choose your own adventure, episode 2

You give your horse a gentle tap with your spurs, ride around the bend in the road, and find yourself in the middle of an argument.

A dozen orcish men stand in the road, carrying clubs, pitchforks, and scythes. For a moment you reach for Heartwarden’s hilt, fearing that they are wild pagan orcs from the north, but to judge from their clothing, they’re farmers, which means they’re from Khaluusk and therefore subjects of the High King.

The orcs are confronting a man in the black robe of a village priest, a wooden cross hanging from a cord around his neck. The priest is stocky, with the thickset build of a man accustomed to hard labor, and his face is almost purple with anger.

The orcs themselves look equally furious.

“What is this?” snarls the largest of the orcish men in Latin. His hair is white, and most of his left ear is gone, with that side of his face marred by a scar that looks like it should have killed him. The right side of his face is marked with a pattern of tattoos that identifies him as a headman in an orcish clan. “You say these lies about us, Father Linus? You say these slanderous lies about us?”

“Say whatever you want,” says Linus, “but you cannot change the facts. Five children from the village of Victrix are missing.”

The orcish headman growls, his red eyes shining brighter in his leathery green face. “You say that Ulacht is a liar? You say this, Father Linus?” Orcs almost invariably refer to themselves in the third person, so you guess the headman’s name is Ulacht. “You think that we took your children? That we kidnapped them and sacrificed them to the old blood gods?” He thumps his chest with a fist. “Bah! We of Khaluusk are subjects of the High King and baptized sons of the Church!” He levels a finger at the priest. “And you have taken our children!”

“We have done nothing of the sort!” says Linus.

“Seven of our children have gone missing,” says Ulacht. “Ulacht is the headman of Rzoldur, and my kinsfolk tell me that seven of our children have disappeared. We orcs do not value our children so lightly that we fail to notice when they disappear.” He growls. “Ulacht thinks that cowardly men from Victrix slew our children to boast about how they slew terrible orcs in the wild.”

Linus’s face somehow gets darker. “That is preposterous! You will tell me what you have done with the children, or I shall make sure the Dux in Castra Marcaine hears…”

“Silence!” roars Ulacht. “You will return our children, or you will see what an orcish warband can do!” He growls. “We may have sworn to the High King and his God, but we have not forgotten the old ways!”

The priest lifts his fists, the orcish headman his club, and it looks as if they are about to come to blows.

Then one of the other orcs sees you and shouts something in the orcish tongue, and suddenly the entire mob is looking at you.

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