Chapter 187 - Strength and Honor

The next few days went by fast, with all of us working so many hours of each day that sleep felt like something we used to do and feeling rested was more a memory than a familiar thing. We made it work, though, staying on in Peter’s castle—my castle, now—and beginning the exhausting process of undoing all the damage he’d done.

I sent out riders to all the ‘vassal Domains’ except the orc one. The people at the Air Guard base needed to know that yet another of their leaders was dead, so Clay took on the task of notifying them about Turner’s demise. Fortunately, the man wasn’t very popular, and they took it well, settling in to begin elections for a new council leader. Someone was still going to have to use the control stone to command the Domain officially, but they could work out who that would be among themselves.

General Jefferson was particularly pleased to get the news about Eddings’ demise. He sent me a reply message letting me know he felt it when I took over Peter’s kingdom, and that he’d be along in a few days to work out the details of how we would be operating together in the future. Carver said much the same, but I’d expected it from him.

Most of my time during those three days was spent handling the day-to-day minutiae of running a Domain with several thousand people living in it. Peter had set up a competent machinery of government, thank goodness. But it was going to take me some time to learn how it all worked, and I still wasn’t to where I could predict what would go sideways next, so I relied heavily on the people he had in place.

Vetting his people was another epic quest of doom, too. Peter had acquired a metric shit-ton of assholes, especially among his guards. Their job was basically to keep the workers in line, which wasn’t difficult when the workers had barely any crystals and the guards were issued plenty. But they had a habit of taking it further, and treating the worker class of residents with way less compassion and humanity than I was comfortable with.

I lay down the law hard. It didn’t take. The abuses continued, so Alfred and Kara went out, found the offending guardsmen, and hauled them before me. I heard the case, heard what they’d done, and decided that if I couldn’t enforce my rules, nobody was going to listen to me. I exiled all three men. They left and would never be allowed to return, not to KingsHaven or any of the other Domains in our kingdom.

The abuses stopped instantly. Nobody wanted to be the next person cast out.

Messages were flying back and forth between the various leaders and me. I knew they were talking to one another as well as me, and I hoped that we’d be able to work something out, hash out some new way of governing this whole mess. We finally set a meeting of all leadership for the fifth day after Peter’s death.

Well, all but one leader. I still hadn’t tackled the orc problem, hadn’t even sent a messenger that far north, yet. I figured the orcs were as likely to eat my messenger as they were to send a reply back, so I intended to go there personally instead. That was next on my list, and I wanted to get them in hand before the meeting.

We’d pieced together the basics of how Peter had acquired the orcs’ loyalty. Some of it I overheard from the orcs themselves during our battles, but Peter had bragged about it to his guards, palace staff, and even to Carver. He’d flown Big Red up north to the orc camp, torched part of the camp and more than a few orcs, then met with the chief. Peter agreed to help him conquer the neighboring orc encampment and not kill them all, and the orc leader agreed to become his vassal.

Now he was mine, instead, and it was time to knock on a few doors.

I took off on Tenebris alone. This had to be a solo mission, even if Kara was adamant that was a bad idea. Peter had faced them with only himself and a dragon, by all reports. I had to do the same if I was going to be taken seriously.

The flight was uneventful, giving Tenebris and I time to catch up and discuss the future. He asked me about myself, about my past, and I opened up, telling him about where I’d grown up.

It sounds to me like you miss them, he replied, talking about my parents.

To my shock, I realized a tear was tracking its way down my cheek, and it wasn’t from the wind. He was right. I missed them both a lot and wanted to know if they were okay more than just about anything.

“I do, yeah.” I wiped the water from my face.

Why not go to them? Tenebris replied. I understand that before, the trip would take too long. But now you have me. We can be there in a day.

It was an idea I’d barely begun letting myself consider, and it was so tempting! I didn’t want this upcoming meeting with the orcs, and wanted the one with the council of leaders even less. Part of me wanted to take off toward the east right now and go find my family.

All the same, I couldn’t just leave all the people around the city who were counting on me. I needed to create some sort of stability in this place. Then I could think about it.

“Maybe after we get things settled down some,” I told my dragon, hoping it wasn’t a lie.

I had Tenebris fly over their camps twice before we took any action toward the orcs. They spotted him right away, and sounded alarms. Scores of armed orcs ran to take positions up along the walls, but we were far too high above them to be in any danger.

“Oh, this neighborhood has changed a lot from the scout reports I’ve seen,” I muttered.

How so?

