Brodnak looked down at the sodden, steaming pile of bones and rearranged his breaches into a slightly more dignified configuration. He turned to the patiently waiting spectre of death that stood in the corner of the room.
"So boss, what's this all about then?"
It wasn't every day that a walking skeleton got you out of bed first thing in the afternoon and asked you to piss in a sack full of bones. When Maris turned up things normally got more interesting, true. But the greenskin did sometimes wish they were a little less confusing.
Maris sighed in the way only a dead man can, and started to explain about the Elf. He'd not been looking forward to this bit. Brodnaks face took on a look of bitter disappointment and slight betrayal.
"Couldn't you have come and got me sooner? I could have helped kill it. I NEVER get to kill any Elves". He whined. This wasn't strictly true of course. Maris knew for a fact that Brodnak had killed at least 34 Elves. It was a curious fact about Orcs, that even though sometimes they could get so drunk they forgot to breathe, even then they could tell you how many Elves they'd killed. Not just Elves of course. Somehow they kept a mental count of pretty much everything they'd ever beaten in combat.
"Look, I would have done if I'd had the chance. You know that. But there just wasn't time."
"Why not?"
"It started talking at me. You know what they're like."
This was, Brodnak reflected soberly, fair enough. Half the time anyone attacked an Elf was simply to get it stop talking, the bunch of pompous windbags. The other half of the time of course you were attacking it so that it didn't actually START talking in the first place. Not that it helped really. The Elven race as a whole seemed to suffer from a sort of congenital third person narration.
"Anyway, I let you desecrate the body didn't I?" Maris pointed out.
Brodnaks eyes lit up. DESECRATE. He liked the sound of that. It is a fact of Orcish culture that they do not possess family names. Brodnak Headsplitters father wasn't Mr Headsplitter. Nobody knew really knew who anybodies parents were in an Orc settlement. Everybody got atrociously drunk as often as possible, and sometimes there babies. The young Orcs were then pretty much left to fend for themselves until they were big enough to fight someone for a drink, at which point they were considered adults. That's just the way it was. The ironic part was that many scholars considered these roving bands of Orcish toddlers as a separate species entirely, and commonly referred to them as Goblins. Partly this might be down to the Orcs habit of using the upper levels as a kind of creche. When asked about the logic of placing their young directly in the path of a bunch of rampaging homicidal adventurers that the Orcs themselves hadn't even faced yet, the Orcs would invariably mutter something about it being "character building" and get back to whatever foul concoction they were currently drinking.
The point however was that Orcs had to earn their names through their deeds. So for example Granlik Skullcruncher had big hammer and wasn't afraid to use it, and Wanlag Corpsefondler had some personal issues. Obviously the competition for manly intimidating names was pretty fierce. And whilst Brodnak Headsplitter might sound pretty scary to some, it was pretty much the Orcish equivalent of being called John Smith. It was BORING. No girl would look twice at an guy called Headsplitter. Brodnak had always fancied himself as something more like an Elfslayer. Everyone loved an Elfslayer. But to really claim that he'd have to beat Emlek Elfslayer in an Elf slaying competition. And Emlek had a count of nearly 200. Brodnak was beginning to despair of ever earning himself a respectable name with which to pick up chicks.
But now a whole new world of opportunities was opening up before him. Desecrator. He'd never met anyone called Desecrator before. It had a nice ring to it.
"So, this desecrating thing. Hows that work then?" He asked, only slightly too enthusiastically.
Maris was momentarily taken aback by the Orcs enthusiasm. Had he picked up a fetish somewhere?
"Well, basically we just need to render the remains so unclean that holy magic won't stick to them. That way this blathering idiot," he said kicking the sack and instantly regretting it as a drop of fluid began bleaching his robes "doesn't get resurrected and we don't have to go through all the hassle of killing him again."
"That sort of thing happen a lot then?" asked the Orc whilst the gears of his painfully sober thought processes began to turn.
"Can do, if you're not careful. I once had a Barbarian warlord chasing me around for a week because he though my left leg had once belonged to his brother. Apparently they only need a bit."
"What happened?" asked the greenskin, fascinated. Maris' stories usually ended with some dying in some novel and horrible fashion. Brodnak loved them.
"I think...." Said the Deathmage, struggling to remember the details, "I eventually managed to cut of his arm. Then I had it strangle him. It was that or I'd broken into his family tomb and had his Grandmother do it. I forget exactly. You know Barbarians, they all look alike after a while. All loincloths and oiled nipples."
The Orc chuckled. "Yeah, bunch of posers. Anyway, I think I've got this Descrating thing worked out. Once this lot's dried off a bit I'll smash them with hammers and flush them down the latrines."
"Very good" Said Maris, impressed. It wasn't often that you could achieve this level of enthusiasm in an underling.
"It's just.... Do you think I'd be able to keep the skull?"
"Why, what do you want with that?" Asked Maris quizzically. This was getting strange again.
Brodnack told him. It's hard to understand how a fleshless rictus, forever fixed in that final bony smile could be said to break out into a malicious grin unless you've actually witnessed the phenomenon yourself.
"Ohh, I think that'll be just perfect."
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