Page 49 of Grumpy Pucking Orc
“What’s a cannoli?” Eng asked.
“This.” I pulled one out of the box and took a big bite.
Everyone sniffed, then edged closer.
“That looks good,” Bwat said, wiping some drool from the edge of his mouth.
“Itisgood,” I told him. “Jordan brought me some last night.”
“Smells like cannoli wasn’t the only thing you were eating last night.” Eng smirked.
The others all laughed, the ones closest to me thumping my shoulders and offering congratulations. A few asked about wedding dates and when I planned to go back home. I managed to avoid answering any of those questions, not wanting to go through the same judgement I’d gotten from Ugwyll.
“So, we get a cannoli if we stay on the ice until you say so?” Eng asked, getting back to business.
“Yes, but you need to skate and try to hit pucks into the nets,” I told him. “Standing on the wall doesn’t count.”
“Do the pucks have to actually go into the net?” Bwat asked.
“No, but you have to try.” Finishing the cannoli, I closed up the box and gestured to everyone. “Three laps. Go. Now.”
They all groaned, but surprisingly did as I said—even Eng.
“I already worked my fuck off this morning,” Ugwyll complained. “Why do I have to do twice the workout?”
“Do you want the crowd chanting your name as our best player? Or do you want them chanting, ‘loser, loser’?”
A muscle in the orc’s jaw twitched.
“Do you want women lined up outside the locker room, ready to ride your hand-axe? Or do you want to spend your life sleeping alone, with only your right hand for comfort?”
“Fine,” Ugwyll snarled as he skated out to the edge of the rink. He immediately passed three of his teammates, and I saw everyone’s fighting spirit kick in as they tried to catch him.
After their three laps, I separated them into groups of two so Ugwyll and I could hit pucks to each of them, practicing our passing and receiving skills. I had no idea what I was doing, but I’d watched the human team during our game and had figured out what abilities we absolutely had to develop in order to be competitive—or at least not look like total idiots on the ice.
The guys were staying on their feet and starting to get reasonably good at slowly passing the puck, even though they often missed ones hit their way. Bwat was just skating out to retrieve his puck when our owner walked onto the ice.
I’d only seen Escellates Johnson a handful of times since he’d shown up to offer us a job on his new hockey team, and now I’d seen him twice in two days—and I felt deep down in my bones that his increased interest in our daily activities wasn’t a good thing.
“What the fuck are you doing?” the demon shouted.
It seemed that human hockey players weren’t the only ones who employed liberal use of the word “fuck.”
“Practice,” Ugwyll shouted back.
The demon made a “pfft” noise. “You don’t need to fucking practice. I don’t care if you can skate or hit the puck. Go back to the locker room and play checkers or something.”
He left, and the moment he was off the ice, all the orcs turned to stare at me.
“Keep practicing. We’renotgoing to go play checkers until we’re done here,” I told them, whacking the puck to Bwat. “We’re going to practice, no matter what that demon says. We might work for him, but he hired us to play hockey, and we’re going to play fucking hockey.”
“Yeah!” Ugwyll roared, raising his stick in the air. The others did the same, except for Eng, who just rolled his eyes.
“We’re going to make the other team respect us,” I yelled over their shouts. “We’re going to have fans cheering us on. And by the end of the season, we’re going to fucking win a game.”
Everyone except for Eng raised their sticks at that, slamming them down on the ice as they shouted in agreement.
“We’re not fools, no matter what the demon says,” I added once they’d calmed down.
