And then the whirligig zipped away!

  Directly towards their attackers and then-

  BAM!

  And then shrieks.

  Elated with his luck, and piecing it together immediately, he grabbed Klamant by the shoulders and roared, “IT’S ZHAKKY, MAH BOI! ZHAK!” We’re saved! We’re saved! Good boi! Good boi! Chance!

  “WA-AGH!”

  Lifting Klamant up with his trailing arm, firing blindly forward with his leading arm, Zahul surged forward, simply letting the Berserker Rage guide him, but he didn’t really need to.

  A round sliced through Lurulyn’s spilled intestines, and putrid, bilious green chyme flicked out, but otherwise every single one of Zahul’s shots missed and simply hit the scenery. Bisected after taking the direct blast, Lurulyn was already dead. Nunger had already been bleeding out, furiously trying to use enraged troll regeneration to seal his exit wounds before he bled out, but the rounds had hit his humerus before unfortunately tumbling into his torso. Although thick orcan muscle slowed its spiral so that it stopped just by the third rib, only popping a lung, so that Nunger could have survived given enough time to rest and heal, the blast from Zhak’s whirlgig then snapped his neck, and that was simply too much, and so that was that for Nunger. Skinny, leafy Krami, being the snaga of the group, simply had no calories to regenerate with, and simply croaked after being knocked back.

  Which left Frugruel, groaning in agony.

  Frugruel, as point orcan with the shottie, was positioned well enough forward from the blast, and with enough cover, to survive. But unfortunately, the blast knocked him towards his cover, a scanty clump of maple saplings, which caught his knees and folded them the wrong way. Crack! And just like that, both of Frugruel’s knees were broken.

  The knee was simply too delicate and complex of an orcan biologic structure to rapidly heal back within the narrow margins of time in combat. And so Frugruel knew he had no other option. His survival instinct kicked in, but this time it did not provoke the rage, but instead suppressed it.

  He threw his gun far away, so that it’d be impossible for him to reach without crawling for it.

  And then he threw his arms up behind him towards him, for his face was still buried in the earth.

  “Surrender! I surrender!”

  The coppery scent of orcan blood kicked in a carefully crafted wave of serotonin throughout Zahul’s body, immediately shutting off the berserker rage.

  His dilated pupils shrunk now, widened corneas unflattening, rods folding in, taking in no longer shadow and contour only anymore, but now with the unfurling of cones, color too. He saw red. The shade flared cascading ancient channels of potential, so deeply entrenched in the architecture. Blood. Blood! Someone was hurt. Someone was hurt!

  Klamant shuffled forward, threw his palms on thigh, and leaned forward to sneer at the-

  “Snaga!”, he hissed.

  Sudden shifts out of the rage were disorienting, and Zahul now found himself numb, alienated from his own body. He didn’t feel like he inhabited it, though he certainly still had full control. Instead, he felt like he – or, not he, not really, more of a shade of himself – hovered now, observing what he would do next.

  The broken rampart disappeared and suddenly Zahul found himself standing on ashen, smoking, cratered shores.

  Klamant turned from cursing out the orcan they’d just vanquished, to look at the stony-faced War Master as he strode robotically forward.

  “Aye, War Mastah, sha saved me from certain dar, so let me carry this wretched San Martin orc-”, already bent over, Klamant began grabbing handfuls of grass to twist together to some sort of wrist binding, when-

  Frugruel squeaked a croak of protest as he suddenly felt a great pressure against the back of his neck, but the airflow closed off as the pressure grew and grew and blocked his breath.

  Then-

  Click.

  His fourth cervical vertebrae compressed and popped, the massive damage of bursting cerebrospinal fluid destroying any possibility of salvage. Frugruel died of a broken neck. Zahul had pressed his boot, slowly, but surely, directly upon it.

  Klamant froze very still and said absolutely nothing. The last flickers of his own coursing rage kept him from trembling, but within his third eye he was seized by the terrible prospect that his comrade had lost his mind.

