Weekly Drabble #130: Family Matters (Patreon)

This week's prompt comes from Name Brand Products: 'visiting the in-laws' (or having the in-laws visit). This has been a story idea that's been rattling around in my head for quite some time and this gives me the chance to put it on the page. Enjoy!

~  

Family Matters:

“Are you sure about this?” Lil-na (though she much preferred Albrecht’s name for her) said, crossing her arms, her hands cupping each elbow.

“It wasn’t my idea,” Albrecht Talent replied as he tightened the straps on his vambraces. Technically, current events were, but the incident leading up to them hadn’t been.

“I know, but…” she didn’t say we could have run. She wanted to, and she might have but not now. Especially now, with who and what was waiting outside the small homestead. She ran her hand through her dark, wavy hair. She kept it trimmed in a sidecut. Her skin was a pale green, her features smoother and somewhat humanlike. Her tusks were small, little more than the size of a single knuckle. “He kill many men.” She started dropping participles and lapsing back into pidgin Tammish when she was excited or anxious.

“That’s all right,” Albrecht said as he put his helmet on. “I’ve killed many orcs.” He secured the straps. The visor was raised over his face and he looked out at his worried greenskinned lover. “What’s one more?”

She tried to smile. This was different, and they both knew it.

~

Lil-na, literally ‘worthless girl’. It wasn’t even a name, just a label.

Orcs had two children at a time. Single births were rare and considered lucky. Triple births… there was always a runt. How the family dealt with them varied from tribe to tribe and clan to clan. In some, the runts were eaten by the mother just like the placenta. In others, infanticide was common. Abandoned in the wilderness, thrown from cliffs, tossed in a river. As often as not done in secret to conceal the fact that there had been a runt at all. In the more civilized orc nations, runts weren’t killed out of hand, but they were the lowest of the citizens. Non-orcs and slaves had more rights than the Lil-na and Mar-na. They weren’t even given names.

In some places, the runts were bred with each other to create a servant race, there to attend to the ‘pure’ orcs, their vassals and subjects. Albrecht had seen them herded into battle, given weak wooden shields and weapons barely worth the name. They weren’t there to fight. They were there to absorb the brunt of a charge or rain of arrows and distract the enemy from the real warriors. He’d killed them. It was easy to feel pity for them, but that got you killed. Runts were runts by orc standards, not human. Lil-na, starved as a child, subsisting on scraps, goat’s milk and whatever she could beg her siblings and family for was still the size of a grown man and just as strong.

It was illegal to train a Lil-na or Mar-na to use weapons. That was reserved for true orcs, and worthy vassals. They were unskilled, but when they were on the field of battle, they were dangerous – finally given a target for all their rage, coupled with the hope that if they proved themselves by slaughtering their tribe’s foes, they could overcome the circumstances of their birth.

It had been that hope that led to Lil-na and Albrecht crossing paths. She’d hoped to find a foe to kill, to take their body back to her family and prove her worth to them. A boar, a great stag, a dire wolf – something. It didn’t matter what, and if she died then that was preferable to the life she’d had to endure. Instead of a great beast of the forest, she’d found something almost as good: a human. 

Albrecht had been bathing in a cool forest pond, soon realizing that something was out there. Lil-na’s dappled green hide let her blend in with the foliage, but she was not a hunter. Her brother and sister had been trained to hunt, to fight and kill. She’d been a servant, fetching water, emptying bedpans, cleaning the hut and her stalking skills were rudimentary, to say the least.

He’d climbed out of the pond to move towards his crossbow, but the orc had burst out of the treeline, upon him before he could reach the weapon. A furious but brief battle had ensued, ending with the naked soldier holding Lil-na’s own blade to her throat. He’d seen fear in her eyes… fear, and resignation. She expected to be killed. She almost wanted it. Instead, he’d climbed off her and in her own tongue, ordered her to leave.

She hadn’t accepted that. Orc culture was varied across the continent, but there were some commonalities. One was the simple rule: You keep what you take. He’d beaten her. That made her his, just as the occupants of cities conquered by orcish armies became serfs and vassals. His mercy was an insult too great for her to bear: she wasn’t even worthy of being a human’s slave. With a roar, she’d thrown herself at him a final time, the two of them ending up in the pond. She’d almost drowned him, but he got out of her grasp, got on top of her and held her underwater until she stopped struggling.

Cursing himself for a fool, Albrecht had dragged the orc girl out of the water, pumping her chest and getting her cough up the lungful of water she’d swallowed. Gasping for breath, she’d looked at him, realizing what he’d done… and started to cry. She hadn’t been able to defeat an unarmed human. Worse than that, he had refused her a warrior’s death, rejected her… and then saved her life a second time. That had been the ultimate failure, proof that she truly was ‘worthless’… until he sat next to her and demanded to know what had driven her to try and kill a man she’d never met.

He’d brought her home, letting her salvage some pride as the vassal of a ‘worthy foe’. She hadn’t known who he was, or what he was like, but it was orc custom… and later she admitted that she doubted he could have been worse than what she’d had before. 

