Poldo sighed. “Yes, let’s. We’ve a long journey ahead. My luggage?”
A pack of Wood Gnomes carried his briefcase and bag up behind him and, through no small feat of acrobatics, climbed the Troll and hung the baggage on the saddle’s luggage hook. Once the tiny Gnomes had taken up positions in Thane’s fur, Poldo rapped on the small, wooden desk built into the front of the seat. “All secure!” he called.
“Hang on,” said the Troll. He stepped off the road and moved through the forest beside it. Leaves rushed by as the Troll reached his stride, but somehow the huge Shadowkin managed to not disturb them, and he moved through the forest with eerie silence.
They were only a few strides along when Red Squirrel hopped up onto Poldo’s desk and chittered a question.
Poldo shifted uneasily and thought for a moment about the tasks ahead of him, “Ah, yes. Let’s draft a reply to Mrs. Hrurk, shall we? I’m sure she’d appreciate an encouraging note before she starts her new job tomorrow.”
Red Squirrel squeaked and leapt back into the Troll’s fur. The hair by Thane’s left shoulder rustled, and Poldo heard the briefcase open and close behind him. A moment later, six Wood Gnomes were arrayed in front of a sheet of paper and a set of tiny stamps, each with one letter. One chirruped that they were at the ready.
“Thank you. Ahem. My dear Mrs. Hrurk… uh…” Poldo tried to find the right words, and found it unusually difficult. He cleared his throat again, but failed to dislodge a thought tugging at the back of his mind. Raising a finger to stay the eager transcribers, he leaned sideways and shouted up to the Troll, “You’re sure you don’t mind this?”
“Why would I mind?” Thane rumbled.
“Well, it’s just that I…” Poldo rapped his fingers on the wooden desk resting between the Troll’s massive shoulder blades. “I feel a touch guilty riding you in a saddle.”
“You’re not riding me,” Thane said. “I’ve put you into my backpack.”
Poldo leaned back. “What? No, this used to be an officer’s saddle in the Sky Knights. The Sun Gnomes used it to ride Great Eagles.”
“Well, it was a cow and a couple of trees before that, but I wouldn’t put it out in the pasture.” Poldo could hear the grin in Thane’s voice. “Whatever it used to be, it’s my backpack now. I hope you don’t mind riding in it.”
The Scribkin bristled a little. “Well, that doesn’t seem very dignified.”
Thane shrugged, shifting the desk and its occupants. “At least nobody is trying to saddle you,” Thane said.
Poldo barked a laugh at that despite himself. “Ha! Yes. Fair enough, I suppose.”
“Forget what is fair,” said Asherzu Guz’Varda. “The Wall is not fair. It is not even-handed or forgiving. It does not care about you at all, and if you throw yourself off its highest point tonight, the traders will still come back in the morning and buy and sell like you were never there.”
The Orcess smiled at the workers seated in the rows of chairs before her. From her place among their ranks, Feista Hrurk cleared her throat and glanced around the gathering hall at her fellow recruits, a motley collection of Shadowkin with fresh suits and nervous faces. All of them looked almost as terrified as she felt.
“And the best thing about the Wall is how unfair it is,” Asherzu continued. “The Royal Court is fair. The arbiters of the Heroes’ Guild are fair. They were not always so; years ago they came and slaughtered us at will, and that was unfair. They stole our wealth and left us destitute, and that was unfair. And then they set up a system of noncombatant papers to ‘allow’ us to live in their gutters, and that was unfair.”
The chieftain paced back and forth in front of them, raising her voice as if to call to those in the back even though there were no more than two dozen hires in the room. “And then a year ago, we worked with their king to make the NPC program apply to all, and the Lightlings discovered fairness again. Now they see that it would be unfair to punish the Humans for the evils of their parents. It would be unfair to take gold the Elves earned plundering us, unfair to penalize Dwarves for making investments in our suffering, unfair to take from the Gnomes just for doing the best they could while following the unjust laws of their time. And now, and only now, the kingdom and the Heroes’ Guild cannot do what is unfair.
