The Half's Way

"But you also know that every other orc tribe denounced the Treaty after the death of their God-Queen, about ten years ago, right?"

Shauba pursed her lips. "Father didn't really talk about that."

"Well, everyone else does," Mikel said. "The Red Tusks are heretics, according to the other orc tribes. Their tribe occupies choice land up in these hills -- defensible and within striking distance for raids all over the Marches. So the Red Tusks have a target on their backs. People in Hillcrest fear they're about to be dragged into a Red Tusk-Pikeskull war."

Shauba supposed that one of the perks of living and working in a tavern was that people in taverns drank and talked. Mikel seemed to hear all the news before she did. "So would they? Would Hillcrest fight for the Red Tusks?"

Mikel shrugged. "I suspect Lord Grigor will do whatever helps him in his claim to become Lord of all the Marches. I doubt getting into an orc war will accomplish that. And..."

"And?"

"Well, I think the townspeople like Smashfest well enough, but most of them aren't so fond of orcs," Mikel said. His look was apologetic. "Present company excluded."

Shauba threw an arm over Mikel's shoulders. She was almost a head taller than him. She squeezed him cheerfully and kissed him on the forehead. "Present company is all that matters," she said. "Fuck the rest."

**

Shauba's thoughts pestered her throughout the day, like a cloud of angry gnats. As happy as she was to have Mikel by her side, her instincts told her it was the wrong choice. By the time they camped for the evening, she was in a positively sour mood.

"No fire," she grumbled, as she saw Mikel start to gather kindling. "Father said it was less than two days' walk on the trail to Esker. The tribes raid each other all the time. If the threat of war is so great, it's best we not be seen at night. Someone might mistake us for the enemy."

Mikel considered that, and nodded. They sat down to a silent supper, supplementing dry rations with some wild plums she'd picked along the way.

It was one thing for Shauba to walk into a war zone. These were her people. Shagdab had taught her the language and the culture. He'd taught her how to fight.

It was another thing for her to bring Mikel along. He may have enjoyed getting rammed by the brewer cousins, but orcs would snap him in two. It would be better for him to stay in Hillcrest.

"Mikel, it is dangerous out here," she said, gnawing on a dry piece of meat. "You have to promise that if anything happens to me, you'll go back to Hillcrest."

"Nothing is going to happen to you. They'll have the ceremony, and we'll figure out what to do next."

Why did Shauba's mother put him in this position? Didn't she see how disastrous this could be? What was she thinking?

"I don't care what my mother said to you. She doesn't really know this place, or these people," Shauba said. "If you don't swear to me, on Aersus and Alithea and all those other gods you pray to... then I'll take you back to town and bind you to a chair."

He arched an eyebrow in skepticism. "So if you're in trouble, you want me to abandon you?"

"Yes!"

"I can't."

"You have to."

"No, I don't."

Shauba suppressed a growl. She rubbed her temples in frustration. "Okay. If I'm in trouble, you'll go back to Mother and get help. She knows the language, and she knows some of the other Red Tusks."

Mikel thought about this. "Okay," he said finally.

"Swear it!"

He sighed. "I swear it, on Aersus's cup, and the light of Alithea."

"Good."

They ate in silence after that. When he was done, Mikel reached for his lute, which he had propped against a tree. Shauba gave him a warning shake of the head.

"The music will help us go to sleep," he said.

"No. I'll stand watch," said Shauba. "You need your rest. We'll start early in the morning."

The growing darkness brought a chill, and the haunting hoo of an owl. But for Shauba, it did not bring blindness. She could see quite well in the starlight. Not as well as a full-blooded orc, but better than any human.

She watched Mikel as he rolled up in his blanket. This time, she let the tears flow freely. Angry, hot tears.

The entire fucking human world owed her a debt the size of a mountain. Mikel was the only friend she'd ever had.

Shauba had already gone through the sack and the items her mother had insisted upon, to see what she actually needed. Once she was gone, he'd have to turn back. He'd sworn it.

When she heard Mikel's soft snores, Shauba picked up her axes. She took one last gaze at his spare, sleeping form, and crept back onto the trail.

**

Shagdab rushed her, launching one vicious sword cut after another. At fourteen, Shauba weighed as much as many human men. But her father was half again as heavy, and strong as a boar. She resisted the urge to backpedal, to let him control her movement.

