Interlude 2: Coffin Dance (2/2)

“No fucking shit,” said the thing under the coffin. “Come down here and get a feast on. Dis be heavy.”

The Shaman's eyes went wide. She knew that voice! “Wait... sister? Sister?” she thumped her staff on the ground, rattling the skulls hanging from it, and shuffled down the hill.

“Hello Morgum,” came the voice, and then something small and muddy and green set the coffin down and charged up the hill, leaping in midair to land right in the laughing Shaman's arms.

“Zuula! You is come home!”

They both laughed, and bit each other, and healed each other and bit each other again because ecstatically happy orcs get bitey, and even though Morgum got a mouth full of swamp-soaked plush and stuffing she didn't care.

After that, they sat on the Hek'cha together and looked down the hill, and talked.

“Why you alone?”

Morgum sighed, and pulled off her headdress. Bones clattered on sinew thongs as she sat it down, and fluffed out her gray, well-combed hair. She took more after their “father” than Zuula had, and her hair showed it. It had been blonde once, thirty years ago.

“Unclever question, unclever girl,” Morgum said to her little sister. “I be alone because ain't nobody else left.” Then she winced as Zuula's plush fist caught her in the ribs. Just a little jab, but the doll body had some serious strength behind it.

“Dat be very Shaman answer. Don't try givin' it on a Shaman,” Zuula said. “Where be de odders?”

“Gone.”

“Dead?”

“No. De humans stopped trying to take dis place long ago. De front shifted. Den it went away when de dragons come.”

“Ah...” Zuula hissed. “Fire. In the visions.”

“Fire,” Morgum agreed. “Everyone hid in swamps. Came out when de dragons left.”

“Explains de wastelands up nort',” Zuula nodded to herself.

“After dat... no more war. Just raiding, now and den.”

“No more war?” Zuula looked up at her sister.

Morgum took a long look back.

Zuula was a small doll now, a dirty and bedraggled green plush body wearing a cut-up brown dress that had its sleeves torn off, and been belted into a proper skirted tunic. She had a mask half her size slung next to a spear on her back, and her face had actual bone tusks sewn into it. Glittering yellow glass eyes held intelligence, though, and whatever mechanism she was using to speak replicated her old voice well.

But there was still an aura about her, a feeling that a Shaman's wisdom could tell very well.

“No,” Morgum said. “No more war. Busy dealing wit' de dead that walked after dat. You know how it is. Fighting undead and such. Keeping dem in dere graves.”

Zuula looked away. “Best of some bad options.”

Morgum nodded. “Which is why I be alone, now. We guard de hill. We keep de humans away. We remember what dey did here. What we never let dem do again.”

Zuula and Morgum were quiet then, but the rusty chains below them clanked, telling their own horrible stories as the wind blew them. Stirring memories that burned with a rage that never truly died.

“Until?” Zuula prompted, pulling her mind back to the present.

“Most of the tribe full orc,” Morgum shrugged. “Only a few halfblood, like us. Like me. Dey die.”

“Properly?” Zuula shot her a wary look.

Morgum belched and rubbed her ample belly.

Zuula relaxed. “Good.”

“De young. De got nuttin' to do. Stay here. Die here. No good places to fight. Nuttin' to raid. What you t'ink happen?”

Zuula bit her lip until stuffing came out. “Shit.”

“Shit.”

Much like humans, orcs would fight with each other when they were bored. Much like humans, it got bloody and lethal, if it went on long enough.

“After a time, de remaining ones split up, left. No more is de tribe of Hoorm, son of Kulg. Now is only Morgum, daughter of Gruun. She alone waits and watches. But de promise is kept.”

“Never again,” Zuula said, looking down at the ruins of the slave stockade.

“Never again,” Morgum agreed. Then she looked down at the heck'cha. “Same guy? Mord a kai?”

“Mordecai,” Zuula sighed. “Mordecai Frogstomper.”

Morgum nodded. “I'll stoke de fire. Get de pot going proper.”

It took three nights to finish the ritual. Three nights and a lot of indigestion on Morgum's part.

The heck'cha was from the old country. The palanquin of the honored dead. Zuula had enclosed it, since humans preferred coffins, for some reason. Then she had born it on her back, across hundreds of miles of mountain and swamp and meadow and road, borne it south to her people. And she had taken trophies from the fools that had dared to stand in her way, and the honor of the one borne in the heck'cha had grown with every death.