  Zahul coldly glared back at Klamant and simply said,

  “No need.”

  And strode back towards the main strip, rifle still clutched in hand.

  Why did he just do that?

  “Wha- Zahul!”, Klamant barked now, indignantly, as he stammered and stumbled to catch up with Zahul. Zahul instead felt his skin crawl the closer Klamant approached, driving him to stride faster. “Why’d sha just do that?”

  The growing sorrow inside him, that would not leave, not until he found his daughter-

  “Zahul!”, any moniker of respect dropped completely, or orcish for that matter, “You face me now, orc!”

  It had twisted into hate.

  Zahul stopped walking forwards, his neck craning forward ever so slightly, so that he could glare furiously at the ground.

  And his hate needed a vessel.

  “He’d surrendered! He was no threat to us. You’ve not the right to just- just- execute tha poor orcan like that!”

  Orcan O Elvan, didn’t matter.

  Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

  Whirling suddenly around, Zahul seized Klamant by the cuff and jerked him forward, so that their tusks were interlocked. Heaving breath grinded bone against bone. Madness gripped Zahul’s gaze, and Klamant now felt himself not only still in body, but also in thought.

  How was it any different?

  He wanted to scream at this imbecile’s face to make Klamant understand that he didn’t have time to waste with a prisoner of war, he had to find his daughter! He had to find his daughter! But what would that accomplish? Klamant’s pity? The orc was useless to him, all that he needed was his nazge, the leverage. And so, Zahul, understanding the more effective way to convey power in orcan to orcan communication, simply returned to his ever-characteristic growl, but softer.

  He pulled Klamant’s ear close, his own tusk tearing off a lobe ring, and said,

  “Sha get Raigo ta banish sha war master, aye?”, he shoved Klamant away so that now Klamant could see deep into his glare.

  Klamant gulped. It’d be more likely that the whole village would agree to banish him instead. Zahul’s deeds could not be denied, and so those who had earned power were also given the blind eye when it came to breaking the rules- corruption. But this was just how orcans were.

  The glare intensified.

  “Sha want this village war to end?”

  And then softened.

  “Sha think they’d give us mercy? If we’d attacked them?”

  Turned away.

  “Think the orc would serve us if we nursed him back to health?”

  And just kept walking back to the library to fetch Zhak.

  “Or simply steal whatever he could get his grubby orc hands on after healing his knees, before running down the coast.”

  There was no response.

  “War is simple,”

  Klamant bowed his head and trudged behind.

  “You kill more of them-”

  How was it any different?

  “-or they kill more of you.”

  Just another enemy.

  Klamant was shook. He was incensed, too. His ego could not take the lashing, especially from an orc so much poorer than he. It was unwise to reveal one’s number, but suffice to say, Klamant’s scheming ways had served him well. How else could he position himself to be Zahul’s creditor? And yet it was also impossible to deny that Zahul had also saved his sorry ass. The guilt wrenched at Klamant, for although he strove to maintain a strict modus operandi. Don’t ever let any orc fuck with you without returning a consequence.

  He didn’t really want to destroy Zahul.

  But he certainly wouldn’t mind owning him.

  In any leveraged trade, there is a counterparty. Klamant was not above reweaving arcane runes to disable automatic liquidation, so that should the price of bit plunge so far below the staked price of the perpetual future, so much so that it wiped out the Thraxes household savings the gezzno fool had just deposited in his smart contract, well, then it would not be he who had to repay one hundred times the differential. It would instead be the orc who owed him.

  And with an orcan at Klamant’s level, Trade Master of Rothera, a market mover and shaker, Klamant knew something that Zahul didn’t know.

  He knew there was going to be a coordinated dump of bit and ether for gold and silver from multiple groups of rogue traders, certainly at some shadowy entity’s behest but what that would be was beyond Klamant’s ken. Traders like he in the know simply accepted that if this bloc of the market chose to dump together, then the selloff would drag him down too, and so there wasn’t much choice but to join them and limit the damage. Ideally, he could forget this stressful nonsense, and just continue stacking, but the one thing Klamant couldn’t abide was getting fucked. No. He did the fucking.

