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

Orc hunched over the bar of the inn and in the barback mirror the reflection of a well dressed man came down the stairs and crossed the planked floor and stepped through the door into the sideways rain. Orc paid off the barman and walked out after. Raindrops slapped across his face and pattered on the broad sheathe of the longsword. The man was already halfway across the street, now passing the place where the revival had burned down the year before, now drawing his hood over his head. Orc stepped in the street and shouted the man's name.

The man stopped and turned. His eyes invisible in the shadow of the hood. His cloak blew about uncovering and recovering the holy sigil on his chest.

"The cub," he said.

He stepped back over the gutter and he looked up the street and down it. Nobody else out in the wet. He looked at the orc.

"You didn't need to blow up my powder."

Orc moved into the street and shrugged off the satchel and set it on the ground. The man kept his hands hidden under his cloak.

"So you're here to repay me?"

"I'm here to kill you."

The baron slowly shook his head and his teeth flashed as if he smiled.

"You've got her pride," he said.

He came three steps into the street, the mud sucking at his boots. Orc stood waiting.

"You think you knew her but you didn't," said the baron. "You worship a lie, cub. Shall I show you the falsehood?" A gloved hand emerged from the cloak and threw back the hood.

Orc never saw him draw the saber. Perhaps he'd held it bare beneath the cloak. The tip of it now glinted about his ankles. A flash of light off the steel. Another flash as if he shifted it to his other hand. Orc unsheathed the longsword and tossed the sheathe aside. The baron walked out so that the wind and spray blew onto his back. The cloak swirled up around his feet and flapped before him. He looked at the orc.

"Turn around," he said. "Go to your hardwon home across the sea."

"I'm sworn to kill or to die."

"Sworn," said the baron.

"Stonesworn."

The baron laughed. "A romantic and a heretic then. You should abandon those pagan beliefs, cub."

He saluted with the hilt at his throat and the blade straight up in the air as she had taught him to. "You should see to your own."

The baron stood in the street. His cloak billowing out. His wet locks blowing across his cheeks and sticking to his forehead. The long curved blade of her saber pointed at the ground. "Think on it carefully. There are no infidels in heaven."

The rain slapped into the opaque brown puddles. He had not removed his cloak. He just stood there. Waiting.

"I will remind you again before the end. Come now. Let us commence."

Orc stepped twice forward and put his heavy blade at the baron's chest and the baron stepped back without raising the saber. Orc lunged again sweeping the longsword in an upward arc and the baron slid to the right and the cloak swept back as his offhand came up with the charged pistol and the flash and the roar of it and Orc felt the ball shatter his collarbone and lodge against his right scapula. Before the pain could come he passed the longsword to his left hand and clumsily swung the broad flat of it at the outheld repeater and there was a clang and a clatter as it tumbled away. When he counter swung back he brought the edge at the baron's neck and the man deflected it with the saber.

The baron took a quick step back and shouldered out of the cloak, smiling. He nodded at Orc's shoulder and touched his own in the same place. "She never taught you to see the hidden truths. They are the ones that injure. They are the ones that kill."

Now the pain came. He flexed his hand, felt it. Tested his arm. He kept the longsword in his left hand.

"You thought you were the only hog in her sty. You thought you were something special. How long have you chased her? How long have you sought her suckling teat?"

The baron came in again and there was an exchange of slashes and when he stepped back his trouser leg was cut just above the knee and the fabric was red with blood. He pivoted on the leg as if it was nothing.

"A year? No. All your life."

The baron stopped circling right and began circling left. His shoulders held low. Water dripped from his brow and onto his arms and his knees and onto the ground.

"You believed she loved you. She loved power. And being a woman the first place she knew to find it was between her legs."

Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.

He stepped forward again and the blood ran out the hem of his pant leg and into the rainsoaked ground. He slashed the saber at the space before him like a man fighting in the dark but Orc did not take these feints.

"You followed a woman and forgot that whatever else she called herself she was still a woman. And you—"

The baron was suddenly spinning very close past his shattered shoulder. His grip switched. His eyes intent. Held overhand the saber trailed behind him and Orc stumbled back to keep him square and as the man moved out of reach the orc's tricep hung off of the bone where it had been laid open.

"—were still a hog," said the baron.

He stood tall and half swung and began again to circle. Then he surged forward and with the saber backhand flicked diagonally into Orc's trapezius.

"Your mind is too small to comprehend this. Too narrowly focused on the state of your shoulder, of the blood seeping into the earth."

Orc clubbed down with the longsword but the baron sidestepped and shook his head. His hair plastered to his face. His boots caked with mud.

"God gave us order, cub. Divinity runs through Him to his earthly lieutenants. The King. His Bishop. Men and men alone are suited to the proper discharge of the duties of citizenship and the sustaining of civilization."

