CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

FARCHRIST TALES

BOOK THREE:

THE UNDERGOD

The owner of The Quarter Pony was a middle-aged man by the name of Otis Parkinson and he hired my mother, Amanda, scant minutes after she entered the tavern. The job was that of a waitress, called serving wench in some circles, and came with a room in the back of the tavern, one meal a day, and a small salary. Some men in Otis’s place may have hired the young Amanda out of desire for her beauty, and then tried to abuse their position when she became dependent upon them. But not Otis Parkinson. He was a good man of Grecolus and hired her simply because she was in need and he needed the help. If someone had told him that day he would wind up married to the young girl, he would have laughed in their face. At that time, he did not know my mother was pregnant, he did not know her child would be a boy, and he did not know he would raise me as he would his own son.

+ + +

Night fell over the ork encampment slowly, oozing into the blue sky like molasses. Brisbane was free of his bonds but still a prisoner in the circus wagon. The party of orks had finally left him alone, losing interest in his inactivity and moving onto more stimulating pastimes.

Brisbane was thankful for their departure. He hated their eyes boring into him as they seemed to do, but this relief was lost among his infinity of worries. His hunger, his pain, his fear, they were old worries but they still packed a punch. The worst was that he could do nothing about any of them, and he had to take them in like unwanted visitors and try to make them comfortable. The orks were in control of him and he would not eat until they fed him, would not lose his pain until they stopped hurting him, and would not conquer his fear until he escaped them. He sat himself in one of the far corners of the wagon and tried not to give up hope.

Revenge, Angelika had promised. Revenge. But now even Angelika was gone, lost somewhere in the orkish cave and Brisbane wondered if he would ever wield her again. He tried to reach out to her mentally but he got no response. She was either unable or unwilling to speak to him. He wasn’t sure which one was worse.

He thought about Wizard, the strange ork in the strange clothes who had de-magicked his wagon. He thought about the things the ork had said. He was the only one Brisbane had heard use the common tongue, and Brisbane supposed it was a rare talent among orks. Wizard had really said very little to him, but what he had said left a lot of questions in his mind.

First of all, who or what was He-Who-Watches? Wizard had referred to his magic power as something granted by He-Who-Watches. A mark. There was only one explanation he could find that made any sense, but he distrusted it because it fell too easily in with the rumors he had heard about orks.

There were two schools of thought about orks. The first was that they were simple savage animals on two feet who killed because they liked the taste of blood. The second, and by far the more popular, was that they were simple savage animals on two feet created by Damaleous who killed to serve their lord and because they liked the taste of blood.

The question was, was He-Who-Watches Damaleous? Brisbane decided he very well could be. Even though he had come to discount most, if not all, of what he had been taught about Grecolus and his battles with the Evil One, Brisbane realized thousands believed it and, to thousands, it was a very real force in their lives. He did not begin to believe himself to be the ultimate judge between fact and fiction, but he knew the objective reality of fact often had little to do with the normal person’s subjective reality of fiction.

He considered Illzeezad Dantrius to be a prime example. Roystnof had taught Brisbane magic came from the individual, and Brisbane believed that, but Dantrius—and sometimes, it seemed, the rest of the world—believed magic came from Damaleous. Dantrius may be getting his powers from within, but he believed they were coming from below, and that was the only “fact” that mattered.

He could not help but wonder if the same story applied to these orks. From his words, it seemed Wizard believed his power and Brisbane’s potential power came from an entity called He-Who-Watches. Brisbane did not consider it too far of a stretch to imagine He-Who-Watches was just the orkish name for Damaleous. It was a different culture, they had a different language, and so they had different names for things. It was much like the time Brisbane had speculated about Shortwhiskers’ Moradin and Abbathor being the dwarven names for Grecolus and Damaleous. But if this was true for orks, and He-Who-Watches was what they called Damaleous, what did they call Grecolus? Did they even have a Grecolus-figure in their myths?

This tied into another debate he had once had with himself about the subjectivity of good and evil. Evil was good to the evil-minded. If the orks did worship a Damaleous-figure in the name of He-Who-Watches, wouldn’t that figure be their Grecolus-figure? It certainly might.

If all of this were true, which he still wasn’t sure it was, if orks could get magic powers from this He-Who-Watches, there seemed to be only one question of vital importance to his evolving philosophy. Was He-Who-Watches just the orkish name for Damaleous, or was he some other entity altogether? In essence, was the mythology he had been taught as a child the absolute truth, was it part of a larger whole, or was it a gigantic delusion?

The faithful worshippers of Grecolus considered theirs to be the only true god, all others were false gods based on ritual and superstition. The dwarves, and maybe the orks, had separate gods from those of humans and the other races, but they did not deny the presence of gods different from theirs. Roystnof, and a few like him, believed in a universe with no gods. It was very important to Brisbane to know which of these three ideas, if any, was the true one and, now that he was their prisoner, which idea the orks held.

He decided he simply did not know enough about the orks to gather any details about their mythology. He did feel, however, he could be sure Wizard believed his magic power came from a being called He-Who-Watches, whether that belief was realistic or not. As far as deciding the true nature of the universe, Brisbane didn’t think he would ever collect enough data to make a definite decision about that.

So he turned his thoughts to Wizard’s magic power. Regardless of its source, was it real? He could think of only one way to find out. He would test Wizard’s anti-magic spell by trying to cast a spell of his own.

He knew exactly which one he wanted to try. It wasn’t his only true spell, shocking grasp. That would be too obvious. It was one of the cantrips Roystnof had taught him early in his apprenticeship. Brisbane had been thinking about casting it since he had been tossed into his cage. In the middle of his sorrow, as he was pushed face first into the dirty straw on the floor of the cage, his ears had heard a sound that had brought a ray of sunshine into his cloudy hopes. It was a sound the orks may have thought would help break their prisoner’s spirit, but it had the opposite effect. It was the sound of Vrak’s key turning in the lock on the door of his cage.

A key meant the lock had tumblers, and tumblers Brisbane could turn much like the ones he had turned on Roystnof’s study door when he had cast his first cantrip almost six years ago.

But not now. There were still too many orks up and about. In fact, a number of the armored orks had built a campfire right outside his cage, before the cave entrance, and were eating their evening meal and drinking large amounts of what appeared to be ale. When they had all drunk themselves into unconsciousness, Brisbane would try his spell and, if it worked, he would slip out of the camp and run for it.

But right now, something much more pressing than freedom held his attention. Hunger. He sat dismally in his cage and watched the orks gorge themselves on freshly cooked rabbit meat and gallons of orkish ale. This evening meal seemed to be the only one the orks ate in a day, but they ate enough to make up for it. Brisbane had never eaten rabbit before, but right then, he thought he would have eaten one raw.

One of the orks around the fire Brisbane recognized as Floppy, but he acted as if he had never seen Brisbane before. They ate with reckless abandon and didn’t seem to care that there were people starving not thirty feet from where they sat.

He could hear the other prisoners in the other circus wagons begging and whining for food. He did not want to beg his captors for anything, but he felt if he was not fed soon, he would start uncontrollably. He listened to the moans of his fellows captives in misery. There were perhaps three or four of them and one of them was definitely female. The other voices were male, probably belonging to merchants who had traveled on the South Road between Scalt and Queensburg. In his mind, he saw all kinds of torture the orks could inflict on their prisoners, male and female alike. He thought about things females were especially susceptible to. What did these orks do to their female prisoners? Brisbane tried not to let his rumor-riddled imagination run away with him.

Why didn’t the King do something about these orks? The Windcrest Hills were part of the valley that made up the Farchrist Empire. These orks terrorized and captured honest merchants using the King’s roads to ply their trade, and kept them in cages to be tortured or eaten or worse. How could the King stand for that? Brisbane remembered the tax collector who had come to The Lazy Dragon in Queensburg had been accompanied by armed guards. Apparently, the King conducted his business under protection but did not care as much about other people’s business. Brisbane had never been a great student of politics, but he thought the least a system of government should do was protect its citizens from outside aggression.

He continued to watch the orks as they ate and drank, trying to block out the cries of the other humans as he was sure the orks were doing. He noticed the orks had a servant of sorts among them, someone to cook their meat and pour them fresh mugs of ale, and that this servant was not an ork. He was not a human, either. Brisbane wasn’t sure just what he was.

