Lashka

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Six weeks later
As he flexed the three fingers of his ruined left hand, Orm Tullim supposed he ought to be grateful.  In the end, she had left him an eye, and his tongue. 

But in his dreams he could still feel the joints of his thumb and little finger crackling as she bit them off, could still hear the wet squelching sound amid the blinding pain. He wore a leather patch so that others didn't have to see the raw wound that had not yet healed, though even a patch would never fully obscure the marks her teeth had left on his brow.

And she had let him keep his chain, had let him preserve his oath and his dignity, an unbroken circle of elvish silver fourteen inches long from the Hidden Mountain.

***
Six weeks earlier

"I have a plan for you, Orm Tullim," the Horde Mother had said as she sucked the marrow from his finger bones, tossing the bits of bone into a copper bowl. "You will be my herald to the other cities that we shall build together. Your people shall be be my people."

"You are a monster," Tullim said, "Why would any man bow to you willingly?"

Lashka gestured to the bones. "If I had truly wanted you dead, I would have eaten your still-beating heart  from your chest. I have taken a smaller blood-price because you have a use to me."

"And if I refuse?"

Lashka's eyes narrowed. "Do not mistake me. We orcs are not like the other races. You will serve me. Otherwise..."

Lashka stared into the flames of the central fire. "Otherwise, I will put your cities to the torch. My men will stretch your children out onto banquet tables and feast on their entrails; they are so much more tender when they are young. Your men will fight and die in the mines or in in the wolf-pits, your women will birth abominations of the flesh that will make my armies strong."

"Mercy is a kindness to be strangled at birth." She smiled. "And you, Orm Tullim....You, I will make sure, are alive long enough to see it all come to pass and know it was of your doing." 

He had looked into her eyes and seen it was true. 

"Very well." 

He choked on the words.

"What shall I do for you, my queen?"

***

When he had been a lad of twenty, the chain had been much longer, almost nine feet from end to end. Spider-fine, he had had to wrap it almost a dozen times around his neck so that he could wear it, and even then the weight was palpable. 

In the three-score and four years since, he had missed that weight sometimes.

Each year, on his name-day, it had been reforged so that it was an inch shorter. An inch, for a year. A reminder that their days trapped in an unbroken circle of flesh were numbered, and that time itself was closing in. A circle was perfection; a forged chain had no beginning or end. Silver was also the aspect of their Lady of the Moon.

He looked down at her light shining through his tent-flap. She was full and round tonight, though the chill in the air foretold that blood-moons were not far off. 

He gripped the chain tightly with his ruined hand, ignoring the pain. "Curse you, my Lady," he murmured. 

Edited by Lashka - 07 Nov 2011 at 17:08

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Lashka Members Profile Send Private Message Find Members Posts Add to Buddy List Greenhorn Joined: 29 Sep 2011 Status: Offline Points: 89	Posted: 07 Nov 2011 at 16:53
	Six weeks later As he flexed the three fingers of his ruined left hand, Orm Tullim supposed he ought to be grateful. In the end, she had left him an eye, and his tongue. But in his dreams he could still feel the joints of his thumb and little finger crackling as she bit them off, could still hear the wet squelching sound amid the blinding pain. He wore a leather patch so that others didn't have to see the raw wound that had not yet healed, though even a patch would never fully obscure the marks her teeth had left on his brow. And she had let him keep his chain, had let him preserve his oath and his dignity, an unbroken circle of elvish silver fourteen inches long from the Hidden Mountain. *** Six weeks earlier "I have a plan for you, Orm Tullim," the Horde Mother had said as she sucked the marrow from his finger bones, tossing the bits of bone into a copper bowl. "You will be my herald to the other cities that we shall build together. Your people shall be be my people." "You are a monster," Tullim said, "Why would any man bow to you willingly?" Lashka gestured to the bones. "If I had truly wanted you dead, I would have eaten your still-beating heart from your chest. I have taken a smaller blood-price because you have a use to me." "And if I refuse?" Lashka's eyes narrowed. "Do not mistake me. We orcs are not like the other races. You will serve me. Otherwise..." Lashka stared into the flames of the central fire. "Otherwise, I will put your cities to the torch. My men will stretch your children out onto banquet tables and feast on their entrails; they are so much more tender when they are young. Your men will fight and die in the mines or in in the wolf-pits, your women will birth abominations of the flesh that will make my armies strong." "Mercy is a kindness to be strangled at birth." She smiled. "And you, Orm Tullim....You, I will make sure, are alive long enough to see it all come to pass and know it was of your doing." He had looked into her eyes and seen it was true. "Very well." He choked on the words. "What shall I do for you, my queen?" *** When he had been a lad of twenty, the chain had been much longer, almost nine feet from end to end. Spider-fine, he had had to wrap it almost a dozen times around his neck so that he could wear it, and even then the weight was palpable. In the three-score and four years since, he had missed that weight sometimes. Each year, on his name-day, it had been reforged so that it was an inch shorter. An inch, for a year. A reminder that their days trapped in an unbroken circle of flesh were numbered, and that time itself was closing in. A circle was perfection; a forged chain had no beginning or end. Silver was also the aspect of their Lady of the Moon. He looked down at her light shining through his tent-flap. She was full and round tonight, though the chill in the air foretold that blood-moons were not far off. He gripped the chain tightly with his ruined hand, ignoring the pain. "Curse you, my Lady," he murmured. Edited by Lashka - 07 Nov 2011 at 17:08

