The coffin moved through the swamp bit by bit, sloshing through the water in spurts like a boat being rowed by extremely out-of-rhythm oarsmen.
This was no ordinary coffin. The sides of it were bound with chains and leather thongs, holding teeth, horns, rotting hands, and all sorts of broken weapons. The bent blade of a sword clattered next to a minotaur's horn. A still-bleeding swatch of hide from a mountain lion cushioned a row of bandit-fletched arrows. And a few hooks were empty, where things had fallen off along the way. The climate hadn't been conducive to traveling with softer tissues.
It was warm down in the swamp, warm and muggy despite the fact that it was the beginning of spring. This was how things were in the damp of the Canelands, where the days blazed with boiling heat, the nights were still sultry, and the summers were a special kind of hell where you could chew the air if you ran out of food.
“Well at least there's no snow,” the people who lived down here would tell each other in between bouts of heatstroke and toerot fungal outbreaks. And there was something to that, true.
For those who didn't feel the heat, didn't sweat, didn't have to worry about skin or flesh or stuff like that anymore, it wasn't so bad.
The alligators, for instance, thoroughly enjoyed the Canelands. And the six or seven that had been bemusedly following the coffin through the swamps, had other things on their mind. Mainly the eternal question of whether or not this thing was edible, and if so, then how much hassle it would be to drag it down to the depths and devour it?
Standard alligator stuff, really.
They'd been following it for a few miles now. And it certainly did smell vaguely like food. And it was moving somewhat like a wounded creature should.
The bravest among them had just screwed up enough of his reptile courage to take a bite, when a cough rang out over the waters.
The coffin stopped.
The alligators stopped.
The island ahead of the coffin didn't stop.
It surged upwards, three tons of primal fury, mud and weeds sliding from its back as the beast rose from the depths of the river.
It was to the alligators as a giant was to humans.
It was a thing from another age, an age when trees were new-fangled inventions that would never catch on, and the general evolution of the world had tended toward really, really fucking big lizardy things.
Back then this one would have been considered a small fry. But its species had done well enough that this guy had made it through the millennia relatively unchanged.
Only ripples in the water remained, where alligators had been. And if the water in that region now had a strong scent of alligator urine, well... who could blame them, really?
The Beast had been roused. There was no good reason to stick around.
The small fry gone, the beast's relatively tiny eyes considered the coffin and narrowed.
It opened its jaws wider.
Then stopped, as the coffin shuddered, and rose a bit. Just a bit, as if it were looking up at the Beast. Or as if something under it was peering out from the water and muck and leeches.
A muffled voice sighed. Then said “Speak wit' Nature.”
The Beast coughed.
The voice coughed back.
The conversation that followed was short and unhelpful. For all the Beast had its advantages, deep thought and reflection wasn't one of them.
And so, disregarding the warning that it had just been given, it lunged forward to take the meal that had so obligingly come to it.
In the very short fight that followed, the creature had just enough brainpower in its skull to realize that it had made a horrible, horrible mistake.
Fifteen miles away, in the small fortified village of Hold Mabeah, a horrendous shriek broke the early morning air.
It sounded like the bellow of a dying dragon, and the residents of the town, mostly fishermen and smugglers, stared as a dark cloud of birds, bugs, bats, and non-flying creatures that had been temporarily motivated to become skyward exploded up and away from the patch of swamp that the residents called “Don'gotheah.”
In the decades that followed, those who were around for the day of the great yawp would talk about how the cows milk had been soured, chickens had sucked eggs they'd laid that morning back up into themselves, and Granny Twothistle's last black hair went pure white, all as a result of that strange and mysterious calamity.
Being mostly humans, the inhabitants of Hold Mabeah drank and thought about for the rest of the day, until they decided to do the usual thing they did when things beyond their control inconvenienced them.
Namely, they blamed it on the least popular person in town, (Perspicacia Lee,) burnt them as a witch, and took their stuff.
