Chapter Book 7 ex8: Interlude: North III

Hakram hadn’t put armour on.

A loose shirt, trousers and boots were all he wore as he held his axe loosely in his grasp, watching his opponent move. Dag Clawtoe had laughed off the challenge at first, thinking it a jest, but the laughter had gone away when Hakram failed to join in. The older orc was taking the duel seriously and had come in champion’s garb: helm, mail and greaves. Dag kept his shield up and his sword raised, circling as warriors pounded the ground around them. The jemmek was liked by his clan and their allies, but orcs liked a good fight even more.

“I’ll end it without killing you,” Dag Clawtoe growled.

Hakram did not answer. It was one of his weaknesses as a champion – the way his people saw it – that he had no taste for that sort of banter. The rough edge of his tongue he reserved only for people he was going to kill. The tall orc took a step forward on the black earth and without missing a beat Dag attacked as he moved. A short push forward, shield steady as the blade thrust up towards his armpit. A smooth movement, well practised, and Hakram’s limbs of steel were not as quick as those of flesh had been. It didn’t matter, because he’d been waiting for the strike: the moment his foot touched the ground he was already pivoting, carrying his momentum forward as Dag’s thrust passed him by.

His elbow smashed into the other orc’s helmeted forehead, slamming him to the floor.

Warriors roared in approval as Dag cursed and rolled away, slapping away Hakram’s light swing with his shield before rising into a crouch. He’d lost his helmet, as Hakram had wanted. The leather strap had snapped and the helm fallen into the grass, shaking free Dag’s hair – a long black braid going from his forehead to his back. Hakram almost rubbed at the elbow that’d struck the helm, but he knew he was imagining the ache. Steel did not grow tender from striking at steel. Hakram rolled his shoulder, loosening it, and waited for the wary jemmek to come for him again. Dag hesitated, but he would be jeered at by his own warriors if he looked afraid of the fight.

So he came, measured this time. A feint to the left, trying to draw Hakram’s blade, but when it passed without answer the other orc shot forward. Surprised, Hakram took a step back that saved him from being swept entirely off his feet when Dag’s shield bashed into his chest. His footing slipped but he backed away again, only to earn another bash – at the head, but he was ready this time. Hakram’s axe came down and though he’d misjudged the distance it still came down on the shield arm Dag had exposed by striking. Instead of the axe-head against mail it was the shoulder that found its mark, a clean blow that had the jemmek shouting in pain.

The arm wasn’t quite broken but it was hurt. Dag was no greenhorn, though, and pain didn’t stop him. Hakram was hit in the shoulder by the shield, forcing him in a backwards stumble, and in a discreet thrust under that cover the jemmek’s sword came for his belly. That he caught with fingers of bone, steel scraping the pale, but the other orc used the grip to tackle him. Hakram rocked backwards, swallowing a curse – if he was pushed to the ground this was lost – as Dag smashed their foreheads together with a hellish scream. He dropped his axe, useless so close anyway, but even pushing back he found that Dag had the advantage on him. Hakram growled and tried to smash their foreheads again, but Dag put the shield in the way. Inspiration. Steel fingers closed around the rim of the shield, yanking it down. The other orc roared in pain, his wounded arm twisted, and fangs flashed as he ripped through his own shield straps to break free.

That’d been a mistake.

Hakram arm rose and he bashed Dag’s head in with the freed shield. Dag drew back, yelping, but it wasn’t enough. One, two, three more hits to the head and down Dag Clawtoe went. Eyes wide and unseeing he dropped onto the black earth, only barely conscious. It was done. Hakram breathed out, tossing away the shield. Howls and shouts of approval erupted around them, dragging back Dag to some semblance of wakefulness. He rose to his knees, expression still dazed.

“Why?” the other orc asked, quietly enough he was barely heard beneath the shouts. “I’m not the chief, Deadhand. What would you take from me, being camp-leader?”

Hakram shook his head.

“They backed you,” he said, gesturing at the warriors around them. “And they still will.”

Dag scowled, confused.

“They back you,” Hakram calmly said, “only now you back me.”

Confusion turned to anger but the other orc did not argue. It was not the place of the defeated to argue terms with the victor. Yet there was still an argument ahead of him, Hakram thought as he left the duelling circle and traded backslaps with cheering warriors. Further back Oghuz the Lame, chief of the Red Shields and the other leading light of the alliance, was waiting with a few of his warriors at his side. The old orc snorted when Hakram approached.

“You’re not a Red Shield,” Oghuz said. “Unlike Dag I don’t owe you the courtesy of accepting a challenge.”

“It’s not a fight I’m looking for,” Hakram said.

“Isn’t it?” Oghuz scoffed, but after a moment he sighed.

He barked as his warriors to give him space, room enough that the two of them would be able to speak without being overheard.

“That was a mistake,” Oghuz said, gesturing at the duelling grounds. “Dag had weaknesses as a man to front for but you have even more. You think we’ll just let ourselves be pressed into Callow’s service in, Named or not? It’s a worthy queen you’re serving, Deadhand, but she’s not one of ours.”

Hakram did not bother to answer that. It was a pit of an argument, one he wouldn’t be able to climb out of should he fall. So he took another path.

“The duel,” Hakram said. “What did you think of it?”

