A new tribe of orcs has come to ask their fellows for a place amongst them. A new and unusual tribe.
guest story by Zyzzyva
tags: heroic azuras, nsfw
It had been twenty-eight years since the orcgemót at Silver Valley, and so it was time again.
The orcgemót at Silver Valley was the greatest event of the orcs; the greatest event of the West; the greatest event in the world, perhaps, although precious few people had attended both the coronation of an Empress of Ceraphon and an orcgemót to say. The more distant tribes began moving a year or more in advance, to ensure they made it there in time. The nearer tribes had spent nearly as long preparing the valley for the event. It was common enough to say there was no safety in the Far West, and true enough; but for the twenty-eight days of the orcgemót, the magic and the solidarity of the orcs ensured that no thinking creature could harm another in the bounds of Silver Valley. Even dragons did not trifle with the orcgemót (although perhaps that was simply because they disdained to be so bound).
For the last week before the orcgemót, the upper reaches of the Silver River and the near side of the Silver Pass were choked with people, as most of the orcs alive converged there. The vast camp in the valley bottom was, for a month, larger than any city west of Iphegnaea in Ceraphon. It was a riotous display of colour and style: dyed pavilions with fluttering banners, intricately carved and intarsia’d wagons, actual houses packed and reassembled from the near-weightless wood of the greywillow, circles of stones unwalled and open to the sky, and tents, tents, tents of every description. The Silver Valley thundered with noise as the largest market festival in the world took place—this beyond doubt; even the Great Market below the imperial palace in Tecera had nothing on the orcgemót. Anything that orcs made or traded or treasured could be found there: stones, wood, metal, food, drink, carvings, tools, toys, clothes, jewelry, weapons, art, stories, songs, friendship, love. Nor were orcs alone the traders, although the orcgemót was far from the lands of other peoples. Humans from the east, naga from the south, people with the heads of birds or the bodies of octopi and stranger things still from across the Aklan Mountains to the west: all—or at least the most intrepid of them—came to Silver Valley for goods and bargains that simply did not exist elsewhere.
It was not just a trade fair, either (although no one would ever imagine that so many orcs could be gathered without one). News was traded, as well as items; for a month the vast, extended family of the orcs was one again, and gossip great and petty washed through the valley as everyone and everything got caught up on the doings of everyone and everything else. This year there were two stories more urgently passed around than any other. The Broadflower tribe was not at the orcgemót at all; the word was that they were now servants and possessions of the Golden Wyrm. (Less tragic and less final than it might have been for humans, of course, but still disquieting; what to do about it and how would likely be the main question at the formal inner orcgemót.) And then, almost as if in balance, a new tribe had come to the orcgemót for the first time. The people of Meteera wished to be joined to it.
⁂ ⁂ ⁂
Chieftain Cassandra felt out of place. This was her own problem, she knew. The other orcs around her knew who she was. The story of the people of Meteera had spread before them like wildfire: the tribes coming across the Aklan Mountains probably knew her name before she had come within a hundred miles of her campsite. And they supported her, to a one: they had enough politeness for her to not be stopped and accosted with congratulations by strangers in the paths and alleys of the orcgemót camp, but she had not had to bargain for a single drink or bite of food since arriving. Each gift was pressed upon her with enthusiastic wishes of good fortune.
But… they knew who she was on sight because she stood out of place. What did she look like to them? Her tattoos were adequate, telling of her deeds and skills in the hexagonal style the people of Meteera had inherited from their neighbours and patrons of the Finchsong tribe; well, borrowing was not a crime, especially for a young tribe, and by the time she was old her children’s storytellers and artists would have made it their own. (A tile left empty on her left breast, over her heart, that she hoped in a month’s time would tell of how she had been a speaker at an orcgemót.) Small for an orc chieftain, and lean, wiry rather than broad with muscle, but that was not unheard of. Red hair, long rather than cropped short and spiked, in a braid woven tight as steel down her back: that too was an unusual style but not unique. It was her skin, pale and spattered with freckles; her teeth, broad and flat like a cow’s.
It was not her ancestors’ faults that they had been humans, any more than it was her fault that she was an orc; but she still somehow felt out of place.
(She ignored the occasional human merchant who somehow ignored the nudity and the tattoos and the eusocial joy of the orcgemót glowing in her, and addressed her like a fellow human; they were merely idiots.)
