1
DROKO
The Dead Man’s Cliff loomed above me.It blotted out the noonday sun.Formidable, to say the least, an absolute brute of a climb.And at the crest, the telltale glint of stormsilver beckoned.
It was high—much higher than it had looked from a distance—and I was no climber.But for even a walnut-sized nugget of the precious metal, it would be worth the risk.My mind was made up.I would go back to the Two Swords Clan with the stormsilver in my grasp…or I wouldn’t go back at all.
“Is the Great Droko having second thoughts?”
The lisp of Crespash’s taunts slithered like worms in the rain.Never mind my slave’s thick goblin accent.With his teeth long ago yanked from his skull, he mutilated the common tongue.
But I understood him perfectly well.I’d been ignoring his jibes for years.
He grinned wide, flashing gums the color of stone.“You don’t need to prove yourself, you know.You’re the chieftain’s son—”
“Histhirdson.”
“And just by pissing upright, you command the type of respect most young orcs would die for.Why break your neck over a silly bit of metal?”
For all that Crespash annoyed me, his council was usually sound.It was merely a matter of considering his suggestion…then doing the opposite.I planted myself at the foot of the cliff and shielded my eyes from the sun, searching for the telltale reflective glint of the precious alloy.
Crespash, as usual, was no help at all.He parked himself under the shade of a nearby aspen and said, “I, personally, wouldn’t dream of going through all this trouble to please a woman I hadn’t even met.Not to mention the fact that Farya is promised to you, so it’s a done deal.”
Maybe so, but promises can be broken.Farya’s father had betrothed her to me when I was just a boy—before we lost land to the Red Hand Clan.“If there’s stormsilver to be had, I’m not walking away without it.”In the wake of my clan’s defeat, it was more important than ever to prove myself.I placed my back to the sun and squinted harder.
The goblin followed my gaze.“What makes you think thereisany stormsilver to be had, anyway?Did your shaman feed you another prognostication about your path to success?Maybe it came to him in a dream, or he discovered it among some dusty scrolls…or he read the omen in the sound of a cow’s fart.It’s all balderdash.You know the only talent he’s really got is telling people what they want to hear.”
“You wouldn’t dare say that in earshot of his honor guard.”
“Did you notice any fanatics in white paint lurking around all the way out here at the bluffs?I certainly didn’t.”
I grunted.My eldest brother put great stock in our shaman’s pronouncements.Though it had always seemed to me that in retrospect, the prophetic utterances were vague enough to fit anything.
Still, I wasn’t about to agree openly with a heretical goblin slave.Even if there was no one else around to hear it.
Crespash took up a stick and idly shoved a bird’s nest from the tree.It landed with a muffled thump.He plucked an egg from the clump of straw with his stumpy fingers and broke the contents into his mouth, swallowing the glob whole as he eyed the cliffside.“That’s a sheer climb.You could break a leg—or your skull.And for what?You’ve never even laid eyes on this Farya.For all you know, she’s nothing but skin and bones, with the personality of a pot of gruel.I’ll bet she snores like a congested dwarf.”
The goblin was just baiting me.True, I’d never heard any tales of Farya’s beauty, or wit, or strength…but she was a chieftain’s daughter.She’d at least be well-fed.
There—up by the dangling tree roots—was that a glint?A cloud passed in front of the sun before I could know for sure.
“Y’know what your problem is?”No doubt Crespash would take great pleasure in telling me.“I think you’re in love with love.Oh, any orc would swear on the stars, moon and sky that it’s not so—but you’ve got it in your mind that marriage is all about finding that one true mate.You think your life will only start once you move out from the longhouse and establish a household of your own.Pump out a brood of bouncing, green baby orclets, and finally, for once, you’ll be happy.Even though you’re at your apex right now, and you’ll never be anything more than the third son of a failed chieftain—”
“Hold your tongue!”
“Or what?”He flashed his gray gums.“You’ll cut it out?”
“First you claim my birthright earns respect, and now it’s the pinnacle of a sorry life.So, which is it?”
“I suppose it’s only the rambling of a lowly goblin whose inferior mind surely can’t comprehend the intricacies of your advanced orcish ways.”
I knew better than to dwell on the slave’s words—the only point of the conversation was to provoke me.What rankled was that he wasn’t entirely wrong.I was itching to get out of the longhouse.To distinguish myself.To be my own man.Things I could only hope to achieve once I’d married.Until then, I would just be another green face in a sea of unproven orcs, living under someone else’s roof and following someone else’s orders.
And until the time came when I finally took Farya as my wife, I’d have to make sure her father had no reason to change his mind.
Which meant scaling the cliff.
It was a daunting challenge.The stone walls were steep, craggy, and slippery with moss.The tree roots provided ample handholds, but they unraveled when I hauled at them with too much force, leaving me hanging precariously in mid-air.My arms burned as I climbed, forcing me to move quickly between handholds.Every foothold threatened to crumble beneath my feet as I scaled the cliff.