As he watched the servant move around in the firelight, Brisbane could see he was dressed in plain gray clothing that bore no sign or decoration of any kind. He appeared human in the way of arms and legs and the shape of his body, but his face was another story. His ears were long and sharply pointed, and at first Brisbane thought he might be an elf because of this, but he quickly realized no elf could be this ugly. The servant’s forehead was low and sloping, and his dark eyes were set deep beneath a prominent brow line. His nose was large and long, but pushed in at the end, as if it was trying to stay out of the way of the unruly teeth that pushed out of his large mouth. None of them were pointed like the stout tusks of the orks, but he seemed incapable of fully closing his lips over them. Brisbane thought he looked more like a handsome ork than an ugly human.

The servant was besieged with gruff orders from the other orks and he just about flew around the campfire to cater to all their wishes. When he had them all full of rabbit and their mugs full of ale, Floppy nodded to him and waved his arm in the direction of the circus wagons. The servant quickly picked up a sack and a water jug and made his way over to them.

Brisbane went right up to the bars and watched the servant go to the wagon at the other end of the line. He took a cup out of the sack and poured it full of water. Brisbane had his face pressed between two bars so he could see what was going on. He noticed the cries of the other prisoners had stopped.

The servant handed the cup of water through the bars to a pair of shaking human hands, and then drew from the sack some of the dried strips of preserved meat Brisbane had been fed on his journey with Vrak. These too he handed through the bars. The servant waited for a minute or two, took the empty cup back, and then moved down to the next cage.

They were being fed! Brisbane’s stomach nearly screamed in anticipation as he watched the servant make his way down the line. When he arrived in front of Brisbane’s wagon, Brisbane backed a step away from the bars and sat down in the dirty straw.

He met the servant’s eyes for a moment and then the servant bent over to pour him a cup of water. He handed it to Brisbane through the bars and Brisbane promptly drank half of it, forcing himself to stop so he would have some left to wash down his meat. He got four strips, a banquet compared to the two he had been fed the night before. He ate them quickly, he couldn’t help himself, and soon all he had left was the half cup of water. He quickly drained that and handed the cup back to the servant.

Brisbane wiped his mouth on his sleeve. “Thank you,” he said, not caring if the servant could understand him or not.

The servant showed no reaction. He picked up the sack and the water jug and began to make his way back to the campfire.

Suddenly, one of the orks made a very loud comment and the rest of the orks let out an explosive burst of laughter. The servant froze in his tracks. The ork who had made the comment, Brisbane did not recognize him, rose to his feet and made another one. This time, some of those who laughed also got to their feet and began to make their way over to the servant. The servant dropped the sack and the water jug and began to back up towards Brisbane’s cage, slowly shaking his head.

One of the approaching orks was Floppy and when he and his comrades got to the servant, they seized him, still laughing, and began to drag him to the door of Brisbane’s cage. Floppy produced a key, either a duplicate or given to him by Vrak, and opened the padlock securing the door. In an instant, the servant was face down in the straw and the door had been relocked. Floppy and the orks went back to the campfire, still laughing.

The servant pulled himself out of the straw in front of Brisbane. Brisbane felt compelled to say something to the servant, but he still didn’t know if he would be understood. The servant sat up and tried to brush some of the straw off his clothes.

“Are you okay?” Brisbane asked.

The servant hung his head low. “Yeah, yeah,” he mumbled. “I’m just fine.”

There was an accent but it wasn’t as harsh as Wizard’s.

“What was that all about?”

Another curt comment from outside followed by another surge of brackish laughter.

“Keep your voice down,” the servant said.

Brisbane lowered his voice to a whisper. “Sorry.”

“It’s a running joke with them,” the servant said quietly. “Every time they get a new prisoner, they toss me in with him to see how strong the resemblance is. They think it’s hysterical that I look more human than grugan.”

“Groo-gan?” Brisbane said, pronouncing the strange word carefully. Except for their comparative size, Brisbane didn’t they think looked anything alike.

“Grugan,” the servant nodded. “Orks. That’s what they call themselves.”

Brisbane raised his eyebrows. It never occurred to him that orks would call themselves anything else but orks. He had thought ork was an orkish word, but evidently that was not the case. It was just what humans called them. He wondered where the word came from.

“Well,” Brisbane said, “you’re no ork. Or grugan. What are you?”

The servant did not seem offended by Brisbane’s comment. “I am half-grugan. My mother was human.”

Orks and humans could mate? The idea interested and repulsed Brisbane at the same time. None of the rumor-spreading humans would ever believe that. It was too twisted. To them it would be like humans and wild dogs producing offspring. Unnatural and, as too many of them would probably say, against the laws of Grecolus.

Strange. If orks could mate with humans, Brisbane figured they had to be just another race of men. Stargazer was a half-elf, after all, and no one turned their nose up to her. And although Brisbane had never known any, he supposed half-dwarves were possible. What about half-elf and half-dwarf? Half-elf and half-ork? There were any number of possibilities.

“How…” Brisbane said, not sure how to phrase the question he wanted to ask. “How did…”

The servant held up a hand to stop Brisbane’s sputtering. “My mother was captured on a raid long ago. Normally, she would have been used and killed, but my father, who was then the chief of the clan, took a liking to her and let her live long enough for her to give birth to me. While he lived, I was treated with some respect, but he has since been deposed, and now I am just their freakish whipping boy.”

Brisbane listened carefully to the servant’s story. When he finished, the servant looked at Brisbane very strangely.

“What’s the matter?” Brisbane asked.

“I just realized you’re the first prisoner who has ever tried to talk to me,” the servant said. “The others always screamed and cowered in one of the corners of the wagon. They thought I was some kind of monster.”

“How did you learn the common tongue?” Brisbane asked.

“My father was Sumak. All Sumaks can speak the common tongue.”

“Soo-mack?” Brisbane said.

The servant nodded. “Sumak. It’s the grugan word for clan chief.”

“What’s going to happen to me?” Brisbane asked.

The servant looked around. The orks around the campfire seemed to have forgotten about their joke.

“Scared, aren’t you?”

“A little,” Brisbane admitted.

“You should be,” the servant said. “They’ve never captured anyone like you before. They didn’t know your kind even existed. Ternosh thinks you’re a fake and if you are, you’re going to be in serious trouble.”

“Ternosh?”

“The one in the red robes who spoke to you before. He’s the clan’s Grumak.”

“Groo-mack,” Brisbane said, finally stumbling across a word he recognized. “That’s what Vrak said when he saw this pendant around my neck. What does it mean?”

“It doesn’t translate well into the common tongue of humans,” the servant said. “It’s sort of a sorcerer-priest.”

Sorcerer-priest? Yes, that would be hard to translate into the common tongue. A sorcerer and a priest were, in effect, opposites, one serving Damaleous and the other serving Grecolus, according to popular beliefs. It would be like trying to find one word to describe something that was both white and black, old and young, or dead and alive. Brisbane’s language couldn’t handle it. Only the ork

—grugan—

word, Grumak, conveyed the entire idea.

“They think I’m a Grumak?”

“Ternosh doesn’t,” the servant said. “But he’s not taking any chances until he can find out for sure. They’ve never heard of a human Grumak, but you bear the symbol of one around your neck. As I said, if you do turn out to be a fake, Ternosh is going to be very angry at your sacrilege.”

Brisbane felt as if he was just on the verge of understanding what the servant was talking about. Evidently, the only magic that existed in the clan was that used by Ternosh the Grumak. The pentacle he wore around his neck was a symbol of magic in this culture as well as in his. And it was considered sacrilege for anyone to bear the symbols of a Grumak if they were not a Grumak. That was all pretty clear. What Brisbane didn’t like was the servant’s use of the word sacrilege. It denoted the Grumak was not just a sorcerer but, as the servant’s rough translation had indicated, he was part of their religion. And Brisbane knew how angry some people could get when you poked fun of their religion.

“Who is He-Who-Watches?” Brisbane asked.

The servant’s head popped up as if he expected it to be cut off where it was. He looked over at the orks, but some of them seemed to be bedding down for the night. None of them seemed to notice or care about the hushed conversation going on in the circus wagon closest to the cave mouth.

The servant turned back to Brisbane and lowered his voice even more. “He-Who-Watches is a name for the god of the grugan. His real name is Gruumsh One-Eye, and it is from him that Ternosh receives his power as a Grumak.”

“Gruumsh One-Eye?” Brisbane said so softly he wondered if the servant would even hear him.

