The orc hissed as trapped gasses escaped its blackened corpse. The delightful smell of cooked pork reached Percival’s nostrils and made his stomach twist with disgust. Knowing his mouth was watering over the death of a sentient creature was horrifying.

Trying for nonchalance he asked, “Is that going to cause a problem?”

Katrina raised a questioning eyebrow, “Will what be a problem?”

Ellen stifled a snicker, “You just pulled down lightning from a cloudless day.” It was hard for her to take them seriously at times. They were like adolescent tor-cats. Fierce, deadly and so curious they would wander up to a hunter just to see if his knife was really as sharp as their elders said. There are times when they just don’t get that their actions have consequences.

“Oh…” Katrina looked up at the sky, a smirk spreading across her face before she shook her head and chuckled, “No, no. I see why you would wonder, but the weather has been strange across the entire plains. One stray lightning bolt will draw no curious eyes.”

“Has it really been that strange?” Percival asked. He hadn’t been in the plains during Breeding Season. He hadn’t heard any of the other merchants complain about bad weather, but then no one ever went out during Breeding Season because of how insane the animals got. But how would she know the weather is being strange? She’s never left Pode.

Katrina nodded, “Yeah, I’ve pushed some of the worst away from us, but I can tell this area isn’t used to this much rain. The dargon is changing the area to fit its needs, in a few months this whole area will become a swamp. That takes a lot of water that really doesn’t normally belong here.”

Percival shrugged. As long as it doesn’t alert the orcs.

“So the important question, were you following us?” Ellen asked unstringing her bow.

“You mean when the two of you snuck off?” Katrina shook her head, “Nah. Have your sneaky alone time. I heard the shouts and came down. Broden charged down ahead of me…” She looked around, but the grass was too tall to see anything, “but I guess he got distracted or something.”

Ellen leaned against her stout bow stave and gestured to the two orcs she had blasted with purple light, “You two are strong, how about picking up these orcs and hauling them back to the others?”

Katrina adjusted a gauntlet, “Um… why?”

Percival looked up from going through the pockets of one of the dead orcs. He hadn’t found much, but he had pulled about thirty coppers and had already picked up his fallen caltrops.

“Because I asked nicely?”

Katrina snorted in an unladylike fashion, “I’m going to need a better reason than that to haul dead orcs around.”

“They aren’t dead!” Ellen looked affronted, “I just knocked them out.”

Percival, whose hand was in one of their pockets jumped back from the unconscious orc, “Not dead?” It was one thing to check a dead man’s codpiece for hidden loot; it was another to feel up a living man.

“No. Just knocked out. I wanted to question some of them.”

“Hey, that’s really smart! If we question them, then we can find out where their camp is and where the chieftain is!”

“Yeah. Exactly.” Ellen’s voice was dry.

“But, uh, why not just question them here? Wouldn’t questioning them amongst the bodies of their friends make them more likely to tell us?” Katrina asked.

“Damn. That’s cold.” Percival said. Whoa, she is way more ruthless than I ever thought.

Katrina shrugged, “Hey, they are trying to kill us and our entire nation. They kinda earned a level of callousness.”

“No!” Ellen spoke with a firm slashing gesture of her hand.

“No?”

“Absolutely not. How you behave in situations of pressure says more about you than how you behave in times of peace. Sometimes, you have to question your enemies among their dead; you can’t move them because it will endanger your own life. But this is not one of those times.” Also, we want to get away from any groups that may come looking for their lost patrol. “Torture seems like a great idea, hurt the people who want to hurt you and get the information you need, but that isn’t how things work.”

Percival and Katrina each picked up an orc and walked behind Ellen as she continued to explain.

“Just think about it, Katrina, your family live in Pode. Is there anything that could make you tell an enemy their location?”

“Of course not!”

“Well, if someone tormented you long enough, you would say anything to make the pain stop, including telling where your loved ones are located. But, before you finally say where they are, you would lie through your teeth and say all kinds of things to throw them off the scent. So, when do they know when you are telling the truth? They don’t. So they just keep hurting you. There is no end to torturing someone for information, you never know if you have the right information. There are far better ways of getting information.”

“Like what?”

“Well, if you have time, you can gain their trust. We are social creatures – even orcs – and at some point, we will talk if we feel this person, even if they are our enemy, will help us. We say things all the time that give clues about ourselves without even realizing it.”

“Hate to be the bearer of bad news, but we don’t have time. We were supposed to get this done quickly, but thanks to a certain dwarf, we’ve spent far longer on this mission than we were ever supposed to.”

