Two more warriors dragged a man into the room. A human man. He was dressed in the fine, if now torn and filthy, clothes of a merchant or a minor city official. His face was a mess of tears and sniveling terror. He was thrown to his knees a few feet away from me.
He saw me, and a flicker of recognition, of shared humanity, crossed his face. He started to speak, to plead. “You! Guard! Tell them! I’m an important man! My brother—”
His words were cut off as a third Orc entered the room, leading a small child by the arm. A little girl, noolder than six, her face streaked with dirt and tears, her tiny body trembling uncontrollably.
Korvak finally turned from the map. He looked at the sniveling man, then at the terrified child. His expression was utterly unreadable, carved from stone. He said something in Orcish.
The rat-faced man just shook his head, babbling in our tongue. “I don’t understand! Please, I have money! I can pay!”
Another Orc strode forward, one who seemed to serve as an interpreter. He spoke in the common tongue, his accent thick and brutal. “The General asks why you grabbed this child.”
“I was protecting her!” the man shrieked, his voice rising in panic. “The battle… it was chaos! I was trying to get her to safety!”
The girl let out a small, choked sob and tried to hide behind the Orc guard’s leg.
Korvak spoke again, his voice a low, dangerous growl.
The interpreter translated, his voice flat and devoid of emotion. “The child says you held her in front of you. That when one of our warriors approached, you used her body as a shield.”
The man’s face went white. “No! She’s confused! She’s just a child, she doesn’t know what she saw! It’s a lie!”
I stared at the scene, my own fear momentarily forgotten, replaced by a cold, creeping disgust. I knew this man’s type. Valerius was the same. Their own skin was the only thing that mattered. Hiding behind a child… it was the most cowardly act I could imagine. It was a depth of dishonor that turned my stomach.
Korvak listened to the man’s frantic denials. He then knelt down. It was a slow, deliberate movement, the plates of his black iron armor groaning as he lowered his immense frame so that his eyes were closer to the level of the little girl. He spoke to her, and his voice, for the first time, was different. It was still deep, still a rumble, but the harsh, commanding edge was gone. It was… soft. Gentle. He wasn't speaking the common tongue, but a child doesn't need to understand words to understand tone.
The little girl stopped crying. She looked at the giant, tusked monster kneeling before her, and after a long moment, she gave a small, jerky nod. Then she pointed a trembling finger at the merchant.
That was all.
Korvak stood up. He looked at the sniveling man on the floor, and the granite mask of his face settled into an expression of pure, cold contempt.
He spoke two words in Orcish.
The interpreter turned to the merchant. “He finds you guilty.”
“Guilty? Guilty of what?!” the man screamed. “There is no law here!”
Korvak himself answered this time, his voice in the common tongue a shocking, guttural thunder that filled the chamber. “There is one law. For all warriors. We do not hide behind the small. The weak.” He drew the massive, cleaver-like axe from the loop on his back. The sound of steel sliding from its scabbard was the only sound in the room. “You are not a man. You are a blight.”
Before the human could even scream, Korvak swung the axe.
It wasn't a swing of rage. It was a swing of finality. A single, fluid, unstoppable arc of dark metal. There was a wet, heavy chunk, a sound that was both unimaginably violent and sickeningly mundane.
The man’s body slumped forward, a fountain of scarlet erupting from his severed neck.
His head, its eyes still wide with shocked disbelief, bounced once on the flagstones and then rolled, coming to a stop directly in front of me, not two feet from my knees. Its dead eyes stared right into mine.
My carefully constructed walls, already cracked and battered by the day’s events, did not just break. They vaporized. The sight of the head, the smell of fresh, hot blood filling the air, the image of the honorable monster and the cowardly human—it was all too much. My vision tunneled. A high-pitched ringing screamed in my ears. The stone floor rushed up to meet me.
My world went black.
Chapter 5
Korvak
The human coward's head rolled to a stop at her feet, its dead eyes staring up at her. For a moment, she just knelt there, a small, fierce thing made of mud and blood, her chest rising and falling in ragged breaths. I expected a cry of horror, a scream, perhaps even a defiant spit in the direction of the corpse.
Instead, she simply folded.
