Midnight Bounties 4 - Chapter 36

I fell asleep for a few seconds. My jaw slipped off my knuckles, jerking me awake again. I looked up. The throne room was filled to the brink with people talking over each other while Seldon Wey Stoneford desperately tried to establish some semblance of order. My gaze wandered between the rows of banks that led toward the throne. It was still covered in soot from when I entered.

I shifted in my seat trying to figure out where to put my tail. I had it curled under me at first, but that just felt wrong so I let it hang over the armchair which kind of pushed the rest of my body up and forward. I finally leaned to the side twisting myself into a somewhat bareable position and breathed out. A waft of incinerated air left my maw crackling and catching the attention of some across the dais.

Gods, I needed to kill something soon and be done with the demon form. I tried to focus on the conversation at hand, but it seemed like I was the only one.

“Will you stop fiddling with that cursed dagger already!” Urmon Thornsleeper the Great Claw of the Druid Guild yelled, snatching a bejeweled dagger out of the air.

Sil Got the leader of the assassin’s guild One Night turned to the towering elven druid covered in thick hides over his gold green armor and hissed like a snake. The druid snarled at the assassin and for a moment I actually hoped they’d get into it. It would have been an interesting clash of worlds.

“My good people—” Seldon began, but his voice was drowned out as the argument between Thornsleeper and Sil Got reached the level of screaming insults.

“Kill the little snake, druid!” Ugly Hog, a barrel of an orc and leader of the Blooddrinkers Clan roared and laughed.

“This is the seat of Steelheart! Have some fucking respect!” Robert Tharmore, the First Paladin yelled, shooting up to his feet, eyes a seething white.

“Hear, hear!” some nobles chirped in shyly.

“Fuck your seat of power, human!” Murgar of the Morkin Watch said and all the orcs broke into laughter.

The entire right side of the throne room was filled with the big green boys while the rest of the races squeezed themselves to the left. Nobody wanted to be near them and it wasn’t just the smell. It had a lot to do with the fact that just hours ago they tried to take over the city. Well, Nergat did, but to most Sankta Varathians that made no difference.

“My Lords, please! The enemy could attack us at any moment. Show respect to each other, for the love of the gods!” Seldon tried again.

His hair was a mess, his eyes had big black sacks under them, and his robes were drenched in sweat.

“Can we please address the issue of who will lead the Green Tide. Grand Shaman, you were saying?”

The cacophony let off somewhat as Grimjon Stoneater, the ancient shaman and right hand man of Nergat, pushed himself up on his twisted staff. He smacked his dry lips as he spoke.

“As I have said already said, the only way to choose a new warlord is by retreating to the Frostrock Grotto.”

A whole new wave of angry bickering erupted across the throne room.

“You hear this, Seldon? This is who we’re supposed to ally with?” the First Paladin yelled again.

“This one needs to die if we want to make any progress here,” Hadim Qin said, his voice that of a dying man and yet unusually powerful. The Dark Master of the Warlock Covenant was a grim entity in black robes and surrounded by Everdark energy. I had felt him approach from a mile away.

“Don’t you speak to me heathen!” Robert the First Paladin threatened pointing his gold-white warhammer at the scrawny man.

“I will make a ghoul of you, holy man. And I’ll have you scrubbing my outhouse until your rotten meat slides off your bones.”

The counter threat was delivered in a flat but very serious tone. I liked the man.

“Give me my dagger back, druid!” Sil Got hissed.

“Frank!” Seldon shouted suddenly.

“What?”

“Fire!” I shot up realizing I was sitting on a burning chair. My demonic form somehow incinerated the polished wood. Hell if I knew how.

“Findeer’s rotten breath!” I hissed as the orcs broke into another fit of laughter while I stomped out the fire.

“Apologies,” I said reducing my seat to a pile of burnt wood and ashes.

“Demons and orcs,” The Priest Maester of Allfah’s temple, Faniq Uldrassin said with a bitter sneer. “What days have befallen us that the Gods should have us ally with such creatures?”

“I am not a demon, Priest Maester.” I snapped. “I’ve explained my situation when I came in and I’m not going to explain myself again.” I said sternly. He scoffed shaking his head.

“Man in dress will eat axe if disrespect Frank Boss,” Targa shot back from his seat on the left.

“You hear this Commander Stein? The orcs would threaten the Pantheon!” Stein didn’t react. He seemed entirely absent.

“What I say, old man!” Targa shot up. The Priest Maester swallowed his words and looked at his feet while the orcs fired a barrage of insults to him and his believes. Another fit of angry cacophony filled the throne room. 

“Archmage, can you do something?” Seldon asked desperately.