“There used to be two camps, one at that farm, one at the other one. Those were both pig farms before the Event, and we think the pigs sorta turned into orcs after the return of magic. Not all of them, but…a lot.” I waved my hand down at the walls. Before, there had been two sets, but now they were merged. “All I see is one camp, now.”

Well, Peter did say he would help his orc vassal to conquer his neighbor. Looks like they did that.

“Yeah, it does,” I replied. It looked like maybe it was a true merger, though. Like the orcs hadn’t just slaughtered the other camp, but had incorporated it into their village and just expanded the walls to surround both. Maybe the orcs were better at conquest than humans? I could hope.

“We should get down there,” I said. “Let’s land outside the walls, in fact, outside bow range. I don’t want someone deciding to take pot-shots.”

We spiraled down and then settled on the ground about two hundred meters from the walls. Orcs armed with every imaginable hand weapon bristled the wall-top, watching us. I settled in to wait, because I wasn’t going to go to him. He was going to come to me.

I didn’t have to wait very long. He rode out toward me on that same massive wolf-like creature he’d used as a mount when he attacked Camp Johnson. It was the same orc. The warchief that I’d encountered that day, who I’d fought well enough against to force him to recall all his troops and retreat. I recognized his face right away.

“You again!” he grunted as he halted his wolf and dismounted. With a smack on the animal’s rump he sent it scampering backward. The wolf was smart enough to want nothing to do with Tenebris.

“You speak English?” I asked. That was good news.

“I learn man-talk.”

“Peter is dead.”

“Felt it. Felt someone new take power,” he said, then thumped his chest with a fist. “I Garowar. Who you?”

“I am Selena. I killed Peter and took his realm. I’m here because I wanted to meet with you to discuss our future,” I told him.

“You no sound strong like old king,” Garowar said, grinning toothily.

”Tenebris, would you please give him a quick demo?” I asked, using my mind instead of my voice. It was always more fun without the vocalization.

Tenebris snorted, then exhaled a blast of flames into the ground. They billowed in all directions, coming close enough that Garowar had to have felt the heat, but not so near that it burned him. The flames raged for just a few seconds, then stopped.

After that, I ripped a bolt of lightning from the heavens, sending it down to crash into the tallest tree nearby. The tree lit up, practically glowing for half a second as the torrent of electricity blasted through it.

Then it exploded, sending shards of wood so far some of them almost reached where Tenebris and I sat.

As the noise from the explosion and shattered bits of wood falling died down, I realized a new noise was taking its place—laughter? Garowar was laughing. I clenched my thighs, readying myself for some sort of trap or treachery.

But it was nothing of the sort. “Was joke, King Selena. I understand power. Knew your power when we fought at human castle. Saw it then. See it now. I recognize dragon, even bone dragon.”

“We call a woman a queen, not a king,” I replied, voice cool.

“Queen Selena. No offense meant.” Garowar nodded to me. “We see your strength. No need for fight.”

My earlier hunch about how orcs treated each other in conquest seemed more spot on than I could have hoped. I was recognized as stronger, so they didn’t want to fight? I mean, as sensible answers went, it was a pretty good one. That wasn’t how humans worked at all, but orcs were their own thing…

“Good. But we need to discuss rules. I am not King Peter,” I said. “My rule will be different.”

“Different is okay. You stronger than Peter was, so you lead. Is the way of the orc.”

We spent another hour hashing out new rules. No more attacking human settlements without talking to me first; that was my number one rule. If humans were giving the orcs trouble, they’d be dealt with, but collectively. Basically I was trying to set things up so all our Domains could freely defend themselves—but attacking another Domain was about to become a group decision.

Garowar would also be allowed to attend the meetings of the kingdom’s leaders. Since he was the orc with the control stone, the one commanding his Domain, it made sense. We needed to keep all our leadership in the loop, even this especially unusual one.

The funny thing was, he never once asked me if I would just release him from the vassalage. I don’t know if it didn’t occur to Garowar to ask, or if the orc ethos about following the strong simply made it incomprehensible that someone would want to break away from a strong leader. Whichever the case, he hadn’t even been curious. While I got some pushback about the raiding rules until I reassured him that self-defense was always going to be allowed, he had no problem taking orders from me.

I spent the entire flight home pondering how I was going to handle the human leaders I’d be meeting with in less than two days, because their reaction was probably going to be more than a little different. The truth was, I could free them from vassalage. But if regional stability was our goal, I wasn’t sure that was the best answer, and it was going to be up to me to convince the other leaders of that.