She arrived at the edge of the meadow of silver wildflowers that had given the valley its name and that still was the bare heart of the orcgemót. The camp stopped a dozen yards short of the meadow, and in that space between, storyteller Peshesh was waiting. They were the oldest orc alive, as far as chieftain Cassandra knew; if there were an older orc, they would be the one to know of them, although asking a question like that would be a bit of a waste of one’s valuable time with the greatest repository of lore of all the orcs. They were old and stooped now, their fine orcish musculature starting to fade, but their eyes still shone with a spark of clever, amused wisdom. Around them were their apprentices: all storytellers and shamans of great skill in their own right, from tribes across the continent, now come to learn humbly at their feet for as long as they could.
“Chieftain Cassandra,” said storyteller Peshesh. Their voice was resonant, even in age: the telling part of being a storyteller was as important as the remembering. “Why are you here?”
“The people of Meteera are my tribe. They have chosen me to come forward to the orcgemót and ask, as orcs, for a place in the circle.”
“And are you ready? Your mind will be tried, and your body, and your spirit.”
“I am ready. I am an orc of my people, and I will bear any trial you choose.” There was no choice for the storyteller: the three trials were always the same, but the ritual words were long-established.
“Will another vouch for you?”
“I will vouch for her,” said storyteller Garuhn of the Finchsong tribe, their patrons, who had been a great help to the people of Meteera and chieftain Cassandra in particular in preparing for the orcgemót.
“I will vouch for them,” said an orc she didn’t recognize, or even their tribal tattoo style. She was proud of being an orc, that her people understood and trusted each other, and not only her friends but also strangers would support her in this ritual.
It thus made it a bit awkward that she then had to interrupt the ritual to say “her.”
“I will vouch for her,” repeated the orc, in awkward embarrassment.
“Her?” said storyteller Peshesh, curious but gentle. “Is your gender not chieftain, then?”
“My gender is both chieftain and female,” explained chieftain Cassandra. Storyteller Peshesh nodded, the fact about chieftain Cassandra and its implications about the people of Meteera now understood.
“I will vouch for her,” said shaman Velke of the Lightstep tribe, whom she had met somewhat briefly on the way to the orcgemót.
“Three other tribes swear that you are an orc of strength and skill,” declared storyteller Peshesh. “Then: a great beast troubles the orcgemót. If you are an orc worthy of your tribe, and your tribe worthy of the orcgemót, will you go boldly forth and strike it down?”
“I will,” agreed chieftain Cassandra.
⁂ ⁂ ⁂
The idea that the orcgemót could easily find a “great beast” to be “troubled” by was a holdover from harder times, when the orcs were less populous and prosperous, and the migration to the orcgemót was more likely to be attractive to predators (or worse) than to frighten them off. As it was, knowing the people of Meteera were coming, the Glacier-White tribe (one of the tribes that customarily lived near to Silver Valley) had, at some difficulty and hazard, lured a breachworm to the mountain above the valley. The breachworm was unlikely to ever want to go down into the orc-filled camp; but it was there, lurking, and now chieftain Cassandra had to kill it alone.
In a sense, it was a level playing field; even the strongest or fastest orc could not match a breachworm, so her small stature was no disadvantage here. She would have to kill it by wit and skill. She had her hunting knife with her, although more for her own comfort than for hunting: if a breachworm got within knife-reach of her, she was already dead. For fighting it, she had a half-dozen throwing knives and a good shortbow and a dozen arrows, and the beginnings of a plan.
The mountainside rose quickly, the grass and wildflower that the camp sat upon disappearing and replaced with tough brambly bushes bursting from occasional crevices in the jagged rock. The climb was easy, no cliffs or steep walls, just endless rough outcrops of rock to pick her way between as she ascended. She didn’t know where the breachworm was, nor how to find it if it didn’t come to her, but in fact when she hit the little plateau it became obvious. It was a field of cinders and ash, with only a few broken, charcoaled stumps to attest to the copse that had once stood here. The breachworm’s castings lay piled occasionally on the ground, looking like earthworm casts but a yard or a yard and a half thick. Also, they were fresh metamorphic rock.
Chieftain Cassandra had never seen a breachworm before, the people of Meteera usually living far to the east and north of the Aklan Mountains, but storyteller Garuhn (who had been here with the previous orcgemót) and her own tribe’s scout Derek (who had learned much of the orcs’ specialist lore of all the western environments in becoming a scout) had given her a crash course on the sort of things she might face in the first trial. When they got close enough to hear rumour of what the Glacier-White tribe had brought, they had explained the breachworm in detail. It was a worm, of the earthworm rather than dragon sort, but yards long and big enough around to eat a mid-sized orc whole. (All right, it did share being a predator with the dragon sort of worm.) Rather than earth, it made its way through solid rock, its innards blazing hot enough to melt the stone of the mountains. And it could move through the rock too, as fast as an orc could run on open ground. All in all, an intimidating opponent, although it was still just an animal. She could outsmart it, find a way to make it vulnerable, and kill it, for the trial and for her people.
