Balder woke on the cold, hard floor, staring upward. Though he hadn’t yet sat up, he could tell certain things: he lay outside in a cage, and it was day, as the only light he could see came from a nearby fire.

  He pushed himself upright and looked around. Though to the dim light around him he couldn’t see much. The cage he lay in was around two by two meters big and at least three meters high. Beyond the bars, the flickering light revealed a bonfire, encircled by figures hunched around its warmth.

  Balder narrowed his eyes, trying to see where he was: More cages stood around him, their outlines barely visible. And beyond them, massive stone walls loomed overhead, so tall their peaks vanished into darkness.

  His hand grazed something in the darkness of the cage. He quickly retracted his hand and looked around him: in the darkness around him lay at least five more people, he could barely see them, but he recognized some of their clothes, at least two of them were northerners.

  Balder adjusted his position, sitting on his knees and cautiously stretched his hand toward the person he’d touched. He explored their features carefully, not wanting to wake them. His fingers eventually reached their arm and hands—the texture felt rough, jagged, like fractured stone: scars.

  Hallr.

  Balder inhaled sharply. Were the others here too? Who were the unfamiliar bodies lying beside them?

  Carefully, he rose to his feet, moving toward the cage’s edge nearest the fire. The lack of light made his steps uncertain, so he accidentally lightly kicked or grazed someone more than once before reaching the bars.

  The people around the fire sat in two groups, opposite of one another. The men sitting on the right were clearly imperials. Some of them were easily recognizable though to their more feminine features, although their hair looked unkempt, even from afar and some of them had grown beards.

  The group on the left on the other hand were clearly not imperial, despite wearing their armours. Their faces looked rougher, as if shaped by years of hardship and battles.

  “Northerners,” Balder murmured, his brow furrowing. What were they doing here?

  “Yes, they are”, a dark, nearby voice said.

  Balder flinched and turned. In the cage beside his own, barely visible in the shadows, was an old, pale face staring directly at him.

  “Who are you?” Balder asked, stepping closer.

  “My name is Sigurd”, the man responded.

  “A northerner!”, Balder exclaimed happily, “Where are we?”

  “Where do you think we are?”, Sigurd asked, “you’re one of our own I recon, so you too must know this place.”

  Balder looked around again, still unable to see the walls properly. But now that he thought about it, he only knew of one structure in the region with these types of walls.

  “Orcs End?!”, he asked Sigurd. By now he wasn’t being quiet any longer and he could hear someone in the cage waking up.

  “Now you’ve got it”, the man replied.

  “What happened?”, Balder pressed.

  Sigurd shrugged: “The castle garrison reached some kind of agreement with the imperials. That’s all I know.”

  A thousand thoughts were running through Balder’s mind. What was the meaning of this? Why would his brother betray the north like that?

  “Then what are we doing here?”, Balder asked further.

  “They’ve been rounding up northerners,” Sigurd explained, “Trying to recruit us.”

  “If they want to recruit us, what are we doing here?”, Balder asked.

  “They don’t exactly trust us”, Sigurd answered, “they come here each night and pick out a few to ask them to join their cause. Only some join, but none return.”

  “If that’s the case, what are you planning to do?”, Balder asked.

  The old man smirked: “I don’t bow to traitors. If they want my head, they can have it. I don’t use it all that much anyway.”

  Balder chuckled, he then sat down, leaning against the cage. Others were raising their heads in the darkness, woken up by their talk.

  “I think I hear what they have to say”, Balder admitted.

  “That’s fine too”, Sigurd said, “I’m not gonna judge anyone for wanting to live a few more years in this hellhole.”

  “Balder?”, a comfortable voice asked from inside the cage.

  “I’m here Kolr”, Balder answered.

  Two figures rose from the shadows: Hallr and Kolr. They joined Balder, sitting close as he explained what Sigurd had said. By the end, they agreed to wait and face whatever came the next night.

  As the moon rose, a metallic clang shattered their rest. Someone was striking the bars with purpose. The inmates stirred, rubbing their eyes as the moonlight finally revealed their surroundings.

