The Greatest Archmage To Have Ever Lived [OP MC, LitRPG]

Time passed. Things changed.

And one month later, Sael was walking at the head of a column of thirteen hundred orcs, smoking his pipe and sculpting a horse out of smoke for a child who kept trying to eat it.

The child, a boy of maybe four by orcish reckoning, which made him roughly the size of a human eight-year-old, watched it trot past his face with enormous yellow eyes and then lunged at it, mouth-first. The smoke horse dissolved against his teeth and he looked personally offended.

Sael made another one, and the boy ate that too.

This had been going on for some time. Two others had joined at some point and behind them, the Jurha clan stretched along the mountain road in a line that took roughly fifteen minutes to walk from end to end.

Sael had been told the exact headcount at one point, but the orcs tallied their people differently than humans did: adults and elders were one number, children another, and there was a third category for keth-varu, "those who walk between".

They moved at the pace caravans move when they carry everything a people owns. Carts pulled by grey, shaggy-furred beasts the orcs called drenn — something between an ox and a very stubborn boulder that had grown legs — bore what couldn't be carried on backs. Bundles of hide and bone framework for shelters. Tools. Clay pots packed in dried grass. Smoked meat wrapped in oilskin.

And the music, oh, the music. It had been going since dawn.

Heavy boots on packed earth, the drums struck with open palms, and the deep two-toned chanting of the men rolling back through the column. Not so different from dwarven road-music, though Sael suspected both peoples would be offended from him saying so. Dwarves and orcs were not the best of friends most of the time.

So Sael walked, and the Jurha chanted while the drenn plodded along and the drum-bearers' palms kept their steady rhythm against stretched hide and hollowed stone. And three children kept pace with him at the front of the column, fascinated by what his pipe could do.

Suddenly, a sharp call from somewhere behind them and all three children froze. Then they turned and bolted back along the column without a word, disappearing between the legs of adults who stepped aside for them without looking down.

Sael watched them go. The puff of smoke still curling from his pipe had been halfway to becoming a cat. It dissolved, unfinished... and unappreciated.

"Archmage."

Sarek, son of orc lord Barek, fell into step beside him.

"I apologize for the children," the orc said. "They should not have been bothering you. I've spoken with their families."

"You've spoken with their families?"

"Yes. It won't happen again."

"Sarek, that boy tried to eat a smoke horse directly out of the air. Mouth open, no hesitation, fully committed. That was the most entertaining thing that's happened to me in a week." He tapped his pipe against his palm. "Please don't speak with their families."

Sarek's brow furrowed in as if he was trying to determine whether Sael was serious. "You... wanted them there?"

"Well, yes. I was enjoying their company. They were the only living souls within a hundred feet of me for most of the morning. Everyone else appears to be maintaining a very specific distance that I suspect someone measured."

It wasn't quite an accusation, but it also wasn't not one.

Sarek's expression shifted. "It is not fear, Archmage."

"..Hmm, It's a little bit fear."

"It is respect. Among our people, to walk near the one who leads is a claim. Walking close without invitation says that your standing is near to theirs. Only those who are called to the leader's side may walk beside them. The space they give you is the space they would give a great warchief, or—" He searched for the right word. "A figure whose name carries weight. It is an honor."

"Ah," Sael said.

He had been about to explain that he'd been joking — or at least half-joking — and that he understood cultural norms around proximity differed between peoples and he had not genuinely taken offense. But the window for that clarification arrived, paused briefly, assessed the conversational landscape, and departed for somewhere more productive while Sarek was still talking. By the time the young orc finished, the moment had cooled into fact, and correcting it now would require a longer and more awkward explanation than simply letting it stand.

Sael had extensive experience with windows of explanation closing on him, so he simply nodded, puffed his pipe, and let it go.

They walked in comfortable silence for a few minutes when he felt a shift in the ambient mana, and Sael stopped walking.

Sarek, half a stride ahead before he caught himself, stopped too. He turned back. "Your Majesty?"