She trod softly on the charred ground of the plateau. She had been told it could hear footsteps, even light ones. Eventually she would stomp up and down if that was what it took to lure it to her, but she needed to know if she could hide from it before she tried to engage it. She stopped towards the centre of the plateau, a dozen yards perhaps from the slopes in front or behind her, and waited.
“Even light footsteps” turned out to mean lighter than she could manage, because the breachworm had felt her arrival, and was coming for her. She could feel the faint tremor in the ground that she had been warned of. “When it gets close,” scout Derek had said, “you’ll feel its heat on you. Pay close attention to what direction it’s coming from, because it’s fast and you’ll need to get away from it by feel alone. If you wait until you can see or hear it, you’ll be dead.” She concentrated, eyes closed. Behind her and to the left. The heat had reached that of an unpleasant midsummer day—no closer or you’d die, no further or it’d have time to change direction and you’d die—and she leapt to the side, out of its path.
The breachworm burst from the charred earth of the plateau. She realized, a little surprised, that storyteller Garuhn and scout Derek’s descriptions of it as a worm had been accurate enough, but not really adequate. It looked like a maggot, white and pulpy and glowing like a furnace, a maggot the size of a whole Great-Pine-Forest tribe caravan. Its front maw gaped, blazing hot and toothless, although of course its prey would be burned to ash rather than needing to be chewed. It had tiny legs, or flagella, or however they worked down under the earth, pumping uselessly against the air. She could feel its radiant heat on her face and body, hotter than the sun. It arced gracefully over the ground—”like a dolphin,” storyteller Garuhn had analogized, traditionally, although no one from the people of Meteera had seen the sea, and possibly they hadn’t either—and landed with a sizzle like roasting meat, although it was the rock of the mountain that was burning. It slipped back under the surface smoothly, like water. It had moved too fast for her to even throw a knife, let alone draw her bow.
This is what I have to kill, she thought. She drew a throwing knife now to have it on hand, turned towards the spot it had entered the earth at: a slumped hole, already refilled by quartzite excreta. She didn’t know how long it would take to turn around, to get back for another attack on her, but it had been only moments and her face and front were already heating and she started to run. She zigzagged, trying to keep it confused and unable to follow precisely enough, and when the heat got enough she ducked and rolled again. It was so hot and so close, her back was going to be sunburned tomorrow. But she kept her head and threw the knife into its side as it passed.
The breachworm made a noise, of pain and anger, and ichor spattered from the wound. Impossibly hot ichor—as the worm reentered the earth, the leather of the throwing knife handle was already burning around a core of softening, glowing steel—and a single droplet struck her on the shin. She screamed, louder than the breachworm had, and dragged her leg desperately in the ashy ground to get it off. Idiot! she shouted at herself. You had to hunt a breachworm from as great a distance as possible to avoid exactly this kind of thing. But there was only her—no one else to distract it or line up a shot.
She got up—the burn was unbelievably painful, but superficial: she could still run. As the beast came around for a third pass, during which she would not try to attack it directly again, she thought about her plan. It was very fast, and had a lot of momentum coming out of the ground, but it couldn’t change direction in mid-leap (obviously). It was vulnerable from every direction on the surface, relying on its admittedly intimidating temperature to keep enemies away from its soft flesh. A hunting party could pincushion one easily. But she was alone.
Well, she’d had an idea on the way up, based on what she’d been told of the thing, and its actions up here had only confirmed her understanding of its behaviour. If her combat instincts had betrayed her while feeling it out, she’d just have to stick tight to the plan now. It would work. It had to work, or she was dead; and worse, the people of Meteera would have to wait another twenty-eight years for a chance to be joined to the orcgemót. She wouldn’t fail them.
The breachworm made a third leap and she dodged it too. She couldn’t keep this up forever: it was getting harder to judge its distance as her skin sunburned, and a miss any closer than she’d been managing would leave her agonizingly seared and incapacitated for the next attack. But she was close to the edge of the plateau now, where she’d picked her way through a series of narrow ledges like steps up to the top. The beast was being cautious now: she still felt the ground trembling in the soles of her feet, but the heat was distant. It was trying to decide whether to make another attack; she hoped it wasn’t smart enough to realize what she was trying to do.
She clambered down onto the topmost ledge. The breachworm still hadn’t come after her. This was it, though, this was her moment. She deliberately let her nervous impatience run down into her leg, tapped her foot repeatedly, hoped her noise and vibration would attract it again. “C’mon,” she mumbled. And then slapped her palms into the rocks behind her: “Come on! Come on and get me, you fucking monster! I’m right here!”
