Worlds Apart by Jay Aury

Author:Jay Aury [Aury, Jay]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2018-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

Chief of the Clan

Socretha strode through the camp. The tents of the bands sprawled about the flatlands that the clan made their traditional home. Cruel totems of bone and hide decorated the outskirts. Yet how much had it changed in but a night, she marvelled. Tension was thick in the air as the orcs moved about. Though normally the meeting of the clan would be marked with drink and sport, there was a heavy, subdued feeling. Every orc stared at the chieftain’s great tent, as if expecting any moment the hide peak to erupt with the wizard who had come upon them so suddenly. Perhaps they were right to fear, Socretha thought.

But today she would find out.

The other night she had met with a number of the band leaders. Around a single bonfire, the orcs had talked in low guttural voices.

She had listened to them, stroking Luan’s fur, the worg settled beside her and watching the others with fathomless golden eyes.

“Never!” Borgron barked, slamming his fist against the ground. “Never will we follow a human!”

“But he is powerful,” Morlick said, his voice a whisper. The shaman hunched in his tattered robes. A necklace of human skulls was strung around his neck, his crooked staff rising tall beside him. Wizened, his eyes gleamed from the darkness of his hood. “Powerful as the spellcasters of the elves, perhaps. It could be… useful to have such a one among us.”

“But lead us?” Urick growled. The brute had ogre blood in him, his skin a coppery cast, and he towered over the other orcs. Nearly as large as Morgoroth had been, Urick was garbed in only a loincloth, his heavy hands locked before him in fists. “We let a magic one lead us?”

Fargrim rattled the knucklebones in his hand. The pale orc tossed them, his still face painted with the crude semblance of a skull. “The bones say we follow him.”

“I am not listening to your bones!” Borgron snapped.

Fargrim raised his eyes, black as pitch. “You should. They are made of wise ones.”

“That one’s a pigs’!” Borgron snapped.

“Pigs are wise,” Fargrim said serenely.

Socretha listened to them bicker and argue among themselves, keeping her own counsel. When at last she spoke, the other orcs fell silent.

“We must know more.”

They stared at her. Morlick coughed, a rasping sound. “What do you mean?”

“We must know what he wants. If it will benefit the Clan, then perhaps he should lead us. He is powerful, but we are not slaves. We are Orcs of the Iron Tooth Clan.”

“And,” Morlick had glanced about the others then “Who will ask?”

She could see the image of Morgoroth’s death rise in the mind of each. She’d leaned forward into the light and the heat of the flames.

“I will.”

And so she was. She had their support in that, she knew. Borgron had been Morgoroth’s greatest ally. He may be troublesome, but like Morgoroth, a coward against anything but the certain, and the rest would follow her lead for their own reasons. No guards stood beside the doorway of the chieftain’s great tent.

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