Orc Country

Every night at midnight, the purple clouds came out to dance with the blushing sky. Roger could only hope the exhaust coming from his motorcycle might change the saccharine colors in this state, but he knew it didn’t matter. He’d be back on the road soon enough. The sky-colored grass, blue sky not this pink one, rolled past like a conveyor belt. The tree trunks wrapped in horizontal rainbow stripes, gaudy imitations of their former selves, marked Roger’s path better than any map could. He counted one hundred and seventy-nine trees before turning left at the fork he knew would be there. It wasn’t there when he’d come this way, but that was New Cascadia for you. Reduced to cartoony magic and non-Euclidian driving directions. An entire, corrupted landscape that some people had the audacity to call beautiful, as if photographs of Washington State pre-cataclysm didn’t exist. It made Roger sick.

Soon enough, Roger spotted the hollow, moss covered rock that was his patron’s home. He turned his bike into the open gate and felt the burlap sack tied to his saddlebag scrape along the ground. It left a trail of thick blood from its sodden bottom. The elderly elf man was waiting for Roger on a rocking chair on the porch. He smiled, waved a pale, but still remarkably smooth hand in greeting and gestured to the empty chair on the other side of a small table over the noise of Roger’s revving engine. The hunter shut off the bike and removed the sack from its side.

“Feel free to leave that on the ground over there,” Cerwys called down. “Dump it out, but don’t bring it on the porch.” Fair enough, Roger thought. He wouldn’t want this thing anywhere near his home either. He obediently upended the bag and let its horrid contents thud onto the ground. It was clearly the severed head of an animal, but exactly what animal was somewhat less clear. Patches of white fur, star shaped lifeless pupils at the center of two uneven eyes, long teeth of varying lengths. The patches of skin without white fur were either completely bare or held small, purplish scales. The stretchmarks around them showed that they were growing quickly. Had been, anyway.

“A sheep,” Cerwys said disappointedly with a shake of the head, “mixed with a dragon. Honestly, where do they get their ideas?” Roger had been dreading further interaction with the strange elf, but they were at least on the same side on this issue.

“What exactly is wrong with a sheepdog?” he asked up to Cerwys. “Even if they’re too small with the monsters you’ve got here, couldn’t you make a deal with a dire wolf or something?” Cerwys shook his head again as Roger walked up the steps.

“It’s been tried, dire wolves always go back on their word. Don’t have the friendliness that comes with domestication. Of course, there are giant dogs one could teach.” Roger sat down.

“Or just get rid of the monsters,” he said as if he was giving some obvious answer to a child. The old elf shook his head.

“They’re not monsters,” he said sagely, “They’re just misplaced, like me. You don’t think I’m a monster do you?” He looked at Roger with an amused grin. His teeth were still pearly white and his skin didn’t even wrinkle when he smiled. The only sign of the elf’s vastly advanced age was his white hair and receded widow’s peak.

“That depends,” said Roger before slipping into silence, which dragged for just a moment while Cerwys worked out what he was talking about.

“Oh,” he said when the penny dropped. “Your pay, of course.” He pulled a small leather bag of coins from some hidden pocket in his deep green robe and passed it across the table to Roger. Roger emptied the bag, counted the coins then dumped them all, empty bag included, in his own coin pouch. Now all he had to do was get out of here politely, as quickly as possible. He didn’t dislike the old elf so much as Cerwys made him uncomfortable, just like the rest of this state. Everything was so otherworldly to someone who grew up in the human controlled parts of America, which was, thankfully, still most of it. This elven, fairy, Lord of the Rings shithole made Roger feel like he was trapped in a children’s book. That was why he rode a motorcycle, wore leather and denim. If he couldn’t count on the normalcy of the world around him to stay constant, he could at least make himself an anchor to reality through his appearance.

He did have to use a sword, though, since the cataclysm so long ago had made all gunpowder inert. Cerwys let his eyes linger on the three-foot blade and roughly gilded handle strapped across the handlebars. The handle was crude, golden inlay that seemed to have been shaped with bare hands while the metal was still hot, cloudy gems set haphazardly throughout. Its ugliness was counterbalanced by the mirror-like, razor sharp beauty of the sword’s double-edged blade. The whole picture screamed of a weapon forged hastily with magic, a scream made truth by the weapons name, Radlica. It meant ‘plowshare’ in Slovak, the language of her creator, which suited the sword better than any other could.