Well... they tried to, anyway. The elderly lady in question had long ago figured out the score and that she was next on the list, and gotten out of town as soon as she heard the Yawp, so they had to settle for burning her in effigy. Later on, Perspicacia would go on to be a mighty warlord, leading one of the roving orc hordes that terrorized the region, but that's another story entirely.
The nearest orc horde... more of a mob, really, had heard the yawp. And reinforced the pickets around the edge of their camp in that direction, before settling in for a troubled, uneasy rest. There was plenty of day left, after all. And a long night of pillaging ahead after that, so it wouldn't do to be groggy.
Now, orcs make poor sentries at the best of times. Their eyes are adapted for night, and being forced to stay awake and keep watch during the day is an uncomfortable proposition at best.
So when the coffin came bumping and surging out of the treeline, Roggit and Snarg were completely surprised.
Roggit's jaw fell open wide, and the frog he'd been slowly chewing to death saw its chance and leaped for its life.
Snarg hastily hid the rock he'd been planning to bean Roggit with behind his back.
The coffin stopped on shore, as if it was gathering its strength.
“Zog me,” Roggit said. “Wot's is den?”
“Sa dead box,” Snarg whined. “Where man-things keeps their rotten' meat.”
Roggit flared his nostrils. “Dun't smell that rotten. Smells... fresh. Smells... tasty...”
The word, the idea hung in the air.
The coffin stirred, and the orcs stepped back as it rotated, showing the sides of itself. Showing the trophies, the newest of which was a massive tooth that had been lashed into it with gator-hide leather cords.
That tooth still dripped blood, and why shouldn't it? It had been torn out by its roots.
“Er,” Snarg said, “I don't fink it likes dat idear.”
“At's no dead box,” Roggit said, a light entering his eyes. “It's a hek'cha.”
The coffin shook at the word, and the two stepped back, drew their blades.
Then the casket tilted up.
And something below it, something small, something that had been carrying the coffin a very long way stared out of the darkness beneath it with tiny yellow eyes.
“You. You know de way of de heck'cha?” came a small, but very orky-sounding voice.
“Tha totembox,” Roggit said. “Tha place where honored dead wait to be eaten by their kin.”
“Close enough,” said the voice. “You. What you tribe?”
“We're Zograt's boys!” Snarg said, before Roggit could respond.
“Don't know him.”
“Zograt... Son of... Grok,” Roggit said, wracking his brain for ancient history, at least a decade old at least. “Who was... Daughter of... Murg.”
“Don't know dem neither,” said the thing under the coffin. “We try dis, den. You know Hold Maerrings?”
“Big ruin. Many ghosts,” Roggit nodded.
“Who made it dat?”
“Eh...” Roggit tried, he really did. But he hadn't expected to answer history questions today, and he frankly wasn't a sharp one, even at the best of times. Most orcs didn't have time for book learning, and past deeds of people who weren't them. That sort of thing was shaman business.
In any case, it didn't matter, as a loud, familiar, and unwelcome voice bellowed from behind him.
“WOT'S ALL DIS DEN?”
Zograt, son of Grok, daughter of Murg, had not slept the remainder of that day.
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Zograt, son of Grok, daughter of Murg, didn't know a heck'cha from a hula hoop.
Zograt, son of Grok, daughter of Murg, was frustrated, and just looking for something or someone to take his rage out on.
So when the thing under the coffin hissed “You. Big boy. Who was it sacked Hold Maerrings? Where dey be now?” he decided that stupid box with the stupid noisy thing under it was the perfect target for a beat-down.
“SHUT UP!” bellowed Zograt, son of Grok, daughter of Murg. He drew his chopper, yelled “Twisted Rage!” and charged.
There came a tiny, annoyed sigh, drowned out by the rising bellow of the approaching Zograt.
The sigh was followed by a swiftly muttered “Beastly Skill Borrow, fucking Tyrannosaurus,” that went entirely unnoticed.
Then there was a loud, growling “CHOMP!” that was very, very much noticed. Although the person who'd been closest to that particular exclamation was no longer in a position to notice much of anything anymore.
