I looked out at the orc camp that the scout had reported. He had said a lot of them. It really was not, or maybe I had just become jaded from my time at the Bastion, being outnumbered grossly at all times. A quick estimate put the numbers at a two point five thousand to three thousand orcs.
The orcs were milling around, forming into some disorderly lines. While the children and old people were sent towards the back of the camp. It was clear to me that this was a hunting camp. The orcs moved from place to place, hunting and foraging an area before moving on. I was considering how to approach them when I spotted a familiar figure in front.
“Order the attack, let’s massacre them,” the priest demanded.
I looked at him as if he was an idiot. “Almost a quarter of them are children and old people unable to move. I doubt they’re the ones that made a stew out of your fellow priest.”
He blanched at that remark. I looked at Nishka. “If he tries to order anyone around, shoot him. I’ll go and ascertain their guilt.”
“That’s not what we’re—” he started to say, but was interrupted by a blow to the side of his face. As soon as he spoke up again I had summoned a blunt stone spike aimed for the side of his head. It knocked him clean off the horse.
The Unifiers instinctively went for their weapons, but glares from my troopers around them stopped them in their track. I looked down at the half-dazed priest. “You’re speaking out of turn, you’re not exempt from the punishment I promised the rest of them. Maybe I should ask the orcs if they got any good stew recipe involving human priestly genitalia? What do you think?”
He looked both scared and pissed off. He gulped a time or two before finally saying, “I understand, Milord. Please forgive my outburst.”
“Good,” I said and looked to Caspar, Nishka, and Shenerah in turn. “You all stay here, I’ll go talk with them.”
After getting confirmations that they would obey, I handed my rifles to Shenerah, they would just get in the way. Riding forward on my own, into the range of upwards of three thousand angry orcs should be exciting, frightening. Something. It should not be indifference and boredom, which was all that I felt at that moment.
‘Is this why you’ve tugged me in this direction?’ I asked the enigmatic woman in my mind. I did not get an answer, not that I had expected one. It felt too coincidental she had pulled me in this direction for the past two weeks, and I stumbled upon the one orc I had friendly relations with.
As I got nearer, I saw Bakra move a bit forward, to stand in front of the line of soldiers that had formed. He roared for his men to bring out the human priest, which would be bad with me having at least two priests in tow.
Using magic to amplify my voice, I shouted, “No need for a stinky priest, let’s speak as friends.”
It was clear that a human speaking orcish confused all of them, even Barka looked confused for a moment before he lit up in a smile. I had gotten close enough to recognize. “Friend Karth, is that you?”
“Indeed, I wish to speak,” I shouted back. Distance still necessitated shouting, but at least amplification was unneeded. I, however, noticed something as I got closer. Barka had gotten uglier. Much uglier. His whole left side of the face was a burned mess, and the eye socket empty. Indicating his face, I asked, “Want me to heal that?”
He shook his head. “No, it’s my Shame, I must wear it for the rest of my life.”
“Excuse me?” I was confused. We were now close enough that we didn’t need raised voices.
He sighed, clearly bristling under answering the question. For a moment I thought he would tell me to fuck off, but instead, he answered. “Someone from outside the tribe challenged the old chief and killed him. Not against traditions, but generally not done anymore. We didn’t like that of course, so I challenged her. I lost. Badly. She told me I would serve as a reminder for everyone of what would happen if they crossed her. We left the tribe shortly after that. But why are you here, Friend Karth? Why have you brought so many soldiers?”
“Long story short. I need to convince your overall leadership to summon your heroes, just like I was summoned.”
He looked confused. “Friend Karth, we don’t have any collective leadership.”
“How do you decide when it’s time to summon the heroes then?” I asked.
“Clan chieftains meet every fifth cycle, the shamans go on vision quests to determine if it is time to summon the heroes or not,” he said. “The next Meet is almost four cycles away.”
I groaned when I heard that. So that was how she had screwed me over. She most likely knew this when she asked me, but had not informed me of this very important detail. I had not researched it fully either, but despite how many serfs I had, even prisoner of wars, I did not have anyone who had grown up in orc society.
I could not help but curse, “Fucking conniving bitch! Fuck me!”