“Yes,” the servant said. “And if you are a fake, never let a member of this clan hear you speak his true name. They would kill you most slowly. It is forbidden.”

Brisbane’s thoughts had been correct. He-Who-Watches was a deity the orks believed blessed certain followers with the power of magic. But he still couldn’t be sure it wasn’t really Damaleous the orks worshipped. Right now, however, Brisbane wondered if he shouldn’t be less concerned with just who gave Ternosh his powers and more concerned with whether or not the orks were going to brand him a fake. He could do a few tricks, but he did not know if his power would be enough to save his life. It all depended upon how strong the orks perceived his power to be.

“Do you think I’m a fake?” Brisbane asked.

The servant shrugged his shoulders. “It’s not up to me to decide. I believe you could be a Grumak, but I tend to have a higher view of humans because of my heritage. The real test will come tomorrow.”

Brisbane was glad the servant was being so honest and open with him. There was plenty more he wanted to ask.

“What’s your name?” Brisbane said.

“Smurch.”

“Smurch? Is that your first or your last name?”

“Neither,” Smurch said. “It is my grugan name.”

“Do you have a human one?”

Smurch shook his head. “My mother was killed when I was very young. I know no human names.”

“Mine’s Gil,” Brisbane said. “Would you like one?”

“What would you suggest, Gil?”

Brisbane studied Smurch’s face for a moment. “Jack. You look like a Jack.”

“Jack Smurch,” the half-ork said, testing the air with it. “I like the way that sounds.”

Brisbane could not help but laugh a little.

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This post appeared on Eric Lanke's blog, an association executive and author. You can contact him at eric.lanke@gmail.com.

Armageddon’s Children by Terry Brooks

So, quick story. Terry Brooks’s The Sword of Shannara is the first book I remember reading. I mean, I obviously read other books before that, but The Sword of Shannara is the first book that grabbed me, that I can still remember characters from (Panamon Creel, anyone?), and that perhaps set me off on this literary journey that I’m still on. I’m going to guess that I was fifteen years old.

I remember reading The Elfstones of Shannara shortly thereafter, and I remember waiting anxiously for The Wishsong of Shannara to be published -- which came out in 1985, when I would have been seventeen years old. 

I also read a few of Brooks’s “Magic Kingdom of Landover” books -- definitely the first, and maybe The Black Unicorn and Wizard at Large as well. But that’s about it. For one reason or another, I fell out of the habit of reading Brooks -- probably when I fell away from fantasy novels in my mid-twenties.

One day I was reminiscing about all of this and I decided to check out what Brooks might have written since those days, and -- my word. He sure has been busy. Shannara, it seems, has turned into an entire literary universe, with many novels taking place both before and after the events of the original trilogy.

And then I thought, hey, wouldn’t it be fun to read all those books in “chronological” order? Not in their order of publication, but in the order of that universe’s own chronology -- including re-reading my beloved original trilogy somewhere in the middle.

So I went to the Internet and found the list -- Shannara books in chronological order -- and that told me to read the “Genesis of Shannara” series first, beginning with its first volume, Armageddon’s Children.

Except, Armageddon’s Children is not the first story in this long tale. As I read it I kept coming across references to an even earlier story -- implicit in references to characters like Nest Freemark and John Ross -- characters who don’t really feature in the “Genesis of Shannara” series, but who seem to preface it, to help construct the world in which Armageddon’s Children takes place.

And so, it was back to the Internet and the discovery of Brooks’s “The Word and the Void” series, which is a trilogy that predates the “Genesis of Shannara” series, and which begins, pretty much, in our present day world.

By this time, I was already deep into Armageddon’s Children, so I decided to finish reading it, but then to jump back to the first novel in “The Word and the Void” series, Running With the Demon, and properly start my chronological Shannara adventure there. 

I’ll blog about Running With the Demon soon, but as far as Armageddon’s Children is concerned, it was a relaxing read. Brooks’s prose was eerily familiar to me, and the care that he shows for his characters -- both the heroes and the villains -- was wonderfully present.

+ + +

This post appeared on Eric Lanke's blog, an association executive and author. You can contact him at eric.lanke@gmail.com.

A Severed Head by Iris Murdoch

This post was originally published on a now-retired blog that I maintained from roughly 2005 to 2013. As a result, there may be some references that seem out of date. 

+ + + 

A friend gave me this book and I found it a fairly good read. 

It’s about this man who is having an affair on his wife, who then finds out that his wife is having an affair on him and wants a divorce. His life begins to fall apart after that as we discover all kinds of hidden secrets about the lives of those around him. His wife’s lover is also having an affair with his own sister, and his wife and his girlfriend are both having affairs with his brother.

It’s a tangled and complicated tale, but it held my attention both because of the prose style and because throughout all the ups and downs the characters more or less maintain stilted and phony cordial relations with one another.

I took it to be a book at least partly about the need to maintain certain appearances in society, even when the dirty reality beneath it all is a whole other matter.

+ + +

This post appeared on Eric Lanke's blog, an association executive and author. You can contact him at eric.lanke@gmail.com.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

FARCHRIST TALES

BOOK THREE:

THE UNDERGOD

Amanda took my father’s advice to leave the City Beneath the Castle. She left the very next day, after the body had been found and as the town began to buzz about the possible scandals and reasons for the death of one of their finest. She heard many rumors, some of which were shockingly close to the truth and others that could only have been made up by a madman. It was a warm sunny day when my mother fled from the city of her birth to seek anonymity in one of the smaller hamlets of the Farchrist Empire. She took everything she could pack onto one stubborn mule she had bought from a family friend for three silver pieces and headed out on the North Road. She spent a night in Ladysmith, but decided it was too close to home, and moved on the next day on the East Road. The next town was a small one called Scalt and, as she rode through it, she saw a sign in the window of a small tavern. She tied her mule to the hitching post, took down the sign, and went into The Quarter Pony to start a new life.

+ + +

Brisbane was kicked awake by Snaggletooth a few minutes after dawn. The ork grumbled at him and roughly helped him to his feet. The night on the ground had left him even more stiff and sore, and he could still feel the tautness in his face that could only be swelling. The orks had either already eaten breakfast or had skipped that meal because they were all packed and ready to continue on their journey. Within thirty seconds of being kicked awake, Brisbane was back in his position in the line-up, fighting with the rope that connected his feet to match the tireless pace of the orks. He did not remember the dream he had the night before.

He was miserable in the early morning sun. He felt terrible, his entire body one massive ache with small regions of flaring pain, one in his stomach, another in his face, and the last in the small of his back, where Snaggletooth had delivered a particularly swift kick. His hands had gone numb again and his twisted shoulders were beginning to develop a numbness of their own. He felt like he was choking on his gag and the rag in his mouth had lost all of its moisture during the night. It now tasted like dust.

But his physical misery was nothing compared to his mental anguish. Brisbane simply did not see how he was going to survive another day of the forced march. His hunger had returned with the morning, but unlike the sunrise, it seemed larger than it had been the day before. Knowing the orks, he could expect no food until they camped again for another night, and his stomach complained loudly that was much too far away. The hunger left him strapped of all his energy, and he wondered how much longer he would be able to shamble along like a zombie freshly returned from the grave.

For the first time he found himself wondering why he hadn’t just died when he plunged over the falls above the lost temple of Grecolus. The thought entered his head for the first time and it was quickly followed by the angry, and yet somehow still pacifying, voice of Angelika.

—No! Do not entertain such thoughts, Brisbane. You and I are destined for better things.—

He raised his head and fixed his reddened eyes on his sword, still being carried in the eternal clutches of Snaggletooth.

Angelika, he thought. I just don’t know how much farther I can go.

—There’s not much farther to go, Brisbane. Our journey will end today.—

It will? How much farther is it? How do you know?

—I know.—

It helped Brisbane a little. Today. If he could stay up just for today. Sometime today the hell would end. It was enough to keep his mind pushing his body ever onward. It did not ease his pain like, say, a healthy rub of Stargazer’s healing ointment—oh dear Grecolus, do you remember that stuff, it was in your former life, you spread some on Roystnof’s back after the attack of the ogres and the bruises faded a little right before your very eyes, do you remember that, Gil, can you remember that—might have, but it allowed him to endure the pain for a little while longer. He did not concern himself with where he was going to be and what was going to happen to him when he got there. He didn’t care. He only knew that before he had been lost in an eternity of one foot in front of the other, and now, there was the promise that this eternity wasn’t an eternity after all. It was just a long time. He knew because Angelika had told him so.

