Surprise! You wonder where I been?

I been working, but sounds making danger,
and black bird's chirping

That sounds a lot better in my head because those are lyrics from an EPMD song. I had all these reasons why I hadn't posted yet, one of which was I been working. But that said I didn't really have that much to post this week. Or at least I didn't *think* I did. Til my wife reminded me (inadvertently) that next month is National Novel Writer's Month.

That reminded me that last year I did actually finish a book, but I never let anybody read it because I thought it was terrible. That reminded me that I thought I had lost it when my hard drive crashed sometime in February? Which turned out not to be true because I had a backup of it on a thumb drive I'd forgotten about. Which reminded me that I'd told Travis that I'd let him read it, which in turn reminded me that I had forgotten to do that.

Follow all that? Good.

But the practical point of that is, I had thought a long time ago about using a webpage to write a story on that would just be continuous, because I like things like Order of the Stick, where the guy has been telling a great story for a few years now, and it always makes me wish I could draw so I could have a webcomic, but I can't draw, so having a webcomic just isn't gonna happen.

But then I thought, I could have a webbook instead. And so, while Allie reminded me about NaNoWriMo being next month, it occurred to me that I could just post my terrible book here, one chapter at a time, and possibly drive you all away in a few weeks. So we're gonna give that a shot.

I may have some preamble before chapters or something (like this one, only not as long) and if I find any nice links I'll drop them in there, but for now there's only one thing I want to link (the most awesomest game ever, called Miami Shark) and then chapter one of my "new" book, Skullduggery.

***
"Listen, I'll explain it. What we're saying is this, you find parents, particularly ones with only one kid. I mean, there could even only be one parent, as long as there's only one kid. Got it? Ok. So what we're saying is, that kid has enormous potential, you just have to let it out. You got it? So you kill the parents."

The other orc said, "I don't get it."

Loro sighed. "You kill the parents. This unleashes the pent up potential inside this kid. The one kid. The orphan."

The other orc said, "I still don't get it."

Loro said, "We're both orcs, right? How many Orc Champions have their been since the Battle of Dungore?"

The other orc, younger than Loro, still fresh faced and unscarred thought about that. His name was Akar. He was holding his hand up, looking up in the sky and raising and lowering fingers as he counted. He had three fingers up for a while, then put up a fourth, then put it back down to bring his total back down to three. Then at the last second raised it again and said, "Four."

"Right. Gagnar the Invincible." Loro held up one finger. Akar nodded. "Grush." A second finger, another nod. "Kolo the Black Blade." Three fingers now, and Akar waiting expectantly. "And Grimfist."

Akar said, "That's right. That's the four I got."

Loro said, "And what happened to them?"

"What do you mean?"

"They're all dead. What happened to them?"

"Well, Gagnar was killed by a wizard, I think."

"That's right." Loro was nodding his head, smiling now.

"Grush was killed by Kolo, and then Kolo got killed by a knight, didn't he? A human one from that place in the south where they make that bread."

"That's right, Gandermere's that place. That bread is something with an 'R' I think. Rye?"

"That's it. And then Grimfist was killed by a horse."

"Not just a horse." Loro corrected.

"Oh, right, a horse with a guy on it."

"A guy?"

"What was he? A ranger? He wasn't a paladin was he?"

"Cavalier. The humans call them cavaliers. Come on now, he had a flag and everything."

"I heard the horse did all the work."

"Well, the cavalier trains the horse, so, you know. It's pretty much an even share of the killing."

"Ok, fair enough." Akar had forgotten where this was going. "What was the point of all this?"

"The wizard, the knight and the cavalier, you know what they all had in common?"

Akar shook his head.

"Orphans. All of them. The wizard, Gagnar killed that guy's parents when the wizard was a baby. Kid grows up with vengeance on his brain and becomes one of the most powerful wizards in the world. What does he do? He hunts down Gagnar and kills him."

"Seriously?" Akar was a bit shocked.

"This is what I'm saying. That knight? Kolo killed his mother. Father was long dead, but killing his mom? Kolo made an enemy for life. That kid trained with the sword and shield, found Kolo out in the frozen swamps and put a blade right through him. That cavalier?"

"Grimfist killed his parents?"

Loro shrugged and said, "Well, you know, we're checking on that. I mean we don't really know much about that guy, he just sort of showed up and ran Grimfist over and then left, you know, but it's a pretty safe bet."

"So what you're saying..."

"Of the last four Orc Champions, three of them were killed by humans, two of which were for certain revenge killings, and one is a maybe. Only one of them died like he should have. Killed by another orc in battle."

"So what you're saying is, orphans are what, powerful?"