“You’re more used to using a shield with that axe,” Oghuz replied. “And you still cover for the metal like it’s flesh when you don’t think about it.”

Hakram waited a moment, knowing the old champion would have more to say.

“It was unkind to Dag to stretch it out,” the older orc added. “You could have knocked him half dead with that first elbow strike.”

The tall orc smiled without showing teeth.

“No,” he said, “I could not have.”

Because he could no longer feel his aspects. Could barely even see his Name through the shadow cast by what he might yet become. Oghuz did not miss the implication. There weren’t a lot of reasons why Hakram would be losing his Name, and only one that walked hand in hand with forcing himself to the front of the alliance between their two clans. The old orc let out a low hiss, worrying his lip.

“I do not seek service to anyone,” Hakram said, and like that the other man knew it to be true.

Now it was on Oghuz to decide whether or not Hakram Deadhand was someone he could live with as the Warlord of their age. Tension stretched out.

“Ours are hungry Gods,” the old orc finally said, leaning on his cane. “Best to eat our fill before they catch up.”

A look up and down.

“You’ll do.”

A pause, then a calculatingly casual question.

“Do you get on well with my daughter?”

Hakram grimaced. That wouldn’t be happening. Even if Juniper didn’t kill him Aisha absolutely would – and she’d probably get away with it too.

“Too much woman for me,” he replied, and the old man laughed.

That was one alliance behind him then, Hakram thought. Time to visit the other.

He was being watched.

The twins were already waiting for him when Hakram reached the grounds of the Split Tree Clan. Sigvin and Sigvun were easiest to tell apart by the ritual scars on their bodies: the latter’s looked like woven crescent moons, the former’s like crisscrossing bite marks. Sigvun had once implied he wouldn’t mind Hakram getting the sort of closer look at those scars his sister had been granting, but the tall orc had turned him down. His preferences were well set. The twin had shrugged it off and Hakram was on amicable terms with both – as amicable as one could be while trying to have opposite warlords elected, anyway. He might kill them, or they him, but it wouldn’t be killing done in the red.

“Back already?” Sigvin teased.

Sigvun cocked a hairless brow.

“Should I speak to our kin about raising a pillar?” he gravely asked.

Hakram rolled his eyes. Old-fashioned, the Split Tree. Hardly anyone still hung woven crowns on sculpted pillars anymore: weddings were family feasts under a shaman nowadays, not ceremonies to attract the blessings of spirits.

“Take me to your chieftain,” he said.

Though both kept light expressions, he could see the stiffening in the way they stood. Uncertainty in Sigvun’s eyes but triumph in Sigvin’s. She thinks she has swayed me, Hakram thought. In a way she had. The twins agreed without trouble but the light conversation died and they walked the rest of the way in silence. He spent the time considering he knew of Hegvor Allspeak, chief of the Split Tree Clan. Which was little, for though Hakram could think offhand of half a dozen feuds she had mediated and how he did not even know the old woman’s age. Much about the chief herself was obscured, which he suspected to be on purpose.

He was not made to wait long before being led to a great tent where three orcs, by the looks of them none younger than sixty winters, waited seated. Introductions were briskly made. The oldest shaman of the clan, Bjarte, sat to the right. To the left sat Gulda Hardhead, the most honoured champion of the Split Tree, and between them sat a woman of long white hair with a hard scar across her nose. Hegvor Allspeak, whose eyes were of an unsettlingly pale yellow bordering on green. Hakram was invited to sit across from them at a low table, an honour that was not granted to the twins. They sat on the ground, near the back of the tent. The two were trusted, Hakram thought, but their age meant their influence was limited.

Hegvor pushed across the table a small bowl and cut of dried meat.

“I offer you meat and drink from my table,” the chieftain said.

Brutally salty sheep and hard aragh were what Hakram wolfed down, but that was an old and well-known negotiating trick. At least they hadn’t used Taghreb spices, which would have had him panting for water throughout the entire talks.

“Hail, Hegvor Allspeak,” he said.

“Hail, Hakram Deadhead,” the old woman replied. “The twins say you ask of my time.”

“I do,” he said.

She frowned.

“Not, I think, for what Sigvin hopes of you,” Hegvor said. “So what it is you have come for, Deadhand, if not to lend your name to the better cause?”

Hakram’s dead fingers laid against the table, its intricate carvings dimly felt to his senses. Like a… pressure, nothing like what a hand of flesh had been. And the pressures were lighter now, for the same reason that Hakram thought he would no longer be able to Find something he sought.

“Before I answer that question,” he said, “I want to describe something to you.”

The bone fingers drummed against the wood, a sound like a rat gnawing.

“Within a week the taratoplu will have to disperse because it can no longer be fed,” Hakram said. “As the pressure mounts on all clans to gather behind a banner, the Graven Bone and the Stag-Crowned will cede territories to some of the clans bordering them. Those clans will then come to support Troke Snaketooth and get him elected as High Lord of the Steppes.”

The Graven Bone and Stag-Crowned were the two strongest supporters of Troke, despite being the two largest southern clans after his own, because Malicia had also named them lords of the Steppes. They would be his natural lieutenants, the highest under him after his election. That was well worth territorial concessions to their own rivals, especially when this was an offer that the Blackspears themselves could not make – if Troke was seen to be weakening his clan to rope in others, he would be made into a laughingstock.

