Discouraged wasn’t quite the right word for what Len was feeling. Daunted was a bit closer, but for some reason she still wasn’t feeling too overwhelmed. She honestly hadn’t run into circumstances close to this dire in anything she’d experienced up ‘til this point (including having Vrek and Krel wanting her dead), but it still seemed somewhat more attainable than what had come before. She supposed that her only way forward was through, so she just moved on to the next task in the small garden plot that this Marble plied her trade.

She came upon the girl muttering some strange chants in a language Len didn’t recognize. The tiny plot of land steamed in front of her, snow melting away. Bit by bit tendrils of green sprang up out of the ground to climb trellises. Shortly after that, small blooms sprang to life, then transitioned into a brown bean of some sort. Enthralled by the process, Len just sat back and waited for Marble to finish her work. After a few moments, the young orc wiped her brow and set to work plucking the modest crop free from the plants before the cold set in to freeze them solid.

“That was easily one of the most impressive things I’ve seen here,” said Len honestly.

“Ah!” The girl yelped and turned on her observer. “When did you get here? Err… boss?”

“Right about the time the steam started. That’s incredible.”

“Thanks, but it’s not that impressive. Not like I can fight off attackers or heal wounds.”

Len cocked an eyebrow at that thinking.

“You’re kidding, right? This whole place is reliant on you and you’re down on yourself because you can’t use it to kill people? Know your worth, kid.”

The girl blushed faintly, then got back to work.

“It’s fine, really, I’m just happy to be able to do something here. I wish I could do more, but the land just doesn’t cooperate.”

“Well, that just means we need to do something about that. What all have you tried so far?”

“What else is there? This is the garden, I do what I can with it, and barely make enough from day to day. If you know some miracle solution to help crops grow in the dead of winter, I’d love to hear it?”

“Ah, most of the better tricks I know require electricity,” said Len, suddenly feeling out of her depth. “Don’t suppose you’ve got a bunch of sheets of glass lying around, do you?”

“Why on earth would we have anything like that?” The girl seemed to think she was being made fun of and did not care for the experience.”

“Never mind. Just a random thought. You know what? I’ll get back to you. Got a bit more touring to do and I shouldn’t keep you any longer.”

“If you say so, ma’am.”

Len walked away and sighed, feeling a bit embarrassed by the affair. She’d kind of hoped that this miracle girl would have more tricks at her disposal but she realized that if that were the case, she’d have put them to use already.

“All right,” she said, bracing herself. “Let’s go check out this mine.”

The mine in question was basically just a hole dug into the side of the sheer rock face that the Hovel was built around. Wooden support beams held it open and series of faint magical torches lit the way down the passage. Shrugging, Len ducked inside, following the faint sound of pickaxe striking stone.

After a few minutes of walking, she came upon Moe and two Orcs busying themselves with the work of chipping away at a small vein of coal.

“Heya boss, how’s the tour going?” asked Moe, not stopping his work.

“Eh, kind of up and down. How’s your survey going?”

“Well, you’re currently looking at the entirety of the mining crew. Faug, Krem, say hi to the boss.”

The two Orcs glanced up from their work, nodded gruffly to her, then resumed their task. She supposed that would have to be good enough.

“Real big talkers, these two. Anyway, things are a bit grim on the supply front as you might have heard, so I think I’m just gonna stick to this for the day. If you can wrangle Larry away from preening over his newfound power, could you send him my way? This is probably the most important work to be doing right now.”

Len nodded and headed out, feeling oddly dismissed by her own subordinate. She couldn’t fault his reasoning though, so she complied.

She found Larry ‘supervising’ within the barracks. Most of the assembled Orcs seemed to be doing their level best to ignore him. They weren’t really doing anything, near as she could tell, just lounging about, looking listless.

“So Larry, care to tell me exactly what’s going on here?”

“Well, I tried to get them to start doing stuff, but they said it was their day off and that they weren’t gonna listen to me,” there was a pout in his voice that would’ve been amusing under other circumstances.

“Well, that won’t do. Suppose it’s better than them attacking you, but not by much. Did you learn anything?”

“Not really, just that they’re all in pretty similar situations to us. All pretty much sent here for being useless to the Army, not really fitting into the structure, and generally just expecting to die here at some point. Basically what happens is that every couple of years, most of the guys stationed here die off and then a new batch of rejects gets sent out. They don’t bother with reinforcements until almost everyone’s dead, and the only supplies that they get is what they bring with them on that first run. It’s pretty messed up. Hell, if I’d known this was how it was gonna play out, I’d have snagged some stuff before we were sent here.

“Larry, if we’d known this was gonna happen, we’d have done a lot of things differently. It is what it is. Find out anything specific about these guys or are they all just useless lumps?”

She’d added that last jab hoping to get a rise out of a few of them, but none took the bait.

“Mostly useless lumps, I’m afraid. One guy said he was an expert fisherman, but you might have noticed that there aren’t any lakes anywhere near us. Likewise the weaving expert and the goldsmith.”

“Wait… that’s a fair bit of craftsmen without any means of practicing their crafts. What about the other ones?”

“Oh, they’re all equally useless. I mean, the stone carver might be a bit better, but not a whole lot of demand for Orc-carved statuettes, right? You’ve also got a shepherd, a blacksmith who refuses to work with the crappy iron here, and a glassblower.”

“A glassblower?” she perked up at that.

“Yup, Ramus over there,” he pointed at an Orc currently lying in bed with the pillow over his face. “Of course, you might have noticed that we have snow, not sand in these parts, so his particular talents are about as useless as the rest of the lot here.”

“That’s crazy, you mean to tell me that the Demon Lord sent a mess of tradesmen to a combat post? Why?!”

“Heck if I know. Near as I could gather, most of them just pissed off the wrong people at the wrong time and ended up here. No real rhyme or reason to it, just a little hole to dump undesirables.”

“Well, we certainly fit the description on that one,” she admitted. “Still, a glassblower could be pretty damn helpful…”

“Again, boss, no sand to do anything with.”

“Yeah, yeah,” she said, not really listening, mind starting to spin on a random thought before she clamped down on it. “Anyway, Valkar just let them sit around all day?”

“Apparently he runs drills every once in a while, but I get the impression that a lot of what lets him stay as the leader is the fact that he mostly just lets them do what they want.”

“So these assholes are basically freeloaders living off the efforts of a couple of miners, Marble, and Cookie?”

Larry looked as if he might ask a question to that, but was forestalled by one of the slackers finally taking the bait.

“Hey, screw you, lady. So what if we don’t want to go out of our way at a posting that’s literally a death sentence.”

“Got a name, or just a tongue, pal?”

“No name, never needed one. Just call me Weaver.”

“Ah, the basket maker. Pleasure to make your acquaintance. Now, care to explain to me why you think that you’ve got some sort of right to be taking advantage of the folks out there working to keep everyone alive here?”

He glared at her and sat back down.

“Not a chance, pal. You started this, you’re damn well gonna stick with it.”

She strode over to the man, hauled him to his feet and glared daggers into him.

“Go on, then. Speak.”