“That’s true, that’s true. But I have some different ways to tell if a person is lying or not. Tricks of the trade, a little mind magic, etc.”

Katrina adjusted her grip on the blue orc, “Hm, orcs are evil. They don’t form social bonds.”

Ellen and Percival shook their heads, but it was Percival who spoke, though his words came between gasps, carrying his pink orc. The orcs had appeared to be the same size on the ground, but the pink orc was much sturdier than the blue. “Orcs, uh, they form social groups. Tribes. Very close knit. I’ve done some trading with the blue tribe. Some tribes are fiercer than others.”

The three of them stepped through the high grass into the clearing their party had flattened so they could make camp. Percival and Katrina unceremoniously dumped the orcs into a multicolored pile of limbs in the middle of the camp. Percival grabbed a rope from his pack before coming back and securing the two orcs. He tied them back to back so he could use the same length of rope.

Ellen looked at one orc’s face then the other. The blue one was clearly older, his face more grizzled, his protruding tusks were yellowed, but there was a distinct similarity in their features. Something that went beyond them both being orcs. Could they be related? It would be unlikely. As far as she knew, orcs stuck with their color tribes and didn’t like blending. In fact, the green tribe was considered the lowest tribe on the totem poll because it looked like a blend of the blue tribe and the yellow instead of its own distinct tribe.

Katrina glanced at Ellen, “Do you want me to go track down Broden?”

Ellen shook her head laughing, “You are a terrible tracker. No, that’s okay. We’ll be here a while. If he is still lost after we have questioned the orcs, I’ll go out.”

Kegar stomped over to them, “Who told you to wander off! We were worried about you!”

Lizzy followed behind him, she shook her head and mouthed, “We didn’t know you were gone.”

Kegar stared at the orcs whose prone forms gave him the ability to look down on them in disgust. “What are these orcs doing here? Why aren’t they dead?”

Ellen pulled two handkerchiefs out of her sleeve and gagged the unconscious orcs. “I’m going to question them to find the location of their orc chief. That way we won’t have to wander around these plains forever.”

“No.”

“No?” Ellen’s brow wrinkled in confusion.

“I’m the leader of this expedition. I should have given the approval for capturing these orcs, however, now that we have them, I will be the one torturing them. It would be wrong of me to entrust that to someone else.” There was a gleam in his eyes that frightened Katrina.

“We don’t need to torture them, we can just question them. I have a way of knowing if they are lying or not.”

Kegar flicked his staff and the orcs were restrained by vines that burst from the ground. It was redundant given that they were already tightly bound. However, Kegar’s vines were far tighter than necessary. “What method is this?”

The last thing Ellen wanted to do was tell Kegar she could read his mind if she wanted. It was unethical to do it without someone’s consent or in great need, but she knew from her interactions with Kegar that if he had her ability, he would not be restrained by ethics and because of this, wouldn’t believe her restraint. He might try to kill me to prevent me from reading his mind. “I’ve been trained to read body language. If you question the orc I can tell if he is lying or not.”

Worry flickered across Kegar’s face.

The blue orc’s head lolled to the side. He sneezed mightily pulling everyone’s gaze to him. The blue orc glared up at the dwarf that stood over him. He yelled into his gag. The muffled insults, and they were most assuredly insults, struggled and died around the cloth in his mouth.

Kegar’s eyes narrowed. “Do you speak orcish?”

“Do you?”

Kegar wasn’t about to admit he couldn’t speak a language.

Strozazand stepped forward running a hand through his hair. “Uh, I do. So I guess it doesn’t matter, right? I can ask whatever questions you have. Ellen will tell us if they are lying or whatever and then we can do what we need to do.”

Ellen nodded and undid the gag.

Kegar grimaced. “Where is your encampment?”

Strozazand translated the question into orcish, “Where is your encampment?”

The orc looked at him with a puzzled expression. His blue lids blinked slowly over quicksilver eyes. The eyes had been unfocused when he first came to, but with each passing second they were getting sharper.

Ellen struggled not to let an exasperated smirk cross her face, “I don’t think he knows what that word means.”

“You translated it wrong!” Kegar stamped his foot.

“No.” Stroz shook his head, “No, I just used a word that was too big for him.” He tapped his jaw thinking, before speaking again in orcish, “Where are your bedroll and the bedrolls of your tribe?”

The orc laughed, his skin flushed into a deep blue, “You puny pink skins use bedrolls? Orcs sleep among the skins of our enemies! Their hides are stripped and used to cover our bodies! Thmug the Subjugator would never allow something as pathetic as a bedroll in our camp.” He hawked a loogy and spit onto the ground.