“Dread Empress Malicia will recognize the title and formally charge High Lord Troke with putting down the rebelling High Seat of Nok,” Hakram said. “Most clans will fall in line at the prospect of plunder and even the Howling Wolves and the Red Shields will join the host.”

Utter silence from across the table.

“To secure Troke’s position after the sack, the Wolves and the Shields will be given the honour of being the first into the breach at Nok,” he calmly continued. “You’ll collude with either Malicia or High Lord Dakarai to make their losses crippling, then keep them crippled after you withdraw to the Steppes by keeping away returning legionaries.”

His fingers skittered across the wood still.

“You keep propping up Troke, after that, but begin looking to the future,” Hakram said. “Marry a rising name in the Bones or the Stags to one of your kin, then lay the grounds for them to be Snaketooth’s successor. Then you begin pushing for what you actually want.”

The tall orc showed teeth.

“At a guess? Bringing back the bronze urus as our coinage, a council of shamans to mediate clan disputes like in the ancient Hordes and fixed yearly gatherings under enforced truce,” Hakram continued. “If Troke backs you, all the better. If he doesn’t, he has an accident and you get the prepared successor in power where they will be duly grateful.”

Hakram’s dead hand went still.

“How close am I?” he asked.

A long moment of silence.

“Only one yearly gathering,” Barjte said, the shaman smiling. “We would consecrate holy grounds for the first time since the Miezans, our High Seat of the Steppes.”

Good, Hakram thought. They had, without knowing it, come to agree with one of his own notions in principle. Now he just needed to survive the rest of this conversation. His eyes were on Hegvor, so he was surprised when the answer came from behind.

“I told you, grandmother,” Sigvin erupted. “We should have tried to bring him from the start, it’s such a waste that-”

“Be silent, girl,” Hagvor peevishly cut in, “until you stop thinking with your snatch.”

Sigvin’s mouth closed with an angry click of fangs. Her grandmother – the things you learned, Hakram mused – turned a cool gaze on him.

“You’re a clever man, Deadhand,” she said. “So tell me the reason you’ve come up with that I should let you leave this tent alive.”

So much for drink and meat from their table, Hakram thought amusedly. His people were not the Taghreb, to hold the law of hospitality as sacrosanct, but that’s been a rather hasty turnabout. Still, there was nothing like the threat of death to get a man’s blood flowing.

“It won’t work,” Hakram said. “Even if you kill me and get away with it, even if I say nothing, it won’t work.”

Gulda Hardhead bared her fangs.

“You think us fools, boy,” the old champion said. “Think we haven’t thought it through, maybe, that since we keep to old ways we’re just sav-”

“I think you haven’t read reports of the Eyes of the Empire annotated by the Scribe,” Hakram calmly interrupted.

A start of surprise.

“You know things I do not,” he said. “That I could not learn or did not care to. Are you so proud to believe the opposite cannot be true?”

Because if it were so, if they were a closed door, then he would have to kill them all. Something pulsed in his belly at the thought, almost eager. A craving not entirely his. He had rustled feathers with the brusque answer, but where Gulda was growling and Bjarte looked politely skeptical their leader only looked thoughtful. Considering. Examining where she, too, might have been wrong. Something like hope bloomed in Hakram, chasing away the bloodthirst.

“Trade,” Hagvor Allspeak finally said. “You think trade will bury us, even if we restrict it.”

“You’re a decade too late,” Hakram said. “The total volume of goods traded between the empire and the Steppes is now about three fifths of what is traded within the Steppes, by the Tower’s estimates.”

Surprise from all of them, but only the chief and the shaman grasped what that implied. Hagvor grimaced.

“You can’t cut the flow of goods without impoverishing and starving too many people,” Hakram said. “Either Troke turns on you to keep his seat or he’ll be facing rebellion from half the clans.”

“An empty tent is an invitation,” Bjarte quoted.

They realized it too, then. Their measures were all sensible ones. Bronze urus could be minted in the Steppes, there were rich deposits of tin and copper barely touched, and it would mean no longer being dependent on Praesi coinage. A council to mediate disputes would clamp down on internal wars save those sanctioned by the ‘High Lord’, which would be used to purge enemies of the throne. Holy grounds bound to the title of High Lord would make an effective capital for the Clans that could serve as a place of truce and a way for the Split Tree to begin their revival of what they considered to be the heart of orcish culture.

Only none of this could be done if Troke bucked them off or the Clans fell into civil war. In Hakram’s opinion, Troke cutting them loose to keep his seat would likely result in civil war anyway – without their diplomatic support and reputation, he was a much weaker man and their people responded only one way to weakness. And while that civil war burned, Praes would turn its attention to them. It might be that the exiled orc legionaries would return with the Tower’s backing or that the Empire would raise other lords of the Steppes outside Troke’s authority, to be honest the exact form didn’t matter.

Whoever held the Tower would not tolerate a troublesome and rebellious bloc just like the Tribes existing in the north of the Dread Empire, so they’d intervene. Weaken and divide. The end result would likely be what the Split Tree were trying to avoid in the first place with their grand plan: southern clans tied up with the Legions and permanently at war with the fading clans further north. A buffer state the Tower could use as manpower for its armies and could never rise to become a threat to Ater.