The baron held his hand to the sky and turned his face to the rain as if appealing to some higher power.

"I don't blame Kathryn. She was Saul's responsibility. He was never up to the task. War breaks men, cub. Or it kills them."

Orc tried to turn his undamaged side toward the baron and the baron saw this and continued his circling. Everything below his right elbow had gone cold and numb and everything above was a torment.

"Saul broke. He lost control of his woman. God recognized this. He sent warnings but Saul didn't heed. Finally God took their child but instead of demanding his wife be a wife he allowed her to bring you into his home."

He feinted at Orc's swordarm and sliced at his gut. More blood spilled.

"Husbands must care for their wives lest they act foolishly. It is their sacred duty. And masters must care for their slaves."

Orc feinted awkwardly with the longsword and clubbed it downward. The baron parried away the swing and jabbed the saber's brass handguard into his cheek. He felt his orbital socket break.

"That is why we gathered up your kind. This is the truth hidden from heretics and infidels though it is plain to see in all creation: in the divine hierarchy orcs and their kin stand just above the swine and lay just below the dwarves."

He held the saber across his chest and shifted it languidly back and forth.

They struck at the same time. Orc tried to pin his swordarm. The curved blade slid against the back of his head and his neck and he felt the blood spill. The baron grabbed his shoulder and pressed his thumb into the slughole. Orc couldn't raise his right hand above his waist. He bit at the man's cheek and the man pushed him away. Swords crossed and hacked as they separated. The baron's cheek was opened and his sleeve torn down and hanging off of his wrist. Orc stood half crouched with his hands held low. He had dropped the longsword and it lay in the mud between them.

"The cub has lost his blade."

Orc watched him.

"What shall we do? Were he a man all would agree he must retrieve his weapon for there is honor among men."

Orc careened forward and stooped for the hilt but the baron warned him off with a quick slash of the saber and now he trod upon the longsword and it sank into the mud.

"But he is not a man. He is a slave."

The baron advanced upon him passing the saber twice before Orc's stomach and he felt the blood run down. He reached across his belt and drew Booky's blade and held it forth, a third the saber's length.

The baron regarded this and laughed. The tip of his saber dipped and he held it parallel to the earth as if in accusation.

"A prideful slave and this is his downfall. A whore pretending to lead men begat a cub pretending to equal them. She did this to you cub. You have no one to blame but her."

When he stepped forward Orc made no parry or defense. He stepped into the thrust and as it entered his gut he swiped out with Booky's blade and he felt the blade turn and when the baron moved back he could see the chainmail tunic hidden under the torn shirt. Orc clutched at his stomach with his cold right hand. Blood poured from it but he felt no heat. Everything seemed to be going cold.

The baron looked down at his shirt and the newly rent mail and he smiled. "Hidden truths. Now you understand. You shall never know God's love or the martyrs' embrasures. You shall languish forever in the outer dark."

Orc's feet sloshed in the sucking mud and his right side seemed to hang off of his left. Bloodsoaked rain dripped from the edge of Booky's blade. He was tired.

"Slaves exist to work and to die. Your work is done, cub."

The baron came again at his useless side and Orc raised his dwarfmade blade edge on and it passed through the saber. The shorn blade carried on and sunk into his upper arm and the baron looked at it quivering there and then at the langets devoid of it. He threw away the toothless grip and backpedaled and stooped to excavate the longsword and Orc passed Booky's blade into his useless hand and he drew the handax from behind his back and hurled it straight into the crown of the baron's skull. He heard the crack of the sundered bone like wood splitting. The baron collapsed to his knees. His chin came up and his overweighted head wobbled on his neck like a top coming to the end of its spin. Then he looked down. The way a drunk might pass in and out of consciousness. The handle of the ax protruded from his head like a quail's headplume. He reached up and touched it. His eyes rolled in his head. Blood sheeted down his forehead and landed on his knees and on the ground. He slumped over with his face in the mud and Orc could see the silver chain wrapped around the back of his neck.

Orc was sagging on one knee. The throw had overborn him. He gathered himself up and sucked air into his scarred lungs and stumbled forward. Black spots crowded his vision. He dug in the mud until he found the longsword. He excavated it as the earth latticed over with spiderwebs of white frost and the pools of rainwater and oilblack blood froze from their bottoms to their tops. He steadied himself on the new ice and as the body began to move again he brought the longsword high above the exposed neck. With all his strength he swung and the baron's head was swept off. He grabbed it by the locks and he tossed it in the gutter.

The stones rejoiced at his offering. The ground now steamed and the pools roiled and scalded his cheek where it lay against the street and he could smell the burning flesh but he could not feel it. The life had poured out of him. He would join Tulula. Would join the brigadier. The ground burbled up his spilled black blood like tar. He reached for the headless corpse. He reached for the manstone.