Page 2 of The Orc's Rage

She peered over the bridge that crossed the creek. Another clang rang out, and Cedar paused, torn between going to see what was amiss, in case she could help, and fearing what she might find.

“What’s going on out here?” It was Lissa’s voice again.

“I don’t know.” Cedar heard Rodan cry out, and it was an agonized sound.

Footsteps. She thought the ground was moving underneath her as dozens of pounding feet got closer, and prickles covered her skin. From around the side of Rodan’s house streamed huge, green bodies covered in pelts and bones.

Orcs.

Beside her, Lissa shrieked, and it startled Cedar enough for her to realize she had to move, or she would die. Because when her mother had called orcsmonsters, she had understated it.

These were abominations.

With a speed born of pure terror, Cedar ran as fast as she could, away from the sound of Lissa’s screams.

Kargorr

His heart was beating fast, so fast, thundering in his ears in that soothing, feverish drum. He relished how it swelled his muscles larger, filling them with his hot blood, until fat veins trailed down his shoulders and hands.

The hands that now held his steel axe aloft. Thegrrosekhadn’t forsaken all their old ways, but many of them. It was a good trade though, a stone axe for a steel one. Blood flowed much faster, much thicker, and the humans they came across bent under steel like so many stalks of wheat.

Lord Kargorr loved the sound it made, the blade burying itself into flesh, and he had to admit those puny creatures had invented one good thing in the time thegrrosekwere away.

His horde approached the village from the south, as Kargorr preferred to do. The north was their home, the place they had come from and would always return to, so the humans were never prepared for an attack from the south. The guards had been easy to take down, caught unawares by predators that streamed at them from both sides. But the cries had carried, and other humans came out armed.

Lord Kargorr’s number wasn’t great, but because this was no fortified outpost—merely a village—it would be enough. He and his warriors cut down every man and woman they came across. Survivors didn’t tell stories, didn’t spread the word.

He had torn through the farmer himself because his rage had demanded sacrifice. The rage, that heady, delirious thing that drove all orcs at the core of their beings, urged him to stick his sword through the man’s belly. A shriek followed, and one of Kargorr’s warriors speared a woman like a piece of meat.

It was time to finish this. Kargorr tossed the body down and gestured for his horde to follow. They had left some of their number behind to collect what they could from the villagers’ homes and storage sheds. What they took from this village would feed theparogwell for many moons.

He turned a corner around the farmhouse, and a terrible screech greeted him. It was a bony old human woman with a face like a badger, standing at the end of the road.

He would silence her.

But then something caught his eye. A fleeing shape—a woman in a tunic and dirty green skirt—was sprinting away from the house, off into the woods. The pale skin of her calf flashed, and Kargorr lowered the axe he was preparing to throw at her backside. She was sturdy, and clearly in possession of her senses if she was running for her life. In addition to the sound of their screams and the taste of their blood, humans also made good prizes. Others from his ownparoghad taken humans as slaves, as concubines, or whatever other service agrrosekcould imagine for themselves, and those humans performed well once they were broken and cowed.

“Chase her,” he snarled to Orgha, his closest warrior. “Bring her back to me alive.”

While his right hand raced off after the disappearing waif, Kargorr seized the old woman by the throat. It stopped the sound in her lungs, and she thrashed against him.

“Are you her mother?” he ground out, trying to wrap his mouth around the human language. It was so ugly. He opened his grip enough that she could let out a squeak.

“Who?” she croaked.

He shook her like a rat. “The girl.”

“She’s—she’s a servant!”

He cocked his head. From the direction of the woods came a scream, and when he glanced over his shoulder, he found Orgha dragging the woman in the green skirt out of the trees.

“A servant,” he repeated, tasting the unfamiliar word. “You mean a slave?”

“W-w-well, no?—”

He’d heard enough. He tightened his hand again, closing in on her windpipe, and she let out a harsh gasp. Orgha returned, dragging the green-skirted woman behind him. When she saw his hands around the old lady’s throat, she stopped cold. Her hardened brown eyes traveled from his chest to his throat, and then to his face. Her dark hair was thick and fierce, and his gut clenched as she scowled at him. Her face was filled with hatred, and the ferocity of it licked his insides.

Kargorr leaned toward her, still holding the woman gasping for breath and clawing at his huge hand where it was wrapped around her neck. He brought some of the girl’s hair to his nose and sniffed her. She jerked back, trying to put space between them, but Orgha held her fast.

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