The air inside the tent was heavy with, shadows flickered across the fabric walls, cast by the solitary lantern hanging from the centre pole.

  “Your group killed two of our men, are you aware of that?”, the man started.

  “It’s probably more than that...my lord”, Balder answered emotionlessly.

  The man still forced himself to smile: “I’m well aware of that fact, but I’m not resentful on that part, it’s more of a regret.”

  “Regret?”, Balder asked sceptically.

  The man leaned forward, his gaze steady but soft: “We’ve been slaughtering each other for years at this point, man against man, when it should have really been man against beast.”

  Balder smirked faintly, tilting his head: “Some of my people would argue that there isn’t much of a difference between an Orc and an imperial.”

  Before the words had fully left his mouth, the paladin standing behind him struck the back of his head sharply.

  “Never compare these beasts to the creations of Emberi again you heathen”, the paladin commanded.

  “Please Paladin Zaire, we’re trying to reach an agreement here and this cant be done without an understanding of one another”, the man intervened.

  “This one is a lost cause”, the Paladin responded.

  “I think that it would be best for you to leave now”, the priest said, after which the paladin trampled out of the tent.

  Balder watched him go, then turned his gaze back to the man in surprise. His smile had softened but not disappeared.

  “Don’t think, that I’m defenceless just because I sent him away”, the man explained while still smiling.

  Balder nodded and looked at the man, waiting for him to continue.

  The man studied him carefully for a long moment, thinking about what he was going to say, then all of it spurt out of him at once: “You’re young Balder… and yet, you have spent a large portion of your life on the battlefield. How many years of your youth have you wasted fighting for a lost cause? Three years? Four?”

  Balder chuckled softly: “It’s been a bit more than that and nothing has been stolen from me. I served my god.”

  The man’s smile faded slightly, replaced by a look of quiet intensity: “I’m going to be honest with you, Balder. I don’t like you or your people. I never did and never will. But our best chance for survival is if our people cooperate. Otherwise, humanity is not going to make it through this decade.”

  Balder giggled: “do you tell this to everyone entering this tent? How many comply? Every fifth? Every tenth? How many betray their fallen comrades to fight for a collapsing empire they despise?”

  “You judge them and yet you’ve come to hear what I say”, the man responded, “If you are a true servant of your god, you would have just tried running or fighting your way out, but you didn’t.”

  “I just thought you’d have something more interesting to say…my lord”, Balder retaliated.

  The man looked deep into Balder’s eyes for a moment, then he continued: “Normally I’d have you executed already, for me this is already a lost cause and not worth my time, but one thing that your involuntary companion said makes me rethink that.”

  “You spoke with the fag?”, Balder said mockingly.

  “Yes, I did and interestingly enough he asked for you to be spared”, the man continued calmly, “and since your efforts have saved one of this region's best chroniclers, I think you might be worth a bit more of my time.”

  “Don’t get your hopes up my lord”, Balder responded with an overexaggerated smile on his face.

  “Why didn’t you kill him?”, the man said, his patience thinning.

  “We needed someone to show us the way”, Balder answered quickly.

  “So cooperation between our two people can work,” the man asked, raising an eyebrow and speaking in a tone that a father would use when addressing a defiant child.

  “We used him for our goals”, Balder replied bluntly.

  “If that’s why don’t we use one another to achieve both our respective and same goals as good as we can?”, the man continued.

  Balder chuckled to himself: “I don’t like being used.”

  The expression on the man's face darkened again: “Balder, if that’s how you want it to be, then so be it.”

  Balder looked at the old priest, still standing behind the man for a moment, then he turned his gaze back at the man: “I still haven’t been able to ask my questions.”

  “Very well Balder”, the man said coldly, “ask.”

  Balder looked deep into the man’s eyes: “What happened to the castle's keeper? Did he suffer the same fate as the others?”

  “Technically those are two questions, but it doesn’t matter, as you won’t get an answer to either”, the man answered with a dark smile on his face.

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  “Would you tell me if I joined you?”, Balder asked.

  The man looked at him in surprise: “What if you don’t like the answer I give you?”

  “I just want to know. I have accepted the man's death long ago, all I want is conformation. Your answer isn’t going to change the oath I’m going to swear before the gods, is it?”

  The man seemed genuinely curious now: “What is the importance of this man to you? Is he truly worth sacrificing your so-called honour?”

  Balder thought about the words for a moment. Should he reveal who he was? They probably wouldn’t be to trilled to see another son of the man they despised. Would they just kill him? Would they torture him to make him feel the pain his father had caused to his people? It would all be worth it if he would get answers.

  “Hrym is brother”, he said a lot quieter than he wanted to. Was he scared?

  “Bjorn, this monster only ever had two sons”, the man responded angrily.

  “I think I should know this a bit better than you, shouldn’t I?”, Balder retaliated.

  “I think I know of someone who can judge this”, the man said.

  He now turned to the priest: “have the prisoners be brought back to their cages and open the gates.”

  The priest silently bowed before him and then walked away to carry out his lord's commands.

  “We’re going to see, if you speak the truth”, the man said.

  “Yes we will”, Balder responded.

