Before then, Sly hadn’t seen the full form of an adult orc, only a hand or a foot swiftly pulled back. Now, surrounded by many orcs at once, he saw that the males were much taller and more massive than he had expected, more bears in chainmail than men. Females were slighter in build but still formidable, over six feet tall, lithe and muscular. And they were all green.

  Surrounded by musky bodies, he was pulled up on his toes and towed to the second reinforced door, which opened with the smell of wood stain into a covered corridor. When he heard the inner door slam, the arms holding him relaxed.

  He found his feet, guided rather than dragged through a maze of storage chambers, one after another, containing all kinds of product – hanging meats, urns and fragrant barrels, paper-wrapped packages tied up with string – until he re-entered the main building. Too many tusked faces gawped out at him, those of female orcs as well as their kids, many of them frightened, none of them clean.

  Then he was pushed into an opulent nest of a room, all greens and gold.

  In the middle of the far wall was a chair and in it sat the most striking female orc yet, with sleek long hair like raven’s wings and the bright eyes of a crow. Appearing middle-aged in human terms, she sat like a jade queen in robes of dark velvet – a head of state rather than village headwoman, though he doubted she was either. Her tusks were small, only an inch or so in length, delicate and decorated with silver rings, each bearing the glitter of tiny emeralds.

  Only the scattered toys on the floor suggested what the room had been before his arrival... a nursery, presumably for child refugees.

  Sly took a moment to look around and adjust his cloak. The orc woman said something he didn’t understand.

  “Gus, help me out here,” he murmured.

  ‘Okay Sly,’ Gus’s tickertape popped up on the left side of his vision.

  He started by tapping himself on the chest. “Sly.”

  “Sssl-eye,” said the orc, repeating the word carefully, then touching her own forehead. “Hetlagh.”

  ‘Hetl-agh,’ repeated Gus, before Sly did the same out loud. A picture of the orc flashed onto a character sheet, next to her name in phonetic English. Her heart rate followed, measured by Gus from her near-imperceptible pulse at wrist and neck, alongside an estimate of her muscle mass and not inconsiderable physical strength. Under ‘political power’ Gus entered an estimate of the number of occupants of the stronghold: one hundred twenty. Then the sheet minimized.

  Contemplating Sly, Hetlagh uttered three short sentences, one after the other. The first was sibilant, the second guttural, and the third more lyrical.

  ‘The sentences represent three languages,’ read Gus’s ticker. ‘The second has links with modern Aramaic, with a confidence of sixty-four percent. The other two are unknown.’

  Sly’s eyes widened. Gus knew hundreds of languages through its secondary function, intelligence and cryptography. And Sly knew Aramaic. Not to speak, as he had no linguistic talent, but historically and culturally he knew Aramaic was a name to conjure with. It was one of the longest-lived languages, three thousand years and counting. Once the lingua franca of the Near East, it was spoken by traders along the Silk Road, from China to the Arabian Peninsula.

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  And less usual places, obviously.

  “Okay,” Sly said, and unslung his bag. The shadows moved, but Hetlagh quickly raised her hand. He guessed she had stopped something unpleasant happening to him and he flashed her a grateful smile.

  He pulled the shades out of the bag, unplugged them and demonstrated putting them on, making sure she was watching him manipulate the Legend 02 frames. Then he took off the shades and handed them to her, at arm’s reach.

  “Now you.”

  Hetlagh laughed and took the shades from him. She looked the frames over then hooked them over her pointed ears. Sly worried she would be uncomfortable but she only appeared weird, like a light-sensitive shark. Her curious smile widened: an unnerving sight.

  ‘Hetlagh,’ Gus wrote. Sly couldn’t hear the shades’ speakers but the orc noticeably jumped. He assumed Gus was speaking aloud, and in Aramaic, through the bone-induction speakers behind each ear. ‘This is Sly. Do you understand me?’

  “I do,” said Hetlagh, her growled response presumably in Aramaic. Gus translated what she said with subtitles Sly could read, giving options when the AI could only infer the meaning. “What is this [wizardry | magic | voice | technology]?”

  Sly chuckled, happy he could find a way to talk. “The voice is Gus, my… translator. I’m pleased to meet you, Hetlagh.”

  She didn’t mess around.

  “You are a [man|human] yet you save [the girl] from [dogs|canines] and spoil the attack of the [humans | mountain-men]. Why?”

  Sly didn’t think about lying, it was pointless.

  “I’m a peaceful man. The wild dogs were hunting the girl, so I chased them off. The mountain men are not my enemies, I injured the child undertaking the rite to make him and his family leave. Some hotheads may remain.”

  “And if I [pursue | follow] and kill them all?”

  Sly paused, considering the alien woman’s tusks and sharp teeth. She was fierce and he couldn’t read her eyes, but he didn’t think the point of the question was to threaten.

  “If you did, that’s your right. But in future years there would be no forgiveness and more death on both sides. I’ve seen it.”

  Sly meant to say that he’d seen the cycle before, a recurring nightmare of tit for tat that recurred like cancer, consuming the moral life of a people. Instead, it sounded merely prophetic.

  Hetlagh double-blinked, a flitter almost too quick to see. Sly knew birds and reptiles had nictitating membranes – a third eyelid – but it was startling to see. This wasn’t Cousin Josie in a cosplay outfit, with skin-paint that would wipe off. She was wholly Other, entirely Orc.

  “If I had the choice of leaving [this place],” Hetlagh smiled, “I’d chase them to their highest pastures. However, I’m a simple trader, and don’t have [able-bodied orcs | capable soldiers] today. You fought with skill against your own kind. Are you [a soldier of fortune | for sale]?”

  Sly considered his response. He didn’t want to offend the orc leader or be thrown out of the Stronghold, but neither did he want to be seen as a mercenary.

  “I’d help protect this place,” he said. A nice compromise, he thought.

  “What would you want for your help?” asked Hetlagh, leaning forward, polished wooden bangles sliding to her wrists. This close he saw her nails were trimmed but her tusks were deeply and elegantly engraved under their rings, like scrimshaw.

  “I don’t know your customs,” he said, after another thoughtful pause. “Where I come from, a common defense requires no payment. Could you offer friendship? Hospitality?”

  “For myself, yes. I am [mistress | the owner] here. And I am grateful. But friendship of the People requires agreement from Hosak, the War Master of Guttularach. He is not here.”

  Was that a note of resentment? Sly couldn’t be sure. Was the ‘War Master’ called away on some raid? The campaign wasn’t trivial if the engagement left women and children unprotected or turned them into refugees. Maybe the ‘mountain men’ knew the nature of the campaign but weren’t the cause of it. If a horde of orcs marched on human villages the humans would be defending their homes, not attacking an undefended orc outpost.

  “Your hospitality is enough,” Sly said. The shark in sunglasses smiled back.