Page 7 of The Outcast Orc

“She might be addled,” Borkul murmured. “It would explain why she was face-down on the floor.”

“Please,” she sobbed. “Please don’t pick me.”

I shrugged. She seemed of sound mind to me—but the chieftain wasn’t looking for a concubine to distract him. He had enough problems with the Two Swords Clan sniffing around our eastern border. He just needed a few able-bodied slaves to perform certain tasks we couldn’t. I wasn’t so sure we’d have any luck finding them. The pickings looked slim this late in the day, but the shaman had insisted we come.

Borkul scanned a few stripling males—not yet grown, so they might adapt better to the clan if they survived. Even for humans, though, they seemed frail and weak. We could hardly afford the years it would take to nurture them into something useful.

I was about to drag Borkul over to the laborers, but found that he’d stopped to consider one of the males. His scent was oddly sour, like he was fighting off a malady, possibly to the throat. But overall, he was healthy enough. Ordinary. Unremarkable.

Except for the sign of the augur on his cheek—the Red Hand.

“Come over here,” Borkul demanded. “Let me see you.”

“Why not?” The boy heaved herself off the back of the cage with a sigh—yes, the ague was in his lungs—and presented himself at the bars. “You’ll take me whether or not I play along.”

Borkul looked him up and down, then settled on the augur sign. “How did you come by that mark on your face?”

“The same way you ‘came by’ your scar, I’d wager—though with a much blunter object. Guess I should be glad for small favors.”

I puzzled over his words for a moment until I recalled something I’d once heard about his kind. “It’s no sign,” I told Borkul. “It’s just temporary. These creatures are so soft, they bruise like fruit.”

He grunted his disappointment…but even though he knew I was right, he still couldn’t keep his eyes off the shape of the hand. “Even if it does fade, you must admit, his hair is the right color. It seems lucky.”

The small male barked a cynical laugh, then succumbed to a fit of coughing.

“He is weak,” I said.

Borkul disagreed. “Maybe now, but he might recover. And he has fight.”

“You make the choice,” I said. My own judgment was clearly worthless.

As Borkul turned toward the trader to begin his negotiations, he went still, homing in on another scent. Despite my unwillingness to involve myself in this decision, I followed suit. There, standing very calm and exceedingly still, just behind the slave with the false augur’s mark, was an older male. There was no illness on his scent, no rot, and very little fear. His exposed chest was well-muscled—for a human—and his temperament was intriguingly dignified.

I nudged Borkul and said, “That one would at least make it back to the clan.”

The faint fear smell grew stronger.

At least the male wasn’t stupid.

Borkul thumbed his scar—his thinking-habit—and eventually said, “And the chieftain can use him however he deems fit.”

“You don’t want me,” the male said with surprising authority.

“Shut your mouth,” the trader snapped.

Borkul, ignoring the trader, snorted in amusement. “I don’t? And why is that?”

“Because I’m obviously a poor excuse for a bedboy—I’m far too old.”

The dark-haired male hardly looked past his prime to me—but what did I know? If their soft flesh never meets with the end of a weapon, humans can live a surprisingly long time—especially if they’re not exposed to sickness. Curious now, I eased in to better take his scent. Underneath the typical musk and sweat, it was clean. His teeth were whole. His lungs were clear. And…interesting. Farther down, beneath the kiss of old campfire smoke and traces of the last meal he ate, was the unmistakable whiff of horse.

Nothing to read into. He’d likely been delivered to the slaver thrown over the rump of a pack animal.

Borkul began negotiations for the slave with the augur mark while I stood by, silent, tasting the air.

Was that the rich smoothness of saddle leather I scented?

No doubt it meant nothing. I turned away to head over to the laborers and see if there were any worth buying, but the slaver intercepted, babbling that surely we’d want to present our chieftain with the widest variety of pleasures. I sidestepped to avoid flattening him, which pressed me face-up to the bars of the male’s cage. The male’s fear scent spiked, and a knot in his throat bobbed as he swallowed. “You don’t want me,” he repeated, with only a hint of a tremor in his voice. “I’d be a total waste of your good coin.”

---