The Game of Fates (22 page)

“Yes,
we no wait then,” he told the big oaf of a warrior, “Shaman stay here and watch
gold.  Tell sub-leaders to get warriors up to top at bridge.  Tell them bring
food.  Leave one manies of warriors for watch slaves and mercenaries,” he
counted off two hands worth.  “Chief no need see slaves and mercenaries.  All
others go now!”

“Yes,
master,” Mushrat said, quickly turning to leave.

Shagra
had had very little use for this Manechar, though the healing elixir he’d
gotten from him had done wonders for his arrow wound.  To Shagra, the dealings
of shamans and really any wielders of magic was beyond him.  He didn’t
understand them.  However, unlike most of his fellow warriors, he did not fear
them.  He saw how his father used them.  They were his eyes and ears, their
powers granting them something of an exception to the normal rule that the
stronger rule the weaker.  Certainly this Manechar wasn’t strong or skilled
with weapons, but none of Shagra’s warriors would soon forget the fire that had
flown from his fingers to devour the orc who had challenged his authority. 
Shagra hadn’t been there to see the actual event, but he’d certainly seen the
charred remains.

Outside
the entrance of his room warriors began to trickle past alone or in pairs.  The
laughing and crying of concubines could already be heard in the common
chambers, glad or sad as they were that the warriors would leave them alone for
a time.  There would be no beatings or botherings for them until the warriors
returned, whether they considered that a good thing or not didn’t matter the
slightest to Shagra.  To him, females were a necessary thing, but their uses
were very limited in the tribes. 

The
kobold slaves seemed to treat their females almost as equals, which clearly
showed their weakness.  His twenty years of life had shown Shagra that females
were property, nothing less, and certainly nothing more.  He ensured his concubines
knew their place.  In the other room his six concubines shrank in fear when he
entered.  His oldest sons had taken to treating the concubines and their
sisters the same as well, which made Shagra proud.  In his mind they could only
be proper killers if they first learned to throw away the feelings for those
who gave them birth and dominated their weaker siblings.

“Concubine,”
he called out.  After a moment one of them entered the room.  It was a point of
pride with Shagra that he never called them by their names.  “Get food for me
in backpack.  Put foods for this many days,” he said, holding up his hand.” 
Shagra looked down at the fat female.  She was healthy enough and had given him
three children already, but they were all females. 

The
blood from the last birthing had staunched.  “And we breed again when I come
back.  It long enough now.” 

He
would try again with her.  If she gave him another female child, then he would
trade her away for one that would give him sons…
or maybe for good sword
,
he thought as he remembered the sword he’d lost in his desperate run from the
ants, or was it in his flight from the kobolds who had given him that arrow
wound? 

Shagra
shook his head.  The fever he’d had following that episode had wiped much of
his memory of the incident away.  It was a good thing that the shaman had that
healing elixir, elsewise Shagra might have died.

Picking
up his great axe and substitute sword he noticed that his concubine was still
standing there.  Annoyed, he shooed her away then picked up his chain mail
shirt and started shaking it out, looking for the holes where his head and arms
should go.

Mushrat
stormed quickly into the room.  Startled by the sudden entrance, Trikki almost
dropped Trallik’s head out of her lap.  Leaning against her back, Klimer, the
younger kobold she called cousin, jumped to his feet ready to run at a moment’s
notice.  Seeing it was Mushrat, and that he wasn’t drunk but rather distracted,
Trikki put a calming hand on his leg.

“I
go now.  You stay here,” he said in broken Sorcerer’s Tongue.  What he’d said
had been almost the extent of his vocabulary, but it had taken quite an effort
for Trikki to teach him that.  She thought it strange that he had pressed her
to teach him, but then orcs were surely strange creatures; easy enough to
figure out, but yet primordially strange at the same time.

“Yes,
we stay,” she replied in the same tongue.  “Why you go?” she asked in the
simple grammar of the orc tongue using her own tongue’s words.

