Shame... what shame... He had thought he would die like that, together with his comrades, together with his entire hive, dying with respect and apology for the Emperor.
Yet he had never expected to still be clinging to life, surviving beneath the Orks' whips...
Joseph dragged his feet as he was packed among the human prisoners. They were all people who had luckily survived the defense of Haigelas.
There were scavengers dressed in hides stitched from rats or other creatures, neatly dressed common citizens, wounded soldiers wrapped head to toe in bandages, and nobles in splendid clothes now covered in mud and ash.
This place was like an exhibition of hive residents: filthy, decrepit, dim, with sewage on the ground and shriveled mushrooms growing from cracks in the walls...
A foul stench filled the air. This enormous pit was packed with human prisoners. Several Orks clustered around an even larger Ork as he stepped onto a raised platform and surveyed the slaves.
The hulking Ork flicked the bloodstained whip in his hand, coughed, and addressed the prisoners in less-than-standard Low Gothic.
"Cough, cough! You little shrimps! Now! You lost, and losers get beaten! That's how us Orks do things, and it applies to you too! But you lot are too weak. Toss you outside, and barely any proper lad would even wanna fight you! So from now on, you little shrimps and skinny runts are slaves!"
The Ork casually pronounced everyone's fate. Still startled that Orks could speak human language, no one had yet realized what a miserable life awaited them.
One nobleman, though his hair was greasy and disheveled, the bloodshot in his eyes nearly outnumbering the white, and his gold-threaded formal attire filthy, tattered, and covered in scratches.
He was the first to recover from the shock that