Loro nodded. "They can be. They get powerful, you know, for vengeance. They get mad, they want revenge, they train themselves, push themselves harder than normal, those guys, they become like death incarnate. They become true warriors."

Akar was starting to catch on but had some questions. "Why single kids?"

"You got two kids they're sad, but they have each other to lean on, you know? They don't get the crazy like a kid left alone."

"Ah."

"You got your wizards, your knights, your cavaliers, apparently. They get tough, they go looking for the killer."

"And our plan is to be that killer?"

"Our plan is to create those orphans. We go around every place we can, we create some orphans who have revenge on the brain. Then, later, when they're trained up they come looking for us."

"And then what?" Akar was still fuzzy on the end goal.

"By then the dragon will be back. And when they find us, they'll find the dragon. And when they find the dragon, they'll kill it."

"But the dragon didn't kill their parents." Akar pointed out.

"No, but humans and dragons, you know, it's all historical. They're always killed by a human."

"Really?"

"You ever hear any stories about dwarves killing dragons? Elves? No, it's always a human. But this dragon, this is a big one. We're going to need more than just one guy out there hacking away at it. We're going to need an army."

Akar said, "And we're going to create that army."

"Now you've got it."

"By traveling around the countryside killing kids parents."

Loro nodded. "That's about the size of it."

"How many have you done so far?"

"Well...we haven't really gotten started yet. I wanted to wait until we had a full group. But now there's like six of us, including you."

Loro and Akar were on a small hill and Loro nodded down to the hill's base where the rest of the orcs had set up camp. They were waiting for Loro to explain the whole thing to Akar, the youngest, who had just joined them. His uncle had sent him to find Loro and join up with the group.

Akar looked off to the north and saw lights. "What's that?" He said. The sun going down was making the lights more visible.

"That's the big city. Grandview. Human city. Where their king lives."

"Are we going there?"

Loro snorted. "Gods no! We're avoiding it. We're going to stay out here in the open country. Hit some of these farm houses around here. See what we can find, you know, kid wise, with orphan potential."

"Tough city, huh?"

"Thousands of people. We'd be slaughtered. They kill us on sight, don't forget that."

Akar nodded. He sat down and Loro sat down beside him and they looked at the lights. Akar said, "How do you get to be an orc champion?"

Loro shook his head and said, "You have to kill lots and lots of people."

Akar looked off dreamily at the lights of the city.

After a while Loro thought they should go back down to the camp, but before he could say so Akar asked, "What do you know about the dragon?"

Loro had to think. He said, "I saw it once, when I was a boy. Scared me to death. Flying over a village I was walking to with my parents. It was huge. Bigger than the hill we're standing on."

"Serious?"

"On my honor."

"No one knows what to do. The shamans say you're the only one that's come up with a decent plan. That's why my uncle sent me to find you. He says if anybody's going to get anything done it'll be you."

Loro took the compliment and smiled. He said, "What are things like back at home?"

"You mean when I left? They say it's going to be a while before the dragon comes back, so there's not a lot to do. They're making weapons though."

"They're always making weapons."

"True." Akar said, "But they're making bigger ones."

"That's a start."

"When will the dragon come?"

Loro said, "No one knows for sure. They say it goes in cycles. It comes and burns down some villages, and eats the burnt bodies that get left behind. Then it goes off somewhere to sleep, or wreak havoc somewhere else. Who knows?"

Akar said, "But it's a long time between them."

"Like I said, last time it came I was a little boy. Now we have to wait a while. Long enough for some of these humans to grow up and not be kids."

Orcs have no concept of years, or seasons. In the far north the weather's always the same, so they measure time from battle to battle and not from season to season. If Loro had known how he would have told the young orc that the dragon came to their neck of the woods every thirty years or so, but since he didn't have the vocabulary to do that it seemed pointless to even try.

Akar had worked out the time in his head though, and he told Loro, "I'll be your age when it comes then, yes?"

Loro nodded, impressed with the boy. "Yes, something like that."

"How long will we be out here, then?"

Loro said, "Could be a while. Don't know how long it will take to find enough kids to orphan. We may need ten? Twelve of them?"

"And we're going to stay down here in the human lands until we do?"

"That's the plan. We stay out of sight, you understand? Guerilla tactics, we keep to ourselves we stay out of the humans way."

"Except the ones we're killing." Akar said.

"Right. Except those. That's why we have no fire for the camp."

Akar said, "Ah."

From the shadows at the base of the camp an orc voice called up, "We're building a fire."

"All right then." Loro shouted back down.

"But you just said-"

"I know." Loro said. "But no fire? That sounds terrible, doesn't it? Besides we're not where anyone could actually see it. And if they did, they'd probably think we were just hunters out, you know, hunting."

Akar said, "Oh."
***