GoCorral

Chapter 6 – Antidote to Adlishar (Continued)

Galandir scratched his head. “Their magic armor…”

“Yes?”

“It wasn’t perfect. But I can’t figure it out. The first one I killed, I stabbed it through the chest. The duel with the leader… I did the same stab but his armor deflected it.”

Tereman said, “Could his magic have been stronger?”

Galandir said, “Maybe. I don’t understand it.”

Tereman said, “I stabbed mine in the side, here.” Tereman sat up in his seat to point at his abdomen.

Stenvall said, “So there is weaknesses in the armor. In the side?”

“Or maybe in the chest?” said Galandir.

Tereman said, “Not enough to help us yet, but we should remember that. Maybe we can figure something out.”

Blendegad said, “What about those swords drinking blood?”

Stenvall said, “Blood drinking is common for my people. It gives us the power of our enemies.”

Tereman made a disgusted face, took a breath, and then said, “Do you think the swords are gaining power that way as well?”

“I don’t know anything about magic swords.”

Tereman tilted his head and nodded in agreement.

Galandir said, “The leader seemed better than the others. Stronger, faster, and his magic was more powerful as well.”

Tereman said, “We were all powerless against him.”

Blendegad said, “He did something the others didn’t. He knocked me out with magic, not a hit to the head. I didn’t see any of the other monsters do that.”

Tereman said, “I don’t think we have enough to defeat that adlishar. If we do see it, we should run.”

The table nodded.

Tereman asked, “Anything else?”

A silence filled the room.

Tereman stood and took his cup. “Then a toast to our success! May the gods favor us and bring us victory over our enemies.” Tereman raised his cup high. The others did as well. They clashed them together knocking some of the raspberry water out of each cup onto the table. Each drank deeply and set their cup down.

Chapter 7 – Stenvall

Stenvall was a half-orc. She was the daughter of a human father, Lonius, and an orc mother, Freya. Many half-orcs were the product of a male orc raping a human female. Stenvall was not. Her parents were in love.

Lonius grew up in Dalleer. His father was a wealthy merchant in town. His mother had died in childbirth. Lonius was raised by the household staff, goblin and orc slaves. He had tutors to teach him arithmetic, science, logic, history, and rhetoric. His social life consisted of being seen but not heard at the high society parties his father threw.

Lonius grew to hate his father. The trade business required his father to be absent for long periods. Lonius was free to play and enjoy life with the slaves and their children while his father was away. When his father returned, discipline was strict and fraternizing with the lessers was punished.

A secret love developed between Lonius and the orc child, Freya. She was green, tusked, and had a head of black bristley hair. Her tusks gave her a smile that tilted to the left. She snuck into his bedroom after his father beat him to comfort him. They played at kissing when they were younger, but it wasn’t until he was thirteen that he realized he truly loved her.

Lonius’s father caught them kissing on his sixteenth birthday. His father organized another high society party to present Lonius to the world. Lonius hated the attention. It wasn’t for him, it was for his father’s legacy. He stole away from the party and found Freya. To avoid his father’s eyes, they hid in a closet, pressed together and lightly exploring each other’s bodies.

His father found them. Lonius was slapped, but Freya suffered worse. His father beat her with a birch rod. Lonius screamed as Freya endured the punishment with quiet whimpers and badly restrained tears.

When he was finished his father told Lonius that he would join him on all future business trips. His time for play was done and it was time to be a man.

Lonius refused in silence. He resolved to flee Dalleer that night, but not alone. He would take Freya and all the other slaves with him.

Late after his father had gone to sleep, Lonius took the keys and freed every slave in their employ. He guided them out of the estate and through the city streets to the eastern gate. As dawn broke they fled through the open gates and into the world.

Their life outside of Dalleer was difficult. With no supplies to start they were hungry and cold. They dug for roots. They hunted for game as best they could with improvised and crafted tools. They stole what they couldn’t get for themselves.

Many of the slaves broke away from the group. A few orcs stayed. They were the ones Lonius and Freya liked the most. Their band headed further east, hoping to reach the safety of the Orc Lands.

The journey was hard and it hardened them in return. They left Dalleer as a group of soft house slaves. They reached the eastern side of the Aral Sea as hardened survivors.

Along the way Lonius and Freya consummated their relationship. Kissing led to touching and touching led to sex. They were in love and love found them with a baby on the way. The child, Stenvall, was born in the Orc Lands.

Their little band was surprised by the reception in the Orc Lands. They had hoped to find orc cities, towns, and villages. There were villages and tribes. Sadly, the tribes were not welcoming. A small band of freed slaves was a burden, not a celebration. Each tribe they found rejected them.

The orcs were divided long before Stenvall was born. The orc tribes were united once. During the Dragon War they fought as one under Gorwinua, the master bard. She gave them hope and strength. Unfortunately, Gorwinua’s responsibilities as a Dragon War Hero pulled he away from the orkish people. Her absence left a huge power vacuum. Gorwinua left no clear successor to her position in orkish esteem. Soon after she was gone the tribal chiefs fell to infighting and petty arguments.