There were magics that mages could cast that would prevent someone from lying or would flash blue or red if someone lied. With a bit more study, Shandra would be able to cast such spells. However, Ellen was not a mage. She was a psion. She could tap into a person’s surface thoughts; hearing them, speaking into them and with effort she could search through a person’s memories or even change them. What she was doing with the orc took little energy, at the most she would nudge his thoughts toward what she wanted. The hardest part of it was actually to open her mind enough to hear the orc’s thoughts without picking up on the people from Pode’s thoughts. It would be an invasion of privacy and it would confuse what she was trying to determine.

Ellen saw the orc’s thoughts regarding Stroz’s question in a series of pictures. She didn’t know exactly what had been asked, but she saw his memories of a spacious tent. The tent’s floors were blanketed with a mixture of crudely and incredibly well tanned furs of the different plains creatures, including a tor-cat. A voluptuous, middle aged orc female with delicate tusks tipped in gold lay naked on the blankets. She was such a rich and deep pink she almost looked red. The blue orc looked down on her with a tender fondness that only comes from a long bond and children. Two slightly younger females, mirror images of one another, ran clean, manicured blue fingers lightly across his chest. Their nails were a rainbow of colors with delicate chips of precious stones embedded into the nails.

Oh hells no. She was not interested in watching orc porn. It was his memory, but it didn’t need to be her’s too. That was the problem with this method of psionics, what she did wasn’t like reading a transcript or history of an event. Her power was kin to acquiring a new memory; with all the emotions, smells, and tactile feelings that accompanied those memories.

Stroz frowned and snapped out a new question.

The orc’s memory shifted from the floor of the tent to him walking out. Judging by the color of the sky he was remembering a morning. She nudged his memory, asking him to recall more. A very large fuchsia orc, one that easily stood head and shoulders over the two bound in front of Ellen, towered over him speaking to him in the harsh orcish tongue. The blue orc felt admiration, jealousy and… friendship… towards the larger orc. Insight speared her, He is the pink female’s brother.

The three female orcs clung to the blue orc’s his legs, weeping at whatever the large orc had said.

That must be the orc chieftain.

The blue orc turned in his memory and stepped away from his lovers. The first orc he saw was the young pink orc who was currently tied to his back. Warm paternal feelings welled up. Pride. Joy. Anxiety.

That explains the features. That should be something we can use. The blue orc won’t want to betray his mates, but he should want to save his son.

Then the blue orc gathered up a squad and walked off into the grass, looking for something.

For us. Ellen realized. She watched the path the orcs went on their patrol. She knew where the encampment was in relation to them. It was quite close. But how did they know to look for us? She couldn’t understand the words that the two orcs had exchanged, but she was confident that something that had been said… something said how the orcs knew they were coming.

Ellen nodded as the blue orc insulted Stroz. “Stroz, I recognized a word or two that he said. Can you ask him why he chose to bring his son on this raid?”

The blue orc’s eyes narrowed at Ellen. His thoughts flicked to his son.

Wait. He understands the common tongue? This was a surprise to Ellen. She had always been led to believe that few orcs managed to learn it. Generally only the shamans, who were often covered in feathers, and the chieftains, who were huge. This orc was neither.

Stroz’s brow wrinkled in confusion. “Uh, yeah…”

“I thought you said you didn’t know orcish?” Kegar demanded.

Ellen shook her head lying, “Not enough to speak it by any means, but I can sometimes pick out a word or two.”

Kegar frowned. His lips pressed so thin they disappeared like a knife cut behind his mustache and beard. “No. Don’t ask him that.” Kegar beckoned Köttur over. “Tell him, if he doesn’t tell us where the orc chieftain is, I will have Köttur rend his son limb from limb in front of him.”

Stroz’s eyes slid sideways to Ellen. A miniscule shrug said, “If I would I could.” Then he spoke harshly in orcish.

The blue orc’s eyes widened at Kegar’s words. He hadn’t displayed fear when Köttur approached. Ellen could tell that he had been convinced of his death from the moment he awoke. However the orc died, he would die with honor. But at Stroz’s words, the blue orc whipped his head to the side; his eyes bulged as he saw his son’s slack mouth and felt the young orc’s shallow breath.

“Thunk!” The blue orc shouted. He turned back to Stroz and began babbling. His angry voice shouted and railed against Stroz, but fear radiated off him.

He brought his son out to die in battle, but is afraid of him actually dying. A traitorous thought slipped out of her, or… perhaps he is afraid of having his son be tortured? It is certainly different to die in battle than to be tortured, even though both leave you dead and both can be quite painful.