And so he was able to push on. He drove his body to the point of exhaustion, and then he drove it a little farther. He had to stay up just for today. Today this madness would end.

Snaggletooth and the other orks did not notice any superhuman effort coming from their prisoner. They knew where they were going and how long it would take to get there. The human was just extra baggage. They were glad he had given them as little trouble as he had. They were only concerned about getting home, and when they got there, the big human with the star around his neck would no longer be their responsibility. For them, it would be feast, drink, and old stories around a hot fire.

Brisbane did not care how she knew it, but Angelika had been right. His forced march ended that day. It was in the afternoon, far past noon but still early enough not to be troubled with finding a place to camp for the night. The sounds of bustle and activity could be heard from a long way off, but Brisbane was walking in a stupor of deaf ears, and he had no idea they were approaching the orkish settlement until he was brought to a halt by the ork holding onto his dead arms.

He looked up. He saw Snaggletooth had stopped and he was talking to an ork he had never seen before. This new one was also dressed in a mismatched set of black armor and he carried a shield with a large red eye painted upon it. He had a sword belted at his side and in his free hand was the leash of a dog, the breed of which Brisbane had never seen before.

It was a large animal, about as high as the ork’s waist at the shoulder with fur speckled in black, gray, and white like the fine grains of sand on a beach. It had a short snout and tall ears. Its eyes were bright orange and its teeth glistened white, wet with spittle. The dog was sitting at attention beside its ork master, growling deep in its throat.

Snaggletooth and the Dogmaster were exchanging what sounded like pleasantries in their brackish language. Brisbane wasn’t really paying attention to the sounds of their speech, but he seemed somehow attuned to the word groo-mack and, at its mention, he saw the Dogmaster begin to look him over suspiciously.

Snaggletooth then held Angelika up for the Dogmaster’s examination but he did not give the weapon to the ork. Talking all the while, Snaggletooth pointed out the large emerald in the base of Angelika’s pommel and then tried unsuccessfully to draw her from her scabbard. From a forgotten place deep inside of him, Brisbane’s wrath began to build at the sight of the ork handling the sword, but Angelika’s voice quickly echoed in his brain and calmed the tremors.

Snaggletooth and the Dogmaster talked for a little while longer and then the Dogmaster walked his dog down the length of their line, stopping beside each person to let the dog sniff them over. The dog approached Brisbane first, still growling low in its throat. Under other circumstances, he might have been embarrassed when the dog came up to him and sniffed at his crotch, but in his present condition, he just added it to the list of his personal tragedies since he had left his friends. Some of the orks laughed when the Dogmaster had to forcefully pull the animal away from Brisbane.

The other orks extended their hands before the dog got close enough to invade their private areas. The dog reacted favorably to each of the orks and, after the initial sniffing had been taken care of, each ork gave the dog a friendly pat on the head. The Dogmaster then returned to the head of the line and Snaggletooth slapped him on the back, barking out what could only have been a warm goodbye. Brisbane was shoved forward again.

The party continued over the rise of another hill and Brisbane thought about what he had just experienced. It had obviously been some sort of checkpoint, to control the flow in and out of wherever it was they were going. That was interesting in itself, that the orks would be organized enough to post and maintain such a patrol. It was the kind of thing that required strong leadership to work properly. It was the kind of thing one would expect to find around a fortification like Farchrist Castle, but it was a bit remarkable to find it out here in the wastes of the Windcrest Hills among a group of orks. But what really caught his attention was the dog, and more directly, the Dogmaster.

The domestication of animals was something Brisbane was sure most people would have put past the ability of an ork. Most people thought of orks as little more than animals themselves. But the Dogmaster had definite control over his animal. He remembered the way the dog had sat, seemingly at attention, while its master chatted with Snaggletooth about him and Angelika. That dog had not just been domesticated; it had been trained, probably to do much more than to sniff at the genitals of strangers. At every turn, Brisbane was seeing that these orks were much more than most people thought they were. He decided most people were full of shit.

The small group topped the hill they were climbing and started down its other side. Brisbane saw ahead of him, sprawled in a short valley amidst a high group of rocky hills, the large extent of the ork settlement.

It seemed to have little organization. There were a few ramshackle buildings scattered over the village, the most notable being what was obviously a kennel of some sort, giving its function away by the barks of dozens of fenced-in dogs. Figures moved randomly around the settlement, concentrated the thickest around the buildings. The settlement seemed to grow more dense as it neared the sheer side of the hill on the opposite side of the compound. The hill appeared to have been cut off by some mechanical means and a large cave mouth had been dug into it. Periodically, figures moved in and out of this cave mouth, and he could only assume the orks had some sort of underground complex in there.

As he was marched down the hill and into the settlement itself, Brisbane lost sight of his overview of the area and began to see more and more detail. Most of the orks moving about were dressed in ordinary, if dirty, clothing, but a few among their ranks wore the typical set of black ork armor. Of those in regular clothes, females were by far more numerous than males. They looked a lot like their male counterparts, big and solidly built, having snouts and tusks smaller than those of the males and less hair around their faces and necks. But they were most easily distinguished from the males by the large pair of breasts each of them seemed to have, pushing out the fabric of their dirty tunics. As Brisbane looked around, he did not see a single female with anything near to what would be considered normal for a human female. Some were almost freakish in their proportions.

Nearly all the females were engaged in some kind of handiwork. Mending clothes, preserving meat, or cleaning weapons, they all seemed to have some task to perform. Each of them also seemed to have a small litter of orkish children dancing around them, making a good deal of noise and doing their best to turn the attention of the females away from their work. As Brisbane was led through the settlement, the children paused in their activities to watch him walk by, their eyes wide with avid interest, only to lapse back into their foolishness after Brisbane had passed.

He also saw a number of small tents scattered between the few buildings. Their front flaps were open but he saw almost no one sitting inside any of them. The day was warm, and Brisbane figured they would stay empty until nightfall, when it would be necessary to put all the unruly children to bed.

His impression of the settlement as a whole was one of order amidst chaos. Out here in the wilderness the orks had obviously carried on a productive society for some time. There seemed to be no logic in the layout of the area—buildings, tents, and people scattered any which way—but in the actions of the men and women he had witnessed so far, Brisbane could see each ork had a job to do in their society and each ork did that job well.

These perceptions did not rattle off in his head like a lecture in sociology, he was in much too much physical distress for that. But the inklings of them were there, tugging away at the fringes of his conscious thoughts, reinforcing his idea that these orks were much more than anyone had given them credit for being.

After marching Brisbane through the center of the village, Snaggletooth stopped him when they arrived within a hundred feet of the cave mouth Brisbane had seen from the distance. There were many more armored orks in this area, all of them male and all of them carrying shields with the red eye symbol. Lined up next to the cave mouth, radiating out away from the small cliff face, were a row of structures that, from the distance, Brisbane had thought were just another group of run-down buildings. They were not. They were familiar for he had seen such things dozens of times in his life, but they seemed out of place here in the ork settlement. They were circus wagons.

There were five of them, lined up like a train, the hitchings for a team of horses laying uselessly on the ground and extending under the raised floor of each one’s neighbor. They were not the happy, colorful models, the ones used to transport the circus people from town to town in relative comfort. They were instead the ones used to transport dangerous animals, constructed of heavy wood with two walls of thick iron bars to cage the animal apart from innocent onlookers. They were not derelicts. They were being used by the orks to cage animals, and those animals were human beings.

Brisbane suddenly began to fight against his bonds and his captors. The ork who had control of him from behind, Brisbane thought it was Floppy, held firmly onto him and cruelly twisted his arms, forcing him toward the circus wagon closest to the cave mouth. Had Brisbane been rested and healthy, he might have been able to wrench himself free from Floppy’s grasp, but in his weakened condition, it was no contest. He was pushed steadily and painfully forward.

Snaggletooth took a key off a hook driven into the wood of the wagon and opened the padlocked door on its front. There was a small window in this door, guarded by small iron bars, which must have once been used by the circus masters to look in on their animals. When Snaggletooth had the door open, Floppy wrestled Brisbane up a step or two and drove him into the circus wagon.

The floor was covered with dirty straw and he stumbled face first into it. Before he could rise to his feet, Brisbane heard the door shut behind him and the locking of the padlock. Snaggletooth came around to the side of the wagon and he waved the key mockingly in front of Brisbane’s swollen face. The ork then clipped it to a ring at his belt and then, with Floppy and Half-Pint and the other two orks in his charge, disappeared into the cave mouth.

