Chapter Ninety-six

‘Oi! That’s mah ship! Whatcha doin’ to it ya ganks?’ Raagstrom Raagh demanded answers from the elves surrounding him. He had managed to sit up despite his shackles, and quite accurately observed that the Raagh’s Indisputable Lameness was still sandwiched between the Furious Fist and the Righteous Wrath, and crews from both ships were swarming on it. From what I could see, some of the elven sailors were looting it for anything that might be usable, but some of them — probably naval engineers or thereabouts — were preparing to sink it. I wasn’t sure how they were planning to do it, but it seemed a number of large, metal tools and a bit of fire would be involved. At this point I had no doubt the few orks that had surrendered, and their slaves, had been committed to the sea, so the galley was either going to become a ghost ship riding the currents or sink to the bottom. The ork captain, however, seemed to feel very strongly about his ship, and his barrage of demands didn’t let up. ‘Answer me ya ganks! Where’s mah crew? Ya ain’t gonna be gettin’ away with this! Imma crush yer skulls!’

To most of the marines and rangers the ork’s speech must have sounded like foreign words spoken by a wild beast that had swallowed a bucket of gravel, but to those included in the voice-chat, Raaghstrom Raagh’s thoughts overlapping his growls and grunts, made his meanings clear.

‘This is incredible. I’ve never thought it possible to understand the barbarians,’ Captain Fenirig Arla said quietly to his father, who stood next to her. Captain Rimarle Alas just nodded, his eyes glued to the restrained ork in front of us, poor little Fifi in his arms growling at the green creature like there was no tomorrow. Krissy’s mouth curled up in a small but satisfied smile.

I personally wasn’t convinced; the slaves didn’t seem to have a problem understanding their greenskinned masters, in fact, they themselves used a language that was a mixture of Orkish and Treini. But I supposed this was a fairly unimportant detail.

‘I remember when these fuckers first appeared,’ Fenirig Arte said with the voice of those reminiscing about a long-lost past. ‘Right when we were fighting that evil god, when Fayr-Sitan was fragmenting and Fentys was falling apart. None of us were too happy about having to deal with the greens on top of everything else, I can tell you that.’

His daughter nodded knowingly; I had no doubt she had heard this story a few times growing up, but to me, this was news. I recalled Fenar’s wife, Korolan Mirei, talking about this during our almost pleasant dinner with her and Wensah. Setting aside the fact that the evil god in question was or had been an overgrown Tentacle Horror, this meant that orks were relative newcomers in the world, didn’t it? Had they only been here for two hundred or so years? If so, where had they come from?

My natural first reaction of course was: “Ha! Wensah did it”. If the orks were from another world like I was, and knowing Wensah had been involved in the fight against the Tentacle-god, then it kind of made sense. The problem with this was that Wensah had been Korolan Mirei’s familiar at the time, and as such, I didn’t think she’d had the ability to cross whatever boundary was there between worlds or dimensions. Maybe she had learned it from the Tentacle-god? Or from someone or something else? Or was it an ability a spirit could gain in the process of becoming a god? Whatever was the case, in her current state as a grand spirit or godling, she was able to conduct interdimensional raids to pick up stray souls, so there was that.

I was sure it had something to do with Black Essence as well; the substance was basically the sole building material for portals to the Spirit World, and gods had the means to produce it. It even occurred to me that my own, tiny portal inside me was artificial, put there by Wensah, so I could maintain an avatar in the material world. Yeah, these were possible answers, answers that generated even more questions.

‘State your name!’ Master Fenirig Arte addressed the ork, saying the words aloud as well as sending his thoughts through the voice chat.

That derailed my train of thoughts, and I decided it was better to focus on the here and now instead of venturing into the realm of conspiracy-theories.

‘I’m Raagstrom Raagh, ya gank!’ the answer came.

Fenirig Arte stepped closer to the ork, whose head was almost level with his, even though the beast was sitting.

‘You’ll be answering my questions,’ the Master of Third Rangers informed him in a matter-of-fact tone.

‘I ain’t doin’ shit! Gimme back mah ship ya fuggen …’ the ork captain unleashed the beginnings of a presumably long tirade, but Fenar cut him short by kicking him in the face so hard the creature fell back and slid a whole meter on the floor. The scarfaced elf then placed one foot on the coughing-swearing ork’s chest, and said,

‘I hope you enjoyed being in hell.’

‘I ain’t likin’ that place,’ the ork said, shuddering visibly as he lay on the ground.