The rumbling shifted. After a moment, she felt its heat coming for her. She couldn’t flinch, had to make it commit to the attack. The heat was bubbling out of the rock. It was close, now, far closer than scout Derek had told her to let it get. Closer—closer—the heat was unbearable—
She threw herself from the side of the mountain.
Behind her, the breachworm shot out from the rockface, its maw glowing inferno-yellow, its little limbs flailing in the sudden void around it. Chieftain Cassandra hit the next tiny ledge below her back-first, felt the wind knock out of her, and rolled anyways, her ribs and lungs in agony, her vision greying at the edges, and the breachworm missed her and the ledge entirely, its momentum carrying it down the mountainside much too quickly to recover. It struck the broken rocks below and tore open, white-hot innards spilling down like a blinding, burning flood. It screamed—the noise could never have been made by an orcish throat but was clearly pain—and she listened to it tumble further away from her, its noises rising and falling but mostly weakening.
After a minute or two, she had her breath back enough to get back up and look properly. It had fallen and slid perhaps two-thirds of the way down to the valley bottom. She was momentarily thankful she hadn’t accidentally set the whole camp on fire in defeating it, and she started back down towards it. It was a difficult journey: the ichor had cooled and was now merely disgusting, but it was also slippery, and the brush she would have used for handholds was still burning with the heat of its passage. Eventually, she got close enough to the breachworm to see that it was somehow, horribly, still alive, twitching and groaning, trying to crawl back into the earth. It was rent in a dozen places, and bleeding out, and perhaps would be dead soon; but she wanted this damn thing finished.
She drew and nocked her amalgam-headed arrow. “Steel or obsidian would melt,” scout Derek had told her, “and so will this, but the quicksilver will poison it within moments.” She aimed carefully at the front—maybe not really a head, but the most intact part, so hopefully most fatal—and loosed. The beast thrashed and screamed again and the arrowshaft sticking from it burned up, and then it was over.
⁂ ⁂ ⁂
She stumbled the last few yards of hillside back to the camp. Her tribe were there, with food and water and bandages and burn salves, waiting for her. She thanked scout Derek for the arrow (not that scout Derek and the whole tribe were not with her in this trial), took potter Clara’s arm gratefully, let her lead her around the edge of the camp towards the meadow again. She was not too tired, not in so very much pain, and the help and care of her people was a balm; but she wanted a night’s sleep before the next trial. There was no time for that: the orcgemót opened formally the next morning. She, like all new tribes’ chieftains, was required to complete the three trials in a single day.
At the edge of the meadow potter Clara and scout Derek and the others halted; not that the space for the trial was forbidden, per se, but the trial was again for her alone and they were not needed. In the fringe of empty space in front of the meadow, storyteller Peshesh again waited. Their apprentices had moved off a little; now they were joined instead by five orcs, all exuding sexual charisma. Even without the tattoos recounting their prowess as lovers—and they each had a lot of those—they were all tall, and rippling with muscles, with muscles and tits and cocks and cunts and hands and nails and lips and tongues and piercings and muscles just designed for sex. Which, given what she’d heard of the friendly but very fierce competition for places in this trial in the last month or so, was about as close to literally true as it could ever be.
“Chieftain Cassandra,” said storyteller Peshesh. “You have returned.”
“The beast is dead,” said chieftain Cassandra. “The orcgemót is safe.”
Storyteller Peshesh nodded. “You are welcomed here. The other tribes have sent representatives to greet you on their behalf; will you greet them?”
“Of course,” agreed chieftain Cassandra. “I am chieftain Cassandra, and I greet you all and all the orcgemót for the people of Meteera.”
The five other orcs began coming towards her.
“I am trader Muyun. I greet you for the Lightstep tribe and the orcgemót.”
“I am hunter Tsele. I greet you for the Skydancer tribe and the orcgemót.”
“I am silversmith Xuloveras. I greet you for the River-and-Sea tribe and the orcgemót.” (Ah. That was the tattoos she couldn’t quite parse: one of the tribes that usually traveled far in the south, and where they went in for specialized microgenders like that.)
“I am trader Sarana. I greet you for the Great Broken Mountain tribe and the orcgemót.”
“I am scout Leyastámer. I greet you for the Ironhand tribe and the orcgemót.”
The five of them had circled her as they introduced themselves, until she was surrounded by a tight ring of hard orc flesh, so close she could feel them breathing around her. It would have been extremely uncomfortable situation if all involved hadn’t been aware that she was about to have almost certainly the best—and certainly most important—sex of her life.
