Two orcs out of three taken care of. One snoring on the ground. One swaying where he stood. Two blades out of three accounted for. One lying in the grass. One held by Sorrows.
“Have you figured why your big friend might lose his head, gray?” he asked. He placed his hand on the second orc’s face and gave it a shove. He turned to face the pale orc.
She was gone.
She was gone, and this presented two problems to Sorrows. First: without the orc, he had no one to answer his question. An answer which would have suggested that the tavern was a favorite of local humans. An answer which would have revealed that among the various foods humans enjoyed eating, orc was a favorite. A delicacy. Orcs didn’t know humans. None of the mortal species lived long enough to remember a time when humans inhabited cities and villages. With a little help from the Grimstone, Sorrows would have convinced the orcs he spoke the truth. And they would have hurried back to their tribe and spread the message that the tavern in the village was best avoided.
The second problem was the more pressing one. The female orc continued to misbehave. To move in a manner unlike orcs or any other mortal species. And when a mortal creature no longer acted like a mortal creature, then chances were the creature was not mortal.
“No.”
A quiet word, softly spoken. But a word that caused Sorrows to tense every muscle in his body. A word that sucked the breath out of Sorrows like a punch in the gut. And a voice that sounded more female, but less orc.
He turned again to see the pale orc studying him from ten paces away. She hadn’t been there a second ago. He took a step forward. She backed away quickly, holding out a hand.
“Stay there,” she said. “I can hear you just fine from here.”
“You don’t sound like an orc,” Sorrows said. He tightened his fingers around the hilt of the big orc’s blade.
“You don’t sound like an elf,” the orc said.
“I’m not an elf.”
“Perhaps I’m not an orc.”
“You look like an orc.”
“Do I? I wonder. Something doesn’t feel right about this one,” the orc said. She held her hand out, staring at her fingers as though noticing them for the first time. She twisted her arm at the elbow, rotated her wrist. Her eyes remained fixed on her hand as she spoke. “I know who you are, Hollow Man.”
“What did you call me?”
His mother had named him Solomon. The orc tongue involved a good deal of grunting and subsequent misunderstanding. Solomon, hollow man. It was a plausible mistake.
“Hollow Man. That is what you are called, is it not?”
“Where did you hear that name? Who told you to call me that?”
“No one told me anything. I hear what I hear. Are you intimidated by my knowledge?”
“Should I be? I’ve been around a long time. I’ve met more than my fair share of orcs. I’m sure I met one or two smarter than you. I left most lying on the ground like your friends. Others weren’t as fortunate.”
The orc laughed. Unexpected. An orc rarely laughed. And when one did, it was a cacophony of grunts and choking clucks, as though the spasmodic bursts of air passing through its mouth caused its thick purple tongue to flap like a banner. But the female orc’s laugh was nearly musical, like the fluttering notes of a low flute.
“They are not my friends, Hollow Man. But I am your friend, though I doubt you would see it that way,” she said. “Not at first. Perhaps not ever.”
“I don’t have friends. Certainly not orc friends. And stop calling me that name.”
Sorrows took another step forward. The orc took another step back. Expected. She had moved into a pool of moonlight and Sorrows studied her. Really studied her. Her skin was gray. He had noticed that in the tavern. Her muscles were lean and toned, but she looked smooth and that was wrong. Orcs are all veins running over sinew. A mesh of lines carrying oily blue blood from heart to head to fingers and feet. The pale orc’s skin was flat. No veins. Wrong. Her leathers hung loose on her body. Loose meant chafing. Loose meant the armor might catch on things. Branches or bramble while travelling through the forest. Or an arm when swinging a sword. Loose armor was bad. Near as bad as tight armor. His eyes travelled from her legs up her hips to her stomach, shoulders, neck. His gaze found her hair, and he spotted it. Wondered how he hadn’t spotted it before. Wondered why the other orcs agreed to travel with her.
“You’re missing a bead,” he said.
“Am I?” Her hand wandered to her head. She touched her hair with clumsy, stiff fingers. “How can you tell, Hollow Man?”
The big orc was stirring. His arms and legs were moving in the grass. A low groan rumbled in his throat. Sorrows slid a foot under the discarded blade of the second orc and flung it at the first with a quick flip of his boot. The hilt hit the big orc in the side of the head, and the creature stopped moving. He’d be like a sack of wheat on the pale orc’s shoulders now. The second orc would need to walk, which meant no more steel against skull. Which meant Sorrows was near out of time.
He closed his eyes. He took the amulet against his chest, grasped
