The magistrate’s face and scalp had been peeled off his skull in one clean yank. And now the orc who’d done the peeling was using the magistrate’s curly locks as a napkin.
From the midnight shadows, Linus Van Der Pintz watched the great, green brute, as he peeked through a gap between the two doors at the rear of the Temple of Tarim. Illuminated by a single candle, the savage was seated cross-legged on the altar, the contents of the priest’s larder laid out in front of him on the once-lily-white chancel linens. The sound of slurping and chewing echoed faintly off the vaulted marble ceilings. On the floor below him, the magistrate’s corpse lay sprawled out, its head a grisly mass of blood and bone.
Linus licked one of his pinky fingers and used it to smooth out his whisper-thin mustache. “Well, Linus, me old salt,” he whispered to himself, pulling his jerkin taut over his bulbous belly. “Fortune favors the bold.” And before he could think better of it, he pushed one of the doors open.
The orc looked up from his post-slaughter feast with a grunt. He was naked to the waist, wearing only an animal tooth necklace and tattered rags for leggings. The dancing shadows cast by the altar’s single candle played along the curves and furrows of the creature’s thickly defined musculature.
“Greetings, fellow pilgrim,” Linus called out as he stepped into the light, smiling broadly up at the orc. “I only just arrived in town on the copper line caravan. How very good it is to find a brother worshipper of Tarim at this late hour for fellowship and…”
Linus halted sharply, pretending to notice the magistrate’s mangled body lying in a heap between himself and the altar.
“Egad,” he gasped. “It seems there’s been a…” His eyes found the orc’s, which were locked onto him with a kind of alien intensity he’d never experienced before. Linus’s voice cracked as he stammered out, “…a-an a-accident.”
The orc’s head cocked ever so slightly to one side. As if he were studying Linus.
Gingerly, Linus knelt down beside the body, and the pool of cooling crimson that encircled it. “Do you…know what happened, friend?”
The orc had been gnawing on the carcass of a squab; he slowly sat it down beside him, never once taking his unreadable eyes off of Linus. His muscles were taut under his olive-green skin, like a high-tension spring compressed and barely held in place.
A bead of cold sweat trickled down Linus’s neck. Well…in for a pfennig… he thought, steeling himself to proceed.
Linus stood and slowly approached the altar, keeping his eyes on the body, despite how much his every in-born survival instinct screamed for him to watch the blood-drenched savage squatting above the corpse. “What kind of creature could have done such a thing, do you suppose?” he mused aloud. He turned to the orc, then. “Say, your tribe does speak mantongue, doesn’t—“
He fell silent as again he pretended to notice something new. This time, it was the magistrate’s excised head meats and hair, which were clenched in the orc’s fearsome grip.
From deep in the orc’s broad chest came a deep and fearsome growl.
There was no need to dissemble in this moment, when Linus had planned to feign terror—his terror was all too real. All the same, he backed up half a step, swallowed hard, and proceeded with the second part of the plan.
“Br-brother,” he stammered. “As a follower of Tarim…I, I, I know that whatever happened here…there must have been a very good reason. Protecting the innocent. Serving Tarim’s holy writ. True?”
The orc planted his hands on the edge of the altar, and leapt down to the floor, sending his dishes and drinks flying in all directions as he moved. The beast-man—his features now fully obscured by the church’s inky shadows—towered over Linus.
“B-b-b-but the g-g-guards…” Linus barely managed to spit out, squeezing his eyes shut as the massive shadow bore down on him. “…the guards might not see it that way.”
There was a long silence where nothing happened. Linus just stood there, his eyes closed, expecting to be throttled, or maimed, or lifted into the air and thrown against a wall. But when none of those things occurred, he dared to peek out from under one eyelid. Finding the orc still there, frozen in place, listening, Linus breathed a barely perceptible sigh of relief.
“A large…unusual looking fellow like you? Found standing over the body?” he said, smoothing out his jerkin over his now sweat-slick belly. “Chances are? They’ll simply empty their crossbows into you on sight and call it the king’s justice done. No, brother. They’re more likely to listen when the explanation comes from a face…” Here, he held a hand under his quivering double chin. “…that looks like their own.”
The orc turned slightly, allowing the candle light to catch the edge of his features. Linus couldn’t be sure, but the mute monstrosity seemed to be considering the wisdom of his words. Emboldened by this, Linus took a trembling step toward the orc.
“Tarim wrote, there be no greater act of devotion than a willingness to lay down one’s life in the just defense of an innocent man,” Linus said, improvising scripture on the spot. “Clearly, this was an act of self defense. Allow me to go to the guards. I will tell them it was I who slayed him.”
