Page 1 of Agor

Chapter 1

Becca

With an icy trickle of unease down my spine, I peered carefully into the trees around the clearing, looking for any signs of orcs.

“We should head home,” I said, keeping my voice calm for the sake of the others.

We had entered the bog orcs’ territory that afternoon. Gleb, Ilya, and I guarded a group of women from our village, and I feared we had wandered way too close to danger in our search for wild cranberries.

“Just a bit more, Becca?” My best friend Faeena pleaded, lifting her heavy basket that brimmed with the red-and-white berries. “See? It’s almost full.”

The other women’s baskets and buckets had also been filling fast since we’d stumbled on a good patch of berries.

I nodded briefly, gripping my spear tighter.

“Just until the sun reaches the tops of the trees,” I conceded.

No one wished to run into the vicious bog orcs and die a horrible death for a few baskets of berries. But without the cranberries, there certainly would be more deaths in the village this winter.

Ever since the mountain orcs’ frequent attacks had pushed us out of the fertile mountain foothills seventeen years ago, our entire village had been on a move. Over the years, we’d crossedthe valley and ended up settling on the outskirts of the wetlands. We’d lost everything—our fields, our orchards, and our houses. All our cattle were also gone during that long, perilous journey.

The wetlands proved inhospitable. Fruit trees just wouldn’t grow here. Potatoes rotted in the ground. The last winter had been especially harsh. The early frost killed the few root vegetables we’d managed to grow before we harvested them.

We’d been trying to hunt instead, but hunting meant entering deeper into the forest where the bog orcs lived.

Grim desperation had settled among the villagers, giving us the courage to move farther into the orcs’ territory in search of food. The threat of brutal murder by the savage creatures was no longer enough to keep us away when faced with the slow starvation threatening us all as another winter approached.

The women’s baskets were filling up. The sour berries would keep well when packed whole into jugs filled with water or squished into jams. They’d last through the winter, keeping disease and starvation at bay.

My stomach growled. It’d been a while since my breakfast of water spinach and warm cattail soup. I crouched by a plant sprinkled with small hard berries and picked a few. Bright red on one side, they remained white on the other. Their sour taste sent a shudder down my body when I crushed them between my teeth, but the aftertaste was pleasant and fresh.

My gaze drifted along the wet, mossy ground. Despite the late afternoon, fog still lingered around the mounds of moss. The forest always seemed foggy, day and night. Fine shreds of mist curled low along the ground, clinging to the tree trunks.

A slight movement on the clearing’s edge caught my attention. The fog around a thick half-fallen tree log shifted, revealing a massive foot in a black leather boot pressing down on a mossy knoll. Water seeped from the ground, pooling around the boot under the solid weight of its wearer.

Someone was watching us from behind the tree line, and judging by the size of his boots, it was not a human.

Orcs had found us.

It didn’t matter whether there was just one waiting to attack or a thousand. The best thing a human could do when encountering these beasts was to run. Fast.

The women had scattered all over the clearing by now, following the berry-rich plants. Gleb and Ilya, the two men tasked to guard the women with me, were both about five paces away.

Ilya, the seventeen-year-old boy, had his own basket that he was filling with berries, cheerfully chatting with the women.

Gleb scanned the surroundings, but didn’t appear to notice the hidden menace.

The orc’s boot shifted. He stepped from behind the log.

A burst of panic uncoiled my body like a spring. Jumping to my feet, I brought my arm with the spear back, then hurled it at the orc.

He growled as the weapon went through his chest with a thud.

“Run!” I yelled, drawing my sword. “Back to the village, everyone. Now!”

Used to the encounters with unexpected danger, the women and girls hiked up their skirts and sprinted away. Some grabbed their baskets. Others dropped theirs in a hurry, the hard, juicy berries rolling over the moss and splashing into the puddles of water.

A huge, bright-green orc stomped my way. His dark eyes burned with hatred as my spear jutted from the middle of his chest. Placing his feet wide, he gripped the spear with both hands and pulled it out, then flipped it in the air, aiming it at me.

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