“We will adapt,” Hagvor Allspeak finally said, tone weary. “Change our approach. For this chance I thank you, Hakram Deadhand.”

Hakram hummed. He did not take the implied dismissal.

“Your answer’s not in closing the door,” he said.

“It’s even less in being eaten by the Tower,” Hagvor curtly said.

“It’s too late to cut ties to the degree you envisioned,” he bluntly replied. “It would cost too much to too many people who have no reason to listen to you except force. But that’s the wrong approach, anyway, because distance isn’t what you actually want – it’s just the method you decided would get you that.”

“And what would you know of what we want, Adjutant?” Gulda Hardhead scorned.

Hakram wondered if she truly disliked him or whether this was a ploy. One friend, one foe, Hagvor striking the balance. Regardless, there was an odd pall on the room after she spoke. Most faces were touched with a frown, Bjarte even casting a wary look around. They can’t feel the Name anymore, Hakram realized. The pressure of it. The longer the conversation had gone on, the more the last wisps of his moonlit oath had gone away. Casting the Name in his face rang wrong to their ears because he no longer held it. The chieftain considered him with wary eyes. He smiled amicably, never showing teeth.

“You want a unified orc state with strong enough foundations that the empire can’t absorb it,” he said. “You want to avoid the Steppes being empty because all the youths went south to the Legions, coming back only to live in Legion towns and raise their children to do the same. You want to avoid clan weavers abandoning the trade because it’s easier to buy ten baskets from Okoro at a copper each, to avoid storytellers reading from Praesi books instead of learning the old sagas by rote. You want for there to be someone other than Soninke scholars able to read our glyphs in forty years.”

Gulda rocked back like he’d just slapped her across the face.

“I understand what you want perfectly,” Hakram Deadhand. “You’re just going about it wrong.”

His steel hand clasped the edge of the table, making it creak.

“You think that by making a few opportunities you’ll turn our people away from Praes, but you’re not looking at the numbers,” he said. “You’ll make a standing army at your holy grounds, but how many warriors will be able to be part of it? A thousand, five? The Legions will take anyone and make them rich. And maybe destroying the clans with ties to the empire would make room, free land and wealth, but it won’t work like that in practice. Not unless you slaughter the entire clans and none one has the stomach for that so they’ll move into the Empire, migrate, and then it’s the same problem you thought you avoided only the border’s thirty leagues south. Your fundamental mistake is that you are denying opportunities instead of offering better ones.”

“We cannot outbid the Dread Empire,” Hagvor quietly said.

“Then stop kneeling to it,” Hakram flatly replied. “You are trying to mend this from a position of weakness that no one has forced on you but yourself.”

“There’s not enough support for rebellion,” Gulda Hardhead told him.

Her tone was, he noted, significantly warmer than before.

“Not for secession, maybe,” Hakram replied. “But rebellion? We’re already rebels just by gathering here. How many clans do you think would scream their throats sore in approval, if the proposal was instead to march on Ater and cram our terms down the Tower’s throat?”

“Many,” Bjarte said. “But what would that solve, Deadhand? We get lenience for a generation, that is all. All the dooms are pushed back, not ended.”

The white-haired chief hummed at him.

“You want to make… opportunities,” she said. “That rival theirs. Only they’ll be ours, not the Tower’s.”

“Trading with Praes, learning from it, being tied to it – this is the trend of the Steppes,” Hakram said. “And it cannot be reversed without prohibitive costs. But none of these are unhealthy if they don’t lead to our being digested by the Empire. And the key to that is for us to offer another way.”

“There is not enough wealth in the Steppes,” Bjarte said. “Ours are not rich lands, save in grass and frost.”

“So why does the Empire care to assimilate us in the first place?” Hakram replied. “Manpower. Warriors. That is what we make that they want from us, Praes and Callow both. Orcs soldiers have been the backbone of the two most successful armies Calernia has seen since the days of Triumphant.”

Hagvor caught on first.

“Mercenaries are illegal in Praes,” she pointed out.

“Laws change at the end of a sword, in this empire,” Hakram calmly said. “All the time. Why should it not be ours, for once?”

Rumbles of approval from the twins at his back. The older heads needed more, though. Could see further.

“These armies took more than orcs to be victorious,” Hagvor said. “They make war in a new way. Companies, not warbands.”

“Let warbands do the work of warbands and companies the work of companies,” Hakram said. “If we must raid, let us raid. But battles are a soldier’s trade and best left to soldiers.”

They didn’t like hearing it, but that was the reality of it.

“Clans can’t make an army like that,” Gulda Hardhead said. “Not on the move. It takes too much training for the drills. You’d need a settlement to support it.”

“A settlement where the wealth of retiring legionaries could flow,” he replied, “and be put to use to benefit the Clans instead of unmake them.”

Many orcs who’d lived in towns and cities for decades would balk at returning to tents anyway. They all knew that. A solid roof over one’s head was a comfort few liked to let go of. And while they didn’t like the face of it – a town for Legion orcs, for those who wanted to leave the old ways – they’d already agreed to a city in principle. Their holy grounds for the High Lord of the Steppes would have been the same thing, only smaller and poorer and badly run.