"We're here." Sael lowered his pipe and looked ahead. The road, such as it was, had been narrowing for the last hour, and it ended not far in front of them in a tangle of undergrowth and old-growth branches.

"Would you call the halt?"

Sarek reached for the horn at his belt. It was a short, curved thing, dark with age, made from the tusk of something that had been very large. He raised it to his mouth and blew a single low note.

The column didn't stop all at once. The note was picked up and relayed — a second horn answering somewhere in the middle of the caravan, then a third near the rear — and the whole procession slowed in a rolling wave. The drum-bearers wound their rhythm down over the span of thirty seconds and the chanting trailed off, each voice dropping away until the last elder's call went unanswered, and the silence that replaced it was vast and ringing.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from NovelFire; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Sael turned to Sarek.

The young orc stood still, the horn in his hand, waiting.

"Sarek," Sael said. "Son of Barek, son of Jorek, son of Marathen, son of Guhl."

Sarek stared at him.

"I've been practicing," Sael added, because he had. Five generations of lineage was, by orcish custom, the deepest form of formal address. Anything past three was considered a mark of profound respect. Going to five meant you were serious. Going to six, he'd been informed, was technically possible but generally regarded as showing off at the expense of the dead, which was considered poor form. So, five was the ceiling.

"Welcome home."

Sarek's jaw worked once but he said nothing as Sael turned and stepped off the road.

He raised a hand and with a simple spell, the branches folded back. The canopy split apart overhead. The trees leaned away from the path like curtains drawn open, and the valley opened beneath them.

Behind him, a wave of "Oooooh," and then gasps.

Sael understood the sentiment, at seeing a long, generous slope of green fell away from the ridgeline, further than felt reasonable. High grassland and wildflower meadow in the upper reaches gave way to stands of old hardwood lower down and a river cut through the center.

Three waterfalls fed it from the eastern ridge, while a herd of brown, four-legged creatures moved through the lower meadow, numerous and entirely unbothered, which was as much taxonomy as the moment required. Birds called from the tree line in overlapping layers and the air was fresh and reinvigorating.

Sarek stood beside him at the edge of the ridge. The horn hung forgotten at his side while he was looking out at the valley, and his expression was something Sael couldn't quite name.

Behind them, more orcs pushed through the brush, following the path they'd cut. The first ones to reach the ridgeline stopped, stared, and went quiet. The ones behind them did the same. And the ones behind them.

Hmm. A bit awkward that silence...

Sael cleared his throat.

"I should mention, uhm, I took a few liberties with the valley before your arrival. The growth along the lower slopes has been encouraged. Some of the trees are new. Iron-pear, black walnut, a few stands of ghural along the eastern ridge, as I'm told those fruit in autumn and are hard to find this far south." He gestured loosely at the expanse below. "The river's been widened at the bends for irrigation. The upper meadow should support grazing within the season."

He tapped his pipe against his palm.

"As agreed, I haven't built any structures. The land is yours to shape however you see fit."

Sarek nodded once, slowly, still looking out.

"One more thing." Sael's voice didn't harden, exactly, but it settled into something more deliberate. "The Kingdom of Darransh extends its formal protection over this valley and every soul within it. Its borders are yours." A pause. "And I will guarantee that protection personally."

Sarek turned to look at him.

"Personally," Sael repeated, because he wanted that part heard clearly.

There wasn't quite a word for thank you in orcish. You could say dra vehn — roughly, this will be held — or keth murhan, which was closer to you have my arms. But gratitude spoken plain, one person to another, the way humans used it... the language had never made room for it. The orcs, Sael suspected, had simply never seen the point of naming something you could show.

What they had was a gesture.

Sarek suddenly sat down. He folded his legs beneath him right there on the ridge, rested his open hands on his knees, and was still.

Behind him, the nearest orc did the same. Then the next. Then the next. It traveled the way the horn-call had — picked up, passed back, repeated — a rolling wave of stillness moving through thirteen hundred people until every last one of them was seated on the mountainside, hands open, weapons untouched, facing the valley in silence.

To sit in someone's presence, Sael had learned, was a deep gesture of trust.

Then Sarek spoke.