Linus could see, even in the thin light that lined the orc’s face, a wave of understanding come across his brutish countenance. Almost giddy with excitement, he pressed on:
“The man was drunk, I’ll say. He became abusive. He tried to steal my purse. He brought out a blade. There was a struggle…” Linus couldn’t help himself; he began acting out the encounter for the creature’s benefit. “…and in the end…” Linus gestured to the body on the floor. “…he met a horrible fate of his own making.”
Linus held out his arms and gave the orc a small, reassuring smile.
The orc seized him by the throat and squeezed.
“Who. Was. This. Man,” the orc snarled, pulling Linus’s fat, sweating face within inches of his own.
Linus, eyes wide, gurgled and spit.
The orc leaned down to the body and tore an embroidered patch from his blood soaked vest; it bore a symbol that looked like a purple wagon wheel with knives for spokes. “What office does he hold? What title?” Linus felt the grip on his windpipe ease, ever so slightly.
“M-magistrate,” Linus choked out.
The orc’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. He turned his attention back to the body, studied it for a moment, then leaned down again, this time wrenching a thick ring off the dead man’s knuckle.
“And this?” he demanded, pushing the ring into Linus’s face so he could see the twin intertwined snakes etched into the inset opal. “What does this say about the man?”
Linus’s bowels turned instantly to water. “I…I don’t…”
The orc sniffed the air. “Your people tell many lies about mine.” He sniffed again. “But not everything you’ve heard are lies.”
Linus swallowed hard. Orcs can’t actually smell when people are lying, can they?
The orc leaned in close. The scent of the creature. The scale of him. His sheer physical presence. It was overwhelming. For the first time in his life, Linus knew what it was to be a prey animal, pinned under a predator’s massive claw.
“Who,” the orc said, “was this man. Who are you so eager to take credit for having killed.”
“He’s the shaman,” Linus blurted out pitifully. “The shaman of the Hermetic Order of the Entropic Serpent.”
The orc considered this.
“Sounds old,” he said at last.
“The order dates back thousands of years,” Linus agreed, nodding desperately.
“Back to days when leaders were decided by combat.”
Linus’ face fell. The jig, as they say, was up.
“How…how did you know…?” he sputtered.
“Do you know how many secret orders and ancient cabals and invisible empires there are in this country of yours? And they all have stupid, barbaric rules like this.” The orc scoffed. “I’ve been here less than a week. And just by defending myself…or by coming to help an underage girl like I did tonight…I’ve accidentally become the Prime Justar of the Shadow Society, the White King of the Freemen’s Court, the high priest of two different jaguar cults, and…” He looked away, as if wary of who might overhear, then lowered his voice: “…the Princess of Aquiloon.”
There was a long silence, then, as the orc studied Linus, from his face down to his shoes. Though fully clothed, Linus had rarely felt so naked.
Linus attempted to break the silence. “Are you going to—“
“Shut up,” the orc snapped.
“I’m sorry.”
When the orc was finally done, he released his grip on Linus’s throat, leaving four black bruises where his fingers had dug into soft, pillowy skin. “Go. Tell the guards that you killed this man.”
Linus gaped. “You’re…even knowing what I plan to do, you still…?”
The orc turned back to the altar and began gathering the remains of his meal up onto the white linens. “Once, these secret societies your people are so fond of…they were fearsome, formidable. Today, they are mostly full of soft merchants and pitiful artisocrats.” He then gathered up the corners of the tablecloth, and slung it over his shoulder. “I can think of no better way of keeping them harmless than by letting people like you lead them.”
And without another word, the orc disappeared into the shadows of the church, and was gone into the night.
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Later that week, Linus settled into his new role as shaman of the Hermetic Order of the Entropic Serpent. And while he was toasted and hailed behind closed doors by the very cream of his city’s elite, the orc’s parting words never fully left his mind. He could see his sneer behind the smile of every supplicant. He could hear his dismissive tone in every wellwisher’s words of praise.
As weeks turned to months, he found it difficult to take any of the society’s ancient rituals seriously. He stood on his dais, watching overfed bankers and nobles with weak knees reenact rites once performed by soldiers and sages. And as he watched, he could feel the orc’s hot breath in his face, his hand gripping his jugular.
As months turned to years, Linus’s lack of zeal slowly poisoned the rest of the order. Gatherings became less frequent. Tithings became less rigorous. And within thirty years, opal-topped rings engraved with intertwined snakes could be purchased at most every pawn shop in the city.
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Excerpted from “Stengah, Spine Splitter: The Aquiloon Diaries” by Chester Glockenspiel. Originally published in True-Life Romance, September 1971.
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