The other orks in black armor who stood around the area each looked Brisbane over for a while, but they kept their distance and did not pester him. They muttered amongst themselves, but their voices were low and, even if he could have understood their language, he would not have heard what they said. Brisbane tried to ignore them as he mentally went over his situation.

It did not look good. Here he was, hurt, tied, and gagged, locked in a circus wagon deep inside an ork encampment. He did not know where his friends were and he could expect no help from them. The only orks he knew by sight were the ones who had captured him, and they thought he was some kind of wizard. They had gone into the cave with his sword, surely to report to their superiors, and he did not know when they were coming back and who they would bring with them.

That was the down side. If there was any up side at all, Brisbane supposed it would be that he was still alive. The orks had beaten and starved him, but they had taken great pains to capture and bring him here alive. They obviously wanted something from him, and as long as Brisbane withheld it, he would retain his life if not his freedom. The problem was he did not know what the orks wanted.

His thoughts suddenly turned to those of the other people here in the orkish prison. He was alone in his wagon, but he had seen other humans in the other cars. He wished he could remove his gag so he could talk to them, so he could gain some kind of solace in the company of misery, but with his hands tied behind his back, it was impossible. Who were they? How had they been captured? What were the orks doing with them? Did the orks eat them as Shortwhiskers had said? Use them as slaves? Had any of them ever escaped? Could any of them help him? He had so many questions and so few answers.

Some of the orks still watched him, but they did not approach or try to communicate with him, and Brisbane soon found himself with little else to do besides wait. He tried to make himself comfortable in the dirty straw, but his injuries and hunger made it difficult. How did this ever happen to him? It seemed that one moment he had been standing in the hand of Grecolus, looking into the nest at the two eggs and the dead ork, and the next he was being tied up with Snaggletooth on his back. The attack of the bird-monster had been so swift he barely remembered it happening. Its dark shape had appeared like a vision, slammed into him, and knocked him from his perch in less than a second. The fall to the lake and over the falls was a wet smear on his memory, and somewhere along the way he had lost consciousness. It was terrifying to think his life could change so drastically in such a short period of time. It was as if he had no choice at all.

Brisbane did not know what was going to happen to him but Angelika had promised they would have their revenge on these orks if he would be patient and be strong. Well, he intended to do just that. In his position, Angelika’s promise was better than no promise at all, and Brisbane clung to it like a lifeline, a line to what his life had once been. If any part of it was up to him at all, he was going to get his old life back.

And so he sat there in the dirty straw, being patient and being strong, waiting for something to happen which he could control. He didn’t know how long he was going to have to wait in order to get his chance, but at that moment, he was ready to wait until the end of time.

Brisbane sat in his prison for about an hour before the orks took more than a passing notice of him. A group of the armored orks with the red eye shields began to gather in front of his wagon. They remained a respectable distance from him, but they were obviously waiting for something to happen.

That something was the re-emergence of Snaggletooth from the cave. The ork came striding out in the daylight—without Angelika, he left Angelika somewhere in that cave—followed by another ork whose appearance and dress were like nothing Brisbane had ever seen before. He was small for an ork, a little smaller than Half-Pint, and was dressed not in black armor or dirty rags, but in rich red robes. They flowed down the length of him with small sashes and belts of white to hold the many folds in place. He wore a small pointed cap between his two pig ears and his face and hair were immaculately clean. The ork wore a black patch over his left eye. Both the new ork and Snaggletooth came forward and stood directly in front of Brisbane’s cage.

The new ork, Brisbane being too shocked at his appearance to think up a name for him, studied Brisbane for many long minutes and then turned to Snaggletooth and muttered a few sentences to him. Snaggletooth nodded his head and slowly backed away from the new ork, stopping just before the gathered group of his black-armored comrades.

The new ork took a step closer to Brisbane’s wagon and planted his fists on his hips, pushing several folds of his robes away from his feet. He fixed his single eye on Brisbane’s face and, for the first time, Brisbane noticed the ork’s eye was red.

“Well now,” the ork said. “What do we have here? A wizard?”

It took Brisbane a moment to realize the ork had spoken in the common tongue, and not his orkish language. His teeth and lips gave the words a guttural accent, but they were understandable. Brisbane tried to say something to the ork but only mumbles could get past his gag.

The ork held up a placating hand. “No, no, please don’t try to say anything. You’ll just embarrass yourself. We know how to handle hostile prisoners, regardless of their personal powers.”

The ork had quite a command of the common tongue. No simple animal here. Brisbane saw his hopes of early escape slip down another notch. These orks were sharp.

“Personally,” the ork went on, “I don’t believe He-Who-Watches would grant the power to a member of a race as weak as yours, but as others have said, it is better to be safe than sorry.”

The ork then went silent and bowed his head. He raised his arms and began to growl in the back of his throat. At first, Brisbane could distinguish no difference between the growls of the ork and those of the dog they had met at the perimeter of the settlement. But as he listened more closely, he began to hear familiar tones and syllables in the ork’s low speech. It wasn’t common tongue and it didn’t sound like the orkish he had heard since his capture, and yet it was still familiar. It was—

With a shock Brisbane realized where he had heard some of the ork’s strange words before. He had heard Roystnof use them in his magical disciplines. The ork was casting a spell. Brisbane listened more carefully. He could only understand a fraction of the words, either due to his inexperience with magic or the ork’s harsh pronunciation.

But magic words were exacting. They had to be pronounced perfectly or they would not function. Indeed, the words Brisbane could understand were uttered correctly, so he had to assume the ork was using many words unfamiliar to him. It might even be a completely different kind of magic, like Roystnof had said Dantrius’ was. Brisbane began to get very nervous about just what may happen to him.

The ork was soon finished with his spell and he lowered his arms and raised his head. Brisbane looked at himself and his surroundings. He could discern no difference in him or them. The ork signaled to Snaggletooth and he came up to the front of Brisbane’s cage and drew his sharp knife.

“If you will turn around and slip your hands through the bars,” the robed ork said to Brisbane, “Vrak will now sever your bonds.”

Brisbane slowly did as he was told. Snaggletooth—Vrak, his real name is Vrak—slipped his knife between his wrists and, with one quick pull, cut the straps that had bound them together. Brisbane quickly moved away from the bars and began to massage his numb and swollen hands.

Vrak moved back to stand next to the robed ork, who Brisbane’s mind began to call Wizard.

“You may also remove your gag,” Wizard said to him. “It no longer matters. Any powers you might possess have been neutralized.”

Brisbane forced his aching fingers, rising from their comas with the flow of blood back into them, to undo the knot behind his head and he spat his gag out onto the floor.

“Wha—” he croaked, his voice failing him on his first attempt to use it. “What do you mean, neutralized?”

Some of the orks behind Wizard and Vrak seemed to shrink away from the scene and their mumbles grew louder.

Wizard looked at Brisbane as if he was an animal to be trained. “This is the first and last question I will answer for you. I have cast a spell over your cage so no magic will work there. If you really do have the mark of He-Who-Watches, I encourage you to attempt to call forth your power.”

Brisbane did nothing.

Wizard smiled. “I thought not. Tomorrow, you will answer my questions.” He turned with a flourish and went back into the cave with Vrak right on his heels.

Brisbane rubbed his aching hands and tried to ignore the group of orks who did not disperse with Wizard’s exit.

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This post appeared on Eric Lanke's blog, an association executive and author. You can contact him at eric.lanke@gmail.com.

Dialogues in Limbo by George Santayana

This was a tough read. Sometimes I like to challenge myself with philosophy, but I often find that the idea of the challenge is more satisfying than the challenge itself.

In this volume, Santayana explores several philosophical issues through imagined dialogues with the “shades” of several ancient philosophers. It’s a neat device (obviously copied from older philosophical traditions), and one often gets the sense that Santayana knows his shades quite well. The bickering and back-and-forths between Democritus, Alcibiades, et. al., demonstrate a tight understanding of each of the philosophical traditions and viewpoints.

Of course, Santayana is present himself in the guise of a spirit of “a stranger still living on Earth,” and he is the one who winds up bringing in the most challenging questions.

Frankly, most of it blew right past me, but I did get a sense of something useful in the dialogues around “Autologos,” a kind of avatar for the man who believes that he is the author of his own destiny, a concept that most of the ancient shades disagree with, preferring to see the hand of “the gods,” or at least the unknown, in the ultimate and proximate motive forces within us.