Onan Killwind looked up at him with empty eyes. He opened his mouth, closed it, then stuffed his finger into this big old nose like a child. Tailfire, his assistant, shot up scoffing at his master. He closed his eyes, waved his hands around for a moment collecting arcane, energy then cast some kind of shield spell over much of the left side of the throne room that shimmered in white and grey.

“This should give you a minute, Seldon,” Tailfire said.

I grinned, seeing the different guilds and nobles continue their argument without any of their words reaching us.

“Dome of Silence?” Seldon asked and Tailfire nodded.

“Thank you,” the King’s Voice said and breathed out. “My Lords, please let us get to the point of who’ll lead the Green Tide. Grand Shaman, you were saying?”

The paladins, the druids, assassins, warlocks, bards, the nobility, Stein, the Royal Guard, their captain and everyone else but the orcs had been silenced. Grimjon licked his tusks and continued.

“At the Frostrock Grotto, we will have ten days of drinking, followed by a grand battle in which the respective warchiefs will try and claim the title of warlord. Then—”

“Can we do it without the drinking?” I asked.

The Grand Shaman scoffed as if I had insulted him.

“Of course not!”

“Perhaps,” Jagged Eye of the Seven Tips said. He was an old warchief but age had only made him look fiercer.

The Grand Shaman shot him a glare.

“Alright, progress,” I said. “And could we skip moving an entire army to the Frostrock Grotto while the city is under siege?”

“Tradition must be respected!” Grimjon demanded, thumping his staff against the polished marble.

“Hold the fight for the warlord in the courtyard,” Seldon suggested. “We will provide everything else you need.”

“We need Jaggadar beast!” Murgar said. “Chosen warchief must beat Jaggadar beast.”

“Where would we—” Seldon turned to me. “Help me, Frank.”

“Targa killed Nergat,” I said.

“With Hezzak’s help!” Grimjon added angrily.

“With Hezzak’s help, true. But can’t we just pick a provisional warlord so we can defend against the Quinta? Targa can lead a portion of the army and Hezzak can lead—”

“I will not follow a hobgoblin to war!” Ugly Hog of the Bloodddrinkers roared and his men grunted and yelled in support of his words.

The brown-green leader was a barrel of an orc, wide as he was tall and covered in red warpaint. I had only seen their clan during the Shatra’la in the Frostrock Grotto. They were a large tribe that lived at the southern coast and rarely came north.

“The gods don’t allow for a provisional warlord. It’s not the orc way. We must choose one under the eye of Orga and Korga or there is no Green Tide,” Grimjon Stoneater said.

He was eloquent for an orc. A rare thing. It must have been his age and the proximity to Nergat, but that didn’t make him any less of a pain in the ass.

“And that is why your whore mother lays with snifflers and dogs, you fucking inbred piece of—”

The First Paladin realized all eyes were on him. The Dome of Silence had run its course.

“Lord First Paladin,” his squire said, looking up at his noble master.

Robert cleared his throat.

“My apologies. This was unbecoming,” he said and lowered his eyes to the floor, chin glued to his chest.

Laughter broke out on the orc side followed by a myriad of arguments on the left. I looked at Stein who was staring at a spot behind the throne remaining silent.

“Commander Stein,” I said, catching some of the attention of the room. “Are you alright?” It was a question, but it came out like a bellowing threat as everything else I said did in my demon form. It was difficult to sound calm when your voice was filled with fires of the Everdark.

“Listen,” he said. I looked over my shoulder at the curtained wall behind me and back at the commander.

“What?”

Stein suddenly shot up addressing the bickering lords of Sankta Varath.

“Be silent you squabbling idiots for once in your life!”

His voice boomed through the arched throne room like thunder and for a brief moment there truly was silence.

“You hear that?”

“Hear what?” I asked shifting uncomfortably. I was standing hands crossed over my red chest since I destroyed my chair.

“There hasn’t been a single projectile for almost an hour.”

As if on cue someone yelled,

“My Lords!” the panicked voice of a soldier echoed through the throne room. He was standing at the entrance door panting. “The Quinta are on the move! Their troops are readying for the attack. We must man the walls!”

Seldon shot up from his seat and the nobles gasped in fear while the orcs roared in excitement.

“Grand Shaman,” I said standing up. “Pick a warlord or I’ll pick one for you, now!”

“Why—why that is out of the question.”

“Frank boss!” Targa stood, thumping his chest. “You challenge Nergat. You have strength to kill ten Nergats. You have respect of orcs. Be commander today!”

Fusha shot up and so did most of the Loco Bruego Clan.

“Frank boss is strength!” they yelled in unison. Murgar and Hargar shot up too.

“Frank boss is strength!” Murgar roared. “The Morkin Watch follows strength!”

“And the Liver Eaters!” Hargar said.

