Nargi and Grishar had been covering a lot of ground in the past two weeks and, according to Nargi, were nearing human settlements. He said he knew because we had been passing pieces of ‘road’ where you could go two ways. And there were things called ‘signs’ at them: little wooden planks with paint on them in complex forms. Nargi could read them, like the paper things he had in his bag that were called ‘books’.

When Grishar had met Nargi for the first time, he had thought him to be not so bright, considering he couldn’t even add up to two, but turns out he was not only imaginative, but could also do things like ‘reading’. Which was cool. Grishar had decided he would pick up the reading thing one day and write a book on sex with a lot of pictures and detailed instructions on how to perform the various positions. Nargi had said such a book probably didn’t exist yet, which had given Grishar a new sense of purpose. People had to be taught how to do those things and Grishar was going to do it. Who knew most men just knew the basic position? That one wasn’t even fun because the man cannot see the woman’s tits and the woman can see nothing interesting at all. Obviously, he had to keep some secrets to himself, because well… competition, but still. Grishar owed it to the ladies to educate the men on doing a better job.

And Nargi was helping him already by teaching him some form of human speech. He was already really good at it. Probably at some point he would need to get a better teacher, because Nargi didn’t even know the human words for sex, let alone the translations of all the things accompanying it. He needed those for the book though. But, since they were close to human settlements, Grishar was confident in that he’d find a teacher there. He had already had his sentence fixed. You teach human talk to I. And then you’d turn your voice up at the end of a sentence which meant it was a question and not an order. At least, that was what Nargi said. Grishar thought an order would be easier, since people wouldn’t say no, but Nargi had said that asking belonged to being civilised, so he’d probably have to do the voice thing anyway.

A couple of days ago Nargi had started to sing human songs before dinner. Grishar thought that was fun and wanted to join in, which resulted in him now knowing an actual human song. That would probably do good with the ladies, he thought. He thought the best one was the one about ladies spreading their legs. It went like this:

O sweet the smell of raberrie barking in the dann,

The dark night has empet and cocks raise thera larm

The bushcon sees the pinkis bounty, beggen to shake loos

The ladies getring spread their legs to kess the falling froos.

COME EAT WE WOET HURT YOU!

The last part needed to be even louder then the rest, but that was because it was the conclusion obviously. Grishar thought it meant that you could safely eat the raberrie, which was important, because Nargi had told him some berries were poisonous. It was a good song, teaching people about edible berries whilst still being a bit naughty, you know, since there was a penis in it, right before the ladies spread their legs.

Nargi was more cheerful too since he was singing the songs. Songs helped people cheer up, everyone knew that, so every day the sung a little bit more, also when they were on the road. Nargi had taught Grishar some Orcish battle hymns as well. They were full of raiding and killing elves, but when Grishar had asked about the elf that they hadn’t killed in the past, he fell silent again and didn’t want to sing about killing elves anymore. Which was a shame, since the songs were awesome and fierce. Something that would be good background music in a two-man raiding party.

One morning, all of the walking had payed off. Two humans and a hooved creature were travelling down the road straight toward us. Nargi had smelt them, so Grishar had immediately hidden himself to assume ambush-position, like they had with the elf almost two weeks ago.

“No, come here, we are not raiding, we are going to try civilised.” Nargi said.

Oh yes, civilised, Grishar recalled. That had been his idea, naturally they would do that.

“Ok, how do we do that?”

“First put your knives away.”

“What? All of them?” Grishar was holding four at the moment.

“Yes, all of them. We just walk towards them and say: good day to you, fellow travellers.”

“Good day to you, flemmo tevvers!” Grishar replied beaming.

“Yeah, something like that. And then we’ll just see from there. But remember: no killing, no stealing, no screaming.”

Grishar nodded. He remembered that about civilised. With a spring in his step he continued onward until Nargi urged him to calm down a bit and stick with a slow walking pace. It was boring, but apparently they had to, because they needed to move like humans would, otherwise the humans or the animal they were with might get scared.

When the oncoming humans were in sight it appeared as if they were sitting on some kind of cart. It was pulled by a skinny animal with large ears. It was about the size of a deer, but grey. It looked slightly nervous, but all animals did that when confronted with the duo. They were right most of the time since animals had the nice quality of being able to become dinner.

Grishar waved his hand at the humans, then quickly looked at Nargi to see if he did the right thing. Nargi smiled at him and repeated his gesture. Again, me with the good ideas, Grishar thought. I must be a natural with humans.

Grishar waved again, picking up the pace a bit out of excitement. But his face fell when he saw the animal in front of the cart panic. The humans were screaming something at the animal, or at each-other. Grishar wasn’t quite sure. It contained the word for orc, so maybe they were telling the animal that Nargi was just an orc. Them turning the cart around convinced Grishar otherwise, so he urged Nargi to stay for a bit and sped after the cart.

As soon as he had reached it, the cart had already fully turned an was on its way back to where it came from. They seemed like they were going as fast as they could, Grishar could smell the fear coming off of them. He trotted next to the cart and waved his hand again.