Celebcalen Members Profile Send Private Message Find Members Posts Add to Buddy List Forum Warrior Joined: 18 May 2011 Status: Offline Points: 288	Posted: 06 Nov 2011 at 10:07
	This is very good. Reminds me of Stan Nicholls "Orc's and then some. It's good !

Lashka Members Profile Send Private Message Find Members Posts Add to Buddy List Greenhorn Joined: 29 Sep 2011 Status: Offline Points: 89	Posted: 06 Nov 2011 at 09:06
	When they finally brought the old man to her, the fires at the center of the great hall had burned to embers. Lashka almost laughed. Tullim's once crimson robes were in tatters, the ivory surplice spotted with filth and blood. It looked as if Rhaga had let the wolves trample his vestments. Her guards threw him roughly onto the dirt floor of the great hall. "Leave," she commanded her guards, "And let no one disturb us." Once they were alone, she switched into the human tongue most races called Common. "Do you know who I am, Orm Tullim?" He nodded, spitting out the jagged remnants of teeth as he raised himself slowly to his feet. "Horde Mother." He straightened his vestments, but whatever dignity the old man was used to wrapping around himself was gone. "That's right." she said softly, "Lashka. of the Harim." It was obvious to her by the way he stared glassily at her that he did not recognize her. How many other children like me had there been, she wondered. Tullim gave a gravelly moan. "Savages. You took our land." "I took your grain," Lashka said, "But the land was not yours." "Our land," Tullim insisted, "our grain." He said. "You had no right." Lashka gave a gravelly laugh. "No right?" Lashka smashed the pommel of her sword into his mouth, knocking his remaining teeth askew. She snatched the front of the old cleric's robes and brought him mere inches away from her face. "What do you know of rights? You took that land from the people that had lived there for nine generations." "Orcs." he said softly. "No claim." "The Ruatha." she said, "my true-horde." When the Silver Chain had first come upon the village of Ashk Ruatha, their warriors had been off raiding. The priests had ordered their templars to slaughter the whelps first; "little monsters" they had called them. When the mothers tried to fight back, they killed them too. Four hundred orcs who had never wielded a sword had died within the first three hours; their army was ambushed on the road coming back. The templars' commander, a young warrior-priest named Orm Tullim decided to let one girl survive, so his men would have something to hunt for sport in the woods nearby. "Ruatha." Orm Tullim said, his face deathly pale. "The wildling." Lashka smiled. "For many years, yes. Until the Harim took me in. The Silver Lady has been kind, Tullim. She has brought you to me." Orm Tullim shrank back, tripping over his robes to land on the floor.. "Our Lady of the Moon will protect me." "I think not." Lashka rose from her throne and squatted down next to him, "I think I will start with you eyes...." It was not long after that the screaming began.

