Orcish Class

Jess didn't dare go back to the Slaughtered Lamb. He'd managed to offend the people in charge there. Going back would just be asking for trouble.

He spent every afternoon teaching himself Orcish in the library. He also paid a blacksmith in the Dwarven District five silver coins to make him a sword about as heavy as the Stromgarde straight sword. That way he could practice with a real blade under Gred's guidance, and the training should do him more good.

The weather had been cooling quickly. On Azeroth, the calendars used by humans and dwarves were similar to the Gregorian calendar on Earth. There were still twelve months in a year, though different races had different names for them in their own languages.

Dwarves, for instance, called April Suren Month. Lordaeron and the Kingdom of Stormwind used different names too. It was all rather complicated. Maybe that was why, as the kingdoms and races dealt with one another more and more, simply numbering the months had become increasingly common.

The first of October was a Tuesday. It was also the day of Jess's first Orcish lesson.

That afternoon, he followed the address Marin had given him and wandered around the Wizard's Sanctum several times. Even though he'd arrived half an hour early, he was a little late by the time he finally found the classroom.

There didn't seem to be a teacher at the front. Instead, a group of students sat in a circle in the small room. They all turned to look at him.

What surprised Jess was that there were about twenty people, none apparently younger than he was. Quite a few were middle-aged. There was even an elderly couple who looked like husband and wife. Both had gray hair and could well have been over seventy.

"Jess Seso, right?" A middle-aged man waved him over. "I'm Carlo Duchamp. I believe Master Marin has already told you about me."

"Oh... Master Duchamp." Jess nodded slightly. He hadn't expected the teacher to be sitting among the students. With people of every age in the room, there was no way to tell who the teacher was.

Duchamp wore small glasses and had a shaved head. He was tall and thin, with a prickly beard around a mouth that always seemed to be smiling.

Seeing how awkward Jess looked, he said, "Come on in. You're the youngest person in the class. We'll look after you."

The others smiled and nodded politely. Jess wasn't used to a classroom full of such mature people. He could only smile awkwardly back and take a seat to one side.

"Here's how this works," Duchamp said. "Unlike most language classes, we won't have the teacher lead you through everything from beginning to end. Our main focus is discussion. Everyone brings whatever Orcish materials they've collected. We use what we already know to try to translate them, then exchange opinions. When looking at someone else's materials, please handle them gently. Every Orcish book and letter is extremely valuable. In fact, I recommend that everyone copy their Orcish runes and bring the copy rather than the original, even if it takes several times more work. We'll go over the other rules as they come up."

While Duchamp explained the rules, Jess was studying the faces and clothes around him. Before coming, he'd worried that he might run into some of the warlocks from the Slaughtered Lamb's basement. He was still nervous about it.

After all, if Marin was right, this was the only Orcish class in the Wizard's Sanctum. If those warlocks thought their spells were in Orcish, they'd surely do whatever they could to get in.

Luckily, no one looked familiar. No one gave him any strange looks, either. He probably didn't know anyone here.

Most importantly, Gakin wasn't among them.

But the moment Duchamp said that every Orcish book and letter was extremely valuable, Jess's attention snapped right back to the teacher.

How valuable?

How much could he get for a ruined book with ninety percent of its pages burned away? What about a book written partly in Orcish and partly in some unknown language? What about an order written by Teron Gorefiend himself?

This book was originally published on NovelPhoenix. Check it out there for the real experience.

There was no way Jess would sell the burned book or the bilingual volume.

But that order from Teron Gorefiend didn't seem especially useful anymore. He'd already made a copy, and he had no interest in collecting such things.

If he found a rich collector interested in orc artifacts, how much could he sell it for?

Booty Bay... Booty Bay...

He remembered the story the staff merchant Allen Haverghan had told him about selling a staff for 240 gold coins. Just thinking about it made his head spin.

This letter was handwritten by one of the highest-ranking elites among the orcs. It wasn't just a collector's item. It might even have some military value.

Maybe it meant there was still a real death knight walking around Azeroth, never captured, waiting for his commander Teron Gorefiend's order to withdraw. Waiting until the Alliance took control of the Dark Portal...