The second trial was less dangerous than the first, but harder. The breachworm could have killed her, but she was smarter than it and had been able to overcome it. This, by contrast, was perfectly safe, a greeting and symbolic joining of tribes of the sort she and her people had done dozens of times in the journey to the orcgemót alone. If she failed, no one would ever know the details: she trusted without even a flicker of doubt the confidence and discretion of the others. But she could fail. Easily. Five of the sexiest orcs she had ever seen were about to devote their entire attention to fucking her, and she had to reciprocate, pleasing all five of them back with just the one of her.
“Thank you,” she said, and lunged to kiss scout Leyastámer in front of her.
For the first little while she could hope she might simply win through the trial. The others were slow and gentle, stroking and kissing, nuzzling and licking; and all six of them were still standing up, for that matter. She herself had a hand around silversmith Xuloveras’ cock and was gently pumping it, and someone behind her—maybe trader Sarana, although she wasn’t sure—had a finger gliding gently back and forth over her clit. It was pleasant, and far from overwhelming: she could deal with this, could return it in kind to the other five without too much trouble.
Then trader Muyun said “hunter Tsele, up,” and chieftain Cassandra realized that, of course, this had all been foreplay. Hunter Tsele, tall and strong, hooked their arms under Chieftain Cassandra’s armpits, and lifted: she was wholly off the ground, bouncing impaled on the hunter’s big thick shaft, helplessly pinned while the others set to her with suddenly redoubled enthusiasm. There was a mouth on her mouth, and teeth on her nipples, and tongues on her clit, and lips on her fingers, and lips on her toes, and teeth on her throat, and a mouth on her navel, and fingers touching everywhere. There were still only four of them, besides hunter Tsele behind her, but there were far too many of them somehow: in a matter of moments she had become too overwhelmed to keep track.
Hunter Tsele was already panting in her ear, not from exertion—she had no doubt the hunter could lift her like this for hours if they wanted—but with pleasure. Chieftain Cassandra came, suddenly very quick, every erogenous zone and most of the places that weren’t sparking with pleasure, arcing like lightning into her pussy and her clit and her brain, and hunter Tsele did too, their hard cunt-filling cock exploding warm and wet and sticky inside her. They probably – certainly – enjoyed it, but as far as the trial went, it hardly counted at all. She’d had it done to her, not done it to them. And even as hunter Tsele slipped out, wet and softening, silversmith Xuloveras moved forward and rammed into her, hard enough to make her gasp in overwhelmed pleasure again.
And then it went on. And on. And on. Cocks went in, and fingers went in, and her mouth opened to lick clits and suck cocks, and she tasted five different flavours of orc-cum within the first hour; but it was all being done to her. In as far as the point of the trial was for her to demonstrate her skill as a lover, she was failing; and while she was certainly enjoying being tossed around like a toy, used gentle and used hard, five distinct partners singly and in combination, like a glorious feast of sex, she knew she had to somehow get on top of this situation or she would fail her people. She couldn’t allow that to happen. But every time she tried to concentrate on one of the others, work them to screaming orgasm on her own terms, the other four fell upon her and she lost her focus, and increasingly her physical coordination to manage it.
She couldn’t fail. The people of Meteera were counting on her. But if she couldn’t manage the five of them—well. She couldn’t fight a breachworm alone with nothing but her muscles and knives. She’d been smarter than it. She didn’t imagine she was straight-up smarter than the other five, but surely she could do something besides trying to ride through it. Maybe this trial wasn’t supposed to be on-its-face impossible, and some other orc—taller, stronger, more sexual—could simply fuck five others at a time; but she would have to use strategy.
She thought about it in a momentary pause, or at least slowdown, lying atop trader Sarana, the latter kissing her and gently stroking her back. She knew—because she’d tried before—that if she started trying to do anything to trader Sarana, the others would move in again, and she’d fall apart with incoherent pleasure. Trader Muyun would likely be the one to direct them: they’d been doing so throughout the trial so far. Trader Muyun was the strong-point, which meant she’d have to take them on personally, but only once she’d somehow dealt with the others. Who was the weak-point?
“Hunter Tsele,” said Trader Muyun, and chieftain Cassandra rolled over on trader Sarana, watched and felt hunter Tsele drop on top of her. They were it. Trader Muyun always called on them first, and they always followed. They were good at sex, obviously, but more than that, they seemed to like being directed (at least during sex; she didn’t know them outside of this, yet). That could be what she needed. She might as well try, before she passed out from overstimulation.