“But the Wall, the market…” Asherzu grinned as realization dawned on the audience and an undercurrent of soft laughter flowed through the room. “The market is not fair. The market is not concerned with keeping us as we are, with preserving a status quo. The market is a battlefield, as merciless and cold as any your ancestors fought upon. Fought and won.”
She spread her hands to the assembled recruits. “You will fight alongside us. You will bring glory and honor to your people, prosperity to your families, and dismay to your foes. Your mind is your only weapon on the Wall. Sharpen your cunning, seek out every weak spot in the competition, and bring tears of despair to all that oppose us!”
The assembled Shadowkin stood, whooping and cheering. Feista bounded to her own feet, her tail wagging furiously as she clapped. While they were still cheering, Asherzu took a small bow. “I see great things for all of you at Warg Incorporated,” she said. “May your gods smile upon you this day.”
The applause surged as the chieftain stepped out of the small room, flanked by her massive brother and a gaggle of assistants. Feista thought she saw Asherzu wink at her as the Orcess left, but it was too quick to be sure. When the Gnoll turned back to the front of the room, a Slaugh in an ill-fitting suit hopped up to the podium. “Thank you, Chieftain,” he read from a small sheet of parchment. “Next, we will cover our axes and flails policy, harassment and animosity, and then we will move on to the healing plan.”
The rest of Feista’s orientation was slow and overwhelming at the same time; standard procedures, benefits and policies, conflict resolution guidelines—duels to the death were strictly forbidden during working hours. It was like drowning in porridge until suddenly, thankfully, it abruptly ended, and they were allowed to take a lunch break in the small park outside.
She found a spot near a fountain where some of the other recruits were gathering. Clutching her small bundle of bread and salted fish, she found a spot between an Orcess who was going into Sales and a Goblin who had accepted a job in Human Resources.
“So you’ll do payroll and settle disputes?” Feista asked him.
“Oh, gods no,” said the Goblin. “That’s Hireling Resources. In Human Resources, we try to figure out how to extract the most wealth from all of these Lightlings in a sustainable way.”
“Like plundering their homes?” asked the Orcess.
“That’s old thinking,” said the Goblin. “Pillage a town’s gold, and you’ll be rich for a day. Make a town systemically dependent on services that only you provide, and you’ll be rich for a lifetime.”
After lunch, Feista was fetched by a young intern. He had a mottled green face pocked with spots that could have been acne or some sort of intentional modification—it was hard to tell with Gremlins. The intern led her up three floors of stairs into an open floor, illuminated with the pale blue light of glowstones and packed with rows of shining pine desks. Only about half of the seats in the room were occupied. A mahogany desk faced the others at the front of the room, and behind it an Orc bulged out of a fine suit. A polished brass nameplate on the desk said “Borpo Skar’Ezzod” twice; once in Imperial lettering, and below it in Orcish bone glyphs.
“I am Borpo, the Bloodied Fist, first among the Skar’Ezzod, Senior Elder of Finance and Analysis at Warg Inc. You will be my direct report,” Borpo told Feista as the intern skittered away. He grasped her paw in a meaty hand and shook it vigorously. “Together we will bring honor and glory to Warg Incorporated!”
“Uh, yes,” said the Gnoll, trying not to wince at his crushing grip.
“Come. Let us review your duties!” Borpo spoke every word with force and gusto, as though emphasizing a punch.
“Yes,” Feista repeated.
He walked her past all of the empty desks to a green door. Behind it was a small, windowless chamber lined with bookshelves, each of them brimming with folios of parchment. Four desks were in the middle of the room. Three of them were completely empty, while the fourth had a brass nameplate that said “Feista Hrurk.”
“You will be in our analysis team,” said Borpo. “The analysis team will find the weaknesses in our opponents’ stocks, the cracks in their armor that will bring down their bloated corporations. You will provide the brokerage and finance teams of Warg Inc. the insights they need to stand against the Lightling companies.”
“Yes, but… where is the rest of the team?” Feista asked, looking at the cluster of empty desks.
“You are the first of your kind!” boomed Borpo. “Opportunity is before you, and now you must grasp it!”
“But I—I mean, I’ve never done—”
