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

She lay amid the shattered wood with Ogaz stinking and slobbering and bleeding upon her. A kind of mud made from the dust and ash and spilt blood caked down her front. The tusker wrestled her upright and had begun to resume his yammering when she saw Orc standing there, blade in hand. She elbowed the tusker in his groin and he quit his yammering and howled.

"Tell yer jibberin muckslaker te let off me," she said.

Orc sheathed up the blade and said some things to Ogaz. The tusker was bent, hands on knees, bolts yet coming out of him. He groaned and said some things back to Orc.

Orc turned to her. "He says you started it."

"Nakshit and sluicejuice. I don't even know what we're scrappin over. He just started yankin on me, pullin me over lek he'd spent a year down a shaft."

The tusker was yammering again.

"What's he sayin?"

Orc didn't answer. A cold look had settled across his face and now he was talking back to the tusker. Ogaz was waving his arms, pointing at Orc, pointing at Mym. Orc put a hand on the back of the tusker's neck. Leaned into him. Their foreheads touched. Ogaz was shaking his head, his tusk grazing Orc's collarbone. Orc kept talking. Didn't stop talking. Mym began to feel embarrassed and looked around for Daraway and walked over to join her a few yards down the hall.

"Ye alright?"

"Yes."

"We were worried about ye."

"I'm fine."

They watched the orckin by the light of the fireball. Mym nodded at it. "What sort of underslag devil ye blazin there?"

The woman smiled a little. Put up her hand, fingers softly forward. The light rose to the ceiling, spread outward across it like molten metal settling into a cast. "Something I've just learned."

Mym watched its motions. She studied Daraway's expression. The quiet smile. The haggardness about her eyes. "Ye went te the archive."

"Yes."

"Ye learn anythin else?"

"Yes." She lowered her hand and the light dripped itself off of the ceiling and reformed a sphere floating by her shoulder. She reached into her cloak and withdrew the folio. "I know how we can repair the world."

***

The day, as it was, had begun to lighten. They left the palace through a collapsed wall and reentered the palatine grounds where the river jetted from a thousand sculpted fish heads and cascaded down terrace over terrace. They knelt beside its course and submerged their skins and canteens and dromedaries. The water frigid over their hands. From somewhere within the palace a dog barked.

Orc approached and crouched beside her. "Sorry about Ogaz," he said.

She smelled the mouth of her canteen and then hazarded a drink. She wiped her mouth on the back of her hand. "Yer not responsible fer the actions of others."

"That's generous of you."

"It's the truth." She drank again. "How'd he find us?"

"He can track just about anything that touches the ground. He's a bit like you in that regard."

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"Doubt that. What was he on about anyway?"

He looked at the river. "It's an old argument."

"Aye?"

He nodded. "When Glad Nizam was liberating the camps a rumor spread among the freed that she intended to march south, to cross the sea of suns. They were saying there were more camps down there, more orckin interred and enslaved by men."

"Ye believe it?"

He shook his head. "It doesn't matter what I believe. He believes. Even before the moonfall he believed. He left me once already to go chasing that promise. He made good on it in the goldlands. He's done more for orckin than I ever have."

"And yer afraid he'll leave ye again."

"Yeah."

"Well. Maybe ye should let him."

He looked at her now. The yearning evident in that look. "I'd like him to have a home. A real one, not a myth. Not a camp. A warm hearth and a full larder. Neighbors and good work to do together."

"We're back te this then."

"We never left. Men murdered us in our own land. Stole us off of it. Poisoned it."

"Aye. Problem is that's everywhere now." She slung her canteen over her shoulder. "Why do ye care so much about him?"

"He was kind to me once. Back when he had no reason to be. Back when he had every reason not to be."

The tusker had been standing and watching out over the city. Now he loped back to them, pointing back toward the harbor and talking rapidly. Orc stood suddenly and went to the edge of the terrace.

"What is it?" said Mym.

"Mast and sail."

Now Daraway stood. "A ship?"

"More than one."

Mym walked over to see for herself.

The city was cratered and collapsed and barren. The framing of buildings skeletal in the thickening haze. Who would remember any of it? Good stout houses scorched of their paint. Their roofs now their floors. Emptied of their inhabitants. Evacuated of their necessity. Not even vermin now occupied them. The river descended a stair of laundering basins, of bathing tubs, of fountains for drinking. Never to be used again. Beyond the last terrace the seawall. Beyond that the sullen murk gathered about white shapes phantasming upon the ocean. They were coming.

"Who are they?" she said.

Daraway leaned forward and made her hand an awning for her eyes as if the sun beat down upon them. "That's the royal standard."

"Nobody we'd lek te see then."

"No." The woman dropped her hand back into her cloak. "We should make for the span."

Orc turned to them. "The bosun's down there."

"He'll have seen them coming," said Daraway. "He's probably already gone."

He shook his head. "He wouldn't leave."

"And we can't stay."

"Go then. I won't keep you here."

Daraway turned to Mym. "Come on. There's a postern across the garden that'll drop us onto the Kingsroad."

Mym looked at Orc. He was packing his things. Looking down the seawall where the bosun might yet be waiting. He strapped his belt, hung the saber from it. Said something grave to Ogaz. The tusker grinned and nodded back.

She looked past them. Surveyed the city. The cracked foundations and broken homes. Terraced walls shaken apart, washed away. Down around her feet the fragments of palatial stone, covered in dust. She kicked one off of the terrace and it spun end over end and clattered somewhere in the shadows of the ruins and then silence. She knew the span couldn't have withstood the shock of the collision. There was but one other way home.

"We can't take te the Kingsroad," she said.

Daraway looked at her.

Mym put a hand on her arm. "We're goin te have te take the seven passes."

"Is that what you want?"

"What I want is fer everyone te get home."

Orc turned now to them. "We're going," he said.

"Wait a turn. We're comin."

Daraway frowned. "Mym."

"Dara. We can't split up."

"And if those ships are full of kingsmen, the king himself among them?"

"Ye'll be there te blow em up." She slung her longarm and turned to Orc. "Lead on musheater."

They dashed back down to the seawall through the city. Smell of smoke and the salt on the wind. Dark shapes skulking from ruin to ruin. Noses down and sniffing out the buried and feasting upon the half-buried. In a bazaar a stall with flags of colored paper fluttering off a string. Somehow unburnt. They ducked inside a moment to rest. Wooden figurines of the martyrs on the shelves. Then sounding down from the palatine grounds the flat peal of a horn. And again.

"What's it mean?" she said.

"Could be anything," said Daraway.

"Maybe they found your handiwork," said Orc.

"Or their empty meatlocker. Or they're signalling the ships come in. Or they've spotted us and there are already flights of arrows dropping upon our heads."

Orc glared at her, then his eyes tracked upward as if scanning the sky.

"Let's go," said Mym.

As they arrived on the seawall it had begun to rain again. Freezing cold and with enough wind to kill. They ran along the seafront to where the bosun had moored the boat. Three vessels beat up from behind the seabreak and jibed straight for the harbor. Ragged, flat-bottomed barges with tree-trunk masts. Motley sails of bed linens sewn together. Bristling with bearded men, emaciated and tabarded in the king's colors. One lifted a musket and she saw the puff of smoke. Then came the pain. She never heard the shot.