The Heavenly Host (Demons of Astlan Book 2) (68 page)

“Why?” Tal Gor asked.

Virok snorted. “She’s Schwarzenfürze—you do not ask why with her. Remember, we did not ask why she wanted to come to Astlan in the first place and then wanted you to ride her. You are the first person in well over four thousand years to ride her. In fact, I would argue only the second, maybe third person ever.”

Vespa sighed. “Fine. Be that way, you crazy bitch!” she snarled at Schwarzenfürze. “She’s been a huge pain for everyone at Mount Doom. If she wants to stay here, I will ask Lord Tommus to let her stay.” She glared at the D’Warg.

“You do understand, Schwarzenfürze, that if Lord Tommus orders you back, you will be going back?” Vespa asked the D’Warg, who simply narrowed her eyelids.

Vespa flew over the camp to the portal to seek out Lord Tommus. Tal Gor turned his attention back to Schwarzenfürze. Why would she want to stay here? This D’Warg was mighty strange. Although, of course, since this was all completely new, all the D’Orcs and D’Wargs were strange.

Vespa flew back over and hovered in the air nearby. “Okay, Lord Tommus has agreed to let Schwarzenfürze stay, but she will need to report to Tal Gor. Is that clear?” She stared at the D’Warg, who stared back silently.

It was not as if the D’Warg could actually say yes, Tal Gor reflected. Wait a minute—that meant he, Tal Gor, was being entrusted with one of the nastiest death-dealing monsters from the depths of the Abyss that had ever walked the Planes of Orcs! Tal Gor reeled a bit at that thought. He almost felt giddy.

Vespa shrugged. “Back to the gate!”

They all headed back to the gate, the D’Orcs flying, the orcs walking.

The orcs had all come back through and Vespa was just following Virok through the gate by the time Tal Gor finally got back. He cursed his bum leg.

Lord Tommus was standing on this side of the gate. He grinned at Tal Gor. Of course, only the shaman link between them told Tal Gor that his lord’s hideously frightful expression was grin. Anyone else would think the demon was about to eat them.

Lord Tommus chuckled. “Good luck with your D’Warg, shaman. I expect you are going to need it.” He nodded to the orcs. “We appreciate your assistance and hope you have another good feast. We will hunt again!”

I shall contact you again in a day or so,
Lord Tommus told Tal Gor in his head. With that, the demon lord stepped through the gateway, waving a final greeting to all, and the strange rip in reality suddenly vanished.

His tribe mates and hunting partners all started whooping and clapping their hands together to celebrate their adventure. Bor Tal came over and gave Tal Gor a very uncharacteristic hug. Tal Gor looked at him, shocked.

“I have never been more proud of you or any other family member in my life, brother!” Bor Tal told him. The other orcs all came and surrounded him, shouting “Tal Gor, Tal Gor” over and over again. Tal Gor’s chest was thudding so hard he was having trouble breathing. He had never felt so much a part of his tribe in all his life.

After several more minutes of shouting his name and joyfully punching him hard on the back, the side, the front and the head, they all started moving off to talk to the rest of the tribe.

“I better go check on Schwarzenfürze,” Tal Gor told his brother Bor Tal.

Bor Tal chuckled. “To repeat the words of our great Lord Tommus: good luck!”

Tal Gor chuckled and made his way back to where Schwarzenfürze was. She was still standing in the same place, looking wary. “It’s okay,” Tal Gor told the D’Warg. “The gateway is closed; no one is going to drag you back to Mount Doom against your will.”

The D’Warg looked at him for a few minutes, did some sniffing and then relaxed her legs and started walking over towards him. Tal Gor watched her, not sure what she wanted at this point. She got right up next to him and then began rubbing against him.

No, actually she was rubbing the harness and buckles against him. She wanted him to take them off. Tal Gor shrugged and began unsaddling the D’Warg. She stood relatively still and let him take of the saddle, the bags and holders and then the harness. He was sorting the pieces together, wondering where to store them—he guessed with the warg gear—when Schwarzenfürze just started wandering off toward the camp.