“It might grow to threaten our ways, this settlement,” Bjarte said. “The sole city of the orcs yet not bound to their ways.”

“So send shamans and teachers,” Hakram said. “And if you worry of the Clans being adrift, raise your holy grounds in the Steppes to rival it.”

Hagvor’s eyes narrowed, the eerie tint of them making them look like jewels in the light.

“You speak as if this settlement would not be in the Steppes,” she said.

“No,” Hakram said, “it wouldn’t be.”

A beat as she figured it out.

“You mean to keep this fortress,” she said, sounding a little impressed.

“If the Dread Empire of Praes would keep us in the fold,” Hakram Deadhand said, “then let it pay for that privilege. Lands and rights. Is that not what all the High Seats rebel over?”

Hard smiles all around. He had them, he thought. Only the mirth went away.

“Troke has made bargains with the Tower,” Hagvor Allspeak finally said. “They would not pair with the path you describe.”

“No,” Hakram quietly agreed, “it is true that Troke Snaketooth cannot deliver this to you.”

And he said nothing else, only meeting her eerie eyes with his own unflinching stare. Silence stood, stretched, stayed. Like a physical force, strong enough to cut with a knife. Until the white-haired chieftain rose to her feet, limbs cracking and back bent. Hakram did not look away.

Risen, she knelt.

“Warlord,” Hagvor Allspeak swore, and so it was true.

Hakram breathed in as every other in the tent knelt the same, letting the feeling settle over him. The claim. Already he could feel his rivals. One the south, distant and faded. An old claim, long set aside but not quite gone. Grem One-Eye still stood with few equals in the eyes of his people. And another one, closer and sharper and just as aware of him as Hakram was aware of them. Troke Snaketooth had been further along his path than anyone else dreamed of.

And so, Hakram thought, it would end in red.

Within the hour Troke Snaketooth gave answer.

With unfortunately characteristic cunning, the chief struck where no one had expected him to. Four fires erupted across the camp, which was not unusual given the loose approach of some clans to precautions against this, but these were no accidents. They burned down three of the largest repositories of dried meat in the great camp surrounding Chagoro and the largest tent of the Brazen Bird Clan – whose territories near seaside salt flats made the main trader of salt in the Steppes and the sole clan to have brought a large amount of it to the taratoplu. Troke had burned the food reserves and the ingredient needed to preserve butchered animals. Clans would now live on the cattle they could butcher, which would not last a week. Three, four days at best.

Now that a rival had appeared Troke meant to force a vote while he still had numbers and the wind in his sail.

It was a good strategy, Hakram was forced to admit. The chief of the Blackspears tried to summon the clans into the fortress barely an hour after the fires, claiming they needed discussion, which would make things even worse. It would deny Hakram time to grow his support: the Split Tree were mustering like-minded clans in his behalf, but those talks would take time. Two hours was not long enough. It was Oghuz who found a solution: he ordered some of his warriors to terrify their own clan’s herds and let the cattle loose, resulting into a stampede away from the camp. The Red Shield refused the summons, as they urgently needed to gather back their sheep and pigs.

Oghuz’s champions then loudly implied that this scattering was no accident and that all of Troke’s opponents might come to face the same troubles, which had enough clans wary of the Blackspears the Snaketooth had to push back the talks until sundown.

Torches lit up the great hall of the fortress of Chagoro, which in truth had been the mess hall before being made into gathering grounds for the Clans. No more than three heads could enter by clan, which still meant more than six hundred orcs packed tight between the walls. Each chieftain came with a painted shield, their vote to cast, though counting them could get… combative. Accusations of miscounting or lies were common and usually settled in blood – every chief had come tonight with a champion among their three. The Blackspears and their allies had come first, at least an hour early, so they had the back of the hall to themselves and an imposing position. They looked many and strong, which mattered more than most like to admit.

Hakram would make Troke rue that trick before all said and done.

He came as one of the three for the Howling Wolves, standing with the clans of his birth as the shaman whose day it was to officiate – a woman from the Arrant Axes, a Blackspear ally – sang one of the old songs of praise to the Hungry Gods and reiterated these to be truce grounds. Only duels would be allowed here, no red fights. Unsurprisingly, though half a dozen chiefs clamoured to be the first to speak it was Troke who was chosen by the shaman. The chieftain of the Blackspears was a tall and well-formed orc, with short choppy hair and three golden rings in each cheek that made the pale scars on his face stand out. He was not built as thickly as some orcs, but as a warrior he was second in his clan only to his husband.

Skarod Longaxe, the envoy that had come to Wolof and now stood at his husband’s side with cold eyes. Hakram would rather avoid fighting that one. There were a lot of dirty jokes about the reason for that wedding being that Skarod should have been called Longspear instead, but the champion was one of the finest killers in the Steppes. He’d killed three dozen warriors in duels without taking a wound, it was said, and only gotten better since. Hakram was not certain he would win should they fight.

“We’re about to go hungry,” Troke Snaketooth said.

His speaking voice was smooth and carried clearly. That’d been practised, Hakram was sure of it. The man had always been ambitious. There were murmurs among the assembled orcs, but no great exclamation of disagreement or surprise. Most chiefs had either put it together or made a friend who had, by now, though only the two larger alliances would have a decent idea of the days left before it happened.