One by one, the warchiefs shot up and agreed, everyone but the Blooddrinkers.

“Get up, Ugly Hog!” Targa demanded. “The clans go to war!”

“The Gods will not be happy!” the Grand Shaman threatened.

“Because orcs go to war? Then they no good Gods to us!” Targa bellowed and the other orcs cheered. Finally, Ugly Hog stood too and reluctantly thumped his chest.

“Frank Boss, Frank Boss!” the orcs cheered and roared.

I looked to Seldon who nodded back at me.

“Well, fuck me,” I muttered.

“Frank, for the sake of the city, please.”

I sighed and raised a hand.

“I will lead you orcs!” I blurted out and they roared and thumped their chests even harder. It all happened so fast I wasn’t even entirely aware of what it all meant. In the blink of an eye, I had become the new warlord of the Green Tide and the Grand Shaman sure as shit didn’t like it. He shook his head in disbelief but it seemed nobody cared what he had to say.

“What is your command, Warlord Frank Boss?” Targa demanded.

It was a mouthful of a title for sure, but I knew what to do with it. There was only one course of action when it came to using the city’s military capacities.

“Targa, you will be my right hand. Take the Loco Bruego, the Liver Eaters, Blooddrinkers, the Harrow Fists, Seven Tips, and the Red Ghosts under your command. Hezzak you take the other clans.”

I heard plenty of groans and moans for that.

“Groan one more time and I’ll eat your fucking faces!” Hezzak hissed.

The hob knew how to talk to the orcs, no doubt.

“I’ve rammed a Jaggadar tooth into a warlord, you think I’ll take shit from a warchief?”

“I follow Hezzak!” Murgar of the Morkin Watch said and grinned.

The other warchiefs looked to him and each other and thumped their chests in agreement.

“It’s settled then. Take your men to the wall. Stein,” I said and the old commander gave me a suspicious look.

“You’ll take charge of the First and the guilds except for the mage’s guild, you leave that to Tailfire, but all commands go through me, you got that?”

As expected, the brawny noble shot to his feet in anger.

“The day I take commands from a traitor, a king slayer and a fucking demon—”

“Is the day I’ll let you live, you fat bastard. You think I have forgotten who you are? Be happy I don’t shoot you over the wall with one of the orc catapults. I’ll ask you only once, will you obey?” My wings opened seemingly on their own casting a large shadow over the dais and fire escaped my maw. Seldon had to cover his face not to get caught in it.

Stein took a sharp breath and looked around. All eyes were on him, and he suddenly chuckled.

“Of course, Frank. It will be an honor.”

I nodded. I despised the haughty noble, but still needed an experienced commander on the wall and Stein, no matter how much of a coward he had been, remained in the city with his men. They knew him, they were used to his orders, and this wasn’t the time to make big changes.

“Go, defend the city,” I said and Stein and the guilds shot up and funneled out the throne room, while the orcs looked at me confused. I knew what was up and cleared my throat,

“Today we war! Today we take the heads of our enemies and bathe in their blood! Green Tide, to war!” I roared as loudly as I could, shedding the whole throne room in the light of the fires erupting from my mouth and eyes.

“To war!” the orcs bellowed and cheered, then rampaged through the throne room, pushing aside soldiers, nobles, and whoever else stood in their way. As the throne room emptied, Seldon began to slowly clap his hands.

“I can’t believe you did it,” he said, grinning like a fool.

I fumbled for a cigar, put it in my mouth and lit it with the tip of my finger. I took one waft and sucked half of it away.

“Me neither,” I said exhaling a cloud of grey and rubbing my disgfigured face.

“You sure you have time for that?” Seldon asked.

“No, I don’t,” I said, staring into the distance. “But I’ll do it anyway.”

“This alliance will not hold for long.”

“No, it won’t. It doesn’t have to.”

“You should think about what happens after. We’re a Kingdom without a king.”

I took another puff of my cigar and burnt it whole then finally flicked it on the floor and stepped on it.

“You think a lot, don’t you, Seldon?”

“It’s what I do, sir. You have the qualities of a great leader, Frank Midnight. Great leaders need to think ahead.”

I landed a hand on the scrawny lord. Seldon fearfully looked at the giant red paw with long black fangs.

“I’m going to see my family now. Lead them into a war against a hundred thousand Quinta. After that I’ll have a barrel of whiskey, well, either that or I’ll be bleeding out into the dirt below the wall. That’s my plan.”

“It would be a shame, Frank.”

“Go make sure the supply lines are uninterrupted, Seldon. Stuff the nobles somewhere the rest of the city can’t reach them or they’ll tear them apart. Be useful.”

“I will, Your Grace,” Seldon said and winked at me.

“Don’t even fucking start.”