“Where are you going?” Tal Gor asked in vain, since there was no way she could answer him. He shook his head and gathered up the gear, or as much as he could easily carry, and lugged it off to where they stored the warg gear. He hoped the D’Warg would not eat any of his tribe while he was stowing the gear.

It took him two trips to lug all the gear and stow it with the warg tack. He had not heard any screaming, so he assumed she had not eaten anyone, or worse, farted. He looked around the camp but could not see her. He walked up to Soo An. “You didn’t see where Schwarzenfürze went, did you?”

His sister said nothing, but gave him a big smirk and then pointed behind him. He turned to see that she was pointing at his tent. He headed over there and raised the flap. It was especially dark inside for some reason; and then he saw why.

Schwarzenfürze had entered his small tent, knocking everything over. She was currently sprawled over his bedroll along with most of the rest of the interior, apparently sleeping! Tal Gor raised his hands helplessly. What was he going to do? There was barely room for him in the tent! Now that Schwarzenfürze had taken it, where was he going to sleep?

~

“My Lord?” Zelda asked, approaching Tom as he prepared to leave the staging area.

“Yes, Zelda?” Tom asked his steward with a smile.

“If you have a moment, this is Völund, the Smith of Doom,” Zelda said, introducing a short individual, meaning about six feet tall, who was somewhat hunched over, walked with a substantial limp, and did not have wings. Therefore, he was not a D’Orc, nor even an orc, although, he was almost ugly enough to be an orc.

“Völund, a pleasure to meet you.” Tom nodded at the smith.

“Likewise.” Völund shrugged and stood there.

Zelda stood for a moment waiting for the smith to say more, but apparently he had nothing more to say. Interestingly, he did not seem particularly awed or impressed by Lord Tommus. Tom was getting used to people being slack-jawed at the sight of him. In this case, however, Völund just stood there chewing tobacco or something similar. He appeared to be on the verge of spitting it out on the floor.

“Uhm,” said Zelda, shaking her head. “Völund here is in charge of making all our weapons and armor, but at the moment, more importantly, he is also in charge of the mint.”

“The mint?” Tom asked, puzzled.

“Yes, the mint,” Völund stated, and then said nothing more.

“You mean like a coin mint?” Tom asked.

“Yep,” the smith replied.

Zelda sighed and continued, “Naturally, once Mount Doom shut down, the metal founts solidified, and in fact without access to Midgard, the Planes of Orcs, we had no huge need of coins—”

“Now we do, so we do,” Völund interrupted, “and the founts are starting to run again.”

“Yes,” Zelda finished. “So Völund is seeking your permission to start minting new coins. He proposes to use the same denominations as before, but to replace the coin’s head with your portrait instead.”

“Uhm, okay.” Tom was not sure what to say.

“It will be much more efficient for trading with orcs and such,” Zelda said. “Right now, lumps of metal and gems are very imprecise payments, and we can’t be sure we are getting an accurate value for our treasure.”

Tom nodded. “That actually makes a lot of sense. They will take our coins in Midgard?” He was starting to like saying “Midgard” instead of “Planes of Orcs” or “Planes of Men.” It was much more efficient and he would not accidentally sound racist when talking to different groups.

He had never thought about it until he had heard the D’Orcs calling Astlan and the other planes “the Planes of Orcs,” but it did make sense that the term “Planes of Men,” as the wizards used, was hugely condescending and racist to all the other races and species living there. Not to mention the women. He wondered suddenly if there were tribes of Amazon women who referred to Midgard as the “Planes of Women.”

“Definitely. Foreign coins are never a problem. Every large merchant has an assayer, or has basic skills as one and can measure volume and weight to verify the density of a coin, and thus the value,” Zelda noted. “Actually, it’s a skill most orcs learn early on. Since you can only carry so much loot from a city, you want to take the most valuable coins.”

“Back in the day, at the height of the Doompire,” Völund said, “our coins were more valuable than those stupid tokens the Courts issued.”

“The Doompire?” Tom asked.

Zelda shook her head, indicating it was not that important. “That was a slang term for the Empire of Mount Doom, as it was known for several thousand years. It was not an official title.”

“When was this?” Tom was curious.