“Is that why you brought this army?” Barka asked, clearly more interested in why there were close to 5000 troopers at his doorstep.
“Well, long story short? Orcs were framed for killing a priest, some Church soldiers, and a lot of my serfs, we are here to exact revenge,” I explained.
“Framed?”
I gave a slight smile. “Priest pissed me off, I killed him, had to blame someone, so it was orcs. Needed to talk with you guys anyway.”
He got angry at hearing my confession. Wonder why? I still had a smile on my face. “Don’t worry, I won’t kill any of your people. I’ll find a way to trick the priests. I guess I’ll find your leaders at the Meet in four cycles and convince them then.”
He shook his head. “You can’t speak at the Meet unless you’re the chieftain or shaman of one of the clans.”
“Then you can speak for me?” I ventured.
“We’re not a clan, we’re outcasts. Traitors, barely able to feed our own people,” he explained.
“Damn, thwarted again,” I sighed. “You know the two towns and the fort I’ve built?”
“Yes, we’re thankful that you let us pass to trade with the dwarves still.”
“No problem, but go there. Food will be waiting for you,” I said.
He looked thoughtful for a moment. “Friend Karth, there’s a way you can become the chief of a clan.”
“You’re saying that I can challenge the current chief of a clan and become the new chief?” I exclaimed.
“No,” he shook his head. “Not completely. If you challenge a female chief, defeat her, and breed her, making sure it’s a male boy means that you’re the new chief’s father. A woman cannot be chief if she has a boy or a husband.”
“Won’t there be trouble with him being a half-breed?”
“Not if he conceived during the Honour Fight,” Barka guffawed.
“You want me to rape her?”
“No, if you can overpower her without magic, you’ve won fair and square, and she’s yours to decide what to do with. Just like I was hers,” he said with a wistful look on his face. He then sobered up. “Unfortunately, she decided to Shame me instead of mating with me. Our kids would have been strong and fierce.”
“I see,” I said while thinking it still sounded like rape to me. However, it also sounded like it was how things got done in orc society. There were not a lot of options presenting themselves to me at the moment. I had one more thing I wanted to know, “Are there any of the tribes around here that could use a good culling?”
He got a shrewd look on his face while thinking for a long moment. It looked like he was doing some mental calculations. “There’s a way we can help each other, Friend Karth. You see when a clan is conquered or wiped out, the largest group of outcasts become the new clan at the next Thing.”
“And you’re the largest group of outcasts?”
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
He shook his head. “Not yet.”
Another person was using me for their own ends. Which was fair, because I would want to use him in return. “Let me guess, my question about culling comes into play there?”
“I like you, Friend Karth, you cut straight through the torso to the heart. I like it,” he said with a big grin. “Indeed, it’s where your question comes into play. If you were to eliminate two clans and three outcast groups in this area. Sparing the non-combatants, of course, I could absorb them and become the second-largest group of outcasts.”
“If I do this, you’ll present my suggestion at the Thing?”
He shook his head. “Afraid not, Friend Karth, new clans can only vote, not make proposals. You still need to conquer and breed Rikasta.”
I narrowed my eyes. “Are you telling me this just to get revenge on the one who shamed you?”
“No,” he denied. “It’s the only way you can present the proposal yourself. Unless you think you can convince one of the clan chiefs to do it?”
The last part held a tone of mocking laugh in it. “You don’t think I could convince a chief to present the proposal for me?”
“No. And Rikasta is the only female chief at the moment,” he said with a big smile. It was the answer I had been afraid of.
“Fine, tell me where those clans and groups are, what the hell is a little mass-murder between friends, eh?” I said finally.
Barka grinned a toothy smile at me. “Wish I could go with you, but I’d be worried about getting stabbed in the back by those blue bastards.”
“You and me both,” I muttered and followed Barka over to a patch of dirt, so he could draw me a map.
----------------------------------------
The priest, I had still not bothered to learn his name, since he was going to die very soon was throwing a hissy fit over me not killing the orcs. Well, maybe not very soon, but his expiration day was soon. Though I wish it could be at once. He was irking the hell out of me. The only problem was that I did not know how many other priests were hidden in the squadron of Unifiers.
