Conquest Ch. 04 Preview

I'm pretty excited about this scene I wrote yesterday.  I wasn't planning to write it; the cold open leading to a sex scene just got longer and longer as my imagination took off.  I hope you enjoy it!

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Six Months Later

The sun shone bright orange early in the morning, its rays beating down on the long Mead Hall which now dominated the center of the village.  The small encampment which had once been the home of the Lainaird Tribe had grown into a small town after he repopulated it with captives from neighboring tribes.  Once the wooden palisade surrounding it was completed Agmar finally decided it was worthy of a name and dubbed it Royalton.  A fitting name for a King’s City, he thought.

The town itself was a strange mixture of human and orc custom.  On the one hand it had the open, pastoral layout of an orc encampment, with small huts and gated fields for livestock, mixed with long halls for the orc retainers without property.  But on the other, it had walls, a centralized building for the King, as well as a Square and market stalls for commerce.  Eventually Agmar planned to grow the Mead Hall into a proper keep, but that would take years.

The town was a testament to Agmar’s vision for an orc Kingdom.  His uncle Bodak tried something similar in Braden, long ago, but had gone about it all wrong.  He simply forced the most aggressive of the orcs into human castles and let them loose.  But their querulous nature made it difficult to manage land and that first generation of orcs didn’t have the experience to manage humans in tilling it.

Agmar planned to let orcs be orcs.  Some would tend livestock, some would be merchants.  Most would be retainers, getting to share in their Lord’s women and food in return for combat. Subduing the Hills completely would take several more years at least.  Perhaps even a decade.  Then he would see about turning his attention to Thesta.  War was going to come, if not today as a result of his invasion, then in years to come.

The ivory throne creaked beneath him as he shifted his weight.  Not real ivory, though, not from the tusks of the sea bears who populated the northern coast of the Hills or from the elephants found in the Eastern Kingdoms.  Human ivory, culled from the ‘Abyss’ itself.  Femurs made up the seat and held up the chair itself.  Its back was made of ribs, and a row of thirteen skulls decorated the top.  Eventually he would have it replaced with real ivory from the north.  But for now, he decided that a certain terror was called for the intimidate these barbarians into staying in line.

Case in point was the matter brought before him today for judgment.  “Bring forth the prisoner.”

Cuthbert Korlick was dragged forward by two burly orcs.  Even with his bruised and puffy face the Tribesman managed to look defiant.  The leader of the Korlick Clan had recently been captured while trying to raid sheep from the holdfast.  The thought made Agmar grin with satisfaction; organize resistance in these parts of the Hills had degenerated into banditry.

Crouched at his feet beside the throne, Mel gave a little whimper.  Agmar reached down to stroke her head affectionately.  He had long since heard that his slave had once been betrothed to the man.  “Cuthbert Korlick, you’ve been caught stealing sheep and bearing arms against my guards.  Do you have anything to say in your defense?”

“I didn’t steal anything.  How could I steal what’s rightfully mine?  Those sheep had my mark on them, sure enough.  Seems to me I was taking back after your man stole them.”

Agmar scowled at the human.   The man’s fate was sealed before he ever entered the room, but he wanted to make a show of justice so people would at least hope that judgments would be fair.  But instead of giving Cuthbert rope to hang himself with he turned it around in a way that any human would think reasonable.  Which I should have seen coming, he thought, I’ve grown complacent in victory and success.

“Your lands and herds were stripped of you for your treason in swearing fealty and taking up arms against your King.”  That wasn’t true, strictly speaking, as Cuthbert had never been given the opportunity to swear fealty, but it sounded good.  Good enough at any rate.  “Throw him in the ‘Abyss’!”

The orcs cheered, but beside him Mel whimpered.  “Do you have something to say, pet?  Would you like to intercede on your former betrothed’s behalf?”

Cuthbert looked at Mel, seeing her there for the first time.  He hadn’t recognized her at first, not with her crouched and dirty, her hair tangled in front of her face.  Certainly not with the round belly either, swollen with Agmar’s spawn.  His face was torn between shock, disgust, and the faint hope that somehow Mel’s intercession could save him.