  There was going to be a crash coming either way. It was beyond Klamant’s control.

  Don’t come to Klamant for financial advice.

  Didn’t the orc know to do his own research? Klamant cackled silently to himself, because no amount of research would reveal these prized secrets-

  The Alpha.

  He paced ahead and smiled and shrugged at Zahul, “Honestly, Ser, don’t even know what sha was just talkin’ bout. Wha’ jus’ happened? Zhakkathan’s whirligig slew them all! Ai-sha, think the blast must have knocked my head-”, he tapped the side of his head, and made an exaggerated wink as if to say- yes, sha secret’s safe with me. Zahul’s visage softened and he gave an appreciative nod.

  Once out of eyeshot, Klamant smirked.

  Who cared if the orc had a sharp tongue? Who cared if the orc broke the Code? Klamant eagerly swallowed scoldings. Even if he should have been the one scolding this thug, this murderer. Whatever was needed to make an investment profitable. Klamant had certainly consorted with worse to make his riches.

  The War Master of Rothera was certainly an opportune person to own.

  Thanks boi, for murdering three people, and maiming the fourth.

  Optional

  The orcan biological alchemy couldn’t completely defend against the simple wear and tear of living, even of the mind, or what the elvans would call ‘fraying’. And so, Zahul suddenly experienced a post-traumatic stress disorder flashback.

  But all Zahul could hear was ‘You Animal’.

  No curbstomp, Zahul had delivered what gentle mercy he could. He’d made sure to apply just enough pressure to snap Frugruel’s neck to quicken his death with minimal suffering.

  And shirk his duty as War Master? Shirk his duty to a fellow orcan, and member of the Horde?

  And their ancestors before them. The nature of an orcan had never changed.

  ‘Running down the coast’, a phrase to describe the banished, the nomads, orcans who simply roamed from one village to the next, travelling either eastwards or westwards. But in the end, running down the coast just meant going nowhere. For if one travelled down the coast long enough and far enough in Orca, one simply ended up back where one began.

  With at least several dozen to his name, Klamant was, by Reathean standards, affluent. But rich? That was hard to say. Arguably the only truly ‘rich’ individual in all the three realms, at least when it comes strictly to net worth, was the Empress herself. Ultrarich. The definition of rich changed from revolution to revolution, decade to decade. Good example- the consort of the First Queens of Clan Wilson, Clan Zilis, and Clan Boucher. And what did it mean, in the end? Congrats, ser, for winning the dick measuring contest. More was never enough.

  Unfortunately, as he would later learn, all a debtor had to do to get the better of their creditor was to simply not pay anything back.

  He could claim it was just a bug. ‘The block got delayed.’ He could muttshit Zahul all rote, certainly the lunkhead olog lacked the technical knowledge to tell that Klamant had pulled a fast one on him. What Klamant didn’t know was that Zahul had quite the brilliant youngest son.

  Had Klamant allowed automatic liquidation, the contract would simply close, with all the Thraxes bit gone from the wallet, transferred to Klamant’s possession, slightly more worthless, and no more. But Klamant’s main profits came from loan sharking, and so, the supposed ‘bug’, well, it was really the feature.

  It was Senjya. Senjya sent her legions and assassins to rogue traders, bearing a simple request- Sell your ethereal coins to the Imperium. Or else. A deal that cannot be refused. And when it came to deals that cannot be refused, obviously the sale would be below the market price, even if Clan Amallark had all the plat and gold in their coffers to pay well above it. But obtaining the ethereal coin was besides the point when everything that the Imperium owned technically belonged to the God Empress. The point was to push the price down. Market manipulation.

  Such as, for example, two rogue traders named Drizzit and Vyerna Du Pont, the two of whom he knew quite well. Klamant consorted with worse than those two Du Ponts… much, much worse.