“Three days, my shamans say,” Troke revealed. “Three days before we’d forced to leave behind this fortress and the choice we’re meant to make here.”

He swept the hall with his gaze.

“Shame,” Troke Snaketooth snarled. “Shame on you, on us. How long are we going to stand here quibbling when Praes lies open to our south? Are we going to have to skulk back to the Steppes with our tails between our legs because we couldn’t agree on how to swallow the meat in our maws?”

A chief from the far north took offence to that and was given turn to speak by the shaman, but though the man was right that High Lord of the Steppes was a larger choice than what Troke pretended it was not a popular refrain with the hall. Seeing that, the man turned insulting and that was a mistake. Challenges were traded and Skarod Longaxe stepped forward. The chief’s two warriors were slain and his own leg crippled as Skarod forced three duels back-to-back. It was a statement, meant to cow smaller clans, but Hakram thought it a mistake. Skarod had taken no wound and tiredness would pass, but if Troke sent out his husband on his behalf too often he’d look like a coward.

The next challenge he’d have to field himself, Hakram thought, or take a hit to his reputation.

Other chiefs stepped forward to accuse Troke of using the situation to grab power, but all toed the line and their accusations weren’t winning the hall so they petered out. No one wanted to fight the Blackspears if it won them no support. It wasn’t going to be that easy to call for a vote, though. A chieftain from the east, baring her teeth wildly, tossed out a different sort of challenge.

“You speak for you and yours, Troke, but there are others,” she said. “Other claims. Will Dag Clawtoe not speak up, if he seeks to be our Warlord?”

That hadn’t been arranged, though if it took much longer Hegvor had seen to it someone else would speak along the same lines. Chiefs just liked seeing bears fight in the pit, so many were willing to get that fight started themselves if need be. Only this time it was Hakram who stepped forward, axe at his hip. He could feel Troke’s stare on him, the recognition of the claim. The hatred from him and soon his husband. They’d not know for sure until now, then.

“Dag Clawtoe is not who we would we acclaim for Warlord,” Hakram said. “I am.”

Surprise, some laughter – he was a cripple, after all – but more murmurs. After the initial beat, though, the sound of blades on shields. All save three of the clans that’d supported Dag for Warlord were making known their support of him. Fools had listened to the nose, Hakram knew, but the clever had been counting shields. The shaman called for silence, then reluctantly granted him the right to address the hall.

“You’ve heard of me,” he said, without false humility. “I’ve fought more battles than anyone in this hall, led armies to victory in the west. I’ve killed fae and Revenants, monsters and Named. I’ve been to Arcadia and back, walked beneath the gates of Keter and seen the First Prince of Procer kneel. I’m Hakram Deadhand.”

He stared down the hall.

“You’ve heard of me,” he gravelled.

Blades on shields, not only from his allies this time. His people did like a good boast. It didn’t mean votes, but it meant he was being heard.

“I stand for Warlord by the weight of my deeds,” he said, using the old turn of phrase. “Let them raise or bury me.”

A voice finally cut through, belatedly given right to speak by the shaman.

“You’re one of the Black Queen’s,” a chief shouted. “Are we going to kneel to Callow? Fuck that.”

“That oath came to an end,” Hakram said. “I am the Adjutant no longer.”

A beat of silence, an idea.

“Do you not agree, Snaketooth?” he added.

Troke looked unpleasantly surprised at being called on, hesitating at the answer. I win whatever you do, Hakram thought. Either the Blackspear would lie and deny their shared claim, an action that would weight on any confrontation between them afterwards – a finger on the scales, Catherine would put it – or Hakram would be vouched for by his strongest rival. A word none would gainsay.

“He’s not the Adjutant,” Troke said, and tried to speak but shouting drowned him out.

The shaman called for silence.

“He’s not the Adjutant,” Troke repeated, “but he’s worse. You’re a guest, Hakram Deadhand. You left for the Legions and now you come back for the crown Callow can’t give you. What would you know of the Steppes?”

Rumbles of approval. Particularly the northern clans, from the Lesser Steppes or close. Some of those thought it suspicious when orcs even talked to humans, much less fought at their side.

“I am an orc,” Hakram laughed. “What more do I need to know?”

That landed too, to Troke’s visible distaste. Orcs were not so united in their answers about what it meant to be one of their kind that everyone – or even most – in this hall would agree with what Snaketooth would mean by it.

“Funny, though, that making war west would make my scalp less green in your eyes,” he continued. “Do you enjoy killing other orcs so very much, Troke?”

Blades on shields. The Blackspears were not beloved even if they were on the rise. They’d crossed many of the clans closest to them over the years, some under Troke himself. The Snaketooth was wise enough not to engage in that, which left room for another chief to speak up and keep questioning whether Hakram was a Callowan spy or not. The woman insulted him quite bluntly, obviously looking for a duel, but Hakram wouldn’t fight her himself. Her clan was too small for that and she was likely looking to make a name through this. He looked back, and though Dag was visibly eager to be called on Hakram spoke another name.

“Oghuz.”

