there."
"Someday perhaps. But not tomorrow. Tomorrow I go to keep a different promise."
Saand nodded toward the edge of the firelight. "And you're taking him with you?"
He half looked at the place where the [bosun] stood alone with his arms crossed over his chest, at the word hold tattooed onto the knuckles of his right hand. "I'm not taking him anywhere. Poor man just won't let me be and I'd rather not have to kill him again."
"Should be Ogaz with Orc," said Ogaz.
"You're needed here, friend."
Ogaz looked into the fire with his hands between his knees. No one talked. He covered his eyes with a three fingered hand.
Orc withdrew a hand from Saand's and smoothed it across the tusker's back.
"Yew coming back here though?"
"Someone needs to show you how to sow come spring."
"Good." Ogaz nodded. "Here is home."
He smiled and looked from the greenskin to Ogaz to Saand. She squeezed his hand and he squeezed hers back.
She said, "The land will come back. It just needs time."
"As do we," he said.
***
Some days later he walked into Here First with its tall stone tower and its patrols of king's men and women in silver armor and its camps of dirty refugees who gathered along the track as he came and who spat on the ground after he had passed. He wore a new pair of old trousers traded from a terrified human family back along the road, and he had rolled into his shirt the dwarf-mended [Booky's blade] and the [brigadier]'s journal and he carried that bundle in his hand. An envelope sticking out of his waistband held a [letter of marque] with the seal of some great old house of humanity and the signature of its lady.
Beside him the [bosun] rode a little black and white appaloosa with a dwarven [longarm] in a scabbard at his knee and a [harpoon] slung over his back. The appaloosa bore a wooden tug off its collar to a makeshift travois dragging a yard behind it. The travois dug two parallel gashes along the hard packed track from the weight of its load. Orc hadn't known the [bosun] could ride until he'd left one morning up north and showed up ahorse that evening. He didn't ask where he'd found it. It must've come with the saddle.
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They made it all the way to the base of the tower before someone sought to stop them. A helmed woman wearing the blue tabard of the king with a [knife] sheathed on her chest and a bare [sword] in her hand. She whistled up the tower for her comrades then she said to the [bosun], "You found yourself a big one."
"Yep."
"Here for the bounty?"
"What bounty?"
"For your orc there."
The [bosun] rubbed his chin with his hand. "Didn't know there was a bounty."
"Whole silver piece per head. Most just bring the head."
The [bosun] side eyed Orc. "Weren't it a copper last time?"
"No," said Orc.
The woman raised her [sword] and took a step backwards. She whistled again.
The [bosun] dropped his hand and leaned over him. "Thought you said it was."
"The copper was for the rope."
"Well? A whole silver this time."
"I heard."
"Buy me a new pair of boots."
"Better some hot water and a bar of soap."
The [bosun] laughed. "It's your head."
"I'm partial to it."
"Seems like a good value."
"It might be."
Two more king's men came up in their armor beside the woman. "What's all this then?"
"We was just bartering," said the [bosun].
"I'm here for the girl," said Orc.
"What girl?" said one of the men.
"The orphan you've got mucking and washing."
"Ain't no girls here, orc."
Orc looked up at the turret then leaned to look past the soldiers. One of them spat and said, "Get on back to your burrow, boarfucker."
Orc nodded at a roofed stable in the tower yard. "There she is."
The [bosun] saw. "She ain't more than an eyelash. You're sure that's her?"
"I am."
"Fine then." The [bosun] urged the horse toward the stable. The soldiers watched him go. He folded his hands over the pommel and started talking to the girl.
One of the men said, "What about that lady who brought her in?"
"What about her?" said the other, and he turned to Orc. "You here to cause trouble?"
"I'm just here for the girl."
The woman said, "We shouldn't let him take her. Not without something."
"Without what?" said a man.
"I don't know. Something more than his saying so."
"Shut up."
The [bosun] started back, walking the horse by the cheek strap with the girl up in the saddle.
Orc shook his head at the soldiers. "You won't even stand up for your kids. Your kind may outlive mine, but the day you bounty the last orc is the day you start laying them for each other."
The woman pursed her lips and looked at her fellows, but said nothing. The [bosun] and horse and girl came past them.
"You're Cousins," said Orc.
"Damn right," said the girl.
"Some dwarves and a woman sent me to fetch you."
"Finally."
He tried not to smile. "Alright then."
"You know them?" said the woman.
"No," said the girl.
She held her right hand out to Orc.
"I'm Cousins."
He took her hand. "I'm Orc."
"Let's go. This place sucks."
The [bosun] turned to the soldiers. "You bark service to seaway's end here?"
One of the men pointed to a [harbormaster]'s house built on the oceanfront.
Orc nodded. "Alright."
The two king's men turned to walk back to the tower.
The [bosun] said, "You coming, Orc?"
He waved them on. "Right behind you."
He watched the [bosun] lead the horse and the girl toward the sea. He heard him say something and he heard her giggle.
"You got what you wanted," said the woman.
He nodded at the [sword] in her hand. "Your king gave you that so you'd feel strong, but he and those like him keep you weak. They did the same to us once. If they had their way they'd do it still."
"Yeah and what'd you do about it?"
"Mostly we died."
She nodded. "That's what I'm afraid of."
"They count on it," he said, and he turned and walked after the horse with the unopened envelope and its [letter of marque] still stuck into his waistband.
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> +1 [Awareness]: ...I heard him say that between every pair of trees is a doorway leading to a new life, and that got me thinkin why not? (9/10).
> +2 [Renown]: Everybody there big and little woulda followed him. Course he didn't want no followers, and that's why we followed him... (10/10).
> [Renown] Title Gained: [Always a Musheater] Denotes he with the greatest stature of those who survived.
> -2 [Rage]: Somewhere amid all that violence he learned the way to peace is through harsh justice and radical forgiveness. I wish I could see him again. Just once more... (1/10).