I was proud of my Spirit Room, and I briefly considered renaming it to “Hell” or “Purgatory”, or something equally sinister.

‘Good. Now, listen fuckface, if I don’t get the answers I want, Misery here will take you back there right away, and you’ll never see the land of the living again. Sound good?’ Fenar threatened the ork.

Raagstrom Raagh didn’t so much as calm down, he became as still as a statue, staring up at Fenirig Arte with his black eyes wide. After a few seconds of that, he breathed out and said,

‘I’ll answer yer fuggen questions, ya gank. Hell ain’t nice.’

Fenirig Arte glanced at Krissy, the look in his eyes conveying something like “we’ll talk about this hell business later”, then he turned back to the ork.

‘Let’s begin then.’

***

The first five minutes of the so-called interrogation made it clear that Master Fenar knew exactly how to talk to orks and didn’t need anyone’s help. The amount of swearing and threats flying back and forth between them would have put any Quentin Tarantino film to shame.

Both Krissy and I had missed the interrogation of the late Orkuz Graal back in Solace, but now we knew how it must have been conducted. I wondered if Wensah had been actively involved in the questioning — she was rather good at insulting people after all — or just provided the connection like I was doing it now. Either way, there was nothing for us to do, so Krissy sat down on a crate, and we just watched Fenar work his magic.

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

Ten minutes into the insult-marathon, Captain Fenirig Arla and Captain Rimarle Alas finally realised they wouldn’t get a single word in, so they too stepped back a bit and observed the ongoings without getting involved.

Half-an-hour into it, most of the marines and rangers started to look bored; unlike those of us on the voice-chat, they could only understand whatever Fenar chose to say out loud — which wasn’t everything — while the garbled mess of a language the ork used was an ugly enigma to everyone. I, on the other hand, had to give my grudging respect to Fenirig Arte; he was extracting information from the ork like a boss, his questions wrapped in colourful insults, and the poor green sod probably wasn’t even aware that he was answering them. Honestly, orks didn’t strike me as stupid creatures, despite their mannerisms, instead, they were simple and straightforward with an unhealthy dose of belligerence and cruelty on top, and Fenar took full advantage of it.

Soon we were getting a picture of what we could expect from Orkland. It corroborated the information we had got from Orkuz Graal, but it seemed the late captain had left a few things out.

We already knew that the culprit behind the raid on Solace was the Vraathkill Clan, one of several ork clans occupying the lands north of the Fentys Alliance. They had a small town with the imaginative name “The Harbour”, where their single port and all shipbuilding capabilities were located. Of course, orkish mind- and skillset was more geared towards killing and destroying than building, but they were fully aware of this and had a workaround: slaves. More specifically: human slaves. Many of the humans they had enslaved were trained, talented, innovative craftsmen, so their captors had them design and build stuff, as well as teach new generations of slaves their trades. The same principle was used in orkish agriculture, manufacturing, mining and pretty much everything else. For this reason, orks considered skilled human slaves valuable, almost as much as elven slaves, who were stronger, faster, had a much longer lifespan, and could be used as fighters.

From our point of view, the biggest problem was that most current slaves had been born in captivity and were well integrated into their society — if integration was the right word to use here. To them, life was revolving around the clan, and they would fight for their masters to the bitter end. So, we had to consider them enemy combatants, and if we were to destroy the Vraathkill Clan’s port as well as their shipbuilding industry, it would mean a lot of dead slaves. Well, it was what it was.

Much like in any clan, the Vraathkill leadership was centralised, but unlike in other clans, it was a bunch of spiritualists in charge — courtesy of Sivera’s meddling in orkish politics — and no regular ork was strong enough to challenge them. Orkuz Graal had made no secret of his distaste for the so-called “mystics” and their horrid gang, but according to Raagstrom Raagh, he had greatly downplayed the number of spiritualists they had. The late ork captain had placed their numbers somewhere between ten and fifteen, serving under two “shamans”, who were supposedly taking their orders from Sivera herself. Raagstrom Raagh seemed to think there were at least twice as many spiritualists, and he wasn’t convinced Sivera was giving them orders at all. He seemed to believe the weird godling didn’t really care what was happening in the clan, and the shamans were simply doing the “ork thing”, using their superiour, Mana-aided fighting skills to hold onto their power. I could easily imagine that being true; provided Sivera had the same motivation as Wensah — which was to get as many familiars out there to collect Essence for her — I didn’t see why she would care about orkish politics, as long as Essence was flowing her way.