“Good day to you, flemmo tevvers!” he yelled out.

Oh shit, no screaming, he realised as the humans looked at him fearfully. Trying to make it right he jumped on the cart and stuck his head between the two men sitting in the front. Using he sweetest softest voice, he tried again “Good day to you, flemmo tevvers.”

Both men turned to face him, then screamed and jumped off the cart. Apparently, they didn’t feel like being civilised at all.

Disappointed Grishar jumped off the cart as well and started walking towards the two men. One was scrambling to his feet, while the other, who had probably hurt himself in his fall off the cart, lay on the ground, still screaming. Grishar really wasn’t in the mood to deal with people that didn’t want to be civilised right now, considering he was really trying his best here, so he walked over to the silent one.

Last try. He thought to himself. “Good day to you, flemmo tevvers,” he said, and smiled at the man. He threw in another wave as well. The man looked at him in shock. Now what? Grishar thought.

Luckily Nargi had reached them at that point, if it wasn’t for Grishar’s lack of knowing what to do next, he would have scolded Nargi for running. Well, maybe he’d do that later anyway.

“Sorry for the inconvenience humans, I am Nargi and this is Grishar and we do not mean you any harm.”

“ORC!!!!” both men yelled out and both started running, albeit one more effectively than the other.

“Nargi, they’re running and screaming. I don’t think they’re being very civilised. Shall we raid them now?”

Nargi sighed. Grishar thought he looked a little sad and decided to cheer him up with loot.

“I’ll be right back!” he assured the orc as he sped off after the humans.

Grishar had caught up with them in no time. He went for the faster one first, surpassing the one with the hurt leg, jumped on his neck and slit his throat. As he fell down, Grishar checked his pockets and found a small sack of cold coins, which he immediately attached to his own belt. On his hand was a ring, which looked valuable and besides that, the man was only carrying paper.

On to the other guy. That one was now hiding in the bushes some twenty yards back, badly. Grishar walked up to him and looked him straight in the eye.

“Give gold to I” he said, patiently holding out his hand.

But the man didn’t. Instead he took a swing at Grishar with a knife. Grishar easily dodged the attack, but it had pissed him off so he slit the second guys throat too. Then he added the new knife to his collection and checked if the guy had stuff that was useful. He had a little pouch of gold, just like the other one and was also wearing a ring, which looked like gold as well. Very nice, Grishar thought and ran back to Nargi to give him one of the gold pouches to cheer him up.

Nargi knelt down and gave Grishar another kiss on the head. Grishar felt his chest swell with pride. His friend was proud of him again. He had tried, he really had, but the humans were just very not-civilised themselves. Next time it would surely work and for now, they had gold. Grishar was happy. Unfortunately, he got the feeling Nargi was not. The orc stared at the corpses of the men and hung his head.

After the longest silence Grishar could possibly muster he said. “Nargi, let’s go find civilised humans.” And as Nargi didn’t react, he tried another word he hoped would do well with his friend. “Civilied humans with MORALS!”

Nargi smiled at him and nodded. They continued their path and sung the song about the berries again. It wasn’t dinnertime, but they could do with something happy. Grishar was amazed that Nargi forgot the last sentence though. It was the most important part of the song!

“We mean you no harm” Nargi said.

“What?” Said Grishar, looking at the large orc quizzically.

“It’s something else to say to humans, when they’re afraid. It might not work, but maybe you should learn that one too.”

“Say it again!”

“We…”

“Oh, I know that one, that’s us!”

“Mean…”

“What does that mean?”

“It states your intentions.”

“Okay, so we mean you states OUR intentions towards the people I’m talking too?”

“YES!” Nargi smiled at Grishar. Not a sad little smile ad he had done before, but he was positively beaming. Grishar liked it a lot. He tried to figure out the rest of the sentence as well.

“Ha! I knew it! And then there’s the word no and then another word. I forgot it. But with the no in front, it must be that our intentions towards the humans are not raiding right? Does the word mean raiding?”

“The word is harm. And yes, you could translate it to raiding.”

“So you’re learning me how to say: ‘we are not planning on raiding you’, right?”

“Right! Now say it!” Nargi’s eyes were sparkling. Grishar was sure if he said it right now, his friend would be very proud of him again.

“We mean you no ham!”

“It’s harm, but good enough. Well done Grishar.”

Grishar beamed and was waiting for the orc to bestow upon him the forehead-kiss of proudness, but Nargi kept on walking.

“Hey!” Grishar shouted at him, arms crossed.

“What?”

“Are we not friends anymore?”

Nargi looked a bit confused, then suddenly smiled. “Yes we are, but if I give you a kiss every time you say a sentence right, it would become a bit too much don’t you think? What will the ladies say…”

“Right!” Grishar blushed. He was slightly ashamed he hadn’t considered that and was thankful that Nargi had. “So let’s go find those ladies!” He cheered as he continued skipping along the path happily.