The old orc laughed, appreciative. Oghuz the Lame’s blade stayed in its sheath as he walked up to fight Chieftain Sarai of the Drifting Leaves. In front of a crowd of hundreds, the old champion brutally beat to death the challenger with his blackwood cane. All it cost him was a cut on his bared arm, which some in the hall would recognize as a habit from his old champion days: there was one such scar on his arm for every kill he’d made duelling. It was not a statement as bold as Troke’s, but it served as a stark warning for anyone trying to make a name off of fighting him: try it and you might be remembered as a figure of fun instead.

The right to speak was spread around after that, the shaman granting it to every chieftain trying to drum up support for their own candidature as Warlord – or High Lord of the Steppes, as some took a page from Troke’s book instead. Neither Hakram not the Blackspears spoke up again, not openly anyway. The alliances behind both of them sent people to speak with other clans at the back of the hall, trying to buy support of their own more quietly. For all that many oaths had been given outside this hall, there was a long tradition of deciding which horse to eat only at the very last moment.

Maybe an hour passed and people were getting restless. Dag came to him as Hakram listened to the chief and shaman of the Ice Eaters, who was promising that he knew a ritual involving bathing in human blood that would give magic to all orcs should he be chosen as Warlord. Well, he was definitely standing out from the others.

“We’re up to fifty-four,” Dag told him. “Troke’s nearing on ninety, we think.”

Hakram nodded, thinking.

“Call a vote,” he said.

Dag looked confused but nodded anyway. An allied chief asked for the right to speak after the Ice Eaters chief left in sullen silence and used it to call for an acclamation, a demand the hall took up with relish. It was rare for an assembly to last so long without a vote being called, often one was asked at the very start, to make it plain where everyone stood before the talks began. Troke smelled something was wrong, Hakram thought, because otherwise it would not have been wariness on his face. All those who would stand for Warlord or High Lord strode out, and without further ceremony shields began to be tossed as their feet. Troke and Hakram’s supporters threw their shields quickly, already convinced, but most of the hall did not. A handful of other chiefs earned about thirty shields between them, but most clans were holding off to see what happened to the leading candidates.

That patience was rewarded when the Split Tree Clan and its seventeen closest allies walked right past Troke to throw their shields at Hakram’s feet. They moved to stand with the alliance after, to roars of surprise in the hall. Hakram almost smiled, because suddenly the back of the hall that Troke had claimed and filled no longer looked like a solid wall of support. It looked a little empty while staying very, very visible. Didn’t I say I’d make you rue that trick? The final counts were hard to be certain of, but Hakram trusted his eyes: seventy-two to eighty-one. Troke had received more support than expected but the gap had closed.

Now everyone in the hall knew that this ended with one of them the victor, so the real fight began.

Champions first. It was a roughly even trade of victories and defeats, with little unexpected save that Dag distinguished himself by winning thrice – though, unlike Skarod Longaxe, not in consecutive duels. The first few duels were without rancour, but by the seventh the tone had changed. Champions went for kills, not blood, and enmities were made. Without a clear victor in the violence, the fight was passed on and so Hakram stepped out of the crowd as Troke did. Armed, both of them, but it wouldn’t begin with steel.

“Deadhand,” Troke Snaketooth said, enunciating every syllable. “Pretty name. How did you get it again?”

“When I faced a hero and lived,” Hakram replied. “Without a Name of my own.”

“When you lost a hand to a hero,” Troke said. “Only you’ve lost more than that since. How much orc is there left in you, Deadhand?”

It’d been a certainty the man would bring up the crippling, but Hakram still had to push down a grimace. He was past doubting himself over what he had lost, but his kind had poor opinions of the crippled. Having borne a Name – still having a Name, for those who did not understand the details and there would be many – made up for it some, as such things were forgiven in the renowned. Grem famously lacked an eye and was not held in contempt for it. But that was only an eye. Hakram had lost three limbs, nearly a quarter of his body was steel and bone.

Even among those who supported him, many faces agreed.

“All orc, where it matters,” a woman’s voice called out.

Hungry Gods, was that Sigvin? Whoever it’d been there was a gale of laughter as Troke bit down on a scowl. That was one way to disarm the line of argument, Hakram supposed.

“You like to talk about who I am,” Hakram noted. “Who you are.”

“Because I don’t know you, Deadhand,” Troke said. “Who here does? You boast you’ve fought in many wars, but what I hear is that you’ve fought for everyone but us.”

Hakram snorted.

“Us, Troke?” he said. “Who’s that? How many of the clans in this hall get to be called us?”

“We’re orcs,” Troke scoffed. “We get-”

“We’re nothing,” Hakram cut through.

Something like glee passed through Snaketooth’s eyes as rumbles of anger passed through the hall. Troke kept silent, all the better to give Hakram enough rope to hang himself with. The tall orc cast a long look around, unmoved by the anger.

“You don’t like hearing that?” he said. “Good, you shouldn’t. It doesn’t make it untrue.”

He gestured around them.

“Look at us, huddling in a Soninke fortress arguing which Praesi city we should sack before we run back to the Steppes,” Hakram scorned. “Half the armies on Calernia are fighting the greatest war this continent has ever seen and what does Troke Snaketooth offer you – Nok?”

He laughed, sharp and mocking.

“The least of the High Seats, and after the Ashurans already looted it,” Hakram said. “For that privilege we’re supposed to lick the Tower’s hands like loyal hounds?”