But Mel just shook her head and looked away.  Agmar rose off his throne and grabbed the leash attached to Mel’s neck and led her after Cuthbert and the guards as they dragged him out of the Mead Hall.  Agmar’s preferred form of punishment, at least his preferred form of lethal punishment, was to condemn prisoners to the ‘Abyss’.  An old Hell Glass pit mine, long since abandoned, had been deepened and widened into the side of a hill. 

The smooth, inky black stone sides seemed to absorb all light, so that looking down you couldn’t see how deep it was, or whether anything was alive down there.  Cuthbert was dragged to the edge of the earth’s gaping maw, but before they threw him in he was able to shout his final words.

“Enjoy it while you can, Agmar!  Amelie is coming, and Thesta rides with her!  She’ll sweep you and the rest of your trash from these hills!  You’ll die a failure!  A nothing, a no one, a bastard failure!” 

Agmar snarled and kicked him square in the chest, sending him flying into the pit.  His screams ehoed in the chamber, gradually fading into the faint shriek of the wind tearing through the hole.  No one was really sure if he would survive the fall or not; it was just known that no one came out again after being thrown inside.  Eventually his wounds, or hunger, or thirst would see to him.

Or perhaps, as some muttered, one of the previous prisoners condemned to the Abyss would murder and eat him.  Already legends were springing up about savage, cannibal prisoners in the depths.  The warriors who stood guard at the pit told stories of howling screams coming from within.  It’s just the wind, he thought, but still, the stories sent a shiver down the spine of even orcs.

Worse than the tales of the Abyss, to Agmar’s annoyance, were tales of the Princess-Knight, Amelie.  Cuthbert was right when he said Amelie was coming.  Spies in Thesta had reported her gathering troops, and he knew Jeanette, Belkor, and Trogar were gathering swords in their Kingdoms as well.  It still remained to be seen if the diplomats would calm things, but the fragile peace between the Kingdoms rested on a knife’s edge.

For weeks his men had been looking over their shoulders, to the rise of every hill, as if expecting that Amelie and her Falcon Guard would come sweeping down and take them unawares.  Although her service in the last war against Heste had earned her fearsome reputation, it was her actions against the orcs of the Angrian Marche that made his warriors shudder. 

Some orc tribes never did surrender to Turogg, and they had continued to raid Thesta and Sandora while the orcs moved into Zentara and then Heste.  After one particularly bad year of raids Amelie had decided to launch a reprisal against the orcs.  She formed her own caravan and set out into the Marche on the normal trade route.  But rather than carrying goods or treasures, she brought soldiers and steel.  When the local orc warlord demanded tribute to let the caravan pass, she refused.  And when his warriors descended on the caravan they met not scared merchants and green guards but her seasoned Falcon Guard, and were cut down. 

She didn’t end it there, though.  She followed them back to their camp and burned it, claiming the livestock and freeing all the women she found.  Then she marched on the nearest trading post, which did business with the tribe, and burned that as well and plundered its riches.  She extracted a map of all the nearby orc encampments from the prisoners, before returning home to Thesta.  From then on, anytime one of her towns was attacked her Falcon Guard rode in the March to burn one of the encampments.  It took a few years, but eventually she pushed the orcs back far enough that the raids came to a halt.

Orcs rightly looked down on humans as being weak warriors in their own right.  Oh they were brave enough to be sure, and clever, but small and weak.  Their women were even more so, and yet Amelie not only didn’t fear to meet them in combat but was known to have cut down many in fair combat.  It was whispered that she was surely channeling some dark power from the Abyss to give her such prowess.

The rumors were absurd, of course.  Steel could kill an orc, whether held by elf or man, man or woman.  Still, all through his town orcs muttered, Amelie is coming.  Amelie is coming.  Amelie is coming.  The Princess-Knight’s arrival was a talisman for the humans as well.  He could see in their faces that they still had hope that she would save them, as Thesta had so many times in the past.

The orcs need a distraction, and I have just the idea.  “If Amelie comes, I’ll show you what’s waiting for her.  Let’s take a walk over to the barn for some sport, eh?”  He chuckle and soon the others were joining in as they made their way to the barn.