Page 6 of Agor

An orc met us a short distance from the gate. He slapped my captor on the shoulder as an old friend.

“Hey chief, good to have you back. Where is Urug?” He ran his eyes over our small group. “And what do you have here?” He smirked at the sight of me. “Can I have her after you? If there’s anything left of her, of course.” He guffawed.

I shot him a glare, which only made him laugh harder.

The chief gave him a non-committal grunt, tugging me along by the belt tied around my wrists.

When we reached a large plaza, more orcs joined us. They came up to greet their chief and the men who’d come with him. And to ogle me, it seemed. Some did it with undisguised hostility or greed, others with mere curiosity.

“You brought some loot?” another male orc said. “Are you sharing her?”

“She’s so skinny!” An elderly female orc with a knot of minty-white hair in the middle of her otherwise bald head pinched my arm so hard I yelped. “Look at this arm. It’s the size of a frog leg.”

No one had called me skinny before. I’d lost most of my curves and even some of my muscle bulk during the years of hardship. But even the starvation that we all had endured wouldn’t make me look willowy or delicate. I’d never been “skinny” if compared to a human. Of course, orcs dwarfed me.

The old crone pinched my cheek with her gnarly fingers and smacked her lips. One of her tusks was missing. The remainingone poked out from her lower jaw like a middle finger to fate and time.

“What do you humans eat for your bones to poke out like that? Nothing but air?” She clicked her tongue. “We’ll need to get some meat on those bones, girl, feed you some real food.”

I doubted I’d live long enough here to even have a single meal in this place.

“So, what happened to Urug and his cronies?” someone asked.

The chief tipped his chin at me. “The human killed Urug.”

Everyone turned to me at once. I drew my shoulders in, faced with their attention.

“This one?” an orc gasped, as if there were more humans standing around.

“Mhm.” The chief slid a glance along my body with a peculiar smirk, as if proudly presenting a precious acquisition. “She did, I was told. Stux and Reslo got two of Urug’s men. The rest are still at large.”

They killed their own kind?

It made no sense.

But I noticed the orcs were looking at me with more admiration than hatred. I would’ve expected to be spat on or even to be torn to shreds for murdering one of their own.

Then, the full meaning of what he’d said dawned on me. If the orcs with blood on their hands and knives killed Urug’s men, did it mean they didn’t go after our women?

And if so, were Gleb and Faeena still alive then?

Hope made it easier to breathe now.

“I need to talk to Grat. Where is he?” the chief asked.

The orc, who’d expressed eagerness to rape me after the chief, replied, “In his house with his girl orgirls, as it may be.”

“I need to talk to him. Come with me.” The chief gestured to the orc to follow, then shoved me toward the old lady with onetusk. “Granny Magra, take her to my place, please. Make sure to lock her up because she will run if given a chance.”

“Chief Agor,” a cheerful female voice thrilled over the crowd that had gathered around us by now. An orc woman rushed down the alley, adjusting a colorful shawl around her wide shoulders. “You’re back.”

Agor was the chief’s name, then? It kind of suited him.

The woman leaned into him.

“I missed you, big guy.”

Reaching around him, she grabbed a handful of his ass.

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