Ellen shook her head, “He’s terrified now. I can’t get anything from him but fear.”

A sly smile crept across Kegar’s face, “Perhaps we can bargain with him.”

That comment, coming from Kegar was a shock to everyone.

Faute looked at the orcs with disgust, “I can’t believe you would release them.”

Shandra looked up from her book, “I think what Kegar is planning is to offer the son’s life for the information we need. I get it, but we can’t let either of them go unless we could guarantee that they wouldn’t tell we were coming or something like that.” She tapped her fingers on her chin, “Maybe I could come up with a spell that would prevent him from acting against us for a few days or a week… obviously, not longer, since I would have to maintain it…” She trailed off in thought.

Kegar rolled his eyes, “No, you idiots. We aren’t actually going to release the orc. We’re going to lie.”

The blue orc’s eyes narrowed.

Lizzy gasped in shock, “You can’t give your word and then back out! You are acting in my grandfather’s place! It would dishonor my entire family.”

Kegar gritted his teeth before forcibly unclenching his jaw, “But dear, it isn’t deception if you lie to something like an orc. They’re completely evil.” He took her hands in his, “I’m just trying to protect everyone with the least amount of bloodshed.”

Lizzy pulled her hands away from him, “No! You cannot offer him his son’s life and then back out on your word! That’s evil!”

Kegar’s eyes flashed angrily, “Fine! If he agrees and gives us the correct location – which we will verify – then we will release the son.”

Ellen had been monitoring the orc’s mind during the argument, but with Kegar’s final remark she picked up on his surface thoughts. He’s lying through his teeth. He fully intends to kill them both.

Stroz translated the offer to the blue orc. The orc’s eyes flicked from Kegar to Lizzy and back again. It seemed to Ellen that he was trying to decide which would have the ultimate authority.

Ellen knew that she could find the orc camp with what information she currently had. The hard part would be convincing Kegar that she knew the way, especially since what she had was fairly vague information. She would have to do some tracking and she would need to do it in silence.

It would be far simpler to get the whereabouts from the orc’s mouth. Anyway, it would be a few hours, possibly days, before his feelings toward his family wore off and she couldn’t let his son be tortured.

“If you tell Strozazand where the orc camp is, I swear to you, I will make sure your wives and children escape and I will make sure your son does not die today either.” She placed the thoughts in his head.

His eyes snapped toward hers. His brow wrinkled. You… are… a mind walker?

That was a name she hadn’t heard before. “Yes.”

He turned his head to Stroz. This is Strozazand the Dargonman? The troll said he was dead. The troll said Strozazand was carried out a corpse. A slight smile tugged at the corner of his mouth, He looks good for a dead man.

That was certainly news to Ellen. It explained how the orcs knew they were coming, the troll from the keep had escaped – not burned to death – and had watched them leave with Stroz’s corpse. But… “How did you know Stroz’s name?”

The swamp dargon told the chief his name and that he needed to die. But, I argued. I said we orcs weren’t the slaves of the swamp dargon. We are creatures of the plains, like the blue dargons, not swamp monsters like the lizardmen and swamp dargons. When I heard the troll’s description of Strozazand the Dargonman, I knew we weren’t supposed to attack him, but ally with him.

This was unexpected.

“But… if you knew Stroz’s description, why didn’t you cooperate earlier?”

The orc sneezed. How many people have you even known to come back to life? Even the hero’s tales don’t have people coming back to life that often. It’s something saved for intervention from the gods.

Ellen remembered Stroz coming back as a bunny before a lightning bolt struck him and he was restored to his human shape. “I suppose that is true.”

That means that the trolls betrayed my people. I didn’t trust them to begin with, but this seals it. Promise me you won’t let them kill the females and littles, promise me that you will spare my son and I will tell Strozazand where the orc chieftain is.

“I promise.”

Very well. The orc began speaking orcish to Strozazand.

Stroz’s eyes widened. “He says he accepts. We spare his son and he’ll tell us where the camp is.”

“Good!” Kegar snapped. “Lizzy will stay here guarding the orcs. We don’t want them to run while we are gone.”

“No! I’m seeing this through.”

“Fine!” Kegar glared around the group, “Katrina, you and Mary will stay here. Guard them. If they move, kill them.”

Katrina and Mary nodded.

“The rest of you come with me. Stroz, you lead us until we get close.”

The group picked up what they needed for the strike and filed out of the clearing of stomped grasses. Kegar waited until everyone had moved out before going back to Katrina and Mary, “I want those orcs dead when I get back. If they aren’t you’ll be dead.”