Lorderic had been a frontier fortress when the kingdom was still young. Houses of mud and stone piled one upon another in the shadows of its ancient walls. A campanile to the god of men reached above the parapets, now sloughing like a midnight taper from acidic rains, now melting back into the mud whence it had been raised. The coming of the horses advented by a cackling of lethargic crows that roosted upon the ramparts and bobbed their heads over the decaying walls as if in homage or perhaps subservience.

Accompanied by Mym and Tulula he stepped through an archway where lay a downcast portcullis splotched green with age. The eyes of children peered out of dark windows and doorways. The streets were silent but for the crows' laughter and the air had the smell of smoke from dungfires and a beggar began to shuffle forward when he saw them coming and then quickly turned around and shuffled away. Many of the hovels were roofless with their old thatch and timber pillars long since burned for fuel and warmth and these now stood as pens for cattle and pigs and geese.

In the shortyard before the abandoned keep two of the cavaliers waited with the black tusker scout and a veteran whose face was swollen and purple and whose eyes were all but shut. One of the armiger's, sitting disarmed, his epaulets hanging like peeling bark from the jacket he wore. He didn't raise his head when the riders came up nor did he have anything to say.

Orc watched Uhquah step off his mule. The yard was quiet. There were people about but they weren't coming out. There was a garrison of sorts here too, somewhere in the heights of the fortress. He thought he saw their heads up on a rampart, shadowed against the sky.

Tulula called to the scout.

"Little man here thinking he's big," said the tusker. "Thinking he's smart and fast. Not fast enough."

"Where did you find him?"

"Half day down old warlady's path. Nice little place in trees."

"Were there any more of them?"

The scout shook his head. One of his tusks had a trinket dangling from its end and it swayed mutely. "Old warlady already taking care of little man's fellows."

Orc looked at Tulula. "Does he mean the brigadier?"

The tusker nodded. "Yes. Her."

"How far ahead is she?" said Orc.

The tusker shrugged. "A week. Less maybe, more maybe."

The veteran didn't try to rise. The way his legs looked both shins were broken. He tilted his head up some to watch the blue dwarf cross before his mule and loose the carbine in the scabbard at the front of his saddle and gently push back the mule and brandish the weapon.

The veteran looked up. "Make sure you burn me," was all he said. Uhquah put the muzzle of the carbine to his head and fired.

The roar clapped about the shortyard. A bellyful of gore vomited out the far side of the man's head and he fell limply backward and lay in its mess without a soul gone to him. Uhquah already had the carbine pointed skyward and was running his kerchief over the barrel. "Tulula," he said.

Tulula stepped forward.

"Take o him what he doesn't need."

The sow squatted over him with her scythelike knife. Orc didn't care to watch. He turned to Mym and saw she had already turned to him. "I don't know about this," she said.

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"Not here," was all he said.

Over his shoulder he saw Booky and Ogre and back at the entrance to the shortyard the longhorn stood leaning against the wall with his arms crossed over his chest, chewing his cottongrass sprig.

"Bones of shale," he heard Mym whisper.

Orc turned and saw Tulula with the knife in one hand and what appeared to be a wet rag in the other dripping redness across the veteran's face and shorn skull. The cavaliers stood around her, eyes dead of courage and compassion, watching the scalping as if bored. Uhquah was recharging the carbine and sheathing it back and strapping it in. The weird and her cubs stood far back against the wall. The faces of the citizenry peeked out of the windows and loops in the walls around and as Orc passed his eyes over them they crouched down as if to hide from his monstrousness. He wondered if the brigadier knew what transpired in her wake.

Uhquah mounted first and rode his mule out the gate. The longhorn and the rest followed. They made camp without the walls in a grove of aspen that toed their roots into the Fingerling and shimmered in the wind and sun. The river trickled through its bed and the rocks along its bottom were pink and gray and spotted like the salmon they hid.

As dark settled the men and the orckin of the company wandered in clutches through the streets of Lorderic. The weird had laid a badger pelt across an old stall and hung a glowing lantern from its post. Her face was painted up in such a way that exaggerated whichever expression she sought to make. A few children stood with her cubs and all of them were watching her mummer's performance of some sacred tale of orcs. They laughed and at every interlude she laughed with them. Some of the company were bartering with a stockman and some were sitting and drinking local swill from tin cups beside a castiron stove dragged out of the wreck of a house.

Orc and Mym watched from a small table. Tulula stood close by.

"About earlier," said Mym.

"Yeah," said Orc. "I know."

"What do ye want te do?"

"How's it going with the rocktalk?"

"Sometimes I think I might be gettin somewhere."

"But you're not there yet."

"No. Not even close. I was hopin I might hear the blue dwarf's way of speakin with em but he's not said a damn thing in my hearin."

Orc took off his hat and set it on the table between them.

She wrinked her nose. "Might be time ye fed that te the fire."

"That tusker said we're a week back from the brigadier."

"Aye."

"We've lost six days on her already."

"Aye."

"Can you track her?"

"Ye mean without the stones fer helpin? Sure I might be able te. But if we miss we'll be in the middle of nowhere with none but enemies abroad and I know we've been there before but before we had friends too, yers and mine, and now we don't have neither."

"Alright."

She drew her coat more closely about her. "And I don't think that otaur would take kindly te us walkin off on our commitment. Nor the blue dwarf."

He shook his head and he leaned half across the table. "I don't think I can take much more of this company."

"That shitter back there deserved what he got."

He sat back. "That may be but it sure doesn't feel that way. It all feels wrong."

He looked at her but she just sat there as if waiting for his explanation.

"The brigadier wouldn't condone trophy taking. It's not her way."

"Ye keep sayin that but this is the same old lady who spent her youth stormin castles and quellin rebellions and hangin folk from their necks stone dead aye? Same one who murdered them boys who came te take ye off te the camps? Same one who knew a pair of slaver brothers te pass ye off te after?"

He was holding his satchel against his stomach and now he looked down at it and thought about the things he had read in the journal it held. "It's just not how she is."

"It's not how ye want her te be, nor me either. But who are ye te say how she is toward folk who aren't her kin, adopted or naturally had? I know ye been chasin her a long time. Are ye sure ye haven’t made her into somethin she’s not?”

He frowned. “Yes.”

She shrugged. “I’m just askin on yer behalf. I know ye haven’t had folks of yer own so ye wouldn’t know they often aren’t what ye want or need em te be. But look there now.”

Mym nodded down the street and he turned to where she indicated. Ogre had come to stand behind the weird and had a boy on one shoulder and a young girl on another, their feet dangling, their tiny laughter echoing up the lane. With the sweep of her arm the weird produced a flash of light and now Booky half squatted with both arms upturned as if in some ritual dance and Ogre was laughing and bobbing up and down holding the children's hands in his gargantuan fists.

"Looks lek yer old boys there made up," said Mym.

"Looks like."