She locked her legs around hunter Tsele’s back, grabbed their arms, and rolled. Hunter Tsele seemed surprised, but didn’t resist as she got on top of them, their cock firming quickly against her as she ground on them. The others were getting up to rescue them, but chieftain Cassandra didn’t care: she could do this. She leaned in to hunter Tsele’s ear and whispered “good showing, but you’re mine now.”
“What do you mean?” said hunter Tsele back. In a whisper: she had won already.
“You tested me and you failed. I’ve beaten you.” She put her hand around their throat: her small, pale fingers barely wrapping the thick green pillar of the other orc’s neck, but it didn’t matter: she wasn’t trying to choke them, this was all about the hot, sexy symbolism. Hunter Tsele knew what she was doing as well as she did. “And now that you’re mine, you’re going to help me with the others.”
Hunter Tsele hesitated for the tiniest moment, their eyes wide, and then said “yes, of course, my chieftain.” The last in a hiss that clearly connoted something different than the actual gender of “chieftain”. “How?”
“Silversmith Xuloveras and trader Sarana. I’ll take the other two.”
“Of course, my chieftain.”
Scout Leyastámer’s hands—she could recognize them all by body parts by now—grabbed her by the ribcage, their long broad green fingers enfolding her tattooed blue-and-white torso the way she hadn’t enfolded the hunter’s throat, and lifted. Chieftain Cassandra let her fingers drag down between hunter Tsele’s breasts as she was pulled away: caught their eye, and smiled a cruel and wicked playful smile.
“So what should we-” started trader Sarana, beside her, then was cut off with a shout as hunter Tsele tackled them, their hands and mouth attacking the former just as vigorously as they had chieftain Cassandra before.
“What?” said trader Muyun, startled, as hunter Tsele grabbed silversmith Xuloveras’ hand and pulled them down too.
“Oh look,” said chieftain Cassandra, the playfully smug dominance not quite out of her voice yet. “It’s down to two-on-one. That’s not nearly enough for you.”
She dropped to her knees in front of trader Muyun, sunk her fingernails into their firm ass and her face into their hard abs and softly furred mons. “Now’s the part where I show you what I can do,” she purred, and started to lick slowly downwards.
⁂ ⁂ ⁂
“Is the greeting complete?” asked storyteller Peshesh, amused but clearly pleased. Chieftain Cassandra was not asleep. She had been resting, sated after a difficult battle and a long and extremely pleasant bout of sex, but falling asleep would be abandoning her call to greet and please and join with the other five, and failing the trial, and she would not do that. Fortunately, scout Leyastámer (on whose broad, firm torso and in whose long, strong arms she had been lying), was not asleep with her, as witness their startled noise of sudden alertness.
“Yes, I think so,” said chieftain Cassandra, stretching. Around her, the others were getting up from the grassy ground, likewise working aches and stiffness out of their bodies.
“Yes,” agreed hunter Tsele with a conspiratorial smile at chieftain Casandra.
“Yes,” said scout Leyastámer, silversmith Xuloveras, and trader Sarana, one after the other.
Trader Muyun gave chieftain Cassandra a look and rolled their eyes; but the look was amused, and even a little respectful. “Yes,” said trader Muyun. “We have greeted her and she is welcome to the orcgemót.”
“Good,” said storyteller Peshesh.
It was evening now. The camp was flickering with firelight as torches and lanterns were lit, and, at the downwind end of the camp, big bonfires. Some of storyteller Peshesh’s apprentices were setting up their own campfire a little ways away where there was more room for sparks and ash: the night was warm and the moon bright, but it was important to have a campfire to tell stories around.
“Chieftain Cassandra,” said storyteller Peshesh as they walked together to the fire. “You have proven the people of Meteera’s strength and skill. The orcgemót would be honoured to have you join us. Have you and your people brought with you a story worth telling, to be shared with the orcgemót, for all orcs to retell and bring back across the land with them?”
“We have,” said chieftain Cassandra.
There was a small crowd gathering by the campfire now. The apprentices, her five partners of the second trial, three hunters of the Glacier-White tribe who must have been the ones to lure the breachworm to the valley: one of them with the tattoos of their left arm oddly and patchily blanked out with plain green skin, which chieftain Cassandra realized after a moment was a burn scar—a large one—healed by their shaman but the new flesh not yet retattooed. She resolved privately to thank the three of them profusely for their efforts once the trials were over. The audience was dominated by the people of Meteera, though, here to hear the story and see the trials complete, including storyteller Paula, which made her more anxious than the rest of the audience together. Not that the story belonged to storyteller Paula, in any sense—it belonged to the whole tribe, and soon would belong to all orcs; but it had been storyteller Paula’s craft that had made it what it was, and chieftain Cassandra was a chieftain and not a storyteller.