Democritus. You, silent Stranger, do not follow the others on their festive errand, and have not to-day opened your lips. Perhaps you are offended at our enlightened religion.

The Stranger. Not offended, but helpless and envious, like a boy admiring from afar the feats of an athlete or the gleaming armour of soldiers on the march. It is rash to intrude upon the piety of others: both the depth and the grace of it elude the stranger.

Democritus. Religion is indeed a convention which a man must be bred in to endure with any patience; and yet religion, for all its poetic motley, comes closer than work-a-day opinion to the heart of things. In invoking the aid of the gods and in attributing all things to their providence and power, each of us shatters his greatest illusion and heals his most radical madness. What madness, you will ask, and what illusion? This: that his thoughts produce one another or produce his actions: the very illusion of Autologos. These young fops, dancing away to their mock mysteries, are ingenious sophists and pleasant companions, but they are utterly without religion; and if your heart held you back as if from sacrilege from following in their train, it did not deceive you. Autologos is the one perfect atheist: he is persuaded that he rules and creates himself. What madness! And yet how irresistible is the voice of sensation, and will, and thought, at every moment of animate existence! The open-mouthed rabble shouting in the agora suppose that nothing controls them but their pert feelings and imaginations, by miracle unanimous; and even the demagogue who is pulling the strings of their ignorance and cupidity facies that he is freely ruling the world, and forgets the cupidity and ignorance of his own soul which have put those empty catch-words into his bawling mouth. Miserable puppets! The most visionary of mystics is wise in comparison. He knows how invisibly fly the shafts of Apollo: let but the lightest of them cut the knot of the heart, and suddenly there is an end of eloquence and policy and mighty determination. He knows that it suffices for the wind to change and all the fleets of thought will forget their errand and sail for another haven. Religion in its humility restores man to his only dignity, the courage to live by grace. Admonished by religion, he gives thanks, acknowledging his utter dependence on the unseen, in the past and in the present; and he prays, acknowledging his utter dependence on the unseen for the future. He sees that the issue of nothing is in his hands, seeing that he knows not whether at the next moment he will still be alive; nor what ambushed powers will traverse his path, or subtly undo the strength and the loves in his own bosom. But looking up at the broad heaven, at returning day and the revolving year, he humbly trusts the mute promises of the gods, and because of the favour they may have shown him, he may trust even himself. For what is the truth of the matter? That the atoms in their fatal courses bring all things about by necessity, and that men’s thoughts and efforts and tears are but signs and omens of the march of fate, prophetic here, and there deceptive, but always vain and impotent in themselves, never therefore wise save in confessing their own weakness, and in little things as in great, in their own motions as in those of heaven, saluting and honouring the gods.

The Stranger. But can the atoms be called gods?

Democritus. As the sun is called Phoebus and the sea Poseidon, and the heart’s warmth Love, and as this bundle of atoms is called Democritus. The name is a name, and the image imaginary, yet the truth of it is true.

The Stranger’s question is a sneaky one -- driving right at the heart of Democritus’s argument -- and he as much as admits the sophistry in his response. Autologos is wrong not because it is the gods that drive him. He is wrong because he does not know what drives him -- the gods, the atoms, or even, dare I say, himself, since everything seems to be only a name that is placed on the hidden and unknown truth.

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This post appeared on Eric Lanke's blog, an association executive and author. You can contact him at eric.lanke@gmail.com.

You Are Being Lied To: This Disinformation Guide to Media Distortion, Historical Whitewashes and Cultural Myths edited by Russ Kick

This post was originally published on a now-retired blog that I maintained from roughly 2005 to 2013. As a result, there may be some references that seem out of date. 

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This is one of those books that I heard about on NPR. It’s a collection of essays, articles and interviews with a bunch of counterculture types that pretty much purports to tell you that everything you think or hear about in the mainstream media is a load of crap. And of course, it pretty much is.

One of the most interesting things about the collection is that it was assembled in the pre-9/11 world, and so mention of the most colossal conspiracy theory in the history of mankind is nowhere to be found. And yet, reading this, you can see how such ideas begin and flourish. There’s a lot of people out there who evidently think Skull and Bones controls the world, and that all institutions support some dark and sinister purpose, even those run by people who have no clue what they’re talking about, they still unconsciously serve the bidding of the master. The people in this book really don’t like the War on Drugs, and believe that the criminalization of opiates is nothing more than the State’s way on controlling and monitoring the society. The State wants the power to relieve pain to only reside with itself, so it can decide when to use it and, more importantly, when not to use it.

Every tyrant knows that a person in pain will also reliably respond to the ‘positive’ reinforcement of relief from pain. The ability to offer that -- an escape from agony -- is a power no amount of money can buy.

Guess we’re ruled by tyrants now. The logic they seem to use is as follows:

1. Here’s something that’s going on in our society.

2. Here’s one way of interpreting that something.

3. The way that we’ve interpreted it coincides with ways tyrants have oppressed people in the past.

4. Therefore, our society must be being oppressed by tyrants.

The stuff in this book reminds me a lot of Brother Hovind. Wouldn’t it be great if that many pieces of the puzzle actually fit together? Forgot what they fit together into and whether that’s good or bad, right or wrong. Just the fact that they fit together is enough. Fitting the pieces together is all any of us ever need.

In any event, here are some books from their suggested reading list that I wouldn’t mind checking out:

The Christ Conspiracy: The Greatest Story Ever Sold by Acharya S

Papal Sin: Structures of Deceit by Garry Wills

Biological Exuberance: Animal Homosexuality and Natural Diversity by Bruce Bagemihl

The Myth of Human Races by Alain F. Corcos

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This post appeared on Eric Lanke's blog, an association executive and author. You can contact him at eric.lanke@gmail.com.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

FARCHRIST TALES

BOOK THREE:

THE UNDERGOD

It was still raining when my father, Gildegarde Brisbane II, arrived at the edge of the cliff that held Farchrist Castle above the city below, Raveltown. His career as a Farchrist Knight ended in disgrace, he felt his life and purpose crashing down all around him. He loved Amanda, my mother, and that might have been worth living for if he hadn’t loved his god more. He looked out over the rainy expanse of the Sea of Darkmarine and offered a little prayer up to Grecolus. He did not ask for forgiveness. He did not ask for mercy. All he asked for was for it to end when his body crashed into the rocks so far below. After a life lived in devotion to Grecolus, in his last moments, he wanted no part of the afterlife the god offered him. His body was found the next day by a pair of young boys who had come to dig for clams.

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During the march forced upon him for the rest of the day, Brisbane decided the rumors he had heard about orks may not have mentioned their use of magic, but they had hit the nail on the head when it came to their brutality and downright meanness.

It took them many hours to come to the end of the dark tunnel that started in the ettins’ cave and bored down into the earth, sometimes at unbelievable angles. Brisbane spent the whole time lost in the pitch that surrounded him, his eyes never adjusting to the point where he could see anything. At times, he wasn’t sure if his eyes were open or closed.

His constant companion in the blackness was the pain, the pain that seemed to have intensified with the deprivation of his sight. His chest still labored for breath from the abuse his lungs had sustained in his near-drowning in the Mystic River. The pain in his stomach was dull and constant, and the left side of his face felt like it had swelled up to epic proportions. He started to cough, his face and his abdomen competing to see which could hurt him more when he did so, and he brought up something behind his gag that could only be blood by the way it tasted. Unable to spit it out, he was forced to choke the fluid back down.

He was a mess. One ork always had his hand clamped on his wrists and every time he staggered or slowed his pace, the ork would give him a shove that hurt his arms and caused him to trip over his own feet. Three times, he actually fell to the ground and had to be hauled back to his feet amidst the echoing sounds of what he could only assume were orkish curses.

Besides these orations, the orks were mostly silent as they made their way through the rock of the mountain. He tried to carry on some sort of mental conversation with Angelika, who Snaggletooth still carried in the darkness, but his mind was too preoccupied with his pain and Angelika was too preoccupied with their inevitable vengeance. She seemed unable to tell him anything else, nothing except warnings to be strong and promises of revenge. She knew nothing specific about his fate or the fate of his friends, and these were the two subjects he was most concerned with.