Instead, she sidestepped, forcing him to change direction, cutting his momentum. The blade whistled past her head. If it hadn't been blunted, it might have sliced off some of her hair. Shagdab's blows were wild, leaving openings. But they came so fast, it was all she could do to stay out of the way.

"I've fought a few humans, and a lot of orcs. A human wants to kill you," Shagdab once told her. "An orc wants to decorate with your guts."

These were orcish strikes, full of wanton rage and bloodlust. She used the long haft of her war ax to deflect a stab, but she didn't try to block. Instead, she moved, staying close to him, always forcing him to adjust.

"Don't be rash, girl. Never clash against a larger opponent. Move with him. Dance with him," Shagdab had told her. "You are lighter and quicker on your feet than any orc. You are smart. Use that."

She grabbed her chance when it came. Shagdab overextended as he swung. She hooked her axe over the sword blade, catching it between the top of the haft and the beard of the cutting edge, turning it down, taking his balance. Completing the motion, she swung the other end of the haft up against his face. She softened the blow. It wouldn't leave more than a bruise on his thick orcish skull.

Shagdab staggered backwards. She followed, smoothly turning the ax again for an overhand cut that could have split his head in two.

Shagdab grinned, baring sharp teeth. He tossed his practice sword on the ground in surrender. "A good place to finish," he said. "I must return to Esker tonight."

Shauba mopped her sweaty face with a hand. "When will I go to Esker with you?"

"Never," he said. "The human town is a better place for you."

"They hate me here! I belong with my Orcish people!"

Shagdab's mouth twisted bitterly. "Your Orcish people will lie to you, steal from you, and murder you if you have something they want."

"So will humans! Father, you don't know what they're really like."

"Humans and orcs," Shagdab said. He gestured for her to walk with him back towards her mother's house. "Both may stab you in the back, yes. But there is a voice inside the human's head that will make him feel sorry for doing it. I know one thing about humans, Shauba. Their devotion is a precious thing, It's a gold coin in a heap of pigshit. If you have a human's love, never take it for granted."

Shauba had been walking towards Esker for at least an hour through the night, her face tight with dried tears. Memories flowed through her mind, like water from a busted well. But it was that last one, from five years ago, that made her turn around and head back to Mikel.

Shagdab had been speaking of Shauba's mother. But Mikel loved Shauba too.

And she loved him.

Clouds now concealed most of the stars, but Shauba could still see the dim outline of the trail. She could see the jagged lay of the land, and swaying tree boughs against the sky. As she began to near the hillside where she'd left her friend, she spotted a fox, blinking at her from across a meadow.

And she heard voices. Orcish voices, and Mikel's. But what orcs were these? Red Tusks?

Shauba circled around, careful to approach from downwind. There was light coming from the camp. The orcs were carelessly loud. Between their arguing and the breeze, she was able to creep close enough to see them through the brush. The lamp was lit. It had been set at the edge of their little clearing.

Three orcs towered over Shauba's friend, who sat leaning against a tree. They were well armed, each brandishing weapons. One held a strung bow at his hip. The two on either side of the archer wielded a sword and war ax. Their armor looked to be pieces of cured leather with spikes, and fur that left their powerful arms and legs bare.

Shauba slunk as close as she dared. These were not Red Tusks. She could just make out the marking etched into one of the orcs' sage-green biceps. A skull pierced by a long spear.

"How many soldiers Hillcrest send?" the ax warrior demanded of Mikel, in the broken Doric tongue of the Marches.

Mikel frowned. He squirmed uncomfortably. His arms were tied together at wrists. The rope binding them was thrown over a branch above his head. The sword-armed warrior held the other end, jerking Mikel to his knees when he didn't answer quickly enough. "Definitely Grigor Wallams's personal guard," Mikel said. "Which is about five hundred men. Then there are the levies. It's difficult counting those because there are, oh... at least five villages up in the northern hills-" He yelped, hitting the back of his head against the tree bark as he was tugged up again. "The real question is whether the Clearwater cavalry will join the fight. That's what they talk about in the taverns-"

"When beer trader come?" snarled the archer.

"Shut the fuck up about beer! This is important!" the ax warrior roared in Orcish. Then to Mikel: "How many soldiers?"

"Guess about fifty men from each village... So about six hundred levies... do you want me to count the war wagons, too?"

