High Orc (5)
[I believe I once told you. You're far too curious for your own good.]
Now, when was that? I honestly can't recall.
No one's ever accused me of having a bad memory, mind you. Though perhaps I've heard that particular criticism so many times, I simply let it wash over me without noticing.
[That curiosity of yours might be the death of you.]
Oh come now, Narinhoon. Weren't we something like friends? How could you say such an ill-omened thing? I'm wounded. And here I am, the very man who taught you the human tongue.
Do orcs not have teachers, I wonder? What a disreputable species you are...
[You eavesdropped on a state secret. I cannot pretend it never happened.]
Curiosity was my crime. Though who could have guessed that "secret" would be the plan to burn Ainuwail to ash with dragonfire? Frankly, it exceeded anything I'd imagined.
[I will give you a choice. Say you will join the plan, and I will spare your life.]
A choice. A choice, he says.
Narinhoon, let me ask you one thing. In this grand plan of yours — burning Ainuwail, slaughtering thousands of centaurs, clawing back the throne of the Steppe at last — where exactly does my choice factor in? What could a mere ink-slinger like me possibly accomplish by choosing? Stop it? See it done? Neither, I'm afraid.
[Will you not raise a dynasty with me, then?]
Never said I would. Narinhoon — I was always afraid of you. Even in that very moment, when you spoke of setting the world aflame, it was your eyes I feared. Unshaken. Perfectly clear.
Compared to those eyes, your sharp fangs and scar-riddled body meant nothing. Every other orc carried the same.
I knew from the first moment I laid eyes on you that you were no ordinary creature.
You pulled me out of an orc prison. Honestly, our acquaintance could have ended right there. It was only because I needed your protection that I ended up playing tutor to an orc's letters.
You were an excellent student. Truly — a capacity for learning and an intelligence no orc had any right to possess. In candor, you were sharper than even my first pupil.
And your brilliance frightened me too. With every passing day you grew, it felt like raising a monster.
Narinhoon, one more question. If a monster you taught goes on to devour people — does the crime of murder fall upon the teacher who raised that monster?
[You are an eccentric, but an excellent teacher. I will find you a role befitting you.]
And let me guess — you want me to teach another monster? I'd rather respectfully decline that one.
—Help us destroy the elves, he says.
[Yes.]
What did I answer, back then?
"I cannot join this plan. Even if you command it, I will not obey."
Hah — that was a rather fine answer, if I say so myself. Almost unlike me.
Spending all that time around Vesta, that cheeky little sprout, seems to have taught me to say a few romantic things after all.
[Why? Does it seem unfeasible to you?]
How would I possibly judge that?
Narinhoon, I am not a scholar of war. On matters of battle, you'd best me easily. My learning falls far short of evaluating a plan you drew up.
"Why didn't you suggest destroying humanity instead? I might have given that a real thought."
Yes. If he'd wanted to smash the Empire, I might have swallowed my pride and followed along. Those imperial ink-slingers had put me through quite a lot, after all.
[What an odd creature you are. You'd choose the elves over your own kind?]
And what of it? What a pointless question — not like you at all.
Narinhoon, I am, without question, an opportunist. An eccentric, and a wretched excuse for a human being on top of it. If it kept this old body of mine alive, I'd stoop to cowardice as often as needed.
And yet. There are things one does not trade away. A man whose life was saved by a knight does not curse the knight as a licensed thug. From that moment on, he can only look up to him.
[I will not deny you that.]
No matter what terms he offered, I would not betray the elves.
Ahak — they say my name means reunion, and that the people of the Steppe live true to their names.
How could I set fire to the very place where that reunion was to happen?
And so, I must courteously decline your proposal.
[...I see. I understand your heart.]
I was going to die. Knowing it and acting anyway, I couldn't call it an injustice.
I had defied my chieftain, so death was only fitting. And from what I'd seen of Narinhoon's skill, he'd finish it cleanly, without pain. That was the thin comfort I clung to.
[Take him to the cells.]
For reasons I never learned, Narinhoon did not cut off my head.
"What's all that racket out there..."
Ahak, his face gaunt and haggard, lifted his head.
"You there — guard?"
He called out in the orc tongue. But no answer came back. Had the brute stepped away?
"That's odd."
An unsettled feeling crept over him. The hairs on his neck stood on end.
"Don't tell me..."
Had that plan of his been moved up?
"Are you truly going through with it?"