Lashka Members Profile Send Private Message Find Members Posts Add to Buddy List Greenhorn Joined: 29 Sep 2011 Status: Offline Points: 89	Posted: 06 Nov 2011 at 08:23
	"Urgho has returned, and demands to see you." Lashka did not turn around. "The Split-skull can wait, Rhugash. What of the humans?" Of her most trusted captains, Rhugash was the oldest, the one who should have ruled instead of her. This was not her tribe, she reminded herself, though they marched proudly under her banner. Gone were the days of the Great Mother, who had once rallied the ten thousand hordes to fight for her; now her kin were scattered like the wind. Now they treated with elves and dwarves and humans. Teaching them wolf-tongues and the guttural tones of the Tribes that they had dismissed for millennia as savage grunts and growls, never suspecting the true-speech that lay within. "Urgho says that he has cleared the eastern banks of the river. The priests seem to have fled north, towards the cities of Perrigor." Lashka nodded. Her allies, the humans and elves and dwarves that called themselves Nightbringers would deal with the remnants of the Order of the Silver Chain. They had never been a true order; a crusade of children and motley fools in cassocks, more like. "Your son did well today. Make sure he sees his command doubled." Rhugash growled in pleasure. Many of the elders had complained when she had set the youth above their own sons, especially when he had lost an eye in his first skirmish. They would rather see Rhaga take his father's place. But Rhaga had done what none of the old orcs could do - he had reformed the fighting pits, and brought discipline back to her men. He had culled the whelpings from the ranks, and left her with hardened fighters. And he had proven instrumental in convincing the elders of the wisdom of settling here to create a true city. Where once they had numbered hundreds, they now numbered thousands. And this new generation was loyal to her in a way that the elders were not. It was often whispered that though she was not of the tribe, the children were hers to command. Rhaga's support made that possible. It also made him the most dangerous of her captains. The lives of Orc chieftains were notoriously short; the lives of Orc queens tended to be shorter, given that the only way to advance to the head of a horde was by assassination or challenge by combat. And unlike humans, Orcs had no compulsion against using their greater strength against a female. She had already eaten the heart of three would-be challengers. She had no desire to add Rhaga to that list. "There was one other thing," Rhugash said, "Hargg claims that one of the captives is demanding to speak with you. A human named Tullim." Lashka's jaw tightened; it grated her to hear such a soft human word escape her lieutenant. "Orm Tullim; I know the man." "Know him well..." she said, more softly. "Have him sent up. I will deal with him." Rhugash sunk to his knee, his neck offered in submission. "As you command, Lashka." "Yes," she murmured "as I command." The question was, for how long.

Lashka Members Profile Send Private Message Find Members Posts Add to Buddy List Greenhorn Joined: 29 Sep 2011 Status: Offline Points: 89	Posted: 06 Nov 2011 at 07:37
	Repost starting from my Alliance Forum... Night was falling. The crows wheeled away to the east, where the bodies lay blistering in the heat and the rank smell of death rolled in from the hills. Lashka paid it no mind; she preferred rotting corpses to living men in armor. She scanned the horizon, looking for further signs of trouble. The slaughtered men hadn't been true warriors; mostly the sons of farmers and traders and the gaggle of priests that had whipped them up into a frenzy. If it wasn't so pathetic, she might have laughed; there was no honor in killing boys not old enough to hone their stubble yet. For a moment she wondered what the priests had promised them. Salvation? Treasure? Or perhaps the promise of killing something that was different than them, something they had learned to fear and mistrust. Humans could rarely look past the green skin and jagged teeth. They were an arrogant, ethno-centric species willing to dismiss ten thousand years of her people's history and culture, and write off her kind as mindless killing machines. That created fear; it created mistrust. And Lashka used that to her advantage. Among her people, there was a saying: The wolf does not bare its teeth in kindness. Humans had lost that universal defense. They bare their teeth to show their submission. As a result they were weak, corrupt, and venial. They infested the land wherever they roamed. They usurped their place among the older races. Unlike the dwarves, they had never learned to respect the solace of the deep places. They worshipped the sun, but many had forgotten that they owed the Silver Lady her due; unlike Elves they did not give chase in the Starry Hunt. These were the old ways, the ways written in stone and ancient blood and the breath of generations. Some humans recognized their weakness; even now they were returning to the ancient traditions, carving promises on the midnight-stones. They had renewed the Starry Hunt; they were laying aside their arms and embracing their fellow Children of the Night. Lashka rose to her feet. She looked out across the field of battle. They were few, her brethren. But they were growing, they were coming. Night was coming.