First, he had no idea what was to become of him. Shortwhiskers had said orks captured people to be slaves, for food, or for both. He hated to think Snaggletooth was taking him back to his village, or clan, or tribe, or whatever it was, to roast him over a slow fire until his juicy meat fell right off his bones. He supposed that could be his eventual fate, but he thought they would want something else from him first. Snaggletooth had been ready to kill him when he had finally gotten him off their ex-leader, but the ork’s sword arm had been stayed by the sight of his medallion. Groo-mack, Snaggletooth had said to his goons, and they had quickly tied him up and gagged him. They gagged him. That was something they hadn’t done the first time he was captured. They did it the second time, though, and very effectively. A balled-up rag had been stuffed in his mouth and a second one tied around his face to keep the first one in place. He could make no articulate sounds and his screams were muffled into whimpers.

Why did they gag him? Who could he call out to for help? There was no one here in the wilderness or in this tunnel beneath the earth. They may just not want to hear him jabbering, but he had a hunch it was something more than that. Something much more than that.

Groo-mack. It kept coming back to that. What did it mean? If a pentacle meant the same thing to orks it meant to humans, groo-mack could mean any number of things, all of them in the same vein. Magic and magic-using. Did Snaggletooth think he was a wizard? That would explain the gag. If they thought he was a hostile wizard, a gag would effectively prohibit him from speaking the proper vocal tones to cast spells. And his hands being tied prevented him from making the right hand gestures.

That had to be it. The truth of it hit home for him. It made sense. They thought he was some kind of wizard so they had tied and gagged him so he couldn’t cast any spells against them.

But he did not consider himself anything but the most paltry kind of wizard. His talent was confined to a small amount of cantrips, and his one offensive spell, shocking grasp. He certainly hoped the situation never came about where he would have to prove his magical skill to the orks. He could only imagine the orks would be disappointed with his performance.

But these thoughts were secondary in his mind. Foremost was concern over his companions’ welfare since he had left them on that platform atop the peak overlooking the mountain lake. His heart still fluttered over what the absence of Roystnof’s light spell might mean for him, but Roystnof was not the only one on his mind. He felt concern for Shortwhiskers and especially Stargazer. Hopefully, they would, or had already, survived the attack of that strange bird-monster. He was sure they could, if things had gotten really nasty, have easily retreated back into the endless corridor and escaped the monster.

They would come looking for him, he was sure of that. If able, they would come looking for him. Dantrius might not like it, but that had never stopped the party’s actions before. They would come looking for him—but what would they find? Shortwhiskers might be able to find the spot on the bank of the Mystic where his scuffle and capture had taken place, but then what? A guess to look in the ettins’ cave and a lucky discovery of the secret door they could not open without the magic orkish word? He had to accept the fact that he could not count on a rescue by his friends. He was going to have to orchestrate that himself. He had been effectively separated from his friends and any reunion they were ever going to have would only result if he stayed on his toes and took advantage of the first and smallest opportunity to escape his captors.

Roystnof, Shortwhiskers, and Stargazer—their faces flashed before his blind eyes and he tried not to moan out in desperation. Other faces flashed before him, people who had passed out of his life for reasons as different as their individualities. Roundtower, his mother, even Otis seemed to hang in the air before him with the solidity of regret. They all seemed so far away now, almost as if they had never really been, and he wondered if he would live long enough to forget them entirely. He wondered if he could live long enough to forget them entirely.

Angelika, are you sure?

—Strength and patience, young Brisbane. Vengeance shall be ours.—

These are the thoughts that filled Brisbane’s head when the pain of his injuries allowed him to think as he marched down the steep grade of the dark tunnel. They were not unusual things for a young man in his situation to be thinking, but an objective observer privy to his thoughts might have found two thoughts missing from his concerns a bit unusual.

The first was that even though he was in a cramped, dark tunnel, lost impossibly far under the pressing weight of tons and tons of mountain rock, he had no traces of the claustrophobia clouding his thoughts like he had experienced in the meditation chamber. A sympathetic voice might be able to explain this away by saying he had much more realistic threats to his health to worry about than the thought-induced paralysis that seemed to seize claustrophobics, and there aren’t many who would argue against this being the case. But it was not so easy to explain his seeming unconcern for his near-lunatic behavior when the ex-leader of the orks had taken Angelika away from him. Granted, Angelika was no ordinary sword, but it might profit one to speculate on what kind of hold she must have had on him to illicit such a reaction.

The small group spent many hours in the dark tunnel, slowly making their way down and through it. Brisbane began to wonder—like he had done not long before in a different place and what already seemed like a different life—if it would ever come to an end. Like all things, however, the tunnel eventually did end and it surprised him as endings often do. The orks suddenly brought him to a halt with a rough jolt. He still had trouble seeing his surroundings, and for the past few hours he had begun to rely on his other senses. His strangely sensitive ears heard Snaggletooth’s voice mumble another ursh-low and suddenly bright light stabbed into his eyes like knives. He tried to bring his hands up to cover them but his hands were still tied behind his back and he could only shut his eyelids and try to turn his head away from the light.

For a moment, he wondered if this was how Roundtower felt when Roystnof had transformed him from stone back to flesh.

He was pushed forward again and with his eyes closed he tripped over his own feet and nearly fell to the ground for the fourth time. He tried to open his eyes a crack and the light wasn’t as bad so he opened them a little more. Another secret door had been opened before him and through his half-masted eyelids he could see the door opened onto the outside.

The sun was out, warming the late afternoon sky as if it had never been raining. His eyes were quickly getting used to the light as he stepped out into the sunshine behind Snaggletooth. He could see they had exited the mountain at its base and now stood upon a sparse and hilly plain. The Windcrest Hills, he realized. They had cut through the heart of the Crimson Mountains and now stood on the southern edge of the Windcrest Hills. He had traveled through the mountains before, but that had been along the bank of the Mystic, and that river must have been leagues to the west. The orks were going to take him into the heart of the hills, to their home, their campsite, their village.

Before they moved on, Snaggletooth came over to Brisbane and forced him down onto the earth. He was speaking to his men as he did this, and when he got him down he took out a sharp-looking knife and pressed it against Brisbane’s throat. It felt sharp, too.

Another ork, this one whose pig ears didn’t seem to stand up like those of his comrades and whom Brisbane mentally named Floppy, brought out a length of thick rope and began to tie each end of it around one of Brisbane’s ankles. When Floppy was finished, his feet were connected with a sturdy rope not much more than a foot in length.

He was hauled back up to his feet, Snaggletooth putting his sharp knife away, and the day’s forced march continued. The rope prevented him from taking a full step and he was forced to hobble along on little stutter-steps. He dismally realized the rope snuffed out his hope of running for it if the orks ever left him unguarded for so much as a second. He had a hard enough time just trying to keep up with Snaggletooth’s walking pace like this. He couldn’t beat a cripple in a foot race. And besides, Floppy had retaken his place behind Brisbane, holding onto his bound arms. These orks were determined not to let him escape, and he guessed Snaggletooth had a lot more experience at preventing an escape than he had at effecting one.

The pain of his injuries continued to plague him as he was pushed over and around the Windcrest Hills, but new aches began to sneak up on him as well. His hands had gone numb in their constraints and the aches developing in his contorted arms would have made an arthritic wince. His legs were suffering too, the strange pace and cadence forced upon him was taking its toll in muscle spasms and strains. He felt like he could not go on for much longer.

But overshadowing all of this was the growing pang of hunger that seemed to have taken over his abdomen, moving in without permission and taking up more space than it deserved. Brisbane realized he hadn’t eaten since breakfast that morning, a cheery little meal he had shared with his friends before the entrance of the forgotten temple. It had been some simple warmed-over stew, what had been the staple of their diet since they had left Queensburg, but now it seemed like it had been a gourmet feast. He could only hope the orks would take off his gag long enough to feed him, but guessing at how much they would mistrust him if he were indeed a powerful wizard, he doubted he would receive much nourishment. He bit angrily at his gag and wondered if he would ever eat again.

The late afternoon amidst the hills was warm and still, and his unusual effort was beginning to make him sweat heavily. He saw Snaggletooth had a canteen at his belt, surely filled with clean water and surely acquired from some poor merchant the orks had ransacked on the road between Queensburg and Scalt. The dirty rag stuffed in his mouth had become saturated with his own saliva, and he could get some meager relief by sucking on it, but it was nothing compared to what ten seconds with Snaggletooth’s canteen would bring.