Roggit, face dripping with gore, looked to Snarg. Snarg, after pulling Zograt's entrails off his face, blinked and spluttered, and looked back. The two exchanged nods.
“Wait 'ere,” Roggit said.
“We'll just go an' ask about... that stuff yer said... yeah.”
The thing under the coffin did not reply.
And when they returned with the bleary-eyed and very hung-over Shaman, they couldn't help but notice that the heck'cha now had Zograt, son of Grok's daughter of Murg's chopper lashed to its side as well.
The shaman knelt down by the heck'cha, and after a whispered conversation, stood and pointed south and west. The coffin bobbled, reoriented itself, and resumed its march. And then the shaman hauled the entire tribe together, woke them in the middle of the day and gathered them down by the slaughter pit, and educated them about respecting the honored dead, and revering elders who really, really had no time for your shit, and by dint of surviving to old age had proved that they could kick your roody poo orcy ass six ways to Sunday. The shaman drummed respect for elders into every thick orc skull in there, until even the most dense of them swore to honor the old properly.
It was at about that point that a fleeing Perspicacia Lee, luggage in hand and cat on her shoulder, found her way to the tribe's currently-empty cooking tent, and mistaking it for a hunter's camp, set to work cooking the remnants of Zograt that the enterprising hunters had put aside for later consumption.
It was an honest mistake, really. Perspicacia's eyesight was getting a little softer these years, and she had misplaced her spectacles on her forehead, and what was left of Zograt bore no resemblance to what he had been.
Perspicacia was a little tired, too. She planned to sit a spell in this pleasant little camp and whoever these nice hunters were they surely wouldn't mind her presence if she made them a good meal of roast and grits and greens.
But that's another story entirely.
The coffin, which was also a heck'cha, made its way through the swamps, through the fields, past a few human settlement, skirted the edges of a gribbit hatchery, and straight through another orc camp. And by this time, word had spread, and the way was unimpeded by further trophy opportunities.
And at last the coffin came to the ruins that were Hold Maerrings. To the burnt and blackened vale that had once been a meadow in the swamp. To the hill that rose up, cluttered with stony, kudzu-covered ruins, with only a single tower still standing.
There was smoke coming from that tower.
The coffin proceeded up the hill, and it passed graves as it went. Many, many graves, unmarked but undisturbed. No scavengers in this land would dare; no necromancer was that foolish. What was in those graves would lie undisturbed for centuries, eaten only by weak and puny worms, for that is the fate they deserved.
The coffin paused once, by the crumbling logs that had been a stockade. By the rusted remnants of chains set into posts. Memories of the lash, of screams of rage, of watching from the cages as the sneering overseers trained their slaves...
Old memories. Still painful.
But it stirred when the door of the tower opened, and the bone-clad figure rattled out.
A fool would take her for a Necromancer. It was easy to mistake traditional orcish Shamanic garb for something more sinister.
Rheumy eyes peered down the hill. It was twilight by now, and the night was starting to seep in, aided the Shaman's rheumy yellow eyes, let her focus and see what was before her.
“Now dat,” she said, in a cracked voice, “dat be a heck'cha.”
The wind blew on the hill, ruffled the grass growing on the graves, whispered through the kudzu as the silence lingered.
Until it was broken.
“No fucking shit,” said the thing under the coffin. “Come down here and get a feast on. Dis be heavy.”
The Shaman's eyes went wide. She knew that voice! “Wait... sister? Sister?” she thumped her staff on the ground, rattling the skulls hanging from it, and shuffled down the hill.
“Hello Morgum,” came the voice, and then something small and muddy and green set the coffin down and charged up the hill, leaping in midair to land right in the laughing Shaman's arms.
“Zuula! You is come home!”
They both laughed, and bit each other, and healed each other and bit each other again because ecstatically happy orcs get bitey, and even though Morgum got a mouth full of swamp-soaked plush and stuffing she didn't care.
After that, they sat on the Hek'cha together and looked down the hill, and talked.
“Why you alone?”
Morgum sighed, and pulled off her headdress. Bones clattered on sinew thongs as she sat it down, and fluffed out her gray, well-combed hair. She took more after their “father” than Zuula had, and her hair showed it. It had been blonde once, thirty years ago.