"What war wagons?!"

"He is bluffing," the sword warrior said in Orcish. "He probably has the plague. We should have killed him already."

"Not before he tells about the beer."

Shauba unsheathed her axes, one in each hand. She'd never fought two opponents before, let alone three. But she had no choice. She had to be quick. Cut down the odds and keep more than one from attacking her at once. Fortunately, the orcs were in something close to a line, with the ax warrior closest to her, and his back turned.

While Mikel estimated how many soldiers could fit into each war wagon, Shauba took a deep breath. The thump of her pulse was deafening. She slid into position behind the ax warrior, who was now trying to count men on his hands.

Shauba launched herself from cover, like lead shot from a sling. The ax warrior turned just as her woodsman's ax sliced through his fingers, and his jugular behind them. He dropped to his knees, dark blood spurting from the wound.

She rushed past the dying orc. The archer had already turned towards her, placing an arrow to the string. With a weapon in each hand, she couldn't swing the war ax like she wanted. But she didn't need to. She gripped it close to the blade, punching the axehead into the bow stave and the archer's face. As he stumbled back, she followed with the hatchet. It sheared through fur and leather, lodging in his breastbone. As the stricken orc fell, he drew Shauba forward. The slicing cut of the third orc's sword nearly took her face off.

Shauba leapt back. Now she only had her war ax. She backpedaled as the big orc charged, cutting low, then high.

Shagdab's voice was in her ear. Don't let him control your movement.

She sidestepped, just avoiding tripping over the ax warrior. Shauba tried to deflect the sword, tried to hook the blade.

But this orc was well-balanced. He was covered with scars. He had seen battle before, fought off those who were trying their utmost to kill him. She had not.

Shauba had killed two people. With barely a thought. In the time it took to draw two breaths.

His sword licked out like a snake's tongue. Shauba barely dodged, the blade biting into her axe haft.

She circled the orc, feinting with a swing. She was near Mikel now, who struggled to untie his hands.

"Get back, Mikel!" she cried. Her ax haft barely met the sword cut when it came, deflecting it to the space where Mikel had just been. She dodged the backswing. The orc roared, again launching a flurry of attacks at her. Shauba scrambled to parry each blow.

Shagdab's voice shouted at her head. Don't clash with him!

The orc snarled with confidence. "You're no orc," he said. "Just a half-quag bitch." Just as he was about to take another swing, he grunted and staggered forward from a blow to his back.

Mikel was behind him, holding a solid stick in his still-bound hands.

The orc roared with rage, swinging wildly behind him. The blade would have scalped Mikel if he was taller. The Pikeskull crashed into Mikel, knocking the human down as he lurched away from Shauba's cut. But on her follow, she slammed the haft into the side of his bald head.

He swayed, and then stumbled over Mikel's flailing legs.

He's off-balance. You're quicker than him. You can beat him.

Shauba rushed him again. He parried the blow, but he was still unsteady. She launched attack after attack, forcing him to defend. Then Mikel came at him again from the side, bashing the orc in the knee with the tree branch.

We could take him captive. Bring him to the Red Tusks.

The orc's leg collapsed. Shauba knocked his sword offline and slammed the flat of her ax into his face. The sword dropped from his hand. He toppled, just like a tree, and did not move.

Mikel glanced at the other two orcs, who lay dead. He stared at her. His lips were pressed thin, and he looked at her like his eyes were daggers. It took a few moments before words came.

"Gods, Shauba. You left me here alone!"

"I came back-"

"I woke up and you weren't there." His voice broke. "I looked for you!"

Mikel didn't get mad that often. In fact, she couldn't remember the last time.

"You lit the lamp," she said. The camp was secluded, but the light must have drawn the orcs like moths.

"Of course I lit the lamp, Shauba! I can barely see anything past my own hands! I tried to be quiet, but I couldn't find you."

He was shaking. More from the shock, she hoped, than his anger. "They were going to shoot me right there, so I blurted out that I was going to a Lok'gorash for a powerful warrior of the Red Tusks. When they heard that, they hesitated. I told them every story I could think of. They had me bind my own wrists and tied me to the tree. They wouldn't even come close to me. They were just going to... going to..."

Shauba cut the rope binding his hands, eyeing him with worry. Belatedly, she thought to put out the flame in the lamp.