  The tension hung heavy in the air as Balder and the man stared at one another in silence, waiting for the gate into the inner castle to open. Eventually they could hear the loud, rattling sound of giant chains being moved behind the walls. It went on for a minute, as the reinforced gate was slowly opening, the sound alone made it clear, that the gate was made to last.

  The priest entered the tent again: “my lord, the way is open.”

  The man gave Balder a grim look and then looked at the back-entrance of the tent, signalling that he wanted Balder to walk through it.

  Balder quickly complied and stepped back into the moonlight. The Paladin was back and signalled, that Balder was supposed to follow him.

  Balder walked past the wooden platform standing behind the tent: the whole platform was empty, with the exception of a stone block in the middle of it, which was elevated just enough for a head to rest upon. Blood stained every surface: some fresh and glistening, some dark and clotted, remnants of countless executions.

  The only person currently standing on it was a man, dressed in simple clothes and a simple sack with holes in it over his face, in his hand he carried a two-handed axe, which was similarly stained in blood as the stone and the wood below him.

  The lord and the priest had followed closely behind Balder, but now the lord left for a short while to give the man orders, while Balder stepped in to the inner castle.

  Within the high walls a little village revealed itself, but other than normal villages this one wasn’t wildly branching of into every direction, it was organized and exactly planned, the floor was even, the buildings were closely together and had exactly the same hight and the exact same amount of both windows and rooms.

  The whole village was perfectly symmetrical with the exact same number of houses and paths in each direction. The only outlier was the big building at the centre of it which almost looked like a fortress of its own.

  Its walls rose imposingly, rivalling the height of the outer defences. The building was a blank, monolithic block punctuated by windows; its design entirely utilitarian, devoid of the artistry typical of imperial architecture. This was a place built not for beauty, but for efficiency.

  The fortress served as a hub of empire control, meant to house vast reserves of food, water, weapons, and manpower, as it was one of the most important ones in the whole empire, or at least it had been before the sun's disappearance. The fortress was built to control the orc population living in the two mountain ranges surrounding the area. The houses were usually used to harbour the fortress’s massive garrison which was usually many thousand men strong. The garrison’s objective was to push back any orc incursion leaving the mountains as fast as possible, so that they wouldn’t become a greater problem.

  The building in the centre was used to harbour both the noble family Tarto and the massive amount of food supplies the castle would need in a siege.

  Balder couldn’t help but laugh grimly at the memory of his father’s conquest. The imperials had prepared for a lengthy siege, imagining his father’s forces camped outside for days, weeks, even months. Instead, his father had climbed the walls with a handful of men in the pitch black of the day, opening the gates and plunging the fortress into chaos.

  Balder couldn’t help but wonder how many unsuspecting imperial soldiers they slaughtered that day. Three thousand? Five thousand? Ten thousand? He never learned even the rough numbers, but it had been a lot.

  Balder and his captors had been silently moving through the streets for a while now. Small, richly decorated lamps were standing everywhere on the street, lightening up the many confused faces of the civilians which had fled to the fortress in the past few years and were now living in the houses, that had originally been built for the garrison and their families.

  Balder couldn’t help but wonder how many defenders the fortress could still muster; it couldn’t be more than two thousand.

  He was ripped out of his thoughts by something hard hitting the back of his head, causing him to fall over. He rolled over to look at his attacker: on the side of the rode stood two children, a boy and a girl.

  “Murderer!”, they screamed, “Kill him!”

  "Go away!”, the priest barked, his voice sharp and commanding.

  The children hesitated, glaring at the priest with disgust before turning and running into the shadows. Balder felt the paladin’s rough grip pulling him back to his feet.

  “Didn’t you speak of cooperation between our people just a few minutes ago?”, Balder asked mischievously.

  The lord didn’t even glance at him as he responded, his voice calm but firm: “It is not popular among the population, after what your people did. After all, many only lost their homes because of your kind.”

  Without another word, they pressed onward toward the towering structure at the centre of the village. Although many people were on the streets it was quiet, and they were able to reach the building without any more incidents.

  They entered the structure in the middle through a big door. To the left and right of them were two doors leading to massive storage rooms, while the way straight forward led up a stairway at the end of which lay another door. The group ascended the steps, passing guards who cast them looks of confusion and suspicion.

  They moved through the upper door, stepping into a long corridor with a plush red carpet stretching toward yet another door at the far end. This corridor, unlike the rest of the fortress, was richly adorned. Patterns were etched into the walls, and paintings hung in intricate frames. Many more doors were on the side of the corridor which led to sleeping quarters, baths and all the other rooms the noble family could possibly need.

  Balder was very familiar with everything here, as his father had stayed at the fortress for the first four months after capturing and he and his brothers had slept in the rooms on the side of the corridor themselves, he could even see his old room from where he was standing.

  He had expected their destination to be the door at the end of the corridor, where the conference room lay, instead they stopped at one of the side rooms: a richly decorated bedroom draped in banners and luxurious carpets. Balder’s captors walked straight toward the bed at its centre.

  What he saw there left him speechless. In the middle of the bed, tangled in its embroidered sheets, lay his brother. He was naked, his arm draped around a stunning blonde woman who was equally unclothed. They slept soundly, undisturbed by the intrusion, as Balder stood frozen in shock.