Page 1 of Halfling
Prologue
An orc camp could be a very dangerous place, especially for a halfling child. Orek had known this all his life, and in his short nine years, he’d gotten good at blending into shadows and creeping out the back of tents. He could move silently between them now, the orc-kin inside none the wiser.
It was with those quiet feet that he was able to catch his human mother unawares.
Normally, Orla had ears keener than a fox, her sense for coming danger almost uncanny.
But Orek wasn’t a danger to his mother. No, he loved her very much. She was the only one in camp who would really talk to him. And the only other not orc-kin.
In a camp full of big, loud kin, Orla had had to get good at sensing danger coming. They were never truly safe, even being the mother of the clan chief’s child.
Orek slipped inside the tent he shared with his mother, a small thing compared to the big rooms of his father’s tent just on the other side of the canvas. As chief, his father Ulrek boasted the biggest tent, though Orek and his mother were rarely allowed inside.
Orla never wanted to go inside, anyway.
Orek didn’t like when she went, either. It always ended with her crying for days, miserable and in pain. On those days, he tried his best to fetch her whatever she needed and stay out of sight, for she couldn’t bear to look at him.
He hated his father for that.
The noise of the camp fell away inside the dark tent. His father and the other hunters were already deep into their cups, but Orek had managed to grab a few scraps of meat and a flatbread before anyone saw him. He held his spoils in the battered tin bowl he and his mother shared, waiting for her to notice him—he didn’t want to scare her.
Curious at what she was doing, knelt there on the far side of the tent, he peered over her shoulder.
Orla hissed, rounding on him to glare, her dark hair and eyes even darker in the shadows. “What are you doing?” she growled in her human language.
“I brought dinner.” He showed her the bowl, though he wasn’t sure how much she could see in the low light.
Orla’s glare softened to a mild frown. “Eat, then.” And she turned back to her task.
Questions bubbled inside him, but he sat dutifully on his nest of blankets and ate his portion. Orla said nothing, and after a while, Orek realized what it was his mother did—she was packing a sack full of things.
In went her few blankets and clothes, as well as the knife she’d found and hidden two years ago. It was summer still, so she ignored her one heavy coat, instead packing what smelled like cured meat.
The strangeness of it had the food in his belly churning and tumbling.
His mother was good at secreting things away, hiding what bits she could find. They had to stay sharp and take what they could to survive in the Stone-Skin clan.
Although Orek’s father was chieftain, Orla wasn’t the chief’s mate. She was a human slave, bought almost ten years ago for Ulrek and kept here ever since as his servant and sometimes bedmate. The years had been long and hard for Orla, her face gaunt and cleaved by lines of hardship. Tiny compared to the orcs, she was often pushed and scolded by the orcesses. And the males…they pinched and groped whenever they thought the chieftain wasn’t looking.
It was nothing compared to what his father meted out.
Being smaller than the other younglings his age, Orek had learned from his mother how to survive in a world of much bigger orcs. You had to be quick. You had to be smart.
“Don’t pick fights you won’t win. Stupidity like that gets you killed,”Orla had told him bluntly once as she’d cleaned the split lip he’d gotten fighting against other younglings.
Orek finished off his meat and bread quickly—eating slow meant having food snatched away. When he offered his mother the rest, she shook her head without looking up from her pack. “Eat it.”
He did but barely tasted it, unease filling his belly more than the food.
“Mama, what…?”
“Shh,” Orla hissed.
She tied off the pack and pulled her arms through the straps. When it was secure on her back, she finally turned to him, her face a web of grim lines.
“Krul is going to challenge your father soon. Maybe even tonight.”
Fear clutched at Orek’s chest. Krul was the biggest, nastiest male in the clan. There had been whispers about him challenging for leadership for a while now; he was younger and more cunning than Orek’s father, who much preferred to sit by the fire and get drunk than go on hunts and lead raids against other clans.