“Shortly after the Courts realized we were here, so I’d guess between twenty thousand to five thousand years ago.” Zelda shrugged.

Tom gave a small shake of his head. The historical timeframes he was dealing with just kept getting longer and longer. It really took some getting used to.

“So,” Völund said, interrupting his thoughts. “Good?” The fellow was not a man of many words.

“Yes, I think it’s a great idea,” Tom said.

“Well enough.” Völund pulled some sort of contraption out of a bag that hung from his belt. He quickly brought it up to his eyes and pointed the other end at Tom. It appeared to be some sort of steampunk binoculars, with various odd protrusions and some extra crystals on little arms jutting out from the sides, top and bottom.

“Smile,” Völund said.

Puzzled, Tom smiled. Suddenly there was a huge flash of light and a crack of thunder. Tom blinked in surprise. As his eyesight cleared, Völund was lowering the device.

“Should have a proof of the casting by tomorrow. If approved, we can mint the inaugural coins right after we finish the ceremony, before I get too drunk,” Völund stated rather matter-of-factly. He then turned and walked away, muttering, “Looking forward to that drunk, so I am. Four millennia is too long to be sober.”

Tom gave a puzzled glance to Zelda as the smith walked away. “He’s not exactly social, but he is good at what he does. The only smith who can even compare is Hephaestus, and he’s a god,” Zelda told him.

“So what is Völund?” Tom asked after the smith had hobbled off down a tunnel. “He’s not a D’Orc.”

Zelda grimaced slightly. “I don’t exactly know. He is jötunnkind, and according to the stories he’s told while drunk, or so I am told, he used to bed Valkyries fairly routinely, so he must not have been a stranger to Valhalla or Ásgarðr'. He has been here since Ragnarök. I’m told that in the old days, he and Loki often went on long benders together.”

~

Dider, Zerg, Nagh and Vespa began positioning the last round of D’Warg saddles on the saddle frames in the tack room. Dider chuckled.

“What is so funny?” Zerg asked.

“Just thinking about the great time we had. It’s been so long since I have hunted on the Planes of Orcs,” she replied.

“It has been a long time. It was good to hunt with my tribe again,” Zerg said. He was a first-generation Crooked Stick, and unlike Vespa, had been born as an orc in Astlan.

“So,” Tegh Nornfell asked as he brought in the last saddlebag, “were the Crooked Sticks so relaxed in your day?”

“Relaxed?” Zerg asked, puzzled.

“They did seem a little at ease. I noticed that myself,” Dider An Sep added. She was of the Fen Horde on Romdan, like Teg Nornfell.

“I am not following what you mean,” Zerg said suspiciously.

“Well, I’m just saying that I saw none of the typical signs of their being on a war footing. It seemed a bit unusual,” Dider said.

“I didn’t really notice, but then I’ve never met an orc before,” said Nagh, who was third generation in the Abyss.

“Exactly, Dider. The band seemed a little pacifistic to—”
CRUNCH! THUD!
Tegh never finished his sentence, as he was interrupted by Vespa’s fist smashing into his face with a loud sound of bone crunching, followed by a large thud when he hit the back wall of the tack room twenty feet away. The D’Orc slid down the wall.

Tegh reached his hand up to his nose to pinch off the bleeding. “Sorry, Vespa,” he mumbled.

“Apology accepted.” Vespa said sternly as she strode over to the downed D’Orc. “It’s just that we are talking about my tribe, and well, you know us women. We can only put up with so much damn vulgarity before we get pissed and have to act. And, you gotta know, if you’re going to be tossing the P-word around when talking about my tribe, I’m gonna have to put my fist in your face.”

Tegh nodded, holding his nose with one hand and reaching up to take Vespa’s outstretched arm to assist him in getting back up. “I do. It was thoughtless and stupid of me. It has been so long; I think I’ve forgotten most of my manners.” He shook his head slowly, trying to determine if his neck was broken. “Sorry.”

“I understand. And to be fair, they did not seem completely battle-ready to me either,” Vespa admitted.

Dider snorted. “Well, on the bright side, as far as I could determine they had no lawyers or diplomats!”