More Blood Tomorrow

Garg stood on the balcony of his great fortress, formerly the great fortress of a human king, and surveyed his kingdom below. His hordes milled about, taking care of tasks.

There were so many fucking tasks.

Things to be built. Things to be maintained. Farming and transportation and logistics. Running a kingdom was a huge pain in the ass.

Running a horde had been easier. He’d bark an order at someone, and they’d either get it done or he’d chop something off. After enough failures and enough lost parts, he’d just find someone else to yell at. Eventually, things got done.

Kingdoms were more complex. Taking the things the humans had built was easy. Keeping them from falling over was hard. It’d taken a decade for his people to figure it out. A lot of things had fallen over or caught fire. Some exploded. Like grain. Who would’ve thought grain could explode? But they’d mastered it well enough.

Garg had always thought of orcs as different from humans, but it turned out given the opportunity, orcs were capable of falling into all the trappings of the weak human version of civilization. The hypocrisy would’ve amused him if he’d been the type to enjoy that sort of thing.

His wife rose from her bed. She put her arms around him and used her tusk to playfully poke behind his ear.

“Something bothering you, my king?” asked Vav.

“Nothing,” he said.

“Come to bed.”

He nuzzled her hand. “I can’t. I’ve got a meeting with the dwarves.”

“Can it wait?”

Garg laughed bitterly. She had been with him from the beginning, when he’d been nothing more than an orc with an axe and a dozen warriors. She’d seen it all, but she still didn’t get it.

“We need this trade deal,” he said.

“Can’t you just drive them from their lands and take their stuff?” she asked.

“Ever wage a war under a mountain? All the tunnels and the ambushes and traps. Can’t just swarm them all. Just end up clogging all the entrances with our dead.”

“Sounds glorious,” she purred.

He looked into her cold, deep eyes, into her ruthless, merciless soul. She didn’t understand, and he hoped she never would.

“Indeed,” he said. “But when you rule a kingdom, sometimes, you must use . . . ” He almost choked on the sour word. ” . . . diplomacy.”

The emissary of the dwarves was decked out in her finery, which for her meant shapeless brown clothes adorned with jewels. As well as her dark hair and her beard. So many jewels. She jingled when she walked.

Garg wore his cloak. The same black cloak he’d worn when beheading the old king and claiming his kingdom. It still had some blood stains on it. He’d fallen into human trappings, but he still hadn’t completely forgotten where he’d come from.

The emissary bowed. “Lord Garg, it is with great pleasure that I bring you gifts.”

She nodded to her retainers who struggled with a large chest. They set it before him, throwing it open with all its gold coins and precious gems.

“Yes, lovely,” said Garg with a sneer. When he’d ruled the shattered plains, his people had no use for such trifles. Now, they needed them because the neighboring kingdoms valued them. “Throw it in the treasure room,” he instructed an ogre guard, who hefted the chest on her shoulder and walked away.

Garg gestured to a table set with stones, pebbles, and granite. “Would you care for a snack?”

The emissary frowned. “We don’t eat rocks.”

“You don’t?” asked Garg.

“No. That is a hurtful stereotype.”

Garg grumbled.

“My apologies.”

The other orcs, ogres, and trolls in the room gasped.

Furious gods, what had he become?

He gestured to a guard. “Find out whoever made this mistake and have them chopped. Something important. Something they’ll miss.”

The guard grunted and marched from the room.

“I’m not hungry anyway,” said the emissary. “While your kingdom is charming . . . in its way . . . I think it best to conduct our business and leave.”

Garg was certain he was being insulted. He put his hand on his axe but just as quickly removed it. This was not the way of his world. Not anymore.

The negotiations were brief. Garg had no taste for them, necessary as they were, and he was certain the deal was not to his advantage, given how readily the emissary agreed to it. But the orcs would get their steel, the finest weapons and armor from the dwarf forges. And the dwarves would get their food, grown by orc farmers and ranchers. Such was the way of his people now.

The emissary departed, spitting out another thinly veiled insult that he chose to ignore even though bile rose in his throat. He watched her entourage disappear over the horizon from his throne room window. Perhaps a war with the dwarves would be worth it. After his people got their weapons. He was hungry for blood, but not imprudent.

“Blood today,” he said to himself. “Or more blood tomorrow.”

A goblin messenger came running into the room.

“Rebellion! Anarchy!” he screeched. “Uprising! Insurrection!”

Garg perked up. “I’m listening.”

Garg took in the stench of the village’s charred remains. It reminded him of his youth.

Orcs bore no respect for the dead, tossing bodies into pyres, as he strolled among the corpses. He rolled aside a dead orc to see the human beneath, covered in green blood.

“How many were there?” he asked.

“Perhaps a hundred,” said a local lieutenant. “They came out of the darkness and attacked without warning. Dozens were dead before we even knew.”

“Did they now?” Garg smiled. “Good for them.”

He studied the dead ambusher, outfitted in primitive animal skins with a spear made of bone still clutched in her hand. Fine craftsmanship, but the humans had always been clever.

He turned to the lieutenant, only to feel something sharp pierce his back. He didn’t scream. Pain of this type was an old friend, one he had long missed though it was at this moment even more than he realized.

The dead human, not dead at all, twisted his bone spear into Garg. Garg turned, and the weapon was wrested from his attacker’s hands. The orc king raised his axe, and this human, barely more than a girl, scowled her hateful defiance as Garg brought it down, missing her face by scant inches.

“What are you waiting for?” said the human. “If you don’t kill me, then I swear one day, I shall kill you.”

The guards moved to finish the assassin, but Garg waved them off. He reached back and yanked out the spear. His bright green blood oozed down the shaft. He dropped the weapon beside the human and gestured for her to rise.

The girl grabbed her spear and fell into an attack stance, but Garg held up a hand.

“You won’t kill me. Not today. Though you’re welcome to try. I won’t deny you your glory, child. You’ve earned it.” He stepped forward, until he was nose to nose with her. “But you must decide. Blood today/ Or more blood tomorrow.”

She said, “You don’t think I can kill you.”

“You? The girl you are now?” Garg roared with laughter. “But maybe the woman you could be. The right woman with the right army.” He slapped her on the chest. She stumbled back, but wounded and tired as she was, she refused to fall. 

“You or someone like you,” he said.

He turned his back on her. “Now go. Go back to your people before I change my mind.”

The girl took a step toward Garg’s exposed back.

“More blood tomorrow,” said the king, clutching his axe tighter.

She turned and ran off into the forest.

“Should we follow her?” asked a guard.

“No. Let her be. She’s no threat.”

Garg chuckled.

“But I’ve been wrong before.”