“I don’t suppose you’d be interested in another contract,” Cerwys asked after a few moments silence. “Something in one of the other regions, if that helps.” Busted. Was Roger’s distaste that easy to read?

“What’ve you got?” he said, carefully not committing to an answer.

“Stolen property. Dangerous stolen property. Down in Orc Country.” Cerwys finally turned to look at Roger, saw the baffled expression on his face and launched into an explanation. As it happened, Cerwys had been an accomplished mage back in his day, all combat magic that drained life force from victim and caster alike. Fireballs and summoned blizzards, nothing with any practical use in this mundane world. So he’d hung up his staff and spell book all the way back when he’d first come to America during the cataclysm, which happened to coincide with the American Civil War. The spell book had been disposed of ages ago but a staff is much more tricky. As a catalyst for a mages power, simple staffs of ordinary wood become imbued with the collected power of those spells overtime and eventually become indestructible. Not a big deal for a retired wizard living alone in the Northwestern wilderness, but that was before a halfling traveler had happened upon his lonely cottage.

“What’s a halfling?” Roger interrupted.

“Frodo Baggins,” Cerwys said simply before carrying on with the story. The halfling, hobbit, whatever, was lost in the woods after having been separated from his merchant group. Cerwys allowed him to stay the night and found him gone in the morning, as well as his old staff.

“I’d been telling him about that staff over dinner,” Cerwys scolded himself. “Told him it was in the basement protected by some old but strong charms. I was too confident in my own handiwork, I suppose. He must have used some newer magic to break the wards.”

“Not necessarily,” Roger mused. “There are artificers that make all kinds of magic tools these days. I bet if he knew a little bit about the wards, enough to know what kind they were, he might have had some thief’s tools that could’ve gotten him in.” This possibility did not ease Cerwys’ mind as Roger hoped it might. Wasn’t it better for someone who couldn’t do magic to be in possession of a staff, rather than some evil wizard? Apparently not.

“Any idiot can fire off a spell from that staff,” Cerwys was saying. “They don’t even have to know the spell, the staff does most of the work for them. If it had been a mage, at least I could be confident he would not have set it of by accident, but some random thief?” Cerwys looked at the dragon sheep’s head, staring straight at it with a look of mounting horror. He turned back to Roger and said, “Well the good news is that drives up the price of the bounty.”

That had been eight hours ago. Roger had obviously accepted without much more fuss and was soon making his way down the Pacific Coast Highway back to Los Angeles. He’d been in a much better mood, admiring the chaotic waves on the shore and the green hills of Orange County, before the leviathan breeched the surface about 600 yards off the coast. The gargantuan whale hunter reminded Roger that he couldn’t escape the magic nonsense that plagued his home country. He yearned for a time long before he was born, back to the nation’s founding, before whatever cataclysm these things faced in their home dimension had forced them all into this one. A man who’d grown up in a world filled with magic coexisting with the mundane might not necessarily think of orcs and elves as not being normal, but there was a definite line separating things that should exist in this world, Roger thought, and things that shouldn’t. If elves were meant to live in the westernmost edge of the Louisiana Purchase, their mere presence wouldn’t light the sky in the middle of the night or change the colors of the trees.

Eventually, he made it down to Santa Monica. There wouldn’t be any special preparations for a simple reclamation job, but Roger did need a little information about Orc Country. Plus, he couldn’t leave the state again for who knows how long without stopping to see Maddie and Sean.

…

“You were supposed to be back tomorrow,” Sean said in a deep Southern drawl from behind the door he was opening. Roger brushed past the dwarf and stepped inside and regarded the dark but tidy apartment with more than a little longing. This was the first time he would regret taking this new assignment. He wouldn’t be able to keep to his ritual of taking a two hour shower followed by a thirty-six hour nap.

“Went by quicker than I thought,” Roger said without looking back at Sean. “Monster turned out to be more sheep than dragon. Where’s Maddie?”