Mushrat
threw some rations into a backpack and threw it over his shoulder, then hoisted
his great axe over his other shoulder, all the while struggling desperately to
come up with the words in the kobold’s language to answer the little slave. 
Finally, he came up with the words.  “I go kill… Kale Gen now,” he said,
pleased with himself that he had gotten out an entire sentence—including a name
in kobold!  Ready to head out the door, Mushrat shook his head.  “Goodbye,” he
finally said as he left, having now pretty much exhausted what he knew of the
kobold tongue.

“Be
careful!” Trikki called after him.  As orcs went he wasn’t a bad master. 
Besides, he was easy enough to manipulate and unusually talkative for an orc. 
This news that they were finally going to launch the attack that he’d been
talking about ever since they got here made Trikki frown, however.

Trallik
began to stir, finally beginning to awaken as things began to quiet down
again.  Sitting up and rubbing his eyes, the former Kale Gen warrior noticed
Klimer standing as if something had just happened, and with hidden delight
noticed that his head had been resting gently in Trikki’s lap.  Again, that
silly smile appeared on his face for no apparent reason.

“Hi,
I’m Trallik,” he said, slowly in case they didn’t speak Sorcerer’s Tongue well.

“Hi
Trallik,” Trikki said with a warm, inviting smile.  “You’ve been asleep for a
long time.  It is good to see you finally awake.”  Her musical voice drown out
any thoughts other than her face.  “My name is Trikki, and this,” she said
pointing at the dark-scaled male kobold who was only a couple of years younger
than both Trallik and Trikki, “is my cousin Klimer.”

Trallik
gave something of a submissive nod to the pretty female who spoke so clearly,
hardening his gaze somewhat to nod at the whelp.

“How
is it that you speak The Sorcerer’s Tongue, yet your scales are darker than
mine?”

Trikki
seemed almost to blush a bit.  “My mother was Kale,” she said.  She insisted
that I learn how to ‘speak right’,” she said, rolling her eyes somewhat at the
memory.  “She always said it gave one respectability.  She was never very
accepting of the northern gens, as she called them.”

Trallik
couldn’t help but smile at her animated movements and energetic mannerisms.  It
was all very intoxicating to the young warrior, the effect of it only enhanced
by a subconscious understanding that the rules of his world had changed.  And
he had yet to figure out what exactly that meant when it came to females.

Realizing
the conversation had paused awkwardly, Trallik came back to reality.  It was
then that he noticed how hungry and thirsty he was. 
First things first,
though,
he thought.

“So
what are you doing here?” he asked, then realizing he’d ignored her cousin, he
added “I mean both of you.”

Trikki
giggled, seeing clearly how smitten the young warrior was.

“We’re
Mushrat’s property, just like you,” she said.

That
news stopped Trallik cold.

“Property?”
he squeaked.

“Yes,
silly.  He bought you from Skunk.  Something about you making Shagra mad,” she
explained, her voice growing more serious as she saw that Trallik’s mood had
changed.

Trallik’s
face clouded as he turned away from the pair.  He was having a hard time coping
with the confirmation that, indeed, he was a slave.  He’d just been a
mercenary, or at least was going to be.  Thinking back over the last few things
he could remember, a sickening feeling came over him. 

While
strapped to the back of the wolf a few days ago, he’d heard his fellow warriors
talking about fighting orcs.  Looking down at himself for the first time since
coming to, he noticed that all of his gear was missing, even his crossed
shoulder belts that had clearly identified him as a Kale Gen warrior.  Casting
his eyes about the small, cut stone room in which he found himself, Trallik saw
no sign of his gear.

“Oh,
what bad luck!” Shaking his head, he looked back at Trikki who didn’t
understand.  “I was wearing my crossed shoulder belts when the big orc at the
bridge saw me.”

“You’re
Kale Gen, not Krall?” she asked, somewhat surprised.  “Then why were you at the
bridge?  Were you with one of their wolf patrols?”

“No,
I’m not Kale… not anymore at least,” Trallik confessed.

“You’re
not welcome in the Kale Gen anymore?” she asked tenderly, seeing it was a
difficult subject for the young warrior.

Trallik
winced as Trikki hit so close to the mark.