“Why the heck did you not kill them?” the priest asked for the umpteenth time.
“Because they’re not the ones that attacked us,” I replied for what felt like the thousandth time. Under my breath, I added, “You fucking moron.”
“It doesn’t matter! They’re abominations in the eyes of the Gods, they must be purged!” he screamed, and then pointed to the new addition to our group. “And now you’re allowing an unshackled beast to travel with us! You’re a race traitor!”
“The Beast” that he had pointed at sent him a toothy smile with small bits of jerky between her teeth, which made the racist prick shudder in part of disgust and fear. Mostly the latter I would think. I knew that Arkoshta did not speak human, but racism transcended all language barriers and she perfectly understood what the priest meant about her. It was not hard to interpret the priest’s mood and body language.
She took a bite of the piece of jerky she had in her hand. As she purposely chewed with an open mouth, she said to me, “Please tell the angry man that I’m thinking about eating him while I chew this jerky.”
“Does not help the situation,” I told her in orcish. “If I did, he’d probably attack you, and what would I tell your father if you died?”
“That puny man can’t defeat me in an honour battle,” she grunted.
“He doesn’t have any honour, he would use magic.”
She snorted deeply and spat at his feet. “Honourless cur.”
The priest jumped back, though the snot-filled gob was not close to hitting him. “What’s she saying?”
“That she wants to marry you,” I replied irritatedly. I turned back to my guest. “Arkoshta, please behave, I don’t want to explain to Barka why his daughter got hurt.”
“I’m in more danger from your broodmare,” she guffawed and pointed to Shenerah who was staring venomously at her.
“Don’t worry, she’ll behave,” I said. Arkoshta shrugged and went over towards the cooking fire where the men had just started doling out some stew.
The priest stared after her with revulsion in his face. “You didn’t answer my question, how do you know they weren’t the one raiding?”
“You never asked, you were busy being a ranting prick,” I replied. “However, they’re not the ones. They’re normally trading with the dwarves at the Outpost.”
“You let the beasts through to trade?” he shrilly demanded. “Your own words condemn you!”
“You go ahead and tell the dwarves that we’re blocking their trade,” I responded with a snort and watched with a big smile as his face paled. I could not help but smirk. “Exactly. But don’t worry, I’ll send a rider and order my men at Fort Kiril to blockade the dwarves. They’ll also send a messenger to the dwarves, telling them it happened on the order of a douchebag from—where are you from? Oh wait, doesn’t matter. I’ll just say it’s coming from Central City.”
“No, no, no! No need,” the priest hastily spoke. “I let emotions cloud my reasoning. No need to interfere with the dwarves.”
He beat a hasty retreat after that. I grinned at his back. My grin turned to a frown when I turned to look at Shenerah. “Okay, I’ve dealt with one pissy priest already, now what the fuck got your knickers in a twist, honey?”
“Don’t take that tone with me, you know perfectly well what’s wrong. You’re letting that bi—orc travel with us. Yathanae would be very disappointed in you!” Shenerah was not keeping her voice down. Luckily, only a handful or so knew elvish, which she was shouting at me in.
“I loved her too, I know she was not fond of orcs,” I countered calmly. “But she would not be so blinded by hate that she could not see we’ve got a need for Barka’s tribe if we want to succeed.”
“Why are you even so obsessed with getting Chione as a slave? You want to fuck her, is that it? The wives will not agree to that,” she seethed.
“No, I don’t want to fuck her, I’m plenty happy with my wives, all of them, even the one with the pissy attitude!” I shot back, my voice rising. “I need Chione in a collar and manacles so I can protect you guys. She’s as far as I can tell the only one with stronger magic than me in the entire world. I need her under my control, so she’s not a danger to you, the others and our children!”
“I—” she started, before the floodgates opened and she ran away. I could not deal with it right now, I was too angry at her verbal attack. I made a sign for Nishka to follow Shenerah and make sure she stayed safe. Why could she not see that it was the only way forward?
Caspar and his commanders approached a while later when I had had time to cool down. We gathered around a table with a barebone map of the Northern Plains. There were very few landmarks to go by, and the orcs kept on the move so there were no permanent cities.