Albrecht had a small homestead, granted to him when his tour of duty had expired. He’d served well as soldier in the King’s Guard. He’d originally come from wealth – at least enough to supply his own armour and weaponry – but his family and all their holdings had been lost in the sack of Cape Mourning. The orc was a hard worker, and knew how to care for land better than an ex-soldier. She only knew of humans from her people’s tales as cruel, spiteful cowards, but with Albrecht, she’d learned differently. Talent himself only knew of greenskins from the battlefield or alehouses. He’d never met a non-soldier before.

Days turned to weeks, and both of them found themselves enjoying each other’s company more and more, despite the snickers and clucking tongues of the townsfolk. Lil-na helped manage Albrecht’s small patch of land, and he’d shown her respect and kindness that she’d never expected from her own family, let alone a human. One day, he’d offered to teach her how to fight. She’d wept. That night, instead of retiring to her own bed, she’d walked into his chambers, pausing at the frame and looking over her shoulder at him.

He’d followed her in.

“Lily,” he’d asked her the morning after. “How do you like Lily?” He’d told her what it meant in the human tongue; a lovely flower that represented rebirth. She’d made a pleased growl and nuzzled him.

They’d both been happy, more than either had imagined, but it hadn’t lasted. They’d met in the late spring, and it was now early fall. Lily’s absence had been noticed. Her brother, the least cruel of her family, had searched for her. He’d found her. Not as a slave – that would have been excusable. Uncollared and unchained, she walked alongside a human, showing compassion and care for the creature. Runt she might be, but she was still an orc. That was a betrayal. He’d confronted the pair. She’d told him in few uncertain terms, to shove it.

“I’m not an orc, am I?!” she’d snarled back at her indignant brother. “I’m a ‘runt’!”

He hadn’t taken that well, returning to the clan and informing their family that their wayward daughter was not dead, but had taken up with a human and even named him has her mate. That was an insult that demanded an answer.

And that was why Korak Ill-Bladed, his wife and their two children had come to the Talent homestead, bellowing out a challenge. “You have dishonoured your family!” Gortram roared. The orc warrior was barrel-chested, twice as wide as a man, his dark green hide covered with straps bedecked with trophies, heavy, thick armour plates across his belly and his arms. His features were harder and sharper than Lily’s, nasal ridges, a heavier brow, larger tusks. That was another reason runts were so hated. They were too human, and it cast suspicion on the family and bloodline that produced them.

On Korak’s back he carried an orcish scimitar. It looked like the man himself; barbarous and crude, but undeniably lethal. Orc workmanship gave little thought to aesthetics; only functionality. No one who’d faced the greenskins and lived laughed at their skill as metalworkers. That was one of the trades they respected as much as, perhaps even more than, warriors.

“You can’t take away what isn’t there,” Albrecht had snapped back.

Korak’s dark red eyes had widened in surprise as the human spoke the orc tongue, then narrowed as the insult registered, but he ignored it. He jabbed a thick finger at his wayward daughter. “Lil-na!” He accused. “You have sullied your family. You let a human overcome you. You have not killed him. You have not brought his head back to me. You have not been his vassal. You insult the family that gave you life!” He drew his scimitar. “Honour must be answered.” He took a step towards the young woman.

Albrecht moved in front of the larger orc. Lily was still an amateur with weapons. Her father would cut her to pieces. “You are a coward,” he told Korak.

The orc froze. His wife and children froze. Lily gasped. Five sets of red eyes focused on the human. “What,” Korak growled in the human language, “did you say?”

“You talk of dishonour, but here you are, about to strike down the daughter you refused to teach how to fight. Is that how you won your battles? You waited until your foes were unarmed and helpless and no match for you? Is that orc honour?” He gritted his teeth and rattled out a series of syllables that made his tongue ache.

Lily covered her mouth with one hand. Korak’s wife swore. His son grinned. His daughter laughed. Albrecht had just formally challenged Korak to a duel.

Korak ground his jaw. “You would stand for Lil-na?” he demanded. He levelled his scimitar at the human’s face.

Without hesitation, Albrecht nodded. “Yes.”

That surprised the orc. “Very well,” he growled. “Honour duel. You stand for Lil-na.”

Albrecht met his eyes unflinchingly. He’d killed orcs before, but mostly as a man in a formation, breaking their lines with discipline and unflinching resolve. Very rarely one on one and none of those had been as big as Korak. “Yes.”

~

They gave him some time to prepare. Korak had come bearing arms and armour, and Albrecht had just called the patriarch out for being quick to fight opponents not ready for him. Talent knew the rules of honour duels, had seen them between orc mercenaries in the camps, or outside taverns when one of the green-skinned warriors felt slighted. They were not usually lethal. It was seen as bad form to kill an opponent, but there was little concern if fatalities did occur. Albrecht doubted Korak would be overmuch worried about killing him.

“You should not have made the challenge. My fight,” Lily had protested as he’d opened the chest with his armour.

“You would have died. Then they’d have killed me anyways. This way, if I win, your family has to sit on it. If I lose…”

“You dead.”

“I’ll be dead and you’ll be safe. Unless your father really is a piece of dishonourable shit.” Albrecht took his sword down from the wall, a two-handed flamberge. The last gift of his family. “I don’t intend to lose.” If I have to carve that monster up to keep you safe, I will. He touched his fingers to his lips, then to Lily’s. She blushed, cupped his hand with hers.  

He lowered his visor into place. “Let’s go greet the in-laws.”