But she had made it through the first two trials triumphant, and she would do this as well. Storyteller Paula smiled encouragingly at her as she entered the firelight.
The third trial was the easiest, in a way; she had never heard of any tribe failing it, nor could she even really imagine how one could. But it was all the more important for it: where the first two had been traditional challenges, no less but also no more, the story she would tell would forever be the story the people of Meteera had told at their first orcgemót. The story had to be a new one, and the people of Meteera had any number of stories that would have been new to the orcgemót, a legacy of their human ancestry; some of them unsuited to orcish mores or unsettled life, but The Old Man and the Fishbone or The Paladin and Her Demon Wife would have fit right into any orcish storyteller’s repertoire. But from the very beginning there had been no doubt which story she would tell them.
Once, in a land that was not this land, where the wide earth was yellow with wheat and lined by fences, there was a village called Meteera. The people who lived there were humans. Their houses were tall and built from wood. They farmed and raised cattle, and made clothes of wool and linen. It was a hard life but a fine one, and the people of Meteera were happy.
One spring, when the world was green and bright and the people of Meteera sowed their fields, news came to the village that their kingdom was at war. “Do not worry,” the people of Meteera said to each other, “this is far away and has nothing to do with us. The war will come and go, and life in Meteera will go on.”
In the summer, when the sun was high and hot and the people of Meteera cut hay for their animals, news came to the village that their kingdom had lost. Their king had been defeated by a great and terrible empress in demonic armor of steel and brass. “Do not worry,” the people of Meteera said to each other, “this is far away and has nothing to do with us. Kings and empresses come and go, and life in Meteera will go on.”
In fall, when the trees turned red and orange and the people of Meteera harvested their crops, news came to the village that the empire was at war again, and that they would serve the great and terrible empress. “Henceforth,” the messenger said to the Mayor of Meteera, “until our enemies have been made to kneel before the empire, the people of Meteera are in permanent requisition for army service. Your youth shall go to battle; your married men and women shall forge arms and make tents; your children shall turn old linen into bandages; your elderly shall repair to the public places, to stimulate the courage of the warriors and preach the unity of the empire and hatred of all who oppose its empress.”
“And if they do not?” asked the Mayor of Meteera.
“Then her army will come and take your cattle and burn your homes and your young men and women will fight for her no less.”
The people of Meteera were disturbed by this and met to decide what to do. “Our harvest is just in, and winter is coming,” said the eldest child of the Mayor of Meteera. “We cannot let them take us from our homes. We must fight them.”
“But their army is strong, and their empress is great and terrible,” said the middle child of the Mayor of Meteera. “Empresses come and go, and this too shall pass and we will live in peace again.”
“This will not pass,” said the youngest child of the Mayor of Meteera. “Now that this army has come, we shall never be left alone again. Even when the empress dies her heirs will still call upon every village to give up their strength for their wars.”
“Then what can we do but fight them?” asked the eldest.
“Then what can we do but bend our heads?” asked the second.
“We must leave,” said the youngest. “Across the river is the wilderness. No emissary of the empress will ever follow us there.”
“We cannot cross the river!” cried the eldest. “We would leave behind all that we are if we left our homes.”
“We cannot cross the river!” cried the second. “The wilderness is not a place for humans. We would die.”
“We must leave,” said the youngest. “The great and terrible empress would destroy us no less than the wilderness, merely slower. And people can live in the wilderness. The orcs live there, and grow and prosper as we have. They are strong and fierce, but also kind and generous. They will help us, if we ask them.”
The people of Meteera argued long into the night. In the morning, they decided. They would go with the youngest child and cross the river to the wilderness and plead for help from the Finchsong tribe of orcs. That day, they gathered everything they could carry and all their cattle and grain and crossed the ancient stone bridge over the river that divided the lands of humans from the wilderness.
A scout of the Finchsong tribe met them in the wilderness, and led them to the camp of the Finchsong tribe. “Friends and neighbours,” said the chieftain of the Finchsong, “why have you come here, into the wilderness, with all your possessions and cattle and grain?”
“Friends and neighbours,” said the youngest child of the Mayor of Meteera, “our village is lost to us. A great and terrible empress in demonic armor of steel and brass has come, to make us serve in her wars. We have left behind our fields and our homes and come to ask you for aid, that we might live in the wilderness beside you, and escape her reach.”
“Friends and neighbours,” said the chieftain of the Finchsong tribe, “live in the wilderness beside us; and so long as you live here we will keep you safe from the great and terrible empress in demonic armor of steel and brass.”
