"What is he talking about?" Olgerkhan whispered to Wingham.

"War, I expect," the wizened and worldly old half-orc replied.

"This is insanity," Arrayan said.

"Never trust a drow," Olgerkhan lectured.

Arrayan looked to Wingham, who merely shrugged as the fullblood finished his reading, mostly reciting titles and adjectives—excellence, magnificent, wondrous—to accompany the name of King Artemis the First of D'aerthe.

As he finished, the orc flicked his wrist and let go with his bottom hand, and the formed parchment rolled up tight. With a swift and graceful movement, the orc tucked it under one arm, and stood again, hand on hip.

Wingham glanced across the way to a group of three of the town's leading councilors, and waited for them to nod deferentially for him to lead the response—a not surprising invitation, for the half-orcs of Palishchuk often looked to the worldly Wingham for guidance in matters outside of their secluded gates. At least, for matters that did not entail the immediate threat of battle, as was usually the case.

"And what is your name, good sir?" Wingham addressed the courier.

"I am of no consequence," came the reply.

"Would you have me speak to you as fullblood, orc, or D'aerthian Courier, perhaps?" Wingham asked as he stepped out from the gathering, trying to get a better take on the odd creature.

"Speak to me as you would to King Artemis the First," said the orc. "For I am but the ears and mouth of His Greatness."

Wingham looked to the town councilors, who had no insight to offer other than smirks and shrugs.

"We beg you look past our obvious surprise… King Artemis," Wingham said. "Such an announcement is hardly expected, of course."

"You were told as much less than two tendays ago, when King Artemis and the first citizen rode through your fair city."

"But still…"

"You did not accept his word?"

Wingham paused, not wanting to cross any unseen lines. He remembered well the battle Palishchuk had fought with the castle construct's gargoyles, and neither he nor any of the others wanted to replay that deadly night.

"You must admit that the claim of Vaasa—"

"D'aerthe," the orc interrupted. "Vaasa is to be used only when speaking of what was, not of what is."

"The claim of a kingdom here, by a king and a first citizen until recently unknown to all in the Bloodstone Lands, is unprecedented, you must agree," Wingham said, avoiding any overt concurrence or disagreement. "And yes, we are surprised, for there is another king who has claimed this land."

"King Gareth rules in Damara," the orc replied. "He has made no formal claim on the land once known as Vaasa, excepting his insistence that the land be 'cleansed' of vermin, including one race that you claim as half your heritage, good sir, in case you had not noticed."

That ruffled some feathers among the gathered half-orcs, and more than a few harsh whispers filtered about the uneasy crowd.

"But yes, of course, and your surprise was not unforeseen," the orc went on. "And it is a minor reaction compared to that which the first citizen expects will greet your courier when he travels to the D'aerthian, formerly the Vaasan, Gate and through Bloodstone Pass to the village of the same name." He snapped his arm out, handing Wingham a second scroll, sealed with a wax mark.

"All that King Artemis the First bids you, and of course it is in your own interest as well, is that you send a courier forthwith to King Gareth to deliver news of the birth of D'aerthe. It would do well for King Gareth to cease his murderous activities within the borders of D'aerthe at once, for the sake of peace between our lands.

"And truly," the orc finished with a great and sweeping bow, "such harmony is all that King Artemis the First desires."

Wingham hardly had an answer to that; how could he? He took the rolled parchment, glanced again at the strange seal, which was formed of some green wax that he did not recognize, and glanced again at the puzzled councilors.

By the time he looked back, the orc was already swaggering well on his way to the city's northern gate.

And no one made a move to intercept him.

"You enjoyed that," Jarlaxle said with a wry grin that was not matched by his psionicist counterpart.

"I will itch for a tenday from wearing the shell of an orc," Kimmuriel replied.

"You wore it well."

Kimmuriel scowled at him, a most unusual show of emotion from the intellectually-locked dark elf.

"News will travel fast to Damara," Jarlaxle predicted. "Likely Wingham will send Arrayan or some other magic-user to deliver the announcement before the way is sealed by deep snows."

"Then why did you not wait until the snows began?" asked Kimmuriel. "You will grant Gareth the time to facilitate passage."

"Grant him?" Jarlaxle asked, leaning forward on his castle parapet. "My friend, I am counting on it. I do not desire to have the fool Knellict here uncontested, and I expect that King Gareth will be more reasonable than the betrayed wizard of the Citadel of Assassins. With Gareth, it will be politics. With Knellict, it is already personal."

"Because you travel with a fool."

"I would not expect patience from a human," said Jarlaxle. "They do not live long enough. Entreri has moved the situation along, nothing more. Whether now before winter's onslaught, or in the cold rain of spring, Gareth will demand his answers. Better to pit him against Knellict outside our gates than to deal with each separately."

Athrogate's misery at being jailed was mitigated somewhat by the generous amounts of mead and ale his gaolers provided. And Athrogate never let it be said that he couldn't sublimate—well, he used the words, 'wash down, since 'sublimate' was a bit beyond him—his misery with a few pounds of food and a few gallons of ale.

So he sat on his hard bed in his small but not totally uncomfortable cell, filling his mouth with bread and cake and washing it down with fast-overturned flagons of liquid, golden and brown alternately. And to pass the time, between bites and gulps and burps and farts, he sang his favorite dwarven ditties, like "Skipping Threesies with an Orc's Entrails" and "Grow Your Beard Long, Woman, or Winter'll Freeze yer Nipples."

He saved the latter for those times when a female elf or a human woman was set as guard outside his door, and he took special care to raise his voice to a thunderous level whenever he happened upon the refrain about "shakin' them by the ankles, so ye're seein' up their skirts."

For all of his bluster and belch-filled outward joviality, though, Athrogate could not truly ignore the continual hammering outside of his cell's small, high window. Late one moonlit night, when the lone guard outside his cell door breathed in the smooth rhythms of sleep, the dwarf had propped his angled cot against the wall and managed to get up high enough to peek out.

They were building a gallows, with a long trap door and no less than seven noose-arms.

Athrogate had been told his crime against King Gareth, and he knew well the penalty for treason. And though he was cooperating, and had surrendered several of Knellict's spies placed in Heliogabalus—men he had never really liked anyway—none of Gareth's representatives had given him any hint that his sentence might be put aside or even reduced.

But he had ale and mead and plenty of food. He figured he might as well be fat if the door dropped out beneath him so that his neck would get a clean break and he wouldn't be flailing about and peeing himself in front of all the spectators. He had seen that a few times, and decided it would not be a fitting end for one of so many accomplishments as he.

Perhaps he could even bargain to have his name kept on the plaque at the Vaasan Gate….