“Unclever question, unclever girl,” Morgum said to her little sister. “I be alone because ain't nobody else left.” Then she winced as Zuula's plush fist caught her in the ribs. Just a little jab, but the doll body had some serious strength behind it.
“Dat be very Shaman answer. Don't try givin' it on a Shaman,” Zuula said. “Where be de odders?”
“Gone.”
“Dead?”
“No. De humans stopped trying to take dis place long ago. De front shifted. Den it went away when de dragons come.”
“Ah...” Zuula hissed. “Fire. In the visions.”
“Fire,” Morgum agreed. “Everyone hid in swamps. Came out when de dragons left.”
“Explains de wastelands up nort',” Zuula nodded to herself.
“After dat... no more war. Just raiding, now and den.”
“No more war?” Zuula looked up at her sister.
Morgum took a long look back.
Zuula was a small doll now, a dirty and bedraggled green plush body wearing a cut-up brown dress that had its sleeves torn off, and been belted into a proper skirted tunic. She had a mask half her size slung next to a spear on her back, and her face had actual bone tusks sewn into it. Glittering yellow glass eyes held intelligence, though, and whatever mechanism she was using to speak replicated her old voice well.
But there was still an aura about her, a feeling that a Shaman's wisdom could tell very well.
“No,” Morgum said. “No more war. Busy dealing wit' de dead that walked after dat. You know how it is. Fighting undead and such. Keeping dem in dere graves.”
Zuula looked away. “Best of some bad options.”
Morgum nodded. “Which is why I be alone, now. We guard de hill. We keep de humans away. We remember what dey did here. What we never let dem do again.”
Zuula and Morgum were quiet then, but the rusty chains below them clanked, telling their own horrible stories as the wind blew them. Stirring memories that burned with a rage that never truly died.
“Until?” Zuula prompted, pulling her mind back to the present.
“Most of the tribe full orc,” Morgum shrugged. “Only a few halfblood, like us. Like me. Dey die.”
“Properly?” Zuula shot her a wary look.
Morgum belched and rubbed her ample belly.
Zuula relaxed. “Good.”
“De young. De got nuttin' to do. Stay here. Die here. No good places to fight. Nuttin' to raid. What you t'ink happen?”
Zuula bit her lip until stuffing came out. “Shit.”
“Shit.”
Much like humans, orcs would fight with each other when they were bored. Much like humans, it got bloody and lethal, if it went on long enough.
“After a time, de remaining ones split up, left. No more is de tribe of Hoorm, son of Kulg. Now is only Morgum, daughter of Gruun. She alone waits and watches. But de promise is kept.”
“Never again,” Zuula said, looking down at the ruins of the slave stockade.
“Never again,” Morgum agreed. Then she looked down at the heck'cha. “Same guy? Mord a kai?”
“Mordecai,” Zuula sighed. “Mordecai Frogstomper.”
Morgum nodded. “I'll stoke de fire. Get de pot going proper.”
It took three nights to finish the ritual. Three nights and a lot of indigestion on Morgum's part.
The heck'cha was from the old country. The palanquin of the honored dead. Zuula had enclosed it, since humans preferred coffins, for some reason. Then she had born it on her back, across hundreds of miles of mountain and swamp and meadow and road, borne it south to her people. And she had taken trophies from the fools that had dared to stand in her way, and the honor of the one borne in the heck'cha had grown with every death.
And at the end of it, preserved by the magics of the heck'cha, the dead man gave his last gift to his people, strengthening them and reminding them that they, too, would die. And that if they did well in life, that even in death their kin would gather them trophies to go and kick the ass of whichever god tried to lay claim to their soul.
Once it was done, and the few inedible parts that orcs couldn't devour had been disposed of properly, the Heck'cha burned in ritually-prepared shamanic fire, and the two sisters watched the flames rise.
“Dey not comin' round here no more?” Zuula asked. “Humans?”