—Are you really so bent on forcing through that mad scheme, Narinhoon, that you'd wake the dragon's wrath itself?
"Do you have any idea how far that rage will spread?"
Narinhoon. That is not a number a man can calculate. Perhaps the flames consuming Ainuwail would ride the wind and leap across into the Steppe — who could say.
"You'll burn up with the rest of it."
Because he'd felt some lingering fondness for his old teacher, Ahak found Narinhoon less hateful than simply unbearable.
Chained as he was, he stared out at the far distance. Nowhere could he find his belated pupil.
After much agonizing, Ahak made his decision.
"I have to get out."
He couldn't sit in this cell and rot. He twisted his body with everything he had. The chains scraped his skin raw.
—Chains like these couldn't hold me if they tried.
At least, not before his pupil arrived. There had been a time when he wandered beyond the Empire alone. Listing everything he'd lived through would fill an entire volume of adventure tales.
It wasn't his first time in a cell, either.
Trading blows with imperial scholars had been his daily bread, and prison was a place he'd come to know rather intimately.
—One has to know when to stop, though. Calling elves herbivores, claiming the Amazones clip off one breast to draw a bow better — what a pack of lunatics.
Living in the Empire as a defender of elves, an elvophile, practically required a certain familiarity with prison life.
And with escaping it, naturally.
—Even when the orcs kidnapped me, breaking out itself was never the hard part. I only gave up because I had no way of shaking a pursuit.
When it came to pursuit, orcs surpassed even elves. How was a man supposed to outrun a species that bred wolves?
"Ngh."
He strained until the veins stood red in his eyes. Thanks to Rhea bringing him food, he still had strength left to spend.
Clang. At long last, the chains came loose.
"Whew. Son of a—"
He rose, spitting out thick curses, and steadied his swaying body as best he could before stumbling out of the cave.
"Huh?"
"Oh."
The moment he stepped outside, he ran straight into Rhea. That much he could have handled — but the shaggy ball of fur beside her was the problem.
After all that trouble breaking out of prison, a werewolf was waiting for him at the exit.
Why is that thing awake?
Perhaps it meant to guard Rhea — it had sprung up in an instant. God only knew what it had been fed growing on, but its shoulders stood higher than Ahak's own head.
Glittering eyes, a wolf's face twisted into a snarl, jaws stretched wide to bare its teeth.
He'd have believed it if someone told him the thing had eaten a person last night.
Truly, a sight bad for the heart.
Grrrr—!
"You bit— Shh! Shhhiiit!"
As if a beast understood human words. The creature, feeding on Ahak's panic, grew only more worked up. Left alone, it would surely rally every orc in the warren.
No — before that, it would be chewing on him.
Grrrrrrr—!
"Muzzle! Someone get a muzzlleee!"
He missed his pupil. Not the pudding-soft one — the first one.
Vesta...!
Because that man would have cut the werewolf down with a single stroke.
—And by now he'd be living cozily with some nameless elf woman...!
Hot emotion surged up in him. Ahak raised his fists and squared into a boxer's stance.
"To think you'd drive me to this."
Boxing — the oldest of all martial arts, handed down for a thousand years. It was said a boxer who honed the craft to its limit could face even a savage beast with nothing but his two fists.
"My record stands at nine wins in ten bouts, you mongrel...!"
And his fallen opponents were a varied bunch. The seventy-year-old dean of the academy. A pickpocket of perhaps thirteen. A prison guard who'd sold him out...
Gaze locked on gaze. A standoff.
"What do you think you're doing."
Neither the werewolf who'd risen first, nor Ahak, had been the one to speak.
"Yes. It's alright. Let's stay calm."
Rhea stroked the back of the creature's neck, and it sank back down onto all fours.
"That's right. Crawl on the ground like the beast you are...!"
"Such harsh words again."
"Put a leash on it, why don't you. Tch. I'll be going now."
"I shouldn't offer water to a jailbreaker, but — where are you headed?"
His footsteps stopped. He found himself wondering whether he really ought to leave Rhea behind in this orc den.
"I'm going to apply for asylum."
"Asylum? With the elves, perhaps?"
He nodded.
"Will you follow me?"
Frankly, it was unlike him. He could barely keep his own hide intact — and yet here he was, proposing to take on dead weight.
—Enough. Useless thinking.
If he absolutely had to give a reason—
It would be because he kept remembering the meal she had brought him.