And at the end of it, preserved by the magics of the heck'cha, the dead man gave his last gift to his people, strengthening them and reminding them that they, too, would die. And that if they did well in life, that even in death their kin would gather them trophies to go and kick the ass of whichever god tried to lay claim to their soul.

Once it was done, and the few inedible parts that orcs couldn't devour had been disposed of properly, the Heck'cha burned in ritually-prepared shamanic fire, and the two sisters watched the flames rise.

“Dey not comin' round here no more?” Zuula asked. “Humans?”

“No.” Morgum said, watching the Heck'cha crumble, and the magical flames melt even the metal blades that had been jammed into it.

“Not much reason to be staying here, den,” Zuula said.

Morgum glared at her. “A promise be a promise.”

Zuula tilted her head. “Walk wit' me.”

“Oh no. You ain't gonna bash Morgum's head and drag her off.”

“Hadn't crossed Zuula's mind,” Zuula lied. “Come. Show you a 'ting. Make you reconsider.”

“No tricks.”

“No tricks,” Zuula agreed.

“Pinky swear.”

“Fuck!” Zuula growled, and gnashed her plush teeth. “Fine. Pinky swear.”

The only ritual they had learned from human culture worth a damn. The one they'd never broken to each other.

It was a bit trickier to pull off with Zuula's tiny little doll fingers, but they managed. And after that Morgum followed, shuffling after her.

And once they were out to the treeline, Zuula nodded. Then she turned around, and unleashed the skill she'd learned once she'd hit Shaman level 30.

“Nature's Wrath.”

The hill shook.

The hill cracked.

The earth shuddered, almost knocking them to the ground.

Then the hill stood up, the tower on it crumbling as the plants and stones and the very earth itself came to life, and swallowed the hill, and the stockade, and the chains, and the tower, and everything on it, churning and turning and tearing and growing until it was gone, gone under the earth, gone beyond human or orc reach, gone forever.

Only then did it settle down, and what was left was flat earth. Even the graves had been sucked down below, with nary a trace remaining.

Morgum stared.

Then she bopped Zuula on the head with her staff.

“Ow! Hey!”

“My stuff! You break all Morgum's stuff! Wicked little sister!”

“No no no! You not getting it!” Zuula protested, trying to ward off the staff, woozy as hell because she'd just dumped two hundred sanity in one shot. “Ruins is gone! Swamp be coming in now! Humans won't never rebuild de place! You are free to go!”

Morgum stopped beating her sister.

She turned and considered the flat ground. Saw and heard the water trickling in.

Then she turned and gave Zuula one more thwack for good measure, and snorted. “Hmph!”

“Hmph?” Zuula snorted back, and crossed her arms.

“Hmph.” Morgum grunted. Then she looked east. “Last I heard, got some grandchildren out past de ridge. Havenn't seen dem. Might want to.”

“Grandchildren?” Zuula perked up. “How old?”

“Five.”

“Oh.” Zuula deflated, disappointed. Five was the equivalent of teenage years to orcs.

“Could come see dem anyway. Help bust some heads. Raise dem right,” Morgum offered.

“No. No, no,” Zuula shook her head. “Don't want to let dem know great-aunty is undead.”

“Dey might not be able to tell,” Morgum said, tapping her nose with one finger.

“Beh. Don't want to risk it, and ain't gonna lie.” Zuula sighed. “Besides, got t'ings to take care of up north.”

“T'ings more important dan family?”

Zuula winced. This was a low blow, but a telling one, given how Morgum had dropped everything to help with a Heck'cha. It was a very Shamanic sort of jab, really, and she appreciated the skill of it even as she cursed the accuracy of it.

Fortunately, she had an out. “Got family up dere too,” she said. “You could come see dem.”

“Bah, too far. Too cold. Too... human.” Morgum said, looking away, and a waver of old pain in her voice.

Zuula said nothing. Morgum was the older sister. She had come of age back while they were still slaves. And her yellow hair had made her stand out. Had made her look... exotic.

There were reasons that Morgum had a grudge against humans, one that she could never turn off, and one that Zuula could not and would not argue against.

“T'ings to do before she dies,” Zuula said, patting Morgum's calf. “Same as you, eh?”

And she understood too.

There was no parting embrace, because orcs didn't do that shit. There was only a nod, and then they went their separate ways.

The dead had been tended to.

Now it was time to take care of the living, and those close enough to it to matter.

“Dey better not have drunk de stupid juice, while Zuula be away,” she muttered to herself, her mind filled with thoughts of bears, dolls, and half-orcs. “Or dey gonna get such a bite!”