And so the people of Meteera settled in the wilderness beside the Finchsong tribe, and built tall new houses of wood, and farmed and raised cattle. But the wilderness is not a place for villages, and their fields grew fast and tall but choked with weeds, and their cattle grew wild and unruly and sometimes were carried off by giant birds.
“We cannot remain here,” said the eldest child of the youngest child of the Mayor of Meteera. “The wilderness is not a place for villages. The empress is surely dead by now, and it is safe for us to return to the place that was Meteera.”
“The traders say the wars of humans have grown only worse,” said the middle child of the youngest child of the Mayor of Meteera. “To go back would be to return to what our parents fled. We must remain and try as best we can to live here.”
“We will not survive,” said the youngest child of the youngest child of the Mayor of Meteera. “Every year our cattle range further and our harvest is smaller. The Finchsong tribe does not begrudge us aid in winter, but we shall be wholly dependent on them soon.”
“Then what can we do but return to the place that was Meteera?” asked the eldest.
“Then what can we do but struggle on as best we can?” asked the second.
“The orcs live and prosper in the wilderness,” said the youngest. “They can teach us their ways, and we will live.”
“We cannot stay here and abandon the ways of our ancestors!” cried the eldest.
“We cannot follow the travels of the orcs and abandon the ways of our ancestors!” cried the second.
“We must choose what we can take and give up the rest,” said the youngest. “The stories of our ancestors will only live on if we do. We will ask the spirits of our houses to follow us to tents, and the spirits of the harvest to come with us on the hunt, and we will ask the Finchsong tribe to teach us the ways of surviving in the wilderness.”
The people of Meteera argued long into the night. In the morning, they decided. They would go with the youngest child and again plead for help from the Finchsong tribe. That day, they left their houses and fields behind and walked to the camp of the orcs, for they knew now all year round where the orcs travelled.
“Friends and neighbours,” said the chieftain of the Finchsong tribe, “why have you come to us again, and left behind all your houses and fields?”
“Friends and neighbours,” said the youngest child of the youngest child of the Mayor of Meteera, “our harvest is failing and our cattle run wild. We have come to you to ask your aid again. We beg that you teach us the ways of the orcs, that we might survive in the wilderness with you, and the stories of our ancestors not be lost with us.”
“Friends and neighbours,” said the chieftain of the Finchsong tribe, “the ways of the orcs are not secret, but they cannot be learned by humans. We are not you, nor you us, and how we live in the wilderness is not how humans could live here.”
“But traders and travellers have gone to the orcs before,” said the youngest child, “and joined tribes, and became orcs, and learned their ways.”
“This has happened,” agreed the chieftain of the Finchsong tribe.
“Then we shall all become orcs,” said the youngest child, “each of us from the oldest elder to the baby born yesterday, and you shall teach us your ways. And the stories of Meteera will be carried in the wilderness by orcs as they could not be humans.”
“Do you wish this?” asked the chieftain of the Finchsong tribe to the people of Meteera, and the people of Meteera said yes.
“Then we shall take you in,” said the chieftain of the Finchsong tribe, “and teach you, and the people of Meteera shall become a tribe, and live as we do. And the stories of Meteera will not be lost.”
And it was so; and in this way did the people of Meteera become orcs.
The tale was schematic. It had taken not a day but weeks to carry (most of) the possessions of (most of) the people of Meteera over the river, and years before the last person had left the place that had been Meteera, and in the end not all the people of Meteera had followed the man who became chieftain Michael to become orcs. Perhaps chieftain Cassandra’s cousins still lived, in Ceraphon, telling different tales of their ancestors’ sojourn “in the wilderness”. And certainly the leaders of the people of Meteera had not been generation after generation of siblings all from the same family. But it was a true story all the same, and when she finished telling it and it belonged no longer just to the people of Meteera but to all orcs, storyteller Peshesh nodded, and stood.
“Thank you for your gift,” they said, their voice carrying around the fire. “The people of Meteera have proven themselves clever and strong and generous, as orcs should be. Tomorrow morning, when the orcgemót begins, you shall have a place there.”
Author’s notes: This is partially a chance to explore the orcs of Azuras a bit more—me and Devi came up with a whole bunch of ideas about them around the time I wrote Trespass, but they didn’t really make it into that story as such. So after a bit, I decided to just do a story 100% about the orcs, and explore their culture and ideals and also just get some of that down on the page for other people to see too.
The story itself was pretty fun to do, getting chieftain Cassandra through all her trials. And, of course, it was nice just being able to do a big support and validation fantasy where none of the conflict is interpersonal. Azuras orcs rock.