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Lashka 
Greenhorn
Joined: 29 Sep 2011
Status: Offline
Points: 89
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 Topic: Lashka
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.
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Lashka
Greenhorn
Joined: 29 Sep 2011
Status: Offline
Points: 89
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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.
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Lashka
Greenhorn
Joined: 29 Sep 2011
Status: Offline
Points: 89
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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.
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Celebcalen
Forum Warrior
Joined: 18 May 2011
Status: Offline
Points: 288
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Posted: 06 Nov 2011 at 10:07 |
This is very good. Reminds me of Stan Nicholls "Orc's and then some. It's good ! 
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Lashka
Greenhorn
Joined: 29 Sep 2011
Status: Offline
Points: 89
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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
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Lashka
Greenhorn
Joined: 29 Sep 2011
Status: Offline
Points: 89
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Posted: 08 Nov 2011 at 03:44 |
"Men who curse their gods do not live long."
Orm Tullim started at the gravelly voice, which spoke a heavily-accented but passable version of Common. An Orc of small but powerful stature strode into the moonlight. For a moment, Tullim was amused to see that the Orc, like him, sported a piece of leather where his eye had been.
"Do the Orcs even have gods?"
The Orc grunted in amusement. "We worship the Night-Mother, as you do. We respect Great-Wolf, and Eater-of-Bones, and our dead are always with us. We remember the wisdom of the Great Mother, and we consult often the bones of our forefathers."
"Consult the bones?" Tullim said.
The Orc motioned. "Come. I show you."
*** The Orc led him through the muddy streets of the Orc city - a warren of low square buildins with white domed roofs that seemed pale and gray in the moonlight.
The Orc followed his gaze to the rooftops. "The bones of our enemies, ground to dust and mixed with clay. It keeps the day-fire off our skin, and keeps the inside warm at night."
Tullim swallowed. "I see."
The Orc smiled. "What we do not eat, we use. Come - Come, Orm Tullim."
They made their way through the narrow streets. The sounds of a bustling city washed over them -kobolds, and orcs and near-orcs and the massive true-born who painted white fists on their shields.
As they walked, it occurred to Tullim that he didn't know the Orc's name. "I am Rhaga, son of Rhugash," the orc said, as if it should mean something. When Orm made no sound of recognition, he shook his head in disgust. "I lead our people against your clan tomorrow."
Circlet. For the first time in weeks, Tullim thought about the thriving town they had built atop the orc ruins.
There were no more than three hundred souls living there; this city had easily ten times that number. How many were soldiers, he wondered?
What we do not eat, we use...Rhaga had said. The old man suppressed a shudder that had nothing to do with the cold. He walked in silence two steps behind Rhaga, aware that there was simply no place for him to escape to.
They stopped in front of a pair of stone circles set directly into the earth, one within the other. Tullim seemed to recall seeing a similar set the center of the ruins. He watched as Rhaga withdrew one of the stones seemingly at random.
To his surprise the earth opened up in front of them as a set of iron doors dropped open at their feet. Rhaga leaned down and withdrew an iron torch, which he lit from a nearby hearth-fire. The entrance of the opening was as black as deepest night.
"Come. We will speak with the ancestors."
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Lashka
Greenhorn
Joined: 29 Sep 2011
Status: Offline
Points: 89
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Posted: 09 Nov 2011 at 17:09 |
Rhaga charged ahead into the darkness, which swallowed all but the brightest light from his torch in a matter of seconds.
Tullim stepped into the darkness. His fingers traced the oddly shaped walls of the tunnels, a series of short vertical grooves as if someone had chipped away at very dense rock.The air was sweeet and musty, filled with the smells of raw earth and old death. The floor, interesting enough, sounded tiled; he could hear the heels of their boots clicking against the squares.
After a few minutes, Tullim's eyes adjusted. "My gods," he breathed.
It was in a cathedral of the damned. What he had mistaken for grooved walls were actually femurs, set into the walls in tightly packed columns; the 'tiles' were actually vertabrae. He looked at a femur and was amazed to see that it was covered in runes from end to end. Every inch of the bone walls seemed to bear some marking.
He looked upward and was amazed to see a spiderweb of ulnae and radii and fingerbones, a thousand arms with their hands outstretched towards the heavens.
"You've brought me to an abattoir!" Tullim shouted accusingly.
The moving ball of light stopped. "These are the bones of my ancestors. Show some respect."
Tullim supposed he ought to take some comfort that they were orc bones. He hurried ahead until he was abreast with Rhaga. "Why have you brought me here?"
"Our Mother wished for you to understand. She said you needed to know what you were up against. You humans only see what you want to. You think we are merely warriors and savages, but we are much more than that.
It is said that it was the Orc that first tamed wolves, and taught the skill to man. Your dogs are a pale shadow of their ancestors, but we have continued to breed them true.
It was the Orc who first went into the deep places, and showed the Dwarves where to find the richest veins of ore, Orcs who taught the Elves about the heating of metal, and though they improved our lessons, we shall never let them forget to whom that debt is owed."
He paused before a heavy iron door. "Open it," he commanded.
Tullim was startled to see half a dozen kobolds emerge from hidden recesses along the walls. They pulled iron rings attached to the doors, slowly moving them inch by inch. Through the gap between the doors, Tullim could see torches blazing.
"Come; it is not good to keep the dead waiting."
