Thieves of Blood

CHAPTER TEN

Trembling with excitement, Ghaji crouched behind a tall tuft of swamp grass near an ancient elm tree. He could hear the snuffle-snorts of the wild boar that he and the others had been tracking all morning. He was the first to find it, and while this filled him with pride, he also felt a certain trepidation. Now that he’d found the beast, what should he do?

He couldn’t signal Esk, Murtt, and Warg. If he made the least sound he risked scaring off the boar, and if that happened the others would be angry with him, especially given how many hours they’d already devoted to this hunt. He supposed he could attempt to bring down the boar himself. If he did, it would be an impressive feat, especially since the four of them had agreed at the outset of the hunt to use no weapons. Ghaji had only just entered his twelfth year, and though he had grown much in the last several months, he was unsure if he were strong enough to tangle with a swamp boar by himself. The animals had hides tough as boiled leather and dispositions mean as a swamp serpent with a bad case of scale rot, which- was of course why hunting the boar barehanded was a favorite pastime of young orcs. This was the first time Ghaji had ever been allowed to come along on a boar hunt, and if he ever wanted to come again, he couldn’t afford to mess this up.

Foliage was abundant here in the swampland: white cedars, red and silver maples, black spruce, elm and ash trees, along with ferns and numerous species of colorful wildflowers. Birds abounded as well: swallows, warblers, blackbirds, grackles, larks, and larger birds such as herons, egrets, and cranes. Ghaji loved it here. The swampland was alive and vibrant, bursting with energy but at the same time peaceful and tranquil. He could spend the rest of his life here and be content.

A cloud of biters drifted toward Ghaji, reminding him that even a place as wonderful as the swamp wasn’t perfect. The annoying insects didn’t much like the taste of orc. Unfortunately, Ghaji was only half-orc, and the pests loved to jab their needle-like mouths into him even more than they seemed to love doing so to humans. Ghaji sighed. It was the story of his young life; he always seemed to get the worst of both worlds. Maybe if he was lucky, the biters would pass him by for a chance to sink their needles into a fat, juicy swamp boar.

He wasn’t lucky. It was a humid day, and to make matters worse, the sun’s bright light was oppressively hot. Ghaji always seemed to sweat more than both orcs and humans combined, and perspiration was an irresistible lure for biters. Drawn by the beads of sweat forming on his greenish skin, the miniature swarm descended on Ghaji and began drilling greedily into his flesh. Swamp biters grew large as a man’s thumb and their attack stung worse than being stuck by a black briar thorn. Ghaji gritted his teeth as the insects went to work, but maddening as it was, he made no sound and didn’t attempt to shrug them off. An orc always wore his battle scars proudly, and though all Ghaji would receive were biter welts, he’d bear them with just as much pride as he would any other injury. Whatever the cost, he would not permit anything to interfere with the boar hunt.

Ghaji did his best to ignore the buzzing whine of those biters that had yet to select which portion of his skin they’d like to penetrate and listened for the boar. Its snuffling was muted now, and he could hear it scratching at the ground around the elm tree with its hoof not ten feet from the tall swamp grass where Ghaji hid. Swamp boars loved to eat grub worms, and one of the varieties they considered especially delicious lived in the soil near the base of elms-precisely the reason Ghaji had chosen this spot to hide and wait in the first place.

From the muted snuffling, Ghaji guessed the boar had already uncovered some worms and was busy gobbling them up even as the beast scratched around for more. Ghaji knew that if he had any intention of attacking the boar alone, he wasn’t going to get a better opportunity. He tensed and visualized himself leaping out from behind the grass and running toward the boar, but as he was about do so, he heard loud shouting and the heavy pounding of feet. The boar squealed in alarm, and Ghaji stood just in time to see Esk, Murtt, and Warg converging on their prey from separate directions.

Each of the full orcs was a year or two younger than Ghaji, but they were already larger than he and better coordinated. They came at the boar like wild animals themselves, all three shouting and waving their hands in the air to confuse the boar so it would have no idea where to flee. The orcs had shaggy black manes and thick body hair. Their eyes were reddish, and their ears pointed. Their jaws jutted out more prominently than Ghaji’s, and their lower incisors were larger and sharper. The orcs were garbed in simple tunics of brown, black, and gray, unlike Ghaji’s tan one, and sturdy brown boots. Ghaji thought they were magnificent, and for perhaps the thousandth time he wished he looked like them.

Angered at having his plan ruined by the others but determined not to be left out, Ghaji pushed through the grass and dashed toward the boar. He didn’t want the animal to run away from him. He wanted it to run at him, so he didn’t wave his hands or shout. Instead, he would let the others drive the beast to him.

Ghaji had seen the boar while they were tracking it but only from a distance. Up close the animal looked even larger, and it had seemed big enough before. It was sixty pounds and likely heavier. The beast was dashing this way and that, foamy saliva bubbling past its snout and dripping from its long yellowed tusks. Its eyes shone with desperate fury as it cast its piggy gaze back and forth, searching for a way out of this trap it found itself in. Normally a boar would charge an attacker, but the orcs came at the beast from different directions, confusing it. Ghaji’s companions closed in, still shouting and gesturing wildly, but Ghaji stood still, hoping to draw the boar’s attention by not making a commotion.

