"Just this stuff?"
Guk frowned at the black liquid in the bowl. It wasn't quite water; it was a little like the sticky fluid secreted by Squigs.
"It can be lit? Why not use Squig Oil?"
"Squig Oil needs a flame to ignite. Mix this stuff with a few other things, and it catches fire on its own."
Shabal explained in detail from the side.
"Black oil burns longer, Squig Oil burns fast. We tried it. Squig Oil's no good."
He was spitting as he talked, and the nearby chiefs kept well away from him. Even if he had a perfectly good reason for betraying his old boss—finding a real leader and having a proper, glorious Waaagh!—no one wanted a backstabbing scumbag at their side, ready to stab them in the back during a fight. Orks might not have much of a concept of honor, but when a fight was on, going after the guy beside you instead of the enemy just wasn't right.
Guk didn't like him much either. Shabal had been blunt about it: he thought the three of them were holding him back and keeping him from letting loose. But that wasn't a very good reason.
A fickle, ambitious bastard—honestly, Guk would rather have cut him down.
But he wasn't the boss of a tribe anymore. He was a king. Diego had never taught him what mercy was, but he had taught him how to make use of things: nothing was without purpose; it all depended on how you looked at it.
Guk looked away from the bowl and toward the four wooden towers rising in the distance. This place really was poor—so poor they could barely build any other structures besides these. Farther away stood a crude fortress. It had once been the heart of Blackfire,