This Space for Rent. No really, we're taking money. Seriously, you guys.
Hey D'Shai, what do...
Shh! The little girl is sleeping.
Ohh. OK. Anyway...
Still too loud - use sign language instead.
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OW!
Heehee! ...............................
Don't forget the Tip of the Day.
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Out loud.
Tip o' the Day. If you think dealing with a teething baby is difficult, just be thankful your kids aren't half-orcs.
Oooooh, tusks!
*****
The door splintered inward as the half-orc's hamfist blasted against its rough surface. For a moment, the fractured portal seemed to freeze - suspended by a single bolt - before collapsing in a shattered heap at the huge warrior's feet. There, I knocked, Worm mused as he stepped over the sagging pile and looked around the spacious interior of the now aerated building.
Worm scanned the foyer of the once grand home only to see a wreck of dirt, grime, and broken furniture. He nodded and smiled: even though Dueca’s horse would have turned up its nose at using the building as a stable, the house was the nicest piece of real estate he had found since he set out to find lodging in Old City. He looked up to examine the rafters. I bet some of those poxy beggars I passed in that alley would kill for a place like this. It’s a palace around here: four walls, only one hole in the roof.
"Well, well, well, what have we here? A poor soul in need of some help?" The voice behind the warrior was deep yet eerily quiet: a contrast to the snickering laughter of the owner's two companions, who moved from behind Worm to flank the young fighter. "He must be a country boy, ‘cause he sure don't know how doors work."
"Bet he don’t read neither," giggled the slim, pock-marked man to Worm's right. The man produced a small dagger with a practiced air and began digging the dirt from his fingernails, leaving the thin cuticles as the only clean section of his stick figure. "Or else he’d know that this is Trident territory."
"Yeah, yeah! Trident territory!" mimicked the left-side companion, juggling a crude club as he hopped his short, stout frame from foot to foot in a disturbing dance that reminded the half-orc of Pack when he had too much to drink but the outhouses were occupied. "Gotta pay, gotta pay!"
Worm ignored all three, purposely keeping his back to the one still behind him. Instead, the warrior made a show of inspecting the staircase, making sure that it wouldn’t collapse under his weight if he ended up wanting to climb it.
The first thug continued as if Worm hadn’t just called him weak and cowardly with his body language. "Don't you know nuthin’ Nasher? Half-breeds can't read even if they’re from the city,” he guffawed. Worm turned to look at the thug, and finally saw the fat, slovenly, grease-bearded specimen who owned the basso pipes. “Hard to learn when your neck's hangin’ in a noose!" The thug’s belly jiggled as he chuckled at his own joke.
Worm allowed the three men to laugh for a few moments before he replied. "I think it’s time you left. Now,” he said evenly, using the same cold voice that had stopped a dozen fights before they began. “I will be staying here for the next week,” he continued, letting his black eyes bore into the thug’s, “and I do not expect to see you or your playmates again. Thank you."
The three thugs belted out a fit of cackling, stomping laughter that caused remnants of the ceiling to cascade down about the men. "Did you hear that, Ruckus?" said the one called Nasher.
'Yeah, yeah!" said the short one.
"Who do you think you are?" The leader choked out as the laughter died down. "What makes you think you can..."
Worm interrupted before the man could finish. In a heartbeat he stood towering over the fat man, "My name is Wyrm and I have made my decision. You were right – this is my first visit to the city, but I’ve been dealing with peons like you for long enough to know about your kind.” He punctuated his last point with a thick finger in the shorter but wider man’s chest. “I know your methods – violence, the threat of it, might makes right. You bully your neighbors into turning the blind eye while you ply your trade, or while you stomp on the weak, or while you scare your victims into paying for your ‘protection’.” Worm leaned in and hissed through clenched teeth, “Well here I am. Scare me!"
The half-orc could feel – almost smell – the fear coming from the thug and the warrior’s heart began to race. His limbs began to tense as the primal instinct to chase prey built, peaking when that prey squeaked, “Get him!"
Worm loved combat.
It wasn’t that the half-orc didn’t like other forms of competition – winning a game of chess was rewarding in its own way, as was any time he matched wits, strength, or speed against another and won – but fighting was something altogether different. Even the man-mountain champions of the barbarian clans, the only ones he’d ever met that could match his strength, had been hard pressed to deal with the warrior’s combination of speed, power, and cunning. It was a lesson that the barbarians had learned when Worm was a hairy man-boy of twelve, and it was a lesson soon to be taught to a trio of Torian thugs.
Worm’s first pupil was Nasher. The half-orc’s hand struck like a snake’s, striking the smaller man’s stick-like neck with a wet pop. Nasher crumpled in a heap, gasping for air. With his other hand, he reached to his left, catching Ruckus by the back of the head and propelling him face first into a support beam with such force that the stout thug teetered for several heartbeats before he collapsed unconscious on the floor. Then Worm turned on the now broken trio’s leader.
The basso voice was now more a mouse’s squeak. "If you want the place it’s yours!” he said, backing away from the angry young warrior. “Don't worry about us, we was just leavin’! I mean, we just thought you was just kiddin’! If you c’n fight like that, we figgered you’d be stayin’ at the Keep!"
"The what?" Worm asked, flexing his raised fist.
"The Keep!" the fat thug flinched. "They say Trennor lived there. You know, the hero from them legends? It’s the nicest place in Old City. If someone fixed it, it would be the nicest place in all of Tor. Noone’d bother you there. Except..."
"Except what?" the warrior barked, hauling the fat thug off his feet even though the weight of the rotund man taxed his muscles to their limit.
The fat thug gulped before answering. "Except for the ogre!"
"Ogre?" Worm laughed, tossing the thug aside. "The guard would never allow an ogre to reside within the city."
"The guard are as scared of him as anyone else and they leave us Old City folk to fend f’r ourselves. He eats our babies, and roams the streets at night looking for fresh meat. He even gets money from all the guilds. Even the New City ones!"
The groveling thug continued his horror story, but Worm was no longer listening. This might be something, he thought. If I can beat an ogre by myself, maybe Pack will finally see that I’m more than worthy enough to be one of the Heroes of Icemist! Better even – they needed the whole lot to take an ogre! The half-orc strode out the doorway, absentmindedly dragging the babbling thug behind him. Tonight we’ll sleep in the grandest building in Tor, and Pack will see what a real hero looks like.
Without a backward glance, he hurried down the street, his new guide in tow. And it won’t be that scrawny southerner!
*****
Next time:
"Pack's Night Out," or "I'm Batman!"