  They were in between the fortress’s outer and inner wall which were only around sixty meters apart. Around half a hundred cages were surrounding the fire in the middle around which the soldiers sat. The outer and inner walls were both going around the castle fully and at the point, where they were Balder couldn’t see a door leading into the inner walls and the castle proper.

  Some of the walls around them seemed to have been repaired recently, as some of the stones didn’t fit into the fifteen meter high walls in both colour and placement.

  The walls in general were not looking imperial, despite the fort itself being considered on of the most impressive buildings of the empires golden era which had lasted for almost one and a half millennia and had ended very recently with the disappearance of the sun.

  The walls weren’t like other walls the empires usually build. Although they were a work of art in their own right through their hight and thickness they weren’t a literal work of art like usual imperial buildings. There were no stories carved in the stone, telling of the glory of the empire and there were no rich patterns, made by artists wanting to become immortal through their art.

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  Everything in Orcs End was made for pure functionality. It was made to be so as the empire had not build it to spread the word of its greatness, but to contain the plague that was the Orcs and to make sure that the horrors the beasts had brought upon humanity just a thousand years before the empires foundation were never to happen again.

  The soldiers stood up. Balder tried to see why: four figures were approaching them.

  Balder looked at his companions and the three other people in the cage, which all shrugged their shoulders. He then looked at Sigurd.

  “they’re here to select some of us to talk to”, he explained.

  Balder could now see the people walking up to them better. Three of them were soldiers, barely different from those they had encountered the last night, but the man walking in front of them was different: he wore white robes, that reached to his feet and he had a hood over his head over which he had stuck a simple golden crown. He wore equally white cloves over his hands and his face was entirely hidden behind a flat, golden mask, which only left holes for his eyes: an imperial priest.

  When the men reached the cages, the priest started looking into each cage individually, closely inspecting each and every person in it.

  When he reached their cage Balder walked up to the side of the cage he stood before and started to look straight into his eyes.

  The man was old. The skin around his eyes was saggy and his eyes were read. It was as if every vein in his body had been placed in them. The man seemed to inspect Balder just as closely.

  Hallr suddenly walked up to the cage and spit on the man’s mask. Although one of the soldiers placed his hand on the handle of his sword the priest just wiped it off and started walking to the next cage.

  Balder looked at Hallr angrily, who just smiled mischievously.

  “What?”, Hallr said defensively, “you wanna submit to a foreign god’s servant.”

  Balder’s jaw clenched: “Right now, I want to figure out what the fuck is going on.”

  “Quiet!”, one of the soldiers screamed.

  Hallr opened his mouth to retort, but the sharp glances from Balder and Kolr silenced him. Muttering under his breath, he slumped against the bars, shooting the priest a contemptuous glare as he moved farther away.

  “What happened to the fag?”, Hallr whispered when they were further away again.

  “I don’t think they put their own into here”, Balder answered.

  “It’s not like we need him anymore”, Kolr said.

  Hallr smiled and looked like he was about to say something humours, but he held himself back when he saw the priest coming back.

  “This one,” he said, pointing to Sigurd’s cage. Then his crimson eyes swept toward Balder’s group: “And these specimens as well.”

  The soldiers that still stood around the campfire quickly walked towards Sigurds cage and took him and the others in it with them. They didn’t resist, as there was no point in fighting.

  “We come for these later”, one of the soldiers said to the priest while pointing at Balder’s cage.

  “As long as they get to me I don’t care”, the priest answered.

  They left together with their captives. Balder and the others didn’t talk any further, they were anticipation of what would happen now.

  There was no plan to flee, no plan to fight. They would see what the imperials had to say and accept their fate either way.

  After half an hour the soldiers came back and opened the cages, ordering Balder and the others to follow them, which they did without problems, although Hallr still looked like he was eager for a fight.

  Five men walked before them and five behind them, the three of them could probably take them with the help of the other inmates, but where would they go from there?

  They silently walked past a few patrols and soldiers both northern and imperial sitting around fires. In between the first and the second walls wasn’t much else but a few distant tents.