Edited by Lashka - 10 Nov 2011 at 15:58
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Celebcalen
Forum Warrior
Joined: 18 May 2011
Status: Offline
Points: 288
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Posted: 09 Nov 2011 at 18:35 |
 Lashka wrote:
"Come; it is not good to keep the dead waiting." |
 This is scary lol
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Lashka
Greenhorn
Joined: 29 Sep 2011
Status: Offline
Points: 89
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Posted: 10 Nov 2011 at 17:11 |
"Rhaga has taken the human to the Vault as you requested, Mother."
Lashka stared into the embers of the fire. "Thank you, Rhugash." She wondered what Tullim would make of the Vault of the Dead. She hoped that Old Mother Redbones made short work of him.
When she sensed Rhugash had not moved, she looked up. "Is there something else?"
"The outer scouts have reported a rider, coming from the southwest."
"From Bristol Faire, you mean. From her."
When Rhugash did not say anything, Lashka growled. Her nails etched a groove into the wooden surface of the table. She had hoped that she would not have to discuss her annexation of Circlet with her allies.
Apparently one of her horde had a loose tongue. She would have to make sure it was cut out.
"The gates are sealed for the night." Rhugash offered, "we could make them wait outside the city until morning."
"No." Lashka said, "We are Nightbringers. We have nothing to fear from the darkness." She will have most likely sent an Elf messenger...Gods of blood and fury, the smell...
Most Orcs had a highly developed sense of smell, which made them excellent trackers. It also meant that being around the other races, each of which had their own particular odors, was nigh unbearable.
Humans were the worst, usually over-perfumed and yet still smelling like a wet dog underneath. Dwarves were the most tolerable, smelling like barley and damp earth, nitre and sulphur - smells that evoked in most orcs nostalgia for the ancient times, when their ancestors had still dwelled in the deep places under the mountain.
Elves were another matter; they smelled overpoweringly like cloves and cinnamon, sweet, treacly odors that made the sinuses burn and roiled the stomach.
"Dog, earthy, or spicy?" she asked.
"Spicy, though not as sharp." Rhugash replied.
An old elf, then. Perhaps even The Lady herself? Lashka would be truly honored; though they were but a few leagues apart, the elf princess had never seen fit to darken her door. She decided that she would see her in the Twilight Hall.
She said as much to Rhugash "Have Hargg light the tower, and tell the kobolds to prepare food and wine for our guest."
"Should I send for Rhaga as well?"
Lashka shook her head. "Urgho, you, and I shall suffice; Hargg can keept the watch."
"As you wish, Mother."
Edited by Lashka - 10 Nov 2011 at 17:11
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Lashka
Greenhorn
Joined: 29 Sep 2011
Status: Offline
Points: 89
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Posted: 10 Nov 2011 at 21:36 |
Death surrounded them.
Orm Tullim put a quavering hand to his face as he stood at the edge of an immense circular room in which there seemed to be no floor. He stood with the orc Rhaga and it was only by the flare of Rhaga's torch that he could make out any details. Though he could not see the other side of the room or the floor, it looked as if there was a wooden railing that encircled the room perhaps four feet in.
There was a low whistling sound; obviously the wind had gotten in somewhere, and the steady drip of water told him that water had gotten in as well.
In the grey darkness, Rhaga gave a throaty laugh. "I can smell fear, Orm Tullim" He seemed to be staring down at something in the floor.
"Light!"
It started so slowly that Tullim thought at first it was merely his eyes adjusting to the darkness. A ring of gold, creeping upwards, growing steadily brighter as it moved towards their feet.
As the room brightened, Tullim could see he was standing on a small ledge at the top of an immense pit. What he had taken for a rail was actually a square lift attached by a dry, worn rope to an iron wheel and a conveyor system.
Rhage motioned to the lift,"Come."
Tullim gripped the railing tightly as the lift descended. He could see shapes moving against the light below. "There must be hundreds of torches."
"Thousands," Rhaga said with obvious pride. "Fifty thousand of our greatest warriors lie here, those who gave their lives so that the people might endure. Their bones line the walls, and their spirits protect us. You have a similar custom," Rhaga said, "You bury your dead in the earth, or burn them."
Tullim shook his head. "Not like this. We let them rest intact. We do not defile their bodies and make a mockery of creation by building with their flesh."
Rhaga shrugged. "I could push you over the side, Orm Tullim. I could listen to you go - splat!" Rhaga slapped his palms together to emphasize his point. "And them I could leave your bones there for the rats to feed on, until there was nothing larger than a fingerbone."
Rhaga smiled' Tullim had the unpleasant feeling he was being appraised by a tiger. "How sacred would the body of Orm Tullim be then? Who would mourn him?"
"You're a monster."
Rhaga laughed. "What we do not eat, we use, Orm Tullim."
***
They descended the rest of the way in silence. It was the better part of an hour before Tullim once again felt the reassurance of stone beneath his feet. They stepped off the platform and into another hallway of bone. Unlike the other chambers, these skeletons seemed to be mostly intact, though their skulls were missing.
"Our Mother's Fists," Rhaga said, "Our strongest and bravest warriors."
Tullim looked ahead apprehensively. "What happened to their heads?"
Rhaga looked at him. "All in time, Orm Tullim. First you must meet with Old Mother Redbones."
"Old Mother Redbones?" Tullim suddenly realized that perhaps traveling with an Orc into the depths of a pit was not where he wanted to be.
"Our Before-Mother. The one who led us before Lashka came. Our Eater-of-the-Dead."
Rhaga smiled. "She has waited such a very long time for you..."
Edited by Lashka - 10 Nov 2011 at 21:36
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