But that wasn’t the main issue. Centralised power translated to how their settlements and facilities were arranged throughout the territory they controlled, and that was something the Solace rangers had to take into account while planning their raid.

From The Harbour a single road ran all the way to the main town or city called Vraathblood. The place was some ten miles inland, north-west of The Harbour. And that was it. The only city in Vraathkill territory. Everything was concentrated there so that the ruling class of mystics could keep an eye on everything all at once. The rest of the territory was farmlands, woodlands, small settlements and outposts at the borders, populated by ork warriors and numerous slaves to guard against incursions from other clans. The Vraathkill Clan was basically running a city-state, bearing similarities both to ancient Sparta and some medieval European city-states — if I recalled high-school history lessons correctly.

Needless to say, the main target of our expedition, the slave market, was also in Vraathblood. This we had known from Orkuz Graal, but again, he had downplayed the size, the population and the general readiness to respond to our raid.

Unfortunately, the shamans and their mystics had a loyal and sizable following of regular orks, incentivised by the prospect of receiving familiars themselves. The captain wasn’t exactly sure, but he thought no more than nine or ten families, which meant well over a hundred and fifty orks. It didn’t change the fact that every ork and almost every slave in the city was a threat, but the henchmen-orks would be somewhat more zealous in carrying out orders from the leadership.

I wasn’t surprised Raagstrom Raagh had no love for them, just as Orkuz Graal had none; the families that had chosen to become henchmen of the spiritualists enjoyed a lot of advantages, while the rest had become second-class citizens, so to speak. Unlike in the glorious past of the clan, families whose specialty was seafaring were now considered no more than delivery boys who could transport ork merchants — or “tradinfuggaz” — and their goods from A to B on sea.

Based on the accounts of Raagstrom Raagh — and of Orkuz Graal to a lesser extent — orkish society used to be quite the shining beacon of equality: every ork had the opportunity to challenge the leadership, and good positions were just a fistfight away, if the challenger was strong enough to win it. That had changed with the introduction of familiars. But that was just a tangent Fenirig Arte shut down in short order, moving onto important things, like the defences of the city of Vraathblood.

As it turned out, Raagstrom Raagh knew as little about the current state of Vraathblood as Orkuz Graal; his family was based in a small village-type community close to The Harbour, and he hadn’t visited the city in the decade since the spiritualists had taken over. That was disappointing, although it made sense, but at least he gave us a general idea where to find the marketplace and the slave-pens. On top of that, he also told us about Fort Vraath, where the spiritualists, including two shamans, would be sure to spill out from to respond to our attack.

‘… and I ain’t rememberin’ more,’ Raagstrom Raagh said with finality. It seemed he was all out of information to give.

‘Are you sure about that, you worthless heap of hellbound flesh?’ Fenirig Arte tried to push him a little more.

‘Listen ‘ere ya stinkin’, pointy-ear fugger,’ the ork growled at him, struggling against his restraints to no avail. ‘Imma tell ya one thing: ya’ll go bleedin’ em mystics out, sure thing, but yer gonna be dyin doin’ it. And when all yer fuggers go takin’ the dirt-nap, the Vraathkill will be a proper clan again.’

Hm. What a patriotic little ork. He didn’t say it out loud, but it seemed some sort of revolution was brewing in greenskin society, Sivera’s spiritualists just waiting to be overthrown. I silently wished good luck to him and his aggressive, oversized people, but even if they somehow succeeded, I had very little hope the new management would have human rights as its top priority. Well, it was what it was, and it was none of our business.

Master Fenar turned his head to Krissy and said,

‘To Hell with him!’

It took us a moment to comprehend what he meant. I severed the connection to Master Fenar and the two captains, then I reached out with two tenties and performed the spiritual Ctrl-X again, taking the ork’s soul back into my Spirit Room, and his body into Jack’s Room. His loud, angry protestations reverberated in the voice-chat, making Krissy’s face scrunch into a grimace. I knew she wouldn’t like it, but I didn’t want to kick him out of the chat yet, on the off chance he still had something useful to share.

Fenirig Arte then turned to his daughter. The captain of the Furious Fist stretched her arms and legs after the long, and from her point of view, boring interrogation.

‘With this detour, we’re about two days from our destination,’ she stated. ‘I hope you got some useful information from the green asshole, because all I heard was grunts and burps.’

Fenirig Arte smiled at his daughter.

‘Just make sure we get there in one piece, and that your marines are ready.’ He then turned to Krissy. ‘Make sure you’re ready as well. And we’ll talk about this dragging people to Hell business later.’