The orkish tribes developed a system to reduce wars. The tribes were responsible for tribal members. Each tribe had a set of rules to be a member of that tribe. Break a rule and you were cast out. Tribes cared about their own tribal members first. Other tribes came second.

The cast outs were the Clanless. Clanless had no place in orc society. They were nothing. Stenvall and her people were clanless. They were nothing.

Stenvall’s group went from tribe to tribe, trying to find a place. They mixed and mingled with other Clanless bands. As Stenvall grew up she traveled to many places in the Orc Lands. Faces came and went as her family moved from place to place, from tribe to tribe. Everywhere they hoped to be accepted and everywhere they were rejected.

The band’s endless optimism and hope for a stable home in the Orc Lands wore on the other Clanless. The Clanless native to the Orc Lands knew, nothing would change. Hoping for something better was pointless.

Stenvall learned that lesson. She grew up with no wealth but her family’s love. That only got her so far. Lonius fell ill. Consumption took his body slowly, piece by piece over years. Stenvall remembered him running and playing with her when she was young, but never after her first blood came.

Lonius’s condition worsened. Stenvall and Freya knew he needed medicine and magic to improve. The medicine of the Orc Lands was held in the hands of the Silver Palm tribe. Getting the medicine from the tribe was not so easy. They demanded payment in silver and the cost was far beyond what a couple of vagabonds could pay.

Freya resolved to steal the cure from the Silver Palm. She kissed Stenvall on the head before leaving. She took with her the spear and armor their family had pulled together over the years.

Freya never returned. Stenvall stayed with Lonius. She fed him as he weakened until he refused food. He wasted away and Stenvall buried him.

Their band moved on as Clanless always do. Stenvall did not. She stayed by her father’s grave and the marker she’d made for her mother. What hope lay for her without family?

Stenvall remembered the stories her parents told her of their life before the Orc Lands. Freya had never known her ancestors. Fortunately, her father had told her about his family. Stenvall had a living grandfather. She said goodbye to her parents graves and headed west, back to Dalleer.

The journey was long. The road hardened Stenvall. Her muscles grew. She stole and scrounged and fought and killed. She left the Orc Lands as a youth. She arrived in Dalleer as a powerful warrior.

Stenvall entered the city with her head held high. She belonged here. She was the granddaughter of a famous merchant. She made her way to his estate and asked a guard at the gate to speak with him.

Stenvall was led through the opulent estate to a bath. Goblin slaves, replaced since her father’s escape, scrubbed her clean. A white dress with gold and emerald jewels was set out for her to wear. An orc slave helped her put them on in the right places.

A few more twists and turns through the estate and she was at her grandfather’s side. He lay in a bed, withered and dying like her father had been in their rabbit-skin tent. She sat on a wooden stool by the bed.

He said, “You are my granddaughter?”

“Yes, I am. I am Lonius’s son.”

He coughed, “It is good to meet you. Tell me about yourself.”

She told him stories for hours while he coughed bloody spittle into a handkerchief. They ate a light meal and drank. Tonics for her grandfather and water for her. Stenvall told him about Lonius and Freya’s love for each other, their struggle for survival in the Orc Lands, and their deaths.

He said, “I never knew what happened to him. I should’ve guessed he’d marry her. What a fool.”

She said, “Is it foolish to love and act on it?

He was silent for a long time. He coughed. Through a hacking whisper he said, “No.”

Her grandfather told her that he had adopted a son to inherit his business. The boy had been the orphan of one of his business partners. He raised him into a man capable of taking over the trade network he had built. Her adoptive uncle was away on an expedition as her grandfather had often been in Lonius’s youth.

Her grandfather explained that there was no way for Stenvall to inherit his wealth. His adopted heir would not allow it and the law would side with a human over a half-orc. Still it was not right for Stenvall to be left with nothing. He gave her a bag of jewels along with the dress and accessories she put on after the bath.

Stenvall stayed at the estate with him for a few days. She told him stories about herself, Lonius, and Freya. For a time she had her family again. Her uncle’s trip was a long one, so she had her grandfather to herself.

One morning she went to his room as she always did. She greeted him as she always did, but he did not respond. She touched his arm and it was cold.

Stenvall left that day. The slaves sent her away with the jewels. Stenvall did not know what to spend them on. Wealth was there to provide a space for a family to thrive. Without a family, what good was it?

Whatever else, Stenvall would not suffer her mother’s fate. If she was to be a Clanless, she would not be a weak Clanless. She would be strong and strength came from ancestors, training, and weapons and armor.

Stenvall used the gems to purchase the finest armor she could find and the finest spear. A shield to match from sacred heartwood. All these helped her feel the fiercest warrior in Cimmeria.

Shalerton’s call for help arrived in Dalleer as her armor finished forging. The thought of monsters separating families infuriated Stenvall. She answered the call. She went to Shalerton. She followed Forgeus and Gallana. And she lost her spear and shield in the battle. Items she planned to reclaim.