“Should be doing her homework at the supper table,” Sean said, making way and taking a seat on the couch. He was right, Roger turned and opened the kitchen door and found his daughter, a shining golden haired child with green eyes and ears just beginning to grow into points. There was always a butterfly or a bird lingering around her, but Sean had wisely locked the sliding glass door and drawn the blinds. There was probably an entire menagerie of suburban critters waiting on the other side for Maddie to finish her work. At the sound of Roger’s boot thumping on the linoleum floor, Maddie looked up. Her face lit up with a smile of solid gold. The back of her head was lit with a single beam of the afternoon sun, giving her an aura that accentuated the oddity of this perfect seeming child.

“Daddy!” she cried in a voice straight out of kindergarten. The chair legs scrapped back and Maddie rushed up to wrap her arms around Roger’s waist. Roger scooped her up in his arms and held her tight for a full minute. She held just as tightly. “Did you slay the dragon?” she asked when they eventually relaxed.

“Turned out to be more sheep than dragon,” Roger repeated, having decided that the joke was perfect for the girl. Maddie giggled at the idea when he explained it to her.

“But why?” she asked, voicing the incident’s central question. “Ms. Netherel told us that sheep herders usually just use dogs.”

“Shepherds,” Roger corrected. “And Ms. Netherel is right, when it comes to normal sheep. But dogs are too small to help sheep in Cascadia, they’ve got dragons.”

“Why don’t they just teach the dragons to protect the sheep?” Maddie asked innocently. “Dragons already protect their gold. You could just make them think sheep are like gold.” Roger looked blankly at his daughter for a moment, awestruck. From the mouths of babes…, he thought. I should mention that to Cerwys when I get the staff back.

“Listen, honey,” Roger began, dreading what was coming next. “I’ve got another job I need to take care of now. The guy who gave me the last one had something else for me to do and it’s really important. I had to take it, but hopefully I wont be gone too long.” There it was. No physical changes in the child’s expression. Her smile didn’t drop for an instant. Something had simply lessened in her. It broke Roger’s heart.

“That’s ok, daddy,” she lied. “ I know you have important work to do. You gotta get the dragons.”

“No dragons this time,” Roger said, trying to keep his voice even, “Just going to pick up something that was stolen. I’ll be back before you know it.” He carried Maddie back to the chair and set her down gently. “Just stopped by to let you know and take a quick shower. Finish your homework and I’ll come say goodbye before I leave.” She turned back to her book report and Roger slipped back into the small living room. Sean was waiting on the couch, idly stroking his massive red beard and reading a book by lamplight. He looked up at Roger and closed the book.

“Another job so soon?” he asked, having clearly heard everything from here.

“Gotta keep Maddie in that school,” Roger said brushing the question aside. “This one’s in Orc Country.” Sean’s eyes gaped in surprise.

“Orc Country?” he said sounding impressed. “You ever been to Arizona?”

“No, but I’ve been to the Mojave. See one desert, seen em all.”

“That is completely untrue,” Sean said. Dwarves who hadn’t chosen to live their previous lives toiling away in the mines of the Appalachians when they came to America were given the choice to settle in some of the murkier regions of the South after the Union won the Civil War. Sean had made the trip to Santa Monica on foot, which made him the only person Roger knew who had been to Arizona.

“The Sonoran Desert is entirely unlike the Mojave. It would be a whole lot easier to survive in the wilderness there than the Mojave, if it weren’t for the seven million orcs hiding behind every cactus, rock and dirt pile.” Encouraging as always, Roger thought.

“Do you know of a place called Apache Junction?” he asked, breaking through the harbinger’s warning. “I’m looking for a halfling who stole a staff from Cerwys. Shouldn’t have to deal with any orcs at all if I can just go straight there. Or maybe the orcs would help me if they still don’t like halflings.” Roger had received a short history lesson from Cerwys before he left. That also meant that he knew what Sean was going to say next.

“Orcs don’t like anyone,” he said resolutely. “And nobody likes them. That’s why they stay in Arizona and why most of us steer clear.”

