Rise of the Horde

Chapter 847 - 846

The law council met in the administrative hall three days later, in the long chamber that Sakh’arran used for planning sessions rather than the war room with its maps and weapons racks. Sakh’arran had pushed the planning table to one end and arranged seating in a rough circle, which was not the customary configuration for any meeting Yohan held. The circle was deliberate. He had explained this to Khao’khen the previous evening: a circle put no one at the head, which meant no one was performing for a superior and everyone was speaking to the group.

Arka’garr arrived, looked at the circle of chairs, and selected a position near the door. He did not sit in the circle. He stood with his arms folded and watched, as he had been told he was going to do.

"Observing," he confirmed, to no one in particular.

"We know," Sakh’arran said.

The others settled in. Droktagar, the construction foreman, a massively built orc whose hands were perpetually rough with stone dust. Mekka, who ran food distribution with the organized competence of someone who had learned that an uncoordinated distribution network and a hungry population were a single event separated by a short interval. Drenn’ak, the market administrator, who had been the one to document Fezz’s losses after the incident and who had spent three days thinking about what a formal process for such situations should look like. Tharuk the stonemason, sitting with his carver’s hands flat on the table the way he always sat, patient and attentive. Grogus last, the goblin commander moving to his seat with the economy of motion that years of field operations had made habitual. The fine blade at his hip caught the morning light.

Khao’khen spoke first.

"The city needs written law. Not regulations for specific markets or conduct codes for warriors. A law that applies to everyone living in Yohan, that can be read before a dispute arises, that establishes how disputes are resolved and what the resolution looks like, and that operates consistently regardless of who is in the adjudicator’s seat." He let that land. "We are here to decide what that law needs to contain."

The first hour was largely territorial.

Arka’garr, from the door where he was observing, noted that the existing warrior conduct code covered the most serious categories: killing outside of sanctioned combat, theft from fellow warriors, dereliction of assigned duty. Sakh’arran noted that the warrior conduct code said nothing about civilians and that approximately sixty percent of Yohan’s population were civilians. Drenn’ak observed that the market had been running on informal customs for two years and that those customs resolved most disputes without escalation. Mekka said that food distribution disputes had been escalating to command-level resolution twice a month for the past six months and that twice a month was too often.

Then Grogus spoke.

He had been quiet through the first hour, which was not his natural condition but was his deliberate one when he had calculated something worth saying. He waited until the other voices had covered most of their ground, and then he put a single question into the room.

"When this law is written," Grogus said, "does it apply to goblins?"

The room got quiet in the way that rooms got quiet when the question nobody had thought to formalize arrived.

"Yes," Khao’khen said. No pause. No qualification.

"Same law. Same hearing process. Same outcome standards."

"Same law. Same hearing process. Same outcome standards."

Grogus studied him for a moment, then nodded once. "Then I’ll help write it." He settled back in his chair with the composure of someone who had been waiting a long time to have a specific answer confirmed and had found the confirmation sufficient to proceed.

The second hour went faster.

Droktagar raised the question of property disputes between neighbors: whose wall was whose, whose tree roots damaged whose foundation, whether a forge’s noise constituted harm to the residential building next to it. Mekka raised the question of contract enforcement: if two parties agreed to an exchange and one party failed to deliver, what happened. Tharuk raised the question of personal injury, which brought them back to the incident that had convened the council. Drenn’ak raised the question of debt.

The harder questions came later in the session. What happened when an orc warrior injured a goblin in a training ground accident? What rules applied to visiting traders from outside the city? What happened when Realm-enhanced warriors were involved in disputes where the physical power differential was not merely a matter of size but of a categorically different order of capability?

"We set those aside for a second session," Sakh’arran said, when the harder questions had been named. "First session: what daily life in this city requires that currently has no formal backing. Second session: the more complex categories. The law starts with the foundation, not the roof."

There was general agreement on this, which was the first general agreement of the session and therefore an achievement.

By the end of three hours they had eleven categories written on the planning board in Sakh’arran’s hand. Property. Contracts. Personal injury. Debt. Market conduct. Public disturbance. Disputes between residents of different clan or species backgrounds. Entry and exit procedures for non-residents. Standards for certified practitioners. Children’s welfare. Administrative appeals.

"Eleven areas," Droktagar said. "Each one needs language. The language needs to be clear enough that a warrior who didn’t grow up in the city can read it and understand what it means without needing someone to explain it to him."

"That’s the standard," Khao’khen said. "If the law requires an expert to interpret it for daily use, it isn’t a law. It’s a preference held by whoever knows the interpretation."

"Who enforces it?" Mekka asked. "We can write the clearest law on the continent and if the enforcement is the chieftain’s personal authority, we haven’t changed anything fundamental."

"Adjudicators," Sakh’arran said. "Trained administrators who hear cases and apply the code. Not warriors. Not chieftains. Designated people whose function is exactly and only the application of the written law to the specific case in front of them."

"Where do they come from?" Drenn’ak asked.

"The same place the learning hall’s first teachers came from," Khao’khen said. "We identify the people we already have who have the judgment and the patience, and we train them for the specific work."

Drenn’ak was quiet for a moment. He was a steady man, not given to dramatic statements, three years of market administration having given him a particular ability to sit with complicated things until he understood them properly.

"You’re describing a function that operates independently of the command structure," he said. "An adjudicator who hears a case involving a warband master applies the law the same way they’d apply it to a goblin in the market."

"Yes," Khao’khen said.

"Arka’garr’s people will test that," Drenn’ak said.

"When they do, the law’s response will be the response the law prescribes. Not the response the warrior’s rank invites." Khao’khen looked around the circle. "That is the entire point. A law that bends for rank is not a law. It is a courtesy extended by the powerful to themselves."

Arka’garr, from the door, said nothing. But he had stopped looking at the space above the council’s heads and was looking at the council itself, which was the posture of someone who had moved from observing to listening.

Tharuk spoke for the second time all session.

"When it’s done," he said, "I want to carve it into the administrative hall’s entrance wall. The full text, or the core provisions, something that every person who enters reads before they enter." He looked at his hands, the carver’s hands with their permanent roughness and their exact precision. "The three hundred and twenty names on the remembrance wall are there so the dead are not forgotten. The law on the entrance wall should be there so the living know what they’re standing inside." He paused. "A city that knows its own rules is a different thing from a city that guesses at them."

The room was quiet after that in the way rooms were quiet when something had been said simply enough that it didn’t need improving.

"When can you start?" Khao’khen asked Tharuk.

"When the writing is done, the carving begins within the week." Tharuk’s hands were still on the table. "The stone will hold whatever we put in it. Make sure what we put in it is worth holding."