33 #2
“Yes,” he said to the warrioress.
“I will walk with you, if you do not object.”
“Of course,” he said.
They fell into step together.
“I have forgotten your name,” he said finally.
“Gathren,” she said. “And you are Dathor.”
He nodded. Both of their names sounded as if they’d been influenced by the elvish language. “Were you born in Arzakh?”
“No,” she said. “Here. Is that obvious?”
“Your name, I suppose,” he said.
“You must be careful,” she said. “I have heard them speaking about you. They think you are too elvish, that your mixed blood makes you a sympathizer.”
“I know,” he said. “It’s not really about that. It’s about practicality. They cannot see past the victory and the joy of crushing the elves under their heel to wonder about what comes next.”
“Not only that,” she said, “but there are other problems.”
“Right,” he said. “The army gathering at Lalrain.”
“Word must have spread,” she said. “It was foolish for the High Chieftain and others to think they could go around taking all the keeps in the Silvarenna and that no word would get to anyone in the Vale. The orcs do not understand how word travels in a country like this. They do not understand what the trains and the newspapers have done for a place like this. They have lived in darkness too long. This is why we are all going to lose and we will all likely be killed—” She broke off, shaking her head.
“Why am I saying this to you? This is what you said to them, only but yesterday.”
He smirked. “I think you were more impassioned than me. I did not say we were going to lose, either.”
“But you know it is true. It’s one thing to take unarmed keeps held by elves with no standing army and no warning we are coming.
It’s another thing entirely to go up against the armies of the Vale.
The Valaedor elves have guns and cannons and money and supplies and they are well-fortified and they will destroy us. ”
“No, it will not be destruction,” said Dathor, shaking his head.
“We are well stocked in guns and ammunition. I did not let us leave Arzakh without such things. As for food, we have been taking stores from every keep we have toppled. We are not going into a slaughter, no, but without the element of surprise, it becomes all much more difficult. This is why I have been saying—”
“Yes, the alliance, but you’re foolish,” she said. “The Valaedor will never ally with us.”
“They hate Findas,” he said.
“Do they?”
“Which part of the Lothnehil did you grow up in?” he said.
“Silvarenna, same as you,” she said. “What do you think you know that I don’t?”
“I’ve spent my life in love with a fair elf,” he said.
“I know how they think. Furthermore, I have spoken to a ward raised in the Vale. The High King is backward. He appeals to those in the mountains because they like the idea that things might never change. Change is terrifying, after all, especially when one has little in the way of resources. When one is rich and bored and has no worries, change is only exciting. The elves in the south do not know what danger is. They are sanguine and idiotic. They have never woken one day to find that a storm has knocked a huge tree into the south tower and that they have only money enough to pay the servants for the winter, so they must decide between getting rid of the servants or repairing the tower. Nothing bad happens in the south, you see.”
“Bad things must happen,” she said.
“Fair weather and fair skies,” he said. “They are soft.”
“Well, granted, but what does that mean? Why will they ally with us?”
“Because they hate him,” he said. “Because they like to think of themselves as advanced and benevolent. Because they know deep down that they are selfish, and the only way to wash their selfishness away is to be charitable. And here we are.” He gestured. “Perfect vehicles for charity.”
Gathren stopped walking, looking him up and down. “This is your elf maiden? You are her vehicle of charity?”
He stopped walking, too. He rubbed the back of his neck, wondering at himself. “It’s complicated between us. There are elements of it that are… well, we love each other, and the love is too big, so even if it is flawed, it is inevitable.”
“Love is not inevitable,” said Gathren, shaking her head. “Perhaps desire is, but love is something more unwieldy. Love is a decision.”
“Love is certainly not that,” said Dathor, chuckling ruefully.
They regarded each other for several minutes.
“Well,” she said, eventually, “perhaps different loves are different.” She lifted her shoulder, furrowing her brow. “They hate Findas, you say?”
“Can you doubt it? They have had this progressive and magnanimous society, one that celebrated learning and education and new technologies—”
“Yes, but they are not magnanimous.”
