Page 49 of The Orc's Rage

This was why Kargorr had chosen this orc to be his right hand, after all.

With a swift nod, Lord Kargorr agreed. They gave out troop assignments, and two of their number would remain behind to guard the women and supplies.

They waited until night had fully fallen before creeping out from the trees. Kargorr had not yet sent Liga home—he wanted his best warrior, the cat’s huge jaws, to help him on this mission. They had never attempted an attack as bold as this. And though he knew the humans didn’t stand a chance, he still didn’t want to lose a warrior when he didn’t have to. Not when they had family waiting at home for them.

Not a concern he’d particularly cared about before, he thought. It was an odd thing, a new thing, to worry about going back alive.

They raced silently toward the village, mounted on their cats to muffle the sound of their footsteps. Kargorr lit his torch, then held it out as they passed fields of wheat, letting the flame touch everything it could. Smoke rose into the air elsewhere outside the settlement, where his second troop was spreading the flames.

Two guard posts sat at the edge of the settlement, and already men were shouting up in the tower. But it was too late. Kargorr and his warriors streamed past amid arrows falling. He circled the guard post, trailing his torch along the walls, as Liga snarled at the volley dropping from above them. His cat was too fast to be caught by human arrows.

Men screamed as the fire spread. Kargorr spun and followed his warriors into the settlement, where people had fled their homes. He cut and sliced, rent and tore, leaving a trail of bodies in his wake. His blood sang, his muscles swelled, his veins pulsed.

He heard one of his warriors roar a few houses away, and he quickly urged Liga to follow the sound. A band of humans had gotten one of Kargorr’s number alone, and he was run through with a sword, his cat snarling and hissing as the humans backed it up against a wall.

With a powerful shout, Kargorr ran at them from behind, sweeping with his axe to take off a head, swinging down to remove an arm. When the humans had all been summarily executed, Kargorr swung off Liga’s back and went to kneel by his comrade, who was bleeding out on the ground. He exchanged a nod with the other orc, who tapped his chest with his hand one time. Then Kargorr ran his axe through his comrade’s head to end his suffering.

Once his warrior was dead, he mounted up and continued his path, holding his torch high over his head to catch fire to the thatch roofs.

It was a long and bloody night, and Lord Kargorr had never felt his purpose so clearly laid out in front of him. Someday, he would come here with hisyapira. It would no longer be aparogof tents, but a whole city as their number grew and otherparogcame to join them.

Kargorr howled his victory as he speared a fleeing man through the chest, and his warriors howled back, scattered as they were. Soon, the sun began to rise, and the settlement fell quiet again save for some whimpers as one of his warriors dragged back a human man, ashy from the flames.

He nodded at Kargorr. “My conquest,” he said, and the warriors all tapped their chests.

As they strode out of the ruined settlement, smoke drifting into the orange morning, Orgha stopped next to him. “No one for you?”

Kargorr arched an eyebrow. He doubted the question Orgha asked was the one he really meant.

“None that caught my interest,” Kargorr finally said.

“Hmm.” Orgha knew better than to pry more, but Kargorr had a feeling his right hand had already seen through him.

Cedar

When Liga returned, hope swelled in Cedar’s chest that Kargorr might finally be on his way home. The enormous cat was surprisingly pleased, so much that she rubbed her nose up and down Cedar’s chest. She hoped it meant Kargorr was all right.

It had been nearly three weeks now, and though it worried Cedar that they hadn’t received word from the raiding party, Rathka rolled her eyes and said, “They’ll return when they return, and no sooner.”

The silence was most deafening at night. In it, Cedar could hear every beat of her heart, a single drum thumping, while something inside her told her that Kargorr’s bigger, heavier, slower one should be beating right next to it.

She helped the leatherworker as often as she could to keep her mind off of Rathka’s words and had quickly become his valued helper. He allowed her to toil away on her bear when she had done some of the drearier work, and as she hollowed out and cleaned each part of it, she thought of that heavily beating heart.

Now, Rathka would leave Cedar there alone to attend to her own matters, seemingly unconcerned that Cedar might try to run. And never did anyone look askance at the human woman in their midst as she left for the evening and walked back to Lord Kargorr’s tent alone.

It would be so easy. No one would give Cedar a second look if she headed toward the edge of the camp and walked out into the snow.

The huge tent loomed even larger around her, now that she knew what it was for. The emptiness made her ache, and so did the specter of another bed filling that space.

If Cedar had to watch Kargorr take another woman, she would claw both their eyes out. She knew it as surely as she knew her own name.

But he wouldn’t. Things had changed since he built this tent. Hadn’t they?

Cedar slept less and less, sometimes lying awake for hours as she stared up at the gap in the ceiling, where she could just barely make out stars. Now, instead of eating too much, she ate too little. Rathka would put more food in front of her, but to Cedar, it all tasted like nothing.

“You have to feed yourself as well as your orcling,” Rathka would say, pushing the bowl closer again, and Cedar would eat enough that she was left alone.

Late one evening, while Cedar lay in bed with the fire dying in the pit, a horn blasted. The sound pierced air like a knife.

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