  Eventually they could see the big gates of the outer walls that led out of the castle. Opposite of them were the gates leading deeper inside. Before the gates stood a big, brown tent. Two of the prisoners from the other cage stood in a line before its entrance, wating to be let inside.

  Around the tent stood many soldiers and what appeared to be spears had been stuck in the ground around it. On top of the spears sat what looked to be human heads. Behind the tent stood a wooden platform.

  As they were led closer to the line they started to recognize the heads as northerners, there had to be at least a hundred. Hallr looked like he was about to kill one of their guards out of anger, but Kolr again held him back and tried to comfort him.

  As they were finally reaching the line they watched as the imperial soldiers stuck a new spear into the ground not far away from them. They recognized the head the soldiers were now sticking on top of it as Sigurd’s. Hallr seemed like he was about to explode.

  The next man entered the tent just as they entered the line. Balder decided to step up to be second in line, but Kolr held him back.

  “If we die today, then why wait for it?”, Balder asked his comrade after which Kolr let go of him.

  They fell quiet again. After a while the man before Balder was allowed to enter and they heard a scream of pain from the wooden platform behind the tent, shortly after which the soldiers came with a new spear and a head.

  The man before Balder apparently didn’t suffer the same fate, as there was no scream of pain, instead the door to the inner castle opened just as Balder was being ordered to go in.

  He stepped through the tents entrance and was quickly surprised by the tents inside. The from the outside brown linen was purple from the inside and embroidered with rich patterns.

  He apparently took a bit to long to stare at the tent, as he suddenly felt a hand at the back of his head pushing him forward so hard, that he fell to the ground.

  Balder turned around to look at his sudden attacker. The man was entirely covered in white, thick armour, which left very few spots without protection. At the mans bed hung a large, equally white hammer: an imperial paladin.

  The Paladin grabbed Balder by his neck and pulled him back on his feet without Balder being able to resist. He then forcefully sat Balder down on a chair in the middle of the room.

  “Hello”, a man sitting in a chair opposite of him said.

  Balder looked the man into his green eyes but didn’t answer. The man was at least in his fifties, but still clearly recognisable as an imperial through his slightly to feminine face. His short, black hair and beard were starting to show a white colour. The man was wearing fine, grey and white linen clothes and a long red cape. On the mans chest sat the banner of the Tarto family, just as it had on the soldiers in the castle.

  When Balder took too long to answer the paladin, which still stood behind him hit him in the back of the head with his hand.

  “That’s enough, Paladin Zaire,” a screeching voice commanded from Balder’s right. It belonged to the priest in the golden mask, whose tone was sharp with impatience. “I think he got the message.”

  Balder’s head turned toward the priest, his jaw clenched. After a moment, he nodded, choosing restraint over rebellion. For now.

  The man in the chair smiled, his expression almost disarmingly kind: “May I learn your name?”

  “Balder”, he replied.

  “So, Balder I am going to ask you a few questions and if we like your answers to them, we might just have a prosperous future together”, the man said, while still smiling at him.

  Balder nodded.

  Balder’s lips twitched into a faint smirk: “How about you tell me your name first? Makes conversations much smoother.”

  For a moment, silence hung between them. Balder could sense the paladin’s looming presence behind him, anticipating the crack of another blow. Yet none came.

  “You may call me ‘my lord,’” the man said at last, his smile growing sharper.

  Balder considered retorting but bit the words back. His gut told him that this man held answers he desperately needed. If he wanted to learn his brother’s fate, he would need to tread carefully. Mockery could wait.

  “Yes, my lord,” Balder said, the words heavy with reluctant submission. “You may begin with your questions. But to keep this fair, I’ll be asking a few of my own.”

  “Yes, my lord, you may start with the questions, but to keep it fair I am going to ask some of my own”, Balder said, now smiling as well.

  The man blinked, then chuckled softly, the sound carrying an edge of surprise: “Very good, Balder. You may ask your questions... but don’t expect an answer to every one of them.”

  “Never did”, Balder replied.