Private Tales A Tale Writ in Blood and Fury

[Dromar]

THE MOGO​

All around them the bodies of their enemies. Victorious Blight Orcs took what they pleased from the dead, looting anything salvageable or of remote value. Some of the scrub bushes of the Blightlands had been trampled in the fighting, and blood adorned their branches as well as the dirt beneath. A single fire, started by magic, burned amongst the aftermath, thin smoke rising; the orange of the early morning sky matched its hue, the dark gray of the spotty clouds likewise matching the accompanying smoke. In the center of all this, Dromar knelt beside his father, Gorgron, whose entrails had been vacated from his abdomen. He clasped the hand of his father tightly. Though it was odd for a Blight Orc of the Legions to maintain strong familial ties, none of the other Blight Orcs dared looked their way, and they very much made as though such a scene as what played out before the dawn sun's first horizonal glance wasn't happening; as a Centurion, Dromar had a power over them, his Legionaries, that went beyond his mere physical stature, and none of the other Orcs wished to be laid low after being elevated so high in the glory of their victory.

For what excruciating pain Gorgron must have been in, he showed none of it on his face. He smiled contently, even with a bit of mirth. "To think," he said, "that it would be some runty human who would spill my guts."

He tried to laugh, but the effort ended with a wet cough.

Dromar grinned fiercely, and gave his father's hand a tighter squeeze. "And yet, with your innards dangling, you still managed to kill three of them alone."

"Three more," Gorgron said, "sent to their weak god early." He pondered for a bit, then asked, "Which one was it this time?"

"Metisa."

"Metisa," Gorgron said with a disdainful bite of ridicule, as if the very name of the goddess were some cosmic jest. "Maybe I'll pass by her, and call her a mangy harlot on my way to the next life."

Dromar smiled. "I would delight in seeing her face twist in anger."

They were each silent for a short time. Still, as Gorgron lay dying, his grip on his son's hand had that orcish strength and fortitude. His death would be a good one—dying in battle—but he would not feebly let go of life at the earliest beckoning of the grave. He would hold on until the very end.

"Dromar," he said.

"Yes."

"Come closer."

Dromar moved as he was bade, leaning down.

"My life has been long...and finally it will be over."

"Long," echoed Dromar, and then he asserted, "It has been a tale of blood and fury."

Gorgron shook his head, and spoke with the conviction of an oracle. "No. Not mine. Yours."

"Father?" The very word felt strange and foreign on Dromar's tongue, so distant was he to the last time he had uttered it. But in it, especially now in this solemn moment, it had with it too a welcome familiarity. One, perhaps, on some level deep and unspoken, long desired.

"I remember...the Blightlands...before the coming of Menalus."

Dromar nodded slowly and said, "Menalus has brought with him and bequeathed to us strength we have never known before. He gave us the Legions."

"He did," agreed Gorgron. "And we have prospered." One final savage grin. "Look at you...Centurion."

"I will rise even higher, Father."

"I know you will."

Another gap of silence. Elsewhere, the clatter of metal as loot was stripped from corpses and piled for sorting. The few prisoners made their pitiful whimpering in the distance. A small wind blew over the rough plain, and a patch of clouds passed over the sun and blotted out its light and cast a shadow over the whole of the battle's aftermath.

Gorgron's eyes had become unfocused all the while. He was staring upward, vaguely. At last he said, "Can you see it?"

"See what?" asked Dromar.

Gorgron breathed. In. And out. And in. And out. He mustered what he had left in him.

"The time when..."

Dromar waited. Waited for a good while for him to perhaps say the rest. But in time the strength of Gorgron's grip faded, and his hand went limp in Dromar's own. His eyes, open and frozen, had drifted dawnward, seeking out the sun somewhere in his final moments.

Dromar, still holding Gorgron's hand, reached with his other hand to gently shut with two fingers the eyes of his father.

And though Dromar could not yet know it, in those last words spoken by Gorgron would that tale, so prophesized, begin.

