Book Snippet 3 - Back to Orta’ahn

It's amazing to me how a character that I expect to be a one and done finds a way to just keep coming back. It shouldn't surprise me. I hear other writers talk about it happening to them all the time. Also it should just stand to reason that a person in Tole's line of work would need a network of associates he can trust and go to for information and what not.

Anyway, hope you enjoy. I am working on some more short stories as well, they're just coming along painfully slow.

-Tole

Ok, time to make a phone call, well the interdimensional equivalent anyway.  Valsh and I set up an arrangement a couple of years ago.  I can drop a totem at a prearranged location letting him know I want to meet and he can do likewise.  He’s got the metaphysical muscle to come to The Bar if he wants, but considers it rude to come uninvited or unannounced.  Honor is a big deal to orcs, so I observe the formalities as well.  Helps me keep my head where it belongs. I may be crazy, but I don’t have a death wish.

In a small chest under my bed is a totem with a stone base that was given to me as a sign of respect after the very first job I did for my big, green friend.  It lets me open a very small portal over a small altar in Valsh’s tent.  The totem, its base, and the altar are all linked.  I don’t understand how it works, but it is pretty damned cool.  I just hold it in my hand, think of my need to meet, mutter two orcish words, and a little glowing hole appears in from of me.  Simple.  Orcs may be brutes, but their magic is still awesome.

Once I have the little portal open, I take a couple of bottles of Shiner and a small box filled with bones from various worlds and set them through on the altar.  Valsh collects bones. I don’t question it.  Some people juggle baby geese.

My gifts having been delivered I let my concentration slip and the portal closes with a light pop and the smell of ozone.  Nothing to do now but wait.  Time for food and beer, so I head down into the bar where Bobby already has a bowl of stew and a bottle of dark waiting for me. My hero.

I sit down and dig into my food.  Walking like that burns a lot of calories anyway but I did a little interdimensional travel and for some reason that always leave me famished.  While I’m eating, I notice something getting warm in my pocket.  Oh yeah, the silver box I found on Terra is in there.  I take it out and set it on the bar. Bobby is at the other end of the bar, but turns around as I set it down.  Like he felt it or some shit.

“Where did you get that? You pick up a job while you were out?”

I tell him about my trip to Terra, and he comes over and picks it up. “Do you know what this is?”

I say, “Uh...a box?”

“Wow, your detective skills are really coming along, smart ass. Yes, it’s a box, but it’s so much more than that.  Know those orc memory totems you have up in your room?  This is a similar thing, but crafted by a race of...you’d probably think of them as elves, but that wouldn’t do them justice.  These people would think of Tolkien’s elves as uncultured savages. Yes, I’ve read the books.”

“So it’s a memory recorder?”

“I said it was similar.  The blue gem means it has a recorded message that’s keyed to a specific recipient. Usually  keyed to genetic coding.  Drop of blood goes in the hole above the gem and the message will transfer into the mind of the intended person. Very elegant magic. Very expensive and very hard to craft. Worth a damned fortune on some worlds.” With that he sets it back down on the bar and gives me another beer. “You’re probably gonna need that,” he says as he walks away.

I’m not in a big hurry to see what’s in this box, so I finish my food and a couple of more beers staring at that faint blue glow almost the entire time. If this is from her, I’m going to have to really brace myself. I’m not really even sure I want to see her. I almost broke when she died. Seeing her now, even after all this time, is going to be hard. The blackened grass under my hand still has me worried. I know what caused it.  I lost control of my focus that controls the anger in me.  When that happens, some of the magic I carry around in my various tattoos and embedded gems can bleed out through my hands.  I usually feel it happen and put it away. That day I never felt anything. Might be worth going through the process of deactivating all of my magics before I open this can of worms. Don’t want to risk damaging The Bar.

Well, as the old saying goes “there’s nothing to it but to do it.”  I head upstairs to my room.  I have enough beer in me that my walk has turned into a kind of John Wayne swagger.  Makes the stairs interesting.  I open the door to my room and starting running through the preparations to deactivate my shit.  I don’t do this very often for a couple of reasons.  First, it completely discharges the storage gems in my skin which takes a couple of days to recover from.  Second, it stings like a mother fucker because I basically have to ground myself out and set them off. Kind of like sticking your tongue on a nine volt battery only instead of just your tongue, it affects your whole body. Kind of sucks.

I’ve stripped down and filled the little water basin that passes for a bathtub in my room with about two inches of water.  Like I said, I have to ground myself out when I do this.  I’m just about to step into the water when I hear a little crack of micro-thunder and smell ozone. Ah, that would be the reply from Valsh. I step away from the tub and turn around to see my totem on its base and the empty tin box on the table beside my bed in the center of the carving on its top that the totem is tied to in my room.  Guess the message box will have to wait.

I open up the cabinet where I keep my memory totems and put the box inside. I close the door and reactivate the wards. I hear a scraping sound from the cabinet and look through the glass on the door.  All of the orc totems on the shelf where I put the memory box have slid away from it to the other side of the cabinet.  Huh.  That’s interesting. The magics must conflict with each other.  Makes sense I guess...elves and orcs are never buddy buddy in any story I’ve ever read. File that way for later.

I pick up the totem and what I thought was my empty box. The rattle it makes tells a different story.  I open it and find a coin inside.  Means Valsh has work for me. Cool.  Information and a job all in one fell swoop.  I do feel the need to kill something.  Fortune favors fools. Looks like I’m headed to Orta’ahn. I’d better get some pointy things to take with me.

