Page 9 of The Outcast Orc

If there was ever a perfect opportunity to run away, it was now. Even with the collars, we could slip away and find a blacksmith to strike the chains from our necks. I leaned in close, having no idea how good the orcs’ hearing might be, and said, “We’re getting out of here.”

Archie scoffed.

I ignored him. “I’ll take the lead. When I say run, fall in line behind me and don’t look back. We’ll lose ourselves among the other people and make our way back home.”

“Whose home?” Archie asked.

Did it matter, so long as we were with our own kind again—and none of us ended up as a monster’s plaything?

“I’ll make for the thickest part of the crowd,” I said. “And who knows? If we’re lucky, someone might help us.”

“There’s that word again,” Archie said…and he didn’t need to point out that if any of us were even remotely lucky, we wouldn’t have ended up here in the first place.

The wagon groaned as the orcs hopped down, and their shadows loomed large against the tarp. The one with the scar and the silver-tipped tusks appeared at the foot of the wagon bed, gesturing. “Out, and grab those bedrolls on the way. Relieve yourselves downwind and set up camp.”

The bedding was heavy, canvas stuffed with straw. I took one, while Archie and Bess struggled the other down between them. It was awkward work, made worse by the chains…which gave me an idea. “It would go a lot faster without the collars,” I suggested.

To which the orc barked a single laugh.

The other orc, the quiet, serious one, grabbed hold of the chain and walked us over to a stand of trees. He crossed his arms, bored, as he waited for us to empty our bladders. If Bess was ever embarrassed about squatting in front of two men and an orc, she was numb to it now after so many days of availing herself of an old bucket, just like all the rest of the unfortunate captives.

“Cover it,” the orc said sharply as we turned to walk back to camp. We all paused, confused. “Cover your stink,” he said, like he was speaking to a bunch of simpletons.

Even if it weren’t dark, I can’t imagine we would have any chance of finding the exact spot where we’d pissed. But we made our best attempt and dutifully kicked around a bunch of dead leaves.

When we got back to the clearing, the scarred orc was rummaging through a chest of supplies. He handed a wineskin to the quiet one and said, “What’s it to be? Shopping or guard duty?”

“We have what we came for,” the quiet one said.

“Maybe so, Marok, but I smell venison—can you really pass that up?”

Marok? Was that a name? It sounded like one. Why was I so surprised the orcs had names? Hell, even the trained pigeons my old neighbor used to keep had names. I listened, and learned Marok was the stern, quiet orc and Borkul had the horrific scar.

They’d parked in a clearing that had obviously been used by many travelers before us, though not particularly well. A firepit with a spit was dug in the center, and the area all around it was littered with refuse. No Fortifications wall in sight, so we must have been at one of the more distant way station camps. And in the distance, people milled about a ragtag setup of tables and tents at a makeshift night market.

“Set up the camp,” Borkul told us. “Unless you like sleeping on a pile of trash in the cold.”

“Maybe they don’t know how to make a fire,” Marok said doubtfully.

“Of course I do,” Archie snapped. “I’m not an idiot.”

Working together, the three of us made a stack of twigs, lit it with orcish tinder, then fed the small flames with the shattered remains of a broken crate. There was plenty of fuel littering the campsite. But not all of the scraps were wood.

“Bones,” Archie said with a shudder as he tossed what looked like a calf’s femur toward the edge of the clearing. “So many bones.”

“What kind of bones?” Bess said, voice hushed.

“The bones of idle slaves,” Borkul called over. Damn. Their hearing was a lot better than I’d thought.

I located a rib, far too big to be any natural person’s. Although, maybe it was from an orc…. I glanced at our captors. No. The ribcage was shaped all wrong. More likely a boar. “They’re not human,” I told Bess. “The bones, I mean.”

She looked dubious.

“Think,” I said. “It’s a campfire. So this is just what’s left of someone’s dinner. Animals. Nothing worse.”

“Unless there were trolls here before us,” Borkul called over, then snorted derisively. “If so, who knows what the poor sods might’ve once been?”

We stopped talking after that. While I built up the fire, Archie chucked bones into the darkness, and Bess gathered twigs as she knuckled away silent tears.

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