 

[Dromar]

When Dromar stood from Gorgron's final resting place, he was approached by his First Legionary, Frokk. A dependable warrior, Frokk, and so hence Dromar's swift appointment of him to First Legionary once he had become part of his Century. Frokk, lacking the bulk typically found in orcs, had nonetheless about him a wiry strength and shocking agility; and though he stood a full head shorter than Dromar himself, his tall mohawk reached up to, in a sense, make them equal in height.

"Only four dead," Frokk reported.

"And the enemy?"

And here Frokk's wild side showed itself, a giggling glee and delight overtaking him, "An even fifty slain, Dromar. Fifty slain, and seven taken prisoner, hehehe."

More slaves, then, for his Century or for the Ironmaul Legion as a whole—though Legate Kromm was quite generous in allowing his Centuries to keep what slaves they earned by strength of their own arms for themselves. If a couple were selected for the arena to put on a show, all was fair; Dromar himself tossed all of the slaves he had ever taken or been awarded into the arena, so this he didn't mind at all.

"And the prize?" Dromar asked Frokk as they walked among the dead and among their fellow warriors.

"Secure," said Frokk. "All the slaves these would-be saviors 'liberated' are all accounted for, and back in our control."

"We'll see them returned to their proper masters."

Frokk shrugged. "They might be dead."

"Might," said Dromar. The Metisa-worshipping adventurers had struck at one of the outposts in the southern reaches of the Blightlands, and at least a few of the orcs stationed there had escaped to inform Dromar's Century. And this proved their doom, for it was how his Century was put onto the right course to intercept them and catch them in this very morning ambush.

"We can get the details from them," Frokk said.

"Do any of them speak the Blight Tongue?"

Frokk shook his head, but there again came that gleeful grin. "No. But I've got better news."

"What?"

"The Metisa-worshippers had someone special as their prisoner."

"Who?"

Frokk nodded up and down, slowly, as a kind of excitement built up more and more. "Menalus's favorite new trader. Not just any Mogo. The Mogo."

And the honor of recovering him went to Dromar's Century, and to the Ironmaul Legion at large.

 

[Jelal Indrin]

Mogo. A very particular kind of word, denoting a very particular kind of person to the Blight Orcs and Fire Giants of Molthal. It meant something much like foreigner, but it wasn't precisely that, else all these slain Metisites could appropriately be called mogos too. It didn't mean slave either—there were already quite a few words for that in the Blight Tongue. What it did have, though, was a certain connotation about it, something which led to the diminution of the recipient, an effect of being "put in one's place" within the hierarchy of Molthal, even though the mogo in question existed outside of it. Friend was perhaps too generous a descriptor for the word mogo; business partner or client, at best, was what the mogo could hope for. But that connotation still held sway: the mogo was lesser than the Blight Orc, and was truly one step removed from being a slave.

It was a word that separated the wheat from the chaff. It was at least one of the reasons why many men, hardened to the harshness of Arethil's rougher regions, would outright refuse to do business in the Blightlands. Inflexible pride had its shortcomings, of course.

Jelal Indrin was not such a man to have shied away from the Blightlands. And when the Centurion and his First Legionary approached him, standing with the slaves liberated from the custody of the Metisites, and the Centurion addressed him as mogo, it bothered Jelal not one bit.

"May I have your name," said Jelal to the massive Centurion, speaking effortlessly in the Blight Tongue, "that I may address you properly, Serok."

Serok. The complementary word to mogo. Again, like mogo not meaning slave, it didn't mean master, for there were already words for that. But it did reinforce that hierarchy which dominated here in the long reaches of Molthal. It ensured that the mogo showed the respect the Blight Orcs felt they were due by outsiders.

Jelal minded not. For a man steeled of heart, who was not so feeble as to let simple words like mogo or serok stop him, there was opportunity and coin beyond measure here in the harsh expanses of the Blighted Plateau.