I open up my equipment chest and start trying to decide what might come in handy on a planet where everything wants you dead. Armor for sure. Dragon scale chest piece and the accompanying neck guard definitely.  I’m not an orc so there’s no lost honor in shooting me in the back with a crossbow. Terran guns don’t work on Orta’ahn, so they can stay here.  Would be awesome if they did though. I don’t want to take too much so no axes or long swords.  I’m not stout enough to go toe-to-toe with an orc anyway, so big stuff is pointless. I strap my spring loaded stiletto to my right forearm, shove a couple of daggers through my belt in the back and hang a tomahawk from its loop on my belt. The belt does have a lot of small slots on the inside for my mini-daggers and some flechettes, so I take a second to load those up as well. I don’t need to take my money box with me.  I trust Valsh to pay what we agree to.  Besides, he’d probably deactivate the explosive runes in about six seconds anyway so why bother. Saves me having to lug it around and stay on guard for incoming death anyway.

Now that I feel sufficiently pointy, I take Valsh’s coin in my right hand and focus my intent on traveling to Orta’ahn. Once I feel the appropriate amount of energy has formed I reach out and activate the runes carved in my door. When I open it, I can see the inside of Valsh’s tent.  I grab the cases of beer I am bringing as tribute and step through, closing it behind me and feel the heat of the jungle on Orta’ahn where Valsh’s people live. Feels good.

Once the initial dizziness cleared, I noticed that Valsh wasn’t alone.  He was flanked on either side by royal guards who didn’t look all that happy to see me.  I mean, I did punch a hole or twenty in their last War Leader that one time. That was a long time ago. Surely they can’t still be mad at me about that.  Just to be on the safe side, I lower my head slightly in deference to Valsh who, I now notice, is wearing the sash of a War Leader.  The crafty son of a bitch.

I raise my head, and look Valsh in the eye. “Greetings, War Leader. May the day bring you glory.” It never hurts to be nice when you’re dealing with someone like Valsh.

He stares right back at me for what feels like five days and then his face breaks into a big smile around some pretty impressive tusks and serrated teeth. “Tole. Truly the god of death has brought you to me this day.  Our enemy has brought an outsider into our conflict and he has shown himself to be without honor.  None of my warriors would risk tarnishing their place in the gloried Halls of War by killing the little lizard, so we have entreated on our gods to bring us one who can deal with it. He has sent you to me just when we needed you most.”

This was very odd coming from Valsh.  In the past he was more plain spoken.  This sounded almost formal.  I raised an eyebrow and said, “I’m glad I can be of service War Leader.  Please tell me how I may serve your tribe.”

It was getting obvious that he was not enjoying this meeting.  I saw him decide he could still trust me and he turned to his guards and said something in orcish to them that I took to mean “leave us” because the one who’d been giving me the stink-eye protested.  Valsh reached out with his right hand and picked that guard up off of the ground and pitched him out the door of the tent.  The other guard followed his compatriot without comment.  I tried really hard not to laugh. I failed, but I tried.

Once the tent was clear, I reached into the open box of beer I took my original gift out of and pull another three bottles out.  I crack them open and pour them into the mug Valsh is holding out to me. It’s made from what looks like a piece of bamboo about six inches in diameter and about ten inches high. It is also very artfully inserted through an orc skull with gold tips on the tusks.

“The skull is new,” I say. “Anyone I knew?”

He chuckles under his breath which for a creature his size sounds a lot like a rumbling growl. “Yeah. You ended him.” With that he drains the mug in one long pull.

“Cool. Ok, so you said your enemy is using an outsider? A lizard?” I really hope fortune has favored this fool and this lizard is a Goran.

“Slimy little Goran shit. Smells like bad fish. Comes into my camp in the night and takes our pups. Sneaky little bastard.  My guards can’t seem to trap him.” Valsh seems like he’s on the verge of violence, so I crack open three more bottles and refill his mug. All the while I am thinking to myself that today just keeps getting better and better.

“Valsh.  I am hunting one of the lizard’s people.  Not a particular one.  I just need information about his world and his people.  I have a blood debt with them.  One of their kind ended my wife.  I handled the one who did it but his line is hunting me.  I am going to burn them all, but before I can I need to learn my enemy.”

Valsh had been walking back to his chair but stops and turns back to me. He stalks back over to me and puts his face close enough to mine that I can smell the rodent he had for lunch.  He looks in my eyes, mutters something under his breath and the world kind of swims for a second. Fucking orc magic.

The spell calls up my memories of that autumn day when my life went pear shaped.  Only difference is that this time I’m an observer to the events from the outside and Valsh is standing next to me.  He pauses the action in several places asking me questions about the scene as is goes by.  He finds my Hawaiian shirt particularly funny, but once the bloodshed starts he gets very serious.

“She died well...for an Altanian,” he says as the world comes back into focus inside of his tent. “You avenged her that day.  Brought honor on you both.  The Goran don’t follow the rules.  That should have been the end of it.  So if they hunt you now, they deserve the end you will bring them.” He followed that with spitting put a glob of snot into a bucket on the floor that would have drowned a small dog. Might have been a little gross, but it was also damned impressive.

I’m going to have to ask Bobby about the Altanian thing.  Find out if that’s the ‘elves’ he was talking about.  Meantime though I need to keep my eyes on the target. I turn to Valsh and ask, “I gathered from the offered coin you have a job for me? I’m guessing it’s get this Goran out of your ass.”

“Pups…” he starts.

“Stop right there friend.  You know I don’t do rescues. I kill things. I don’t save things. If you want me to kill a rival leader consider it done, but I don’t put myself into harm’s way to save people.  That’s how killers get killed. Tell you what I will do though.  I’ll kill a path to your pups and take that Goran out of the mix.  Your people can follow me and save your pups. Deal?”

He sits and chews his lip a second and takes another pull from his mug. “Done.”

“Alright then,” I say. “Give me two days to scout and then we go end some sonsabitches.”