This time it was Hominum who had started it, by clearing away their forests to fuel the industrial revolution that had just begun. That had been seven years ago, and the war showed no sign of ending any time soon.
‘If I could forge those muskets, there would be no need to open the stall at all,’ Berdon grumbled from behind him. Fletcher nodded in agreement. Muskets were in high demand on the front line, manufactured by the dwarven artificers that lived in the bowels of Corcillum. The techniques used to create their straight barrels and mechanisms were closely guarded secrets that the dwarves harboured jealously. It was a lucrative business, yet the technology had only been recently implemented in the military. Where before the orcs could endure a hail of arrows, a barrage of musket fire had far more stopping power.
It was then Fletcher noticed a final traveller enter through the gates. He was a grizzled soldier, with grey hair and an unshaven face. He wore a red and white uniform, the cloth tattered and worn, spattered with mud and dust from the journey. Many of the brass buttons from his coat were missing or hanging loose. He was unarmed, unusual for a member of a trading convoy and even more so for a soldier.
He had no horse or wagon, but instead led a mule that was heavily laden with saddlebags. His boots were in a sorry state, the soles worn through and flapping with each staggering step he took. Fletcher watched as he settled in the space opposite him, tying the mule to the corner post of the next stall and glaring at the vendor before he could protest.
He unpacked his saddlebags, spreading out a bundle of cloth and arranging several objects upon it. The soldier was likely on his way to the elven front, culled for being too old to fight as a soldier, yet too incompetent to have been promoted to an officer. As if he could sense his gaze, the old man straightened and grinned at Fletcher’s curiosity, showing a mouth full of missing teeth.
Fletcher craned his neck to get a better look at the soldier and his eyes widened as he saw what was for sale. There were huge flint arrowheads the size of a man’s hand, the edges pitted to create barbs that would snag in the flesh. Necklaces made from strings of teeth and desiccated ears were untangled and laid out like the finest pendants. A rhino’s horn, tipped with an iron point, was arranged at the very front of the collection. The centrepiece was a huge orc skull, twice the size of a man’s. It had been polished smooth and bleached by the jungle sun, with a heavy brow-ridge jutting unnaturally over its eyeholes. The orc’s lower canines were larger than Fletcher had imagined, extending out into tusks that were around three inches long. These were souvenirs from the front lines, to be sold as curiosities to northern cities, far from where the real war was being fought.
Fletcher turned and looked beseechingly at Berdon, who had also seen what the man had for sale. He shook his head and nodded at the stall. Fletcher sighed and turned his attention back to the arrangement of his own goods. It was going to be a long, fruitless day.
4
A small crowd had gathered around the soldier, children mostly, but also a few guardsmen who had nothing to trade and no coin to spend.
‘Come round, all of you! Everything you see here is the genuine article, the real deal. Every item has a blood curdling tale that will make you thank your lucky stars you live in the north,’ he yelled with the flourish of a fruit vendor, tossing a spearhead high in the air and deftly catching it between his fingers.
‘Perhaps I could interest you in a gremlin’s loincloth or an orc nose-ring? You, sir, what do you say?’ he said to a young boy with a finger firmly inserted in his nose, who was certainly not qualified to be called ‘sir’.
‘What’s a gremlin?’ asked the boy, his eyes widening.
‘Gremlins are slaves to the orcs. One might compare them to a squire to one of the knights of old, tending to his every need. Not great fighters; it’s in their breeding to be servile. That, and the fact that they barely come up to the height of a man’s knee,’ he said, demonstrating with his hand.
Fletcher eyed the image with renewed interest. Most people had some idea of what gremlins were, even this far north. They stood on two legs, as the orcs did, but wore nothing but tattered scraps of cloth around their waists. Their large bat-like ears and long crooked noses were distinctive, as were their elongated and nimble fingers, expert at prying snails from their shells and insects from rotten logs. Gremlins had grey skin, just like an orc’s, and their eyes were large and bulbous with sizeable pupils.
‘Where did you get all this stuff?’ asked the boy, kneeling to take a closer look at what was on offer.
‘I took it from the dead, my boy. They have no use for it, not where they’re going. It’s my way of bringing a little taste of the war up here.’