“No.” Morgum said, watching the Heck'cha crumble, and the magical flames melt even the metal blades that had been jammed into it.
“Not much reason to be staying here, den,” Zuula said.
Morgum glared at her. “A promise be a promise.”
Zuula tilted her head. “Walk wit' me.”
“Oh no. You ain't gonna bash Morgum's head and drag her off.”
“Hadn't crossed Zuula's mind,” Zuula lied. “Come. Show you a 'ting. Make you reconsider.”
“No tricks.”
“No tricks,” Zuula agreed.
“Pinky swear.”
“Fuck!” Zuula growled, and gnashed her plush teeth. “Fine. Pinky swear.”
The only ritual they had learned from human culture worth a damn. The one they'd never broken to each other.
It was a bit trickier to pull off with Zuula's tiny little doll fingers, but they managed. And after that Morgum followed, shuffling after her.
And once they were out to the treeline, Zuula nodded. Then she turned around, and unleashed the skill she'd learned once she'd hit Shaman level 30.
“Nature's Wrath.”
The hill shook.
The hill cracked.
The earth shuddered, almost knocking them to the ground.
Then the hill stood up, the tower on it crumbling as the plants and stones and the very earth itself came to life, and swallowed the hill, and the stockade, and the chains, and the tower, and everything on it, churning and turning and tearing and growing until it was gone, gone under the earth, gone beyond human or orc reach, gone forever.
Only then did it settle down, and what was left was flat earth. Even the graves had been sucked down below, with nary a trace remaining.
Morgum stared.
Then she bopped Zuula on the head with her staff.
“Ow! Hey!”
“My stuff! You break all Morgum's stuff! Wicked little sister!”
“No no no! You not getting it!” Zuula protested, trying to ward off the staff, woozy as hell because she'd just dumped two hundred sanity in one shot. “Ruins is gone! Swamp be coming in now! Humans won't never rebuild de place! You are free to go!”
Morgum stopped beating her sister.
She turned and considered the flat ground. Saw and heard the water trickling in.
Then she turned and gave Zuula one more thwack for good measure, and snorted. “Hmph!”
“Hmph?” Zuula snorted back, and crossed her arms.
“Hmph.” Morgum grunted. Then she looked east. “Last I heard, got some grandchildren out past de ridge. Havenn't seen dem. Might want to.”
“Grandchildren?” Zuula perked up. “How old?”
“Five.”
“Oh.” Zuula deflated, disappointed. Five was the equivalent of teenage years to orcs.
“Could come see dem anyway. Help bust some heads. Raise dem right,” Morgum offered.
“No. No, no,” Zuula shook her head. “Don't want to let dem know great-aunty is undead.”
“Dey might not be able to tell,” Morgum said, tapping her nose with one finger.
“Beh. Don't want to risk it, and ain't gonna lie.” Zuula sighed. “Besides, got t'ings to take care of up north.”
“T'ings more important dan family?”
Zuula winced. This was a low blow, but a telling one, given how Morgum had dropped everything to help with a Heck'cha. It was a very Shamanic sort of jab, really, and she appreciated the skill of it even as she cursed the accuracy of it.
Fortunately, she had an out. “Got family up dere too,” she said. “You could come see dem.”
“Bah, too far. Too cold. Too... human.” Morgum said, looking away, and a waver of old pain in her voice.
Zuula said nothing. Morgum was the older sister. She had come of age back while they were still slaves. And her yellow hair had made her stand out. Had made her look... exotic.
There were reasons that Morgum had a grudge against humans, one that she could never turn off, and one that Zuula could not and would not argue against.
“T'ings to do before she dies,” Zuula said, patting Morgum's calf. “Same as you, eh?”
And she understood too.
There was no parting embrace, because orcs didn't do that shit. There was only a nod, and then they went their separate ways.
The dead had been tended to.
Now it was time to take care of the living, and those close enough to it to matter.
“Dey better not have drunk de stupid juice, while Zuula be away,” she muttered to herself, her mind filled with thoughts of bears, dolls, and half-orcs. “Or dey gonna get such a bite!”