His ploy worked. The boar saw a target for its fury and dashed at him, hooves churning the moist swamp soil, head swinging wildly so its tusks could do as much damage as possible. Ghaji’s instincts screamed for him to assume a defensive posture-the thought of fleeing never occurred to him, for he was half-orc, after all-but he forced himself to stand calmly as the boar charged at him. Just as the beast was about to gore him, Ghaji jumped straight up. His plan was to come crashing down feet-first on the boar’s head, driving its face into the ground, and if fortune was kind, breaking its neck.

Ghaji had never hunted swamp boar before, let alone killed one, and his inexperience caused him to misjudge the animal’s speed. Instead of landing on the boar’s head, he came down on its back. His weight caused the beast to stumble, but it had enough momentum to remain on its feet and keep going. For a moment, Ghaji managed to stand upright on the boar’s back, then his right foot slid off the boar’s bristly hide, and Ghaji fell to the ground, landing on his right side with teeth-jarring impact. The boar had had enough of this foolishness; it put on an extra burst of speed and raced away across the swampland.

Ghaji lay there for a moment, more upset than hurt. He’d been so close…

He looked up to see Esk, Murtt, and Warg glaring down at him with expressions of supreme disgust.

“You let it get away,” Warg growled.

“Why did you jump on it?” Esk demanded. “You think you’re a swamp hare?”

“You should’ve hit it!” Murtt said, slamming a fist into his open palm for emphasis.

Warg thumped his chest. “I would’ve tackled it!”

“Anything would be better than jumping,” Esk said. “That was stupid.”

Ghaji gritted his teeth as he sat up. He wanted to tell these three that if they’d tried using a little stealth and cunning, along with some teamwork, instead of relying on dumb brute strength, their families would’ve gotten to dine on roast boar tonight, but he said nothing. These were the closest things to friends that he had, and he didn’t want to offend them, even if the idiots deserved it.

Ghaji rose to his feet. He didn’t expect any of the others to help him up. That wasn’t the orc way. Toughness, self-reliance… those were the things orcs valued.

Warg, the biggest of the three orcs, though he was the youngest, stepped toward Ghaji until they were standing almost nose to nose. For an orc, this intrusion into another’s personal space was a major act of aggression and disrespect.

“The hunt has failed, thanks to you, Smooth-skin.”

Smooth-skin was a slur used to insult half-orcs, since the latter typically had far less body hair than full orcs.

Warg went on. “You’re a disgrace to your mother. You’d be a disgrace to your clan, too, if you had one.”

As a half-orc, Ghaji wasn’t permitted to be in a clan, not that any would have him. His mother, Aneen, had been raised in the Gliding Heron clan, but she had been ostracized after Ghaji’s birth, and ever since had remained as clanless as her son.

Ghaji slammed his fist against his chest so hard that for an instant his heart seemed to skip a beat. “You cannot speak like that to me! I am orc!”

“No,” Warg said, still standing with his face right in Ghaji’s. “You’re not.”

The words cut through Ghaji more easily and with more force than any bladed weapon ever could.

Ghaji said, “Very well, I am half-orc.”

The other three laughed.

Esk sneered. “Not to us, you aren’t. To us, you’re half-human.”

The orc emphasized this last word as if it were a particularly noxious variety of swamp fungus, the kind that invaded the hidden recesses of body and made itself at home in the nooks and crannies that it found there.

Ghaji felt as if he’d been slapped in the face. Though he didn’t want to risk driving away his companions, an orc would never let such an insult stand.

“I challenge you to single combat, Esk. Hand to hand or weapons. Your choice.”

Esk laughed. “There is no honor to be gained from fighting a smooth-skin!”

Ghaji was so hurt and angry that he intended to push Esk to the ground and start pummeling him, whether the orc felt like fighting or not, but before Ghaji could make his move, Esk stepped away from him and turned his back. Murtt and Warg did the same, then the three young orcs walked away from Ghaji as if he didn’t exist.

Ghaji stood and watched them go, too hurt and prideful to go after them and apologize for spoiling the hunt. Their insults echoed in his mind. Smooth-skin… half-human… but worst of all was the thought that he had disgraced his mother. Despite the fact that Ghaji had been the product of her rape by a drunken human soldier, Aneen had always loved and cared for him-the only person in the world who’d ever done so. Esk, Murtt, and Warg all belonged to Gliding Heron clan-Aneen’s former people-and when they returned home, they would spread the story of how Ghaji had failed this day, thereby bringing further disgrace upon Aneen in the eyes of her one-time clan.

“I’m sorry, Mother,” Ghaji whispered.

Tears welled in his eyes, and though orcs considered crying an unforgivable sign of weakness, he couldn’t stop himself. Teardrops rolled down his cheeks, dripped off his jaw, and fell to the ground, only to be absorbed by the soft swamp soil.