“I think they dislike that he shows that to them. I think he holds up a mirror to the worst elements of themselves. They are disgusted, but they are in denial. They think the elements are only outside of them. It is not easy to confront the darkness within oneself.”
Was that what his guilt was, in fact?
“I suppose not,” she said.
“So, they wish to crush him,” he said.
“Also, he has not been good for them. His attacks on the orcs have wreaked havoc with the economy and his moratorium on trade with other countries, that has been disastrous.”
“Yes, we must not discount that,” he said. “Hit a Valaedor elf in his pocketbook if you wish to make him vicious.”
“So, you really think you could do it?” she said. “An alliance?”
“Well, I have some contacts who are waiting for word from me, men who have led protests in the past, who may even be sympathetic to orcs.”
“But that is not an army,” she said. “The army of Valaedor is controlled by Findas.”
“No, true,” he said. “I had hoped to have some splinter group, or to—”
“If we are going to topple Findas, it isn’t going to be with an army, because any attack on his palace will be turned away, by his armies.”
He furrowed his brow. Could he have been this stupid about it? Was this truly doomed? If so, what was he going to do? He rubbed his forehead, trying to pull the elements of his plan together, to find some way that they made sense.
Gathren was still speaking. “We’d need to infiltrate Findas’s safe spaces to get to him that way.”
He turned to her in understanding. “An assassination, not an attack.”
“And we cannot get there, not on our own,” she said. “This is what we would offer your contacts. We tell them that they help us get in to kill Findas and then they have the protection of the orc army.”
He let out a little laugh. “That’s brilliant.”
She lifted a shoulder. “Do you think you could make it work?
He started to walk again. “Perhaps, yes. Perhaps it’s better than an alliance with an army.”
She fell into step with him. “I think it is better. After all, any alliance must have boundaries. It must only be something small. We cannot ally with the elves indefinitely.”
“Little chance of an alliance happening at all, I suppose,” he said glumly. “But out of curiosity, why do you say so?”
“Because, of course, elves hate orcs,” she said.
He glanced at her, because that was a very obvious thing to say. Did she mean something more by it?
She continued, “You say all this business about their pitying us and giving us charity and how we can use this to manipulate them, but you are forgetting the fact that once they oust Findas, they will treat us the way they have always treated us, and that way is to treat us like animals.”
He swallowed slowly.
“You think they have some superior civilization to us,” she said. “You said something in one of your speeches about how their government is more complicated than ours, how they have a better grasp on fairness?”
He cringed. “I did not mean that, not quite in that way. I believe, afterwards, I said that it made them shortsighted and weak, did I not?”
“They will never be fair to us,” she said.
He felt this settle into him, and he realized she was correct. Whatever advantages the elves had, their superiority blinded them to reality. His own superiority had blinded him here as well. He had thought that this alliance was a good idea.
He could see now that it was not.
He had told himself that after they killed Findas, that the elves could be convinced to change their laws to make things fairer for orcs. Out of charity.
What a thought.
The elves were not truly charitable to orcs, only to their own kind. He could not have it both ways, that the elves saw themselves as superior and that they would give orcs rights. They would not do so. He was fooling himself.
He started to walk again. “Is it all hopeless, then? We must turn the country to rubble if we wish to have basic rights? And then, we are all plunged into some age of darkness and destruction, halting all progress?”
“The revolt is progress,” she countered.
“But the orcs will not keep up the infrastructure of the country if they rule—”
“I am not saying that,” she said, “not that orcs should rule everything in the wake of it all. But we must entirely topple the elves. We must make them respect us.”
“You have just finished saying they never will,” he said.
“The world on the other side of it must be for orcs and elves both,” she said.
“Well,” he said, “there we are agreed, at least.”
“The orc council will never see that,” she said. “You can talk until you are blue in the face about needing the elves, about what good elves provide for the country, all of it, but you will not get through to them.”
He sighed heavily. “I have squandered all the goodwill I had with the orc council by saying positively foolish things about elves. They thought I was being swayed by my elf heritage. They were right. I was viewing the elves incorrectly. I had a rosy opinion of them.”
“An assassination, however,” she said. “It would not, perhaps, need the entire support of the council to go forward.”
He furrowed his brow. “What are you saying?”