Here follows the full confession of Dominus Borjasin, notorious outlaw, cutthroat and slaver; delivered to the principal victims of his grievous depredations: the council and citizens of the township of Further Edgewater.
A confession has been demanded of me, and so I will deliver one -- but I first intend to give a full account of my life. I insist upon this indulgence because no one will understand my crimes (so-called) unless they hear the entire story of how I came to be the first Man to live among a troop of orcs, accepted by them as one of their tribe.
Where, then, do I begin?
Perhaps I should describe my initial meeting with the orcs, when the search for my beloved Satta led me directly into their hands. Or I might rather begin with those nasty little goblins to whom Satta had been sold at the insistence of my noble mother, the Countess Borja.
But no -- the obvious place to start must be with my own conception.
Too far back
, my Reader protests!
Must we begin at the
very
beginning?
I assure you it is all for the best. My own origins offer insights which cannot be ignored. But fear not! -- I will recount all of my crimes and depravities in due course and in elaborate detail.
My mother was a noblewoman of the greatest beauty, grace, and refinement, bearing the extensive bodily modifications typical of her illustrious class. She worshipped Lud with a most devout (one might almost say
desperate
) zealotry -- she read from the scriptures regularly, and underwent the daily rites of devotion with unfeigned ecstasy. Frequently she spoke aloud to Lud as if He were a close friend sitting in the same room with her, imploring Him to intervene in the most inconsequential matters of her life. This extravagant faith was a bulwark against two morbid terrors: Orcs and wizardry.
She feared orcs abjectly, though I doubt she ever saw one in her life. She would rarely go out of doors by herself for fear of being captured by marauding orcs, despite the fact that there had been no raids in our district for the better part of two decades.
Her fear of wizards, on the other hand, was perhaps more well-founded. The rise of the Wizard-King coincided with both my own conception and the downfall of my family. The Countess's husband (who was not, in fact, my father) was implicated in an act of treason and was executed, along with all six of my brothers (rather, my half-brothers). My mother was raped (by the Wizard-King himself, or so the Countess would have it believed), and I was the product of that odious conjugation.
Following her assault, the Countess fled precipitously -- although she had the presence of mind to gather up as much of the family wealth as she could carry before departing. I was born the next Spring.
My mother, who might have been expected to resent and despise me as a daily reminder of her outrageous misuse, was in fact altogether diligent in my upbringing. She was fiercely devoted to my welfare, if lacking in any maternal warmth whatsoever. She named me Dominus Borjasin, while I knew her ever and always as
Countess
or
My Lady
-- certainly never as "Mother."
We lived for years as far from civilization as the Countess's refined needs would allow. Though we moved once or twice every year, we were never more than a day's walk from a village or town; and as the years passed we tended to settle closer and closer to concentrations of humanity. Shortly after my eighteenth birthday we moved almost within sight of a fair-sized village by the name of Further Edgewater, two hundred miles south of the Wizard-King's capitol. Ten years earlier that village had not even existed, and the land surrounding it was still controlled by the orcs; but their dominance had been fading rapidly since the rise of the Wizard-King, and humans were more than willing to expand into the territory the orcs had been forced to abandon.
Twelve hundred souls lived in Further Edgewater when we moved into a cottage on a wooded hill half a mile north of town. The Countess by then had grown tired of running from the agents of the Wizard-King, whose existence and dogged pursuit of her she never doubted despite a glaring lack of evidence.
After several weeks in our new home, the Countess went to the extraordinary expedient of leaving word in the village that she intended to hire a young servant, and would begin interviewing aspirants immediately. She had never before hired a servant, and I knew then that we would be remaining in the area indefinitely.
We received our first applicant within a few hours, and over the next several days a dozen or more presented themselves at our door. They all seemed to have been grown from the same hobnailed stock, plump and homely girls with heavy rural accents and deplorable manners. The Countess took each of them for a long walk in the woods around our home, asking very few questions, commenting inconsequentially on the weather and the wildlife. I accompanied her on the first two of these tedious perambulating interviews, each of which lasted for over two hours; they ended as soon as the aspirant evinced the slightest impatience in tone or action.
Had I not known the Countess any better, I might have become convinced that she had no real intention of hiring a servant, and was merely amusing herself; but I knew better than to question her motives, no matter how inscrutable. When the last girl had been rejected, we received no more applicants for more than a week. The Countess showed no dismay, and I assumed then that we would simply do without a servant.
Then one morning there came a timid knock at our cottage door, and I answered it to find on our stoop a diminutive girl in a light traveling cloak. She drew back her hood with a self-conscious movement of her hand but did not lift her eyes to mine.
I should have offered greetings, or inquired after her business, or in some manner acknowledged her presence – but from my first sight of her I could only stare as if entranced. What it was about her that so enraptured me I cannot say – She was not beautiful, and there was nothing seductive or even charming in her manner. But her pale freckles and pixie-ish features held a fey allure, and her timorous demeanor served to heighten my beguilement. I know only that I felt in the depths of my breast a sudden painful throb of my heart, and an incontestable conviction that here, all unexpected, was an individual whose destiny was intimately entwined with my own.
If my visitor felt this selfsame lightning strike of precipitate attraction and cleaving of destinies, she revealed it only by an expression of patient bemusement.
"Beg pardon for the intrusion, sir," she said at length, her voice soft and unobtrusive. "I've come to enquire into the position of servant in this household."
"Yes," I said, still unrecovered. "I would welcome you into this house in any capacity."
I spoke in a rush, without pausing to reflect on my words, and was distressed to see that they elicited only a small frown from that exquisite mouth.
"Most gracious of you to say so, sir," said the girl rather stiffly.
Before I could think of anything further to add which might have extended our interview, the Countess emerged from her private chamber, where she had been engaged in strenuous prayer since dawn. She was carrying her favorite implement of worship, a Lingam of Lud, wiping the slickness from its long glistening shaft with a cloth.
"Do we have a guest, Dominus?"
"Uh, yes, My Lady," I stammered, unable to take my eyes from the girl's face. "She is offering to be our servant."
"
