Page 25 of The Orc's Rage

Orgha rode another great cat, with an orc woman astride one next to him. He and Kargorr spoke to one another in their tongue, and then the command was spread down the length of the caravan. Whips were snapped, and all at once, the enormous creatures moved.

Reflexively, Cedar shrank into Kargorr’s chest, away from the huge leg that crashed into the ground right next to them. He huffed in amusement and urged Liga on. She sprang forward, nearly throwing Cedar again, and quickly returned to the front of the caravan.

It felt like only minutes had passed when Cedar’s hip and abdominal muscles began to tire of the constant movement of Liga’s back. Once they were hours in, and the sun was high in the sky, she moaned.

“Can we have a break?” she asked, since all the movement had also dramatically increased her need to pee.

“No,” was all Kargorr said. Then, he slowed Liga down to a walk and fell back until they were among the mammoths. He lifted her by the butt, up into his lap, and it was moments like these she became acutely aware of how much larger he was that he could hold all of her weight on his groin and thighs.

“Now relax,” he told her, and Liga resumed. Sitting atop him this way, all she had to do was to be carried along, and she wondered where they were going next.

Kargorr

He would have to ride with Cedar more often. He would teach her how to move her body in time with Liga’s. Perhaps she could raise a cat of her own someday, when she could be trusted with one.

The idea interested him immediately. If she became attached to apet, that might be just the thing he needed.

She wore the dagger at her belt, as he’d hoped she would. Perhaps if he put the power in her hand, rather than keeping it from her, he could earn some of her trust. Besides, she needed a way to protect herself when he was gone.

A shiver rippled through him. Leaving her alone was unappealing.

Lord Kargorr led the caravan down snowy slopes, toward what remained of a village they had raided a moon ago on the edge of the tundra. For the next move, they would need to build wheeled carts in order to travel, but he had chosen a wooded area that would provide plenty of raw material for the work.

They rested at night, and he was reminded of when he first brought Cedar back with him, and she fought sleeping in his furs alongside him. But this time, on the first night of their journey back southward, she crawled in rather gratefully, and he thought he even heard a pleased sigh when he brought her in close to his body. Cedar sank into his warmth, and quite soon, she was asleep. The steady sound of her breaths slowed his pulse, and the beating of her tiny heart against his chest lulled Kargorr into an easy darkness.

The next day, they traveled hard. When they made camp, Kargorr helped butcher three carcasses so theparogwould have plenty of raw meat for their cats and more to cook over the fire. He caught sight of a familiar human woman, picking her way through the various sledges and campfires, searching for something.

“Two more down,” he called to her, and she spun at the sound of his voice. He gestured onward. “Keep going.”

Her brow furrowed, but she did as she was told, and the assembled orcs turned to watch as she passed. There were a handful of humans among theparog, but his claiming of one for himself had drawn her some attention—perhaps some of it unwanted.

So far, though, no one had challenged him over it, and he wanted to keep it that way.

When the butchering was finished, Lord Kargorr found himself eager to find her. He weaved among the sledges until he found the one carrying Cedar’s pig and her piglets. His concubine sat with two orclings, all of them playing with the baby pigs together.

At the sight of him... a great smile crossed her face, and she held up one of the piglets, who honked and squealed at being displayed in such a way.

“You kept them!” She brought the dirty pig to her cheek and embraced it. “You kept Bread Pudding.”

Was that the pig’s name? Kargorr wasn’t surprised to find she had named it. He simply nodded as he approached, and she put the pig in her lap. The two orclings each had a pig of their own and were feeding them stale chunks of bread—but when they looked up and saw Lord Kargorr, they quickly put down their playthings and ran off into theparog.

“Everyone’s so scared of you,” Cedar said thoughtfully as he crouched down near her.

He nodded. “As they should be.” That was the way of things, therightof things. Respect and fear were tied into each other. There was a healthy amount of it that kept thegrrosekin order.

Cedar made a disapproving noise with her tongue, but didn’t speak her objection.

“It’s time to go,” Kargorr told her, rising to his feet.

She replaced the piglet in the sledge, and it scurried back to its mother. She was clearly sad to leave it.

But someday soon, this tenderhearted woman who had tried to stab him in his sleep would be carrying his orcling, attending to it and caring for it, and she would need no further piglets. But perhaps he could give her something to tide her over in the meantime.

14

Cedar

Cedar’s ass was sore to the bone by the time the caravan reached its destination nearly five days later.

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