“So you want us to lick Procer’s arse instead,” Troke said. “Is that what you’re getting at? We ought to sign up with the Grand Alliance and go die for some fucking idiot princes in some nowhere out west? So much for the fucking War College.”

Laughter and blades on shields. The War College was disliked by some, Procer by nearly all. Callow was respected, in a way, but the Principate? It was the decadent idiot of orc stories, the avatar of excess and cupidity. There was not a thimble of esteem for the Principate of Procer to be gathered in this entire hall.

“Procer’s not my trouble,” Hakram dismissed. “But this kind of talk, Troke? It’s why I called us nothing.”

The Snaketooth had a wary glint in his eye. Last time that utterance had not burned Hakram like the other orc had thought it would. The tall orc instead turned to the chiefs around them, the clans.

“In five hundred years, when they talk of the fall of Keter, the war to end all wars – what will they say of the orcs?” Hakram asked the hall. “Where will the Clans be in that story?”

He sneered.

“Knifing each other over a few dozen chest of loot while the real powers of Calernia carve the land up into great realms, the empires of the coming age. That’s what it gets you, playing the Tower’s game.”

“So you want us to rebel, like Callow-”

“You talk more of Callow than I do, Troke,” Hakram cuttingly replied. “Do you need a recommendation to enrol in its army?”

Hard laughter, not kind to the chieftain of the Blackspears. It put the man on the back foot long enough for Hakram to keep speaking.

“We became part of the Dread Empire of Praes because of the promises made under the Declaration,” he said. “Do you think those promises were kept?”

Rumbles of approval.

“Well?” Hakram challenged. “Do you?”

Shouts, some harder to parse than others, but the screams of NO were clear.

“If the Praesi don’t keep their end of the bargain, then why are we still on our knees?”

Blades on shields. Troke’s face darkened. He was losing the hall and knew it.

“High Lord of the Steppes,” Hakram scorned. “What a way to call burying your head in the sand. Troke offers you Nok and Malicia’s blessing, do you want to know what I offer?

YES, the assembly shouted.

“I give you Ater and all the Tower owes us,” Hakram said.

A roar.

“I give you Keter, riches and glory for a hundred years,” Hakram said.

The roar grew.

“And when we come home at last, we’ll raise a city from the stones we took from theirs,” Hakram Deadhand thundered. “One great enough that even in a thousand years they will tremble at the return of our Horde!”

The roar drowned out everything, and as it rose something grew within Hakram. Sharpened, refined it. And, the tall orc thought as he met Troke Snaketooth’s eyes, the same thing was weakening inside his rival. The tide was turning, and that meant there was only one way for Troke to win now. The chieftain of the Blackspears slowly unsheathed his sword as the roar finally died down.

“Castles in the sky,” Troke Snaketooth bit out. “Their fall will kill us all. Answer for that, Deadhand, with a blade.”

“If you champion nothing, Troke,” Hakram replied as he took his axe in hand, “that is the sole prize you can win.”

The other orc was quick. Quicker than he should be, even as tall as he was. There was an unnatural swiftness to his limbs, the kind that came from a claim settled into one’s bones. Hakram was fresher to his own, but he knew Names in a way that Troke did not. The chieftain’s slash found only steel as Hakram turned and let his arm take it, while he continued to pivot and swung at the man’s head. Troke dropped below the blow before the arc had even begun and Hakram bared his teeth. He knew how to win. They broke and circled each other as feet stomped against stone and blades against shields, their steps careful until Hakram went on the offensive.

A wild chop, cutting down with the beginnings of Name strength, but Troke caught the haft of the axe with the side of his blade and withstood it. Hakram drew back and the chieftain’s footing shifted as he gathered momentum, preparing for a throat that would go through Hakram’s throat. But then the tall orc took a hand off his axe, his bone one, and slapped at the side of Troke’s head. It was a blow that’d hurt but not kill. Catherine would have taken it and finished the thrust, Indrani would already be wrenching her swords of his eyes. But Troke had not yet learned to set aside the instincts of a Name, and so he went to block the slap with his sword instead of finishing the thrust. He’d begun to move before his mind could catch up to the choice.

And so Hakram caught the blade in his dead hand and smiled. He squeezed, steel grinding against bone with a horrid sound, and then the sword broke. Troke’s eyes widened and he was pulling away, but the man found the head of Hakram’s axe resting against the side of his neck. Someone let out a hoarse shout behind them. The Snaketooth’s gaze did not waver.

“I knew it might end this way,” Troke said, grinning ruefully. “But I was hungry, Deadhand.”

He breathed out.

“No regrets. Finish it.”

That was the way, wasn’t it? The red, blood and rage and victory all in one. But he’d never had the red in his blood before, so why start? Hakram’s axe drew back and he swung, Troke’s eyes closing as the flat side of the axe head came to rest against his neck.

“It is finished,” Hakram said.

The man’s eyes opened in startled surprise.

“I have a use for you, Troke Snaketooth,” the Warlord said.

All around them shields were cast down and orcs knelt. The shaman had not called for acclamation, but some things were beyond ceremony. Two hundred shields fell at his feet, as inevitable as the coming of dawn. It was done. The Warlord thought of a moonlit oath, then, and part of him felt like weeping.

But it was done, raised and buried.