Surely a letter like that had to be worth a few gold coins.

"Jess Seso."

Duchamp suddenly called his name. Jess froze. He'd been daydreaming.

In his very first lesson, sitting in a circle with everyone, he'd let his thoughts wander far to the south, right in front of the whole class.

"Have a look at this rune. What do you think it means?"

Duchamp passed him a sheet of paper covered in Orcish writing.

Jess turned it one way and then the other, trying to remember the Orcish runes he'd studied at the library over the past few days. Some strokes looked familiar, but he couldn't place them.

He'd only been learning for three or four days. Even with all the hours he'd put in, he couldn't possibly have mastered a completely different writing system in that time. He might have seen the rune before and still not recognize it.

"It's pronounced mak'gora," Duchamp prompted. "It's a very important ritual in orc culture."

The sound of mak'gora stirred a faint memory. Jess couldn't remember the exact meaning. But when Duchamp called it an important ritual, one thing instantly came to mind: an honor duel.

That was the only orc ritual he knew by that name. When someone challenged a clan chief for leadership, they fought a duel to the death.

"An honor duel." Jess pointed at the page. "I know this one."

He felt as though sweat was about to seep out through his hair.

"An honor duel?" Duchamp and the other students looked puzzled.

Jess glanced around cautiously. "Is that wrong?"

"It does mean a duel," said a middle-aged student beside him. "But where does the honor part come from?"

Jess realized he'd tried to be clever and said too much. He would have been better off admitting he didn't know.

He was about to explain, then caught himself. If he started telling them what he knew about the culture surrounding the ritual, a roomful of people who knew so little about orcs would only become more suspicious.

So he bluffed. "I thought maybe orc duels were like duels between human nobles. You know, fighting over something important. A lover, or their dignity, something like that. Not a fight to the death. They'd stop once someone won... That's just how I understood it."

"It's possible," Duchamp said. "Orcs love fighting. Perhaps they settle certain clan matters through duels."

"I disagree," said a younger woman. "I don't think orcs have any sense of honor. They've burned, killed, and looted everywhere they went. If they love fighting so much, wouldn't it make more sense for them to fight until one of them dies?"

Jess knew she was right. Before the young Warchief Thrall came to rule the Horde, orc duels had always been fights to the death. At the very least, they ended with one fighter so badly injured that he could never fight again.

"Maybe they're kinder to their own people," an elderly man suggested.

Another man said, "When the orcs invaded Westfall, some farms weren't badly looted. The towns they destroyed most thoroughly were the ones with garrisons, the ones that fought back hardest... Maybe they didn't want to hurt unarmed enemies."

"An entire village in the swamp was slaughtered," a young man shot back. "What kind of weapons do you think those swamp folk had to stand against an orc army? You're starting to sound like an orc sympathizer. You're ignoring all those dead farmers and burned farms from Elwynn to the Redridge Mountains."

"Don't go around deciding what other people believe, boy," the man said sharply. "Are you so eager to prove how righteous you are that you'll ignore facts right in front of you? I'd like to see how you explain the orcs' reluctance to harm those farmers in Westfall!"

"Slavery, like any backward civilization," an older female student said slowly. "Orcs have to eat and drink too. They need slaves to grow food for them."

"This isn't a class on culture or politics," Duchamp interrupted before the argument wandered any farther—and into dangerous territory. "Let historians, sociologists, and scholars of the races debate orc values and society. We're here to study the language."

Duchamp seemed more like a moderator than a teacher, constantly steering the discussion back to language. In the Alliance as it stood today, how to treat the orcs was a dangerous subject.

Several other students shared their materials. Jess really did learn quite a few points of Orcish grammar and patterns of word use that he'd missed in the library.

At the end of class, Duchamp handed him a thick stack of papers.

"These are some of the notes we've put together over the past weeks. Use them to catch up. Once you've finished reading them, please return them. We only made two copies, and copying Orcish runes is terribly hard work."

Jess couldn't agree more. How long would it take to copy a stack that thick? These notes would definitely be a huge help in learning Orcish.