Page 1 of Grumpy Pucking Orc
Chapter 1
Ozar
Iglared at the bright white of the ice at the end of the tunnel, a low growl escaping my lips. I’d always hated the waiting right before a battle, that period of inaction until the call to charge was given.
Only we weren’t heading into battle, we were about to play a human game called hockey. Shirtless. With strangely curved sticks instead of swords.
“This is stupid,” Eng muttered in Orcish. “We came here to find wives and take them home, not waste time dancing around on knife-blades for human entertainment.”
Bwat shrugged. “Perhaps this is how we win a human female. Many species require the male to perform dance-like displays to show their suitability as a life-partner.”
Ugwyll snorted. “What we need to do is grab the first sturdy female of childbearing years and drag her back home. That’s how we show our suitability as a husband. Not dancing and not wearing these stupid fucking shoes.”
We all hated these stupid fucking shoes, but none with the white-hot passion of Ugwyll. The orc faced the same struggle as the rest of us, trying to balance on the knife-blades that ran the vertical length of our shoes, but it angered Ugwyll far more than it bothered the others. Ugwyll was agile and gifted in sports and battle, as well as being a scout of great renown beyond his clan. Repeatedly falling while wearing these things called skates was absolutely humiliating to him.
It was humiliating toallof us. Except for Eng, that is, who had spent our one practice before this game leaning against the wall with a bored expression on his face.
“This isn’t a dance, it’s a fight,” I reminded the group of orcs.
“I thought it was a contest,” Ugwyll said. “Hitting the flat minotaur turd with a curved stick past the enemy team and into their nest.”
“Net,” Bwat corrected. “They call it a net. And the turd is a cuck.”
“Cuck.” Ugwyll laughed. “Isn’t that what the humans call their hand-axes?”
“That’s ‘cock.’” Bwat had been diligently studying the human language of English. We all had, but Bwat knew far more than any of us. “They also call their cock a Johnson, a dick, a penis, a?—”
“I don’t care what humans call their hand-axe.” Eng reached down to cup his, a gesture hindered by the large gloves he wore on his hands and the hard plastic device we’d all needed to affix over the area between our legs.
“Shut your mouths and focus,” I growled. “We’re about to go into battle and we need to win.”
A muscle twitched in Ugwyll’s jaw. He glared out into the arena as if that were the foe we were facing and not the humans twirling around on the ice like they were indeed dancing. Eng, on the other hand, just snorted.
“Right. We’renotgoing to win. First, none of us knowthe rules of this game beyond putting the minotaur turd into the other team’s net. Second, none of us can remain upright on these knife blades for more than a few seconds. There will be no winning. This isn’t a fight or a contest or anything we should lower ourselves to participate in. You idiots can slide around out there for the next hour or so but I’m not going to make a fool of myself.”
“It’s our job,” Bwat insisted. “We were told we needed to have jobs if we wanted to stay here, and this was the only job we were offered.”
“Don’t care,” Eng announced. “I’m not doing this, and I’d like to see the human brave enough to try and make me.”
It wasn’t the humans we needed to worry about, it was the demon who owned this team, and the angels who set the rules in this world. The days of raids, of plunder, of snatching human women and hauling them home over our shoulders were over. And that change couldn’t have come at a worse time.
The noise from the crowd in the stadium increased in volume, and I adjusted my stance, trying to balance on the knife blades without having to hold onto the wall. Eng was right—thiswasridiculous. But I’d dance around in these shoes if it meant I could return home with a wife.
A wife meant children, and there was nothing in the world I wanted more than children. Pudgy, green-skinned babies to bounce on my knees. I’d teach them to fight, watch their tusks come in, celebrate their victories and comfort their tears. I’d had no siblings, but I wanted as many orclets as my wife would be willing and able to provide.
Years ago, before the plague took the lives of so many, I would have been wed and have sired several orclets by this age. But with the deaths, my hopes had also died.
Humans had been compatible breeding partnerscenturies ago when orcs regularly raided the human lands, bringing their females home along with gold, jewels, and livestock. Many of the orcs in our tribes had some human blood running through their veins.
So here we were again. Leaving our clans and crossing the portals once more, but this time to only bring home human brides to have children with.
Although if some pillage occurred along the way, that would have been icing on the cake.
I’d expected to face battle. I’d expected screaming unwilling females. I hadn’t expected a group of winged beings to incapacitate the lot of us orcs as if we were newborns.
It was the first of what would be many humiliations.
We’d needed to agree to certain rules before we were released from the custody of the angels. No kidnapping unwilling human females to be our brides. No plundering. And jobs. The maintaining of gainful employment.