The unconscious orc groaned.

"Why did you come back?" Mikel asked, as they hauled the heavy orc's legs over to roll him onto his back. She helped Mikel bind his thick, scarred wrists.

"I remembered something Shagdab once told me," Shauba said. "I realized I need you."

Mikel gave a frustrated grunt. "Couldn't you -- for once -- think before you act, instead of after?"

She stared at him. She'd never seen him like this, not since they were little. "I'm sorry, Mikel. I was so wrong. You've always been there for me. I swear it, I'll do the same for you. On Aersus's cup, and the light of Alithea."

"You don't even know what that means!"

"I know what it means to you."

She yanked her hatchet out of the dead orc's chest. They sat down against a tree. Shauba's heart was still pounding.

She'd almost left Mikel to die alone. She'd come here to embrace her orc heritage and she'd already killed two of them.

Which, she realized, was also part of her heritage.

"As soon as he wakes up, we should continue on to the hillfort," she said.

"I can't sleep now anyway."

Restless, eager to keep her mind off of what she had done, she got up again. She cut a piece of fur off of one of the corpses to clean her blades. "You said they wouldn't come near you. One of them thought you had a plague," she recalled. "What plague?"

Mikel shrugged. "Nothing I've heard of. After all this, you still want to go to the hillfort?"

The orc groaned again. He tried to roll over, and his groans turned into angry growls as he struggled with his bindings. Maybe they needed to gag him.

Shauba wiped cooling sweat from her brow. Gods be damned. This was going to be an adventure. For good or ill, she was going to discover the world she'd been kept from for so long.

She smiled weakly at Mikel. "What? Aren't we having fun yet?"

**

The orc, bound and stripped of his armor, slowed them down at first. Shauba whacked him a few times with the flat of his sword. He was a tough one, to be sure. After that, they made reasonably good time, stopping after dawn for a quick meal. Just after noon, they were hailed by a Red Tusk orc rider.

He wore a long leathery cloak over the same sort of spiked piece armor the Pikeskulls had. A bowl-shaped helmet and red tassel framed his pointed ears. Like Shagdab had been, most orcs were bald and had little body hair. But they often decorated their heads with some sort of hair-like adornment. The scout had a long lance, which he immediately used to poke the captive Pikeskull, as if to prove that his adversary was a creature made of flesh.

The rider's hogmount was the next focus of Shauba's attention. Neither horses nor dogs cared for the company of orcs. So orcs improvised. They bred pigs into various roles, and this was one of them. Shagdab and his Red Tusk companions often rode to Smashfest on hogmounts. Indeed, the festival had contests for the largest bred hogs. Orcs always won.

This hog was as tall as Shauba's chest at the shoulder; so fat that the rider's muscled legs splayed out to the sides. Shauba doubted its swaying gait could reach anything near the speed of a horse. But in a collision between the two, the horse would be left torn and shattered. Ten times the weight of a human, the hogmount would be as unstoppable as a boulder.

Her gaze slid back to the rider's legs. It seemed orc clothing tended to leave their limbs mostly bare. His greenish gray skin was exposed all the way up to the perilous curve of his ass. The thrill of combat still coursed through her, but Shauba also hungered for a different sort of thrill.

"You are the eldest of Shagdab?" Shauba looked up, realizing that Mikel had just introduced her. "And already victorious in battle against our foes!'' The rider spoke to her in Orcish. "I am Alog. I will lead you the rest of the way." He tapped the captive again. "Move, Fuckskull!"

**

The Esker was a long ridge, running roughly north to south. Where natural forces of wind and water might have smoothed it out into a grassy bluff, the Red Tusk orcs had gouged out a rugged home along its eastern face. An outer fence encircled the entire encampment. A sentry there hailed Alog, who'd spoken little on their afternoon journey, and let them through the gate.

Within the fence was a gently sloped, open pasture marked with low stone wall-and-ditch fortifications. Young orcs tended to the pigs grazing and rooting in the field. Shauba was amazed to see the brownish skin and long hair of adolescent half-orcs among the herders.

All this time, there were others here, just like me. Why didn't you let me come, Father?

Beyond the pasture was another stone wall; this one twice as tall as Shauba, with orc warriors standing atop it. The gate to the wall was open, and the rider led them into a muddy village that abutted the rocky cliff of the ridge.