Being forced through that dark tunnel had been a walk in the park compared to marching under the sun with his feet tied together. He began to watch the sun, begging for it to move faster across the sky. He was sure the orks would take a break at sundown, or maybe even camp for the night, but this certainly came out of desperation and not any visible evidence. The orks did not seem to tire and they looked as healthy now as they had at the beginning. He tried not to let his mind entertain surely mad notions that orks were indefatigable and never needed to sleep.

His body, in its pain and discomfort, reached a point of separation from his mind and he began to lose the image of his surroundings. They did not matter. He could be walking through scrub land, in a forest, down the main street of a city, or even across the surface of the Sea of Darkmarine. All that mattered was that he was walking, walking, walking until Snaggletooth said it was okay to stop. He just hoped he could understand the ork’s order when it came.

As it turned out, Brisbane had no trouble understanding Snaggletooth when he finally called the procession to a halt. The sun was dipping into the eastern horizon, and the party was following the curve of a large hill, when Snaggletooth stopped. Floppy let go of his wrists and Brisbane walked a few more steps until he almost collided with Snaggletooth. He looked up and around, seeing they had stopped and he was no longer being held onto, but instead of making a mad, hobbling dash for it—something he might have tried two long hours ago—he dropped to his knees and slowly put his forehead on the hard, compacted earth in front of him.

He heard Snaggletooth and his goons laugh at him. At that moment he felt so beaten, helpless, and pathetic that he would have sold his soul (assuming he had one to sell) to Damaleous himself just to be free of his gag. Not so he could cast a spell on them but just so he could stand up and spit in Snaggletooth’s face.

Go to the hells you pig-faced son of a bitch. Angelika says I’m going to stomp around in your intestines and I’m going to enjoy it.

The orks went about setting up a camp for the night, or what must pass for a camp in orkish circles. They had no mules to carry their gear and, as a result, they had no items of luxury such as tents, bedrolls, or cookware. An ork camp consisted mainly of a hastily made campfire around which they huddled for warmth. Brisbane should have expected this from the orkish campsite they had stumbled onto during their journey up the Mystic, but he wasn’t exactly thinking clearly. The orks had left him where he had collapsed and they built their campfire a little way off to his left.

When they had their fire going well and the sky had darkened enough to be called night, Brisbane looked around him and saw Floppy producing and handing out thin strips of preserved meat from a pack he had been carrying. Brisbane’s stomach growled at him and, even though he knew he had little hope of getting anything, he got to his knees and crawled over to where the orks were reclining on the ground.

He was nearly on top of them before anyone noticed him. They all turned to look at him and he stopped where he was, putting his best look of vacuous hunger on his face. The orks turned to look at their leader and Snaggletooth addressed them in curt tones.

They’re not going to feed me! The thought flashed across Brisbane’s mind like a brushfire. They’re too scared of my magic to take off my gag. The only spell I know requires the use of my hands, too. Please, please, I won’t try to do anything.

One of the orks got up and started coming over to him. This one, at close to six feet, was at least two inches shorter than any of his companions. Half-Pint had a canteen of water in one hand and two strips of the preserved meat in the other. He knelt down before Brisbane and began to growl at him in his harsh-sounding tongue. He put the canteen down on the ground and the strips of meat down on top of it. He took a sharp knife out of his belt, one much like Snaggletooth’s, and pressed the tip of the blade against Brisbane’s throat.

The ork put his finger across his lips and said, “Shhh…”

Brisbane got the point. If he made one sound, Half-Pint was going to stab the knife into his neck. No noise, Half-Pint, you can trust me, nothing but chewing and swallowing. He slowly nodded his head.

Half-Pint reached behind Brisbane’s head and untied the gag. He took the securing strap off and Brisbane let the wadded-up rag fall out of his mouth. He stretched his jaws and they popped painfully. Half-Pint picked up one of the strips of meat and stuffed it into Brisbane’s mouth, the dagger still pressed against his throat. He began to chew. He did not know what kind of meat it was, but it was delicious. Whatever had been used to preserve it had dried it out a little, but he was in no position to complain. It was soon gone and Half-Pint stuffed the second one in.

Half-Pint held the canteen while he waited for Brisbane to swallow his second strip of meat. Brisbane quickly did and opened his mouth to show he was finished. Half-Pint held the canteen up to Brisbane’s lips and began to pour waves of crystal-clear water down his throat. Brisbane gurgled noisily as he swallowed as much as he could before Half-Pint took the canteen away and closed it up. When the ork did, Brisbane felt like a puppy deprived of its favorite treat. He looked pleadingly into the ork’s eyes, but Half-Pint only stuffed the rag back into his mouth and retied the gag, tighter than it had been before.

The meal had lasted no more than a minute and Brisbane had done just what he had been told. He wished he did know some ultra-powerful spell so he could speak just one word and have Snaggletooth and his goons burst into never-ending flames. He bet himself Roystnof would know some kind of spell like that and he would have used it as soon as that spit-soaked rag had fallen from his mouth.

Half-Pint pushed Brisbane around and got him to lay face down on the ground. He offered up no resistance even though he did not know what the ork was going to do. Half-Pint sat on his back and began to undo the bonds that had held his hands behind his back all day. He couldn’t see, but he knew Half-Pint had his sharp knife in his teeth, ready to plunge it into his back if he even flinched the wrong way.

Soon his hands were free and they dropped numb to his sides. Half-Pint began to massage them roughly and the blood started to run back into them. It hurt, but he decided the pain was better than no feeling at all. He still ached all over and the side of his face felt swollen and tender. He tried to rest it against the ground, but it was too painful and he had to lay his head down with his nose pointed the other way.

All too soon, Half-Pint began to retie his hands together behind his back. He tried not to whimper as his bonds were returned to him and the ork got off his back and went back to the campfire, his duties completed. Brisbane rolled over onto his side and watched the orks finish their meal, seeming to gorge themselves, and chat in their strange language. He was still hungry, but at least he was no longer starving, and he tried to keep his mind off his stomach.

For quite some time, Brisbane tried to make some kind of sense out of what the orks were saying to each other, but it was impossible and eventually he had to give it up. It was hard for him to make out individual words, he was unfamiliar with the syntax of the language and it was a chore just to figure out where one word ended and the next one started. He heard the groo-mack word several times, and he could only assume they were talking about him, but what they were saying and what it meant for his future were as unknowable as the secrets of creation.

Eventually, the orks began to get ready for a night’s rest and Brisbane had a glimmer of hope that perhaps they would sleep without guarding him and he could slip away into the night. But this was not to be the case, as he saw Half-Pint preparing a spot where he could sit up and watch him. He didn’t know how many watches the orks were going to set, but he realized that with five of them, they could set enough so no one would be in danger of falling asleep while on duty.

He stayed just where he was, lying on his side, and let his head rest in the dirt. He watched Snaggletooth settle down to sleep with Angelika laying length-wise by his side.

He cursed the ork. Four, they only have four available for guard duty because Snaggletooth is the leader now and leaders don’t stand watch. Leaders get to sleep the night through and wake bright-eyed and fresh in the morning. Just ask the ork laying at the bottom of the Mystic River what it’s like. He knows. He used to be a leader. Leaders are special people with powers above the regular man, aren’t they, Snaggletooth? You’re the leader now and you’ve got the power, but let me ask you something. Why can’t you pull that sword out of her scabbard? Big strong leader like you should be able to do that. Why can’t you pull Angelika out of her scabbard? I can.

He began to drift off to sleep despite the hardness of the ground and his uncomfortable position. He had been walked to exhaustion, and his body just shut down for a night of much needed rest.

Sometime during the night Brisbane had a dream. In it, he and Stargazer were in the clearing where they had met Ellahannah. But they were not petting the unicorn, they were making love underneath a soft shower of pink flower petals. Ellahannah was there, but she was not alone. Dozens of unicorns were there, all running in a mad circle around the lovers in the center of the clearing. Stargazer was on top of him and as she quickened her pace, taking more and more of him inside her, the unicorns began to run faster and faster in an ever-tightening circle. His head reeled with sexual ecstasy, his hands cupped around Stargazer’s buttocks and his eyes fixed on her full and swinging breasts, and just as his dream-body thundered in climax, he jerked himself awake and found himself staring into the eyes of his guard. The ork was smiling at him and Brisbane was sure he somehow knew what he had been dreaming about. He rolled over onto his other side, turning his back on the ork, and tried to go back to sleep.

Eventually, he did. 

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This post appeared on Eric Lanke's blog, an association executive and author. You can contact him at eric.lanke@gmail.com.