Orc And The Lastborn [Progression, Gunpowder Sword & Sorcery]

From where Mym stood in the yard she could see the brigadier and how Orc stopped short with a blade in his hand and how he stared as if he didn't recognize her. She was wearing a kingsman's coat lined with sherpa and the epaulets torn off and in her silver hair a rose kerchief fluttered like a butterfly in the breeze and she did not look like a great swordswoman to Mym. She carried a curved twohanded saber in a sheath across her back and as the longhorn lowered her from her horse it nearly touched the ground. When she turned to Orc Mym realized she had been waiting for him to appear. As she crossed the yard her regality seemed to Mym a thing altogether unsettled. A bearing incongruent with the desperation of that place and her company. Mym studied her, her melancholic smile for him, her tender touch at the scars he'd earned or been given.

"Finally," she said. "Finally."

Mym saw how he looked into the woman's face like one hoping to glimpse his future in a well's reflection. Like a penitent seeking absolution in the eyes of his god. He seemed hardly to breathe and he doffed the hat off of his head.

She eyed it. "It doesn't become you."

He looked at the tattered thing in his hands, itself a trophy and a veteran of many journeys bearing scars all its own. He flung it across the yard.

She reached around his upper arm and squeezed. "You are too skinny."

He stammered as if unsure what to say. Finally he said simply, "Yes maam."

Mym found her mouth hanging open and she looked across at Booky and at Daraway and at Khaz and saw all of them were as shocked as she. Even the greenskin shied back upon his heels as if at any moment Orc might grow a second head like the ogre. The brigadier was so small he could break her in half yet for all the world he acted as if she towered over him. She smiled at him and it was plain to Mym that the sadness in her eyes encompassed him though he was not the whole of it.

"Why have you come?" she said.

He started as if just remembering something and he swung around his satchel and showed her the book within, wrapped in the fine black kerchief so like the one she wore.

"I found it at the house," he said. "The message you left me."

As the brigadier watched the book fell open in his hands as if it was on a crease and he read aloud from the page though he could have just as easily done with his eyes closed. "You can't steal that which by rights belongs to you," he said. "Nor should you feel guilt for killing they who are not people."

The brigadier smiled at him still yet the sadness in her eyes grew ever deeper.

He looked up from the page to the woman. "They sacked the residence but the orchard's fruiting and the garden's grown over its beds. A week of work is all we'd need to get things back to how they were."

She lifted her hand up at the curtain wall, at the spire. "And leave all of this?" she said.

He stared at her as if uncertain of her earnestness. Mym saw this and she took a step toward him.

The brigadier dropped her hand. "You are old enough to know things can never go back to how they were. That was Saul's farm and without him there to run it it would be no better than it was. Do you wish to be climbing up and down ladders all day? Watching your sinews soften and catching your mind wandering?" The brigadier shook her head. "By the martyrs how I hated it."

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He looked down. Mym saw the dark gathering about his face. She heard him say, "All is change," with the conviction of a convert. She took another step.

The brigadier placed her palm on his chest. "I am pleased you found my diary. I am pleased it brought you here. I should have come for you sooner. We might have saved enough of your kin to avoid this business with the queen."

He just stood there. The book still open in his hand, half offered to her, half forgotten. "The risen queen."

The brigadier nodded. "Who else can depose Donnas? The armiger cleansed the camps and the dwarves are fading and the elves have vanished altogether."

"You think she can be trusted."

"Alive or dead she's still a woman and as a woman her first and last concerns are self preservation."

"So you will ally yourself with the dead."

She nodded toward the heart of the city. "We go to her now. You will stand on my right."

"Maam?"

"Show me that dirk. Human made with a dwarven blade? Can it withstand a flame?"

"If ye want te ruin good art," said Mym.

The brigadier looked at her, looked back at Orc. "Show me the ax."

He unslung the ax and did as she bid.

She shook her head. "We do not always choose our tools." She handed it back and she walked back to her mount. As her back was turned Orc let his hand fall with the book still cradled over his placeholding finger. Mym took the last few steps to stand beside him. He didn't appear to notice.

The brigadier reached into the eye of a bedroll lashed down to the cantel. From this she drew out a keen edged blade of thirty inches. Its steel dark with carbon and its metal laid up and folded back in layers so thin they were nigh invisible. She stroked her thumb from crossguard to fuller as if her flesh was of whetstone and the metal whispered under her caress.

"Tools maketh the man," she said. "Or so say the yeomen Barnes."

"I didn't know you knew them."

"I would not have sent you to strangers. They were third cousins of Saul's. This was his also. Take it."

She held the longsword out to him with her hands under the grip and under the foible, palms up, offering made.

He put up the book and he took up the grip. He hefted it. It seemed to Mym well used for several gouges and scratches marred its polished surface. He wheeled it one way and then another and the air hissed from its slicing. The brigadier nodded and he saw and his color changed.

"You have kept up your drills."

"Respectfully maam they've not been drills for three years now."

The brigadier's gaze turned to where the bookmaker stood by with the ogre. "I suppose not," she said. Mym noticed her eyes lingered there for some reason or perhaps by coincidence.

Orc rolled his shoulders and assumed a guard position in invitation. The brigadier toed into the stirrup and swept lithely onto the saddle. From horseback she looked down at him and he looked up at her and it was clear to Mym that this was the accustomed disposition for their pairing.

"Drop your shoulder," she said. "Do not forget how tall you have become."

"Come and find out."

The brigadier shook her head. "The baron is come within the walls. We must go."

He lowered the longsword. "I must speak with you."

"There is no time."

"Why didn't you ever come for me?"

But the brigadier was already sawing her horse around to confer with her accompaniment and with the longhorn. Mym saw Orc's shoulders slump and the tip of the longsword did dab upon the ground and a frown affixed her face as if chiseled from marble.

The brigadier turned in her saddle. "Orc?"

He looked up at her.

"Will you stand at my right?"

Mym watched Orc watch this woman. In her she saw nothing to justify his unnatural fawning and self humbling. He seemed unable to stand up straight. Never before had she seen him thus. She flexed her hand and rested it on the strap of the carbine. His eyes turned down at her movement and he looked at her as if she might answer for him.

"Best ye do what feels right," she said.

He nodded. He looked up at the brigadier. "I'd be honored maam," he said.

Away on the fringe of the gathering Daraway muttered, "I knew it," but when Mym turned toward her voice she was nowhere to be seen.