“Why did you go, then?” Roger asked. “Couldn’t you have taken the Northern route into Utah?” Sean paused only for a moment.

“I wanted to see one,” he said softly, the mood suddenly changing. “My grandparents always spoke so cruelly about them; I thought the stories couldn’t have been true. I thought they were just old and bitter, still carrying ancient grudges from the Old World.” His eyes fixed on a point low and to the left of Roger’s face. “Then I saw them.”

He didn’t continue after that, just continued starring off into the middle distance. Roger waited for what he felt was a respectable amount of time before he prompted his friend back into speech.

“Apache Junction?” he asked after less than a minute. Sean’s eyes refocused and he looked back up to Roger.

“Yeah, I’ve heard of it,” he said, drawing out the first syllable into five. “Sounds like a cowboy town. Probably dangerous. If memory serves, you go straight east from Palm Springs and you’ll get there in about five or six hours, but Phoenix is right on the other side of it. That’s the bigger of the two big cities, probably a quarter of the total orcs in Arizona live there.”

“Ouch,” Roger said. “Well, hopefully nobody sends word to them from Apache Junction if they see me, but if it comes before Phoenix, then it shouldn’t be a problem. I’ll go straight east to the bounty, then come right back. Wont even see any orcs.” That last part might’ve been a little cocky.

“Yeah,” Sean scoffed, “that’s what I thought.”

The staff would probably have been fine waiting another few hours, but in the interest of a speedy return, there was no time to waste. Roger quickly showered and took a few Vials of Ever Vigilance so he wouldn’t need to sleep on the road. They weren’t exactly “healthy” but they were miles better than caffeine. Plus, they wouldn’t cause any problems whatsoever as long as he got a night of sleep in between doses. By the time he was ready to leave, Maddie had finished her homework and was waiting in the living room with Sean to see him off.

It tore his heart to have to spend so much time away from his daughter, but she was a half-elf. The result of the union between a human and an elf. Accepted by neither, humanity had at least dealt with racism long enough to be familiar with the concept. There wasn’t more than ignorant comments and hurtful jokes on that part, but at least that was where it ended. Most of the old elven families, which included most of them, still believed fornication between species was the gravest of sins. Many would pay handsomely for an assassin to remove that kind of sacrilege. At least one had already paid that expense for Maddie’s mother.

Keeping a child like Maddie secret was an expensive business. Roger was sure he would never be able to accurately convey his gratitude to Sean that the dwarf was able to stay with her all these years, but that was fine. Dwarves were not verbally sentimental. The pleasure of Maddie’s company, and the gold that Roger paid him for living expenses, was all the payment he needed.

“Like I said, baby girl,” Roger said walking out and making towards the door. “I should be back in about a week or so. I’ll call later on when I have more details.” Waiting for him by the door, Maddie sprang out with another hug. From behind Roger, Sean reached up and handed him his pack.

“You got a week and a half’s worth of rations, and extra water. Pick up more as you go and don’t drink from the cacti. That juice’ll shut down all your organs.” Roger took the pack, still locked in Maddie’s embrace.

“Thanks.” With his other hand, he tossed Sean the larger of the leather pouches of gold he’d received from Cerwys. “Here’s the gold from the shepherd job, minus a bit for me.” He then knelt down and gave Maddie his full attention. He embraced her tiny form in a hug of her own. For her entire life, no matter what she’d been doing, Roger found that she always had a faint pine aroma about her. “I love you, sweetie.”

“I love you too, daddy,” her voice was muffled by his chest. Roger pulled her back and looked into her shining green eyes. Just for an instant, they flashed to gold, then back to green, one eye, then the other. “You’re going to do big things in Arizona, daddy,” she said, her voice sounding slightly further away than before. Smile frozen, Roger turned his head to Sean as if it weighed a thousand pounds. He raised his eyebrows in silent question.

“There’s been more of that,” Sean said, looking down sheepishly. “Usually vague, little things, but…” he dragged out the last syllable before grudgingly looking Roger in the eye with a look of sincere apology. “Always undeniably true.” Roger looked back at his daughter. Maddie was still beaming at him, evidently having forgotten what she said. So she’s making prophecies now, he thought. That’s… fun.