“Okay, we got two clans and three groups of outcasts to deal with, according to Barka they should be around here,” I said as I conjured five stone figures and placed them on the map. The three outcasts were orcs with bent backs in three different sizes. At the base of each figure, there was a direction arrow. “The outcasts were last seen here and travelling in these directions.”
“What size of fighting force are we talking about?” Commander Bethany asked.
“The smallest group, indicated by the smallest figure, is about ten thousand orcs, Barka figures around two and half thousand are men in fighting shape, around the same for the women,” I explained. “The middle group are around eighteen thousand, figure about ten thousand in fighting shape. The largest group is twenty-two thousand strong, but they have more infirm, so only around ten or eleven thousand in fighting shape.”
“That’s a lot of orcs, Milord” Melissa commented. “Why are they outcast, they’re as big as any clan I’ve heard off.”
“That’s where we are wrong,” I said and placed the two clan markers. One was male, the other female. “The smallest clan is a quarter of a million orcs strong.”
“Impossible, Milord,” Caspar exclaimed. “We’ve never heard of such a horde.”
I shook my head. I had had the same reaction. “That’s because a clan is divided into several tribes. They’re nomads and live on the move, foraging and hunting. If a quarter of a million to a million orcs were to settle in one area, it would be impossible to sustain the clan. A tribe is generally between twenty to twenty-five thousand orcs, with at least a third in fighting shape.”
“If they’re not in one place, how are we going to find them then?” Commander Thomas asked.
I took out a piece of chalk so I could draw on the map. I drew a rough circle around each of the clans. “When a clan moves, they do so in a coordinated fashion. They’ll move to an area and lay claim to it for four to five moons. The circle I’ve drawn around each. The tribes of the clan will then spread out.”
“Where are we on the map?” Thomas asked. I made another stone figure, one that resembled Caspar and placed it on the map. Thomas looked at it. “That’s not too far away from the territory of the clan with the female orc.”
He was right, we were close on the map. “It looks so, but it’s still two weeks' travel before we get into the territory claimed by Barka’s former clan. They’ll not be moving for another three moons at least. They just settled in.”
“Two weeks?” Caspar asked dumbfounded. He looked over the map doing mental calculations. “We’ll be here for at least a cycle.”
“At least,” I said. “At the same time, we don’t have enough troops to handle the clans just yet.”
“Are we calling in another battalion then?” Melissa asked. The Milord had dropped away as the tactical and strategic discussion deepened.
I shook my head in response. “No, we can’t recall Hrothgar from the front, and we need Isaac’s battalion to protect our home.”
“How are we going to get enough troopers then, Milord?” Thomas asked.
“By taking out the outcasts. We’re going to try and get them to surrender with as little loss of men as possible,” I explained. “Half the fighting men and women we’ll induct into our own troops, the rest will be going to Barka. It’s why he sent his daughter and twenty older warriors. We’re going to repeat this with all of the groups and tribes we come across.”
“What about provisions?” Caspar asked. “We only have enough for another eight weeks of campaigning.”
“Barka and his outcasts will pick up a lot of provisions and join us. He knows where we’ll roughly be in seven weeks,” I answered. From there the discussion went into the minutia of the upcoming campaign now that we had more information.
It was two hours later that we finally finished. I was still standing at the table, staring at the map. I felt her presence, so without turning around I asked, “Did you identify the priests?”
“You got sharp senses, Karth,” Arkoshta grumbled as she stepped up to the table. “You also got an infestation of priests of the Betrayers. You managed to piss the priest off enough that he had to whine to the others. Five that hides amongst the Blueshirts, I’ve identified all of them. There are also another twenty magic users, not priests though.”
“Thank you, Arkoshta,” I said with a grim smile. “Are you sure you won’t allow me to create a bond with you? You won’t feel anything. Being able to see the flow of magic would be a very useful thing.”
She snorted. “I won’t let the power of the Betrayer Gods sully the Goddess’ holy gift.”
“I had to ask,” I said and bid her goodnight. The one power I really wanted, I could not get, because she was able to see if I made the connection. I sighed and went into my tent. I had a wife to appease.