Ghaji felt a drop strike his hand, and he was surprised by how cold it felt. Tears were supposed to be warm, weren’t they? He felt another strike his forehead, and now he was really confused. Since when did tears fall upward?

He opened his eyes and saw a full sail billowing before him and beyond it a pitch-black sky. Wind whistled through the sloop’s rigging, and raindrops pattered onto the boat’s wooden surface, only a few at first, then the sky opened up and rain poured down. It looked like the weather had taken a turn for the worse while he’d slept, but he was actually grateful for the storm since it had awakened him from that dream. He’d dreamed of hunting the swamp boar many times since that day, and he wished the storm had let loose a few minutes earlier so he might have awakened without having to relive his failure yet again.

He turned to Diran, but his friend was no longer sitting next to him. He looked over his shoulder, and by the soft blue-white glow of the ring-bound air elemental, he saw Diran and Yvka. They were talking to one another, both wearing the hoods of their cloaks up to keep off the rain. Ghaji shook his head. He didn’t understand why they bothered. It was just a little water.

A bolt of lightning cut the darkness, and for an instant night became day. The lightning was followed almost immediately by a thunderclap so loud that Ghaji’s eardrums rang as if his ears had just been boxed by a warforged.

Yvka shouted something, but Ghaji’s ears rang too loudly for him to hear her. He didn’t think she was asking him if he’d slept well, though.

The wind picked up strength and speed until it drove the rain sideways and sent it stinging into Ghaji’s skin like tiny daggers of ice. The thought of wearing his hood up in a storm no longer seemed so amusing, and Ghaji pulled the hood of his traveler’s cloak over his head and drew the fabric over his shoulders. The cloth had been treated to be water resistant, but that didn’t make it waterproof, especially in a storm of this intensity. Rain began to soak through immediately, but at least the cloak continued to provide some meager protection against the wind.

Speaking of the wind, it was now blowing so hard that the slate-gray water of the Lhazaar Sea was rising and dipping alarmingly, and spray was breaking over the Zephyr’s guardrails and onto the deck. Ghaji had no idea if the elemental sloop was built to withstand such a storm, but he figured it was time he found out. He started back to the pilot’s seat, doing his best to maintain his balance and ignore the nausea roiling in his stomach in response to the turbulent sea.

Another blinding lightning flash lit up the sky, and this time the accompanying thunder came so quickly it almost seemed to precede the lightning. Ghaji struggled to see past the glowing afterimages the lightning flash left in his eyes. He wasn’t sure, but it looked as if the blue-white glow of the elemental bound within the metal ring mounted behind Yvka was flickering like a flame in a high wind.

Ghaji reached the pilot’s seat. Yvka sat with her hands pressed tight against the chair arms, while Diran held onto the chair back, his head leaned close to the elf-woman’s so they could hear each other over the storm. Ghaji took hold of the chairback and squatted on the other side of the pilot’s seat. It seemed that Diran and Yvka were arguing about something, but even this close, Ghaji still had trouble hearing all their words through the howling wind and driving rain.

“…can make it!” Yvka shouted.

“Not if… any worse!” Diran shouted back.

“Soarwood… strong enough… mast will hold… and elemental can… to get us through!” Yvka replied.

Ghaji understood the gist of their argument now. Yvka wanted to weather the storm while Diran thought it was too dangerous and likely wanted to detour around it. Given how badly Diran wanted to rescue Makala and the other prisoners captured by the Black Fleet raiders, the situation had to be dire indeed for him to suggest taking anything other than the most direct route to Dreadhold.

Ghaji leaned his face closer to Yvka’s so she might hear him better. “Have you ever sailed the Zephyr through a storm this bad before?”

“Summer storms like this are common on the Lhazaar!” Yvka shouted. It was a strain, but Ghaji was able to make out all her words this time. “They blow themselves out within an hour or so!”

“That doesn’t answer my question. Have you ever been through a storm like this?”

Yvka didn’t respond right away. Ghaji couldn’t see her expression since her features were concealed by her hood.

“No,” she said at last, speaking so softly her voice was nearly carried away on the roaring wind. “I haven’t.”

“The storm moved in from the northeast!” Diran shouted. “Tack southwest! That should get us out of the worst of it!”

Before Yvka could respond, lightning flashed and thunder cracked once more. This time they could hear the sizzle of the lightning, and a charge ran through the air, making their hair, wet though it might be, stand on end.

“South it is!” Yvka shouted. “I’ll work the tiller and keep the elemental going! Diran, you and Ghaji go forward and trim the mainsail! We’ll be running with the wind at least partially at our backs, and the storm wind, together with that generated by the elemental, might be too much for the mast to bear!”

“Aye, Captain! No problem!” Ghaji said, though he had only the vaguest notion of what “trim” meant. He wasn’t about to admit to that Yvka; besides, he was sure Diran could show him.

Diran reached over and clapped Ghaji on the arm. “Come, my friend! Time to begin your sailor’s education!”

Ghaji scowled. He couldn’t see Yvka’s face hidden in the folds of her hood, but he had no doubt the elf-woman was grinning.