“I…”
Trallik began, then paused.  “I am an outcast, though I would give anything to
not be.  Now that I have lost my friends, I truly miss them.  I valued their
friendship too little… and power too much.”  Then, with a note of finality, he
bowed his head as tears again began to roll down his cheeks.  “I am guilty of
being a conspirator against the lord of my gen.  For this, I am cast off.”

Trikki
couldn’t help herself.  The Fates had truly thrown a lot her way in this young warrior. 
“Don’t be sad, Trallik,” she said, gently lifting his eyes up to look into
hers.  “We’ll be your friends now.”  Behind her, Klimer casually lifted an
eyebrow in passive agreement.

“It
doesn’t matter to you that I was exiled?” Trallik said, hope fluttering in his
chest only slightly louder than the raging hormones.

Trikki
and Klimer both laughed at the same time, Trallik’s question clearly reminding
them of some inside joke between the both of them.

“Trallik,”
she said earnestly, “My mother was an outcast from the Kale Gen.  I never knew
my father.  Klimer here is a descendant of outcasts, the most recent one being
the grandfather that Klimer and I share, who was outcast from the Nipjik Gen.”

Surprised
yet again, this time pleasantly, Trallik smiled with the realization of what
that meant.  What he had thought would be a permanent stigma for the rest of
his existence didn’t matter to this beautiful female… or to her younger cousin,
not that he mattered.

“Well,
I guess we’re all outcasts together,” he said, basking in the warmth of her
smile.

“Oh,
how unlucky of you that Shagra found you wearing Kale Gen belts,” she changed
the subject.  “Shagra hates the Kale Gen.  Some of their warriors gave him that
wound in his side.  In fact, Mushrat says that’s why Shagra brought his
father’s tribe from the Great Forest to attack the Kale Gen’s home caverns
instead of going after the Krall Gen.”

Trallik
was genuinely surprised yet again.  Fear began to form in his heart.  “What’s
this about an orc tribe coming against the Kale Gen?” he asked, his lips
suddenly dry again, despite Trikki’s ministrations.

“Shagra
is a champion from the Bloodhand Orc Tribe.”

Trallik’s
blood ran cold at the mention of the name of the orc tribe that had raided the
Kale Gen’s home caverns barely six years ago now.

“His
father, Drakebane the Mighty they call him, Chieftain of the Bloodhand Orc
Tribe, has come with what must be a thousand warriors and at least a company of
ogre mercenaries, intent on enslaving the Kale Gen.” 

Trikki
pointed at Klimer.  “Klimer says he’s seen their campfires in the northern
valley below.  They arrived today and have called in all their warriors from
their outposts, like this one.  I’d imagine they’ll march through the mountains
tomorrow and be at the Kale Gen’s caverns by nightfall.”

For
the first time, Klimer spoke up, his northern-gen accented voice cracking from
the strains of maturation.  “Yep, they no want to fight new Kale fort.  Fort no
have good stuff.  They go take Kale Gen caves from new lord of Kale Gen.” 
Though the language was choppy, it was said with earnestness and a sincerity
that showed intelligence in the whelp greater than his mangled attempts to
speak The Sorcerer’s Tongue showed.

Seeing
Trallik’s surprise at the contrast between how well Trikki spoke and how poorly
Klimer spoke, Trikki jumped in.  “Apparently the Kale Gen threw out their old
lord, and a few hundred others as well.  They’ve built a fort in the northern
edge of your old valley, up against the mountains.  It seems you weren’t the
only one that was trying to get rid of your gen’s lord.”

That
revelation gave Trallik much to think about. 

“Maybe
yoo no outcast now?” Klimer ventured.

Trallik
slowly nodded.  “Yes, I believe I’m no longer an outcast from the gen.”  His
face began to brighten as he thought about the possibilities.  “In fact, I
would imagine that they’d probably welcome me home as one of their own!  I did
kill the old chamberlain,” he said, then felt embarrassed at the exaggerated
claim, “well almost.  I would have anyway if I hadn’t been ambushed by that
horror.”  He corrected himself, the memory of the paralyzed helplessness of the
ant queen’s silken embrace causing him a sudden shudder.