Chapter 2

GURREK

T hom. Thom. Thom.

The steady beat of my hammer on the metal lulls me into my quiet place, where I am fully alone. Here, I can think through everything. Here, I settle my soul and then lose myself in my work. The hammer becomes an extension of my hand that can shape metal. More force here, and the metal gives. More force there, and it bends away. Bigger strikes leave bigger marks, but many tender, precise strikes leave smooth surfaces in their wake.

These days, though, it is perhaps far too easy to find that place in my mind where there’s true nothingness. Life plods along, each day the same as the previous day, except in the rare case of a village-wide event. Then I am dragged from my forge and forced to participate in whatever wedding or birthday or other nonsense festival that’s been planned. Afterwards, I return to my quiet place, resuming where I left off.

Sometimes, when I make the short trip back from my forge to my home, I wish life had taken a left turn somewhere. What if there were someone waiting for me inside my front door? Instead, there is no sound when I enter tonight, and the lights are all off. I light them one by one with a match, refilling the oil as needed, and start making supper.

What would it be like to make supper for someone besides myself? Occasionally I think it might be good to have an orc wife, someone who would smile as she ate my meal, who would embrace me when I walked in the door.

But that’s not in the cards for me. Our village is small, and the women here are all like sisters to me. I know them much too well. None of them would fit into my life. None of them call upon my loins the way a wife should.

So instead, I labor over the forge and make suppers alone.

I have a piece of mutton partway into my mouth when I hear a commotion outside. Wagon wheels squeak. There’s a murmur of voices.

Hmm. I wonder what’s going on.

Taking one more bite of my meal, I clean off my mouth with a napkin before stepping out the front door. It’s fully autumn now, bringing a chill in the evenings that foreshadows the cold nights to come. I’m lucky that I have plenty of hides and blankets, though, and I chopped enough wood over the summer that I am well-stocked for the winter months.

I make my way deeper into the village, toward the square where the buzz of voices grows louder. Here I find a dozen of my fellow villagers depositing empty wagons. I’m not the only one to come and ogle, either, as other orcs peer out their doors and join me in the square.

“What’s going on?” I ask Merka, the older orc woman who lives closest to me.

“Don’t you remember?” She rolls her eyes and gives me a little knock on the head, as if my dome is a door. “We traded with the human village. They were all going to die, those poor little saps, if we didn’t step in.”

I quirk a brow at her. “We helped humans ? What, did Rulag gain a sudden generous streak?”

“No, it was a trade. Remember what I just said? They gave us something in return.”

“What did they give us?”

“I guess we’re going to find out.”

Merka winks and moves through the growing crowd, closer to the orcs that have returned from their trip. I spot clan leader Rulag among them, his head of tall hair shaved in a thin band down his skull so it’s always visible from a distance.

Then one of the orcs turns away, revealing to me what they traded for.

A human. A human woman .

She’s small, so small, and a disgusted gag rises in my throat at the sight of her. Her face is strange—pointy and sharp, like she could cut someone open with her nose. Her frail body is dressed in what appears to be little more than rags, and she bites her lip as the other orcs around her talk.

They traded perfectly good food away for a human prisoner? Why? What possible purpose could she serve, as small and weak as she is?

At last, Rulag turns to the rest of us and raises his hands in the air.

“All right, all right. Settle down. I want everyone to meet in the great hall. There’s a matter to discuss.”

Word spreads quickly as more and more orcs filter out of their homes, and I lose sight of the human as my fellow villagers move as one toward the hall, where we eat our communal meals and hold silly celebrations. I manage to find my way inside without getting stepped on—it helps that I’m much bigger than most orcs—and snag a seat at the far end of one of the long tables.

That sick feeling in my stomach grows. What does that moron Rulag have planned? He took over the position of clan leader from his mother, an old orc woman who knew what was what until she passed away. She kept everything in order, and certainly never would have traded a winter’s worth of goods for a single, skinny human wretch.

As we make our way to our seats, I’m not the only one grumbling over this outcome.

Once the village has all assembled in the great hall, Rulag raises a hand and then beats his chest with it, signaling silence. The talking ceases, and he gets up onto the table so he can better address us.

His mother never would have stood on a table.

“My clanspeople,” he says, voice booming throughout the huge, wooden rafters. The human woman stands nearby, shivering with her fear. I can almost smell it from here. “I wanted to address your concerns about the new human in our midst.”

He gestures for the little woman to be brought forward so everyone can see her. Her brown eyes are huge and terrified, and she crosses her arms protectively around herself. She clearly does not want to be here.

Rumbles of discontent spread through the assembly.

“Now, shush.” Rulag waves at us all dismissively. “We had plenty of food going into the cold season. The humans would have died, and then how would all their corpses smell from here? Mighty foul.”

“That’s no concern of ours!” someone calls out, and a few other orcs thump their tables in agreement.

“Aren’t you a sympathetic soul?” Rulag sighs dramatically. “I did ask for an exchange, of course. I can’t have humans believing our generosity comes for free.”

But it was free, wasn’t it? Who has need of this waif of a creature up in the mountains? Life is hard here, but productive if you’re willing to work for it, and I doubt she could do much in the way of useful work given how small she is.

“You bought yourself a human wife?” another orc calls out. Dakar is a younger orc but one of the biggest there is, and he’s proven himself to be a fine butcher. The other orcs laugh.

Rulag stomps his foot to earn silence again.

“I have no need of a wife,” he says, standing up straight. His eyes dart to someone in the crowd, and he winks at whoever is on the receiving end. “But as our number has grown smaller, my clanspeople, so have our choices. This was a necessary move, unfortunately, to preserve our village into the future.”

More murmurs rise from the crowd, but Rulag talks over them. “Don’t ignore it!” he calls out. “How many unmarried orcs are among us?”

A few hands go up. Then a few more. There are not many choices, he is right about that. It’s a small village, and so most of us are related in some way or another. I have considered venturing to other villages in the past to search for a wife, but that seems far too onerous of a task when I don’t know who I’ll find there. And then what—after traveling a hundred miles, I would ask her to uproot her life to move to my village, instead?

I hate that this young idiot is right.

“Well, then,” Rulag says, getting mighty cocky about it. “Every year we will bring a new human into our midst. This is just the first.”

Another round of disapproving shouts fills the hall.

“All right, shut up, shut up. I’m done discussing this for now.” He turns toward the human woman, who watches him warily. She has a look of bafflement on her face, like she has no idea what’s being said about her.

And of course she doesn’t. Humans speak their own tongue. I know some of it, just words and phrases we’ve borrowed from them over time, but not nearly enough to communicate to a human how her fate is being decided.

“It’s time to find a home for you,” Rulag says. He sprinkles in some human words, clearly enough for her to understand, because she instantly backs away. Two of Rulag’s buddies catch her, preventing her from leaving.

Now I feel like I might vomit. She’s frightened and here against her will, that much is clear. I’m not going to be party to some woman being auctioned off like a piece of livestock.

“Who will take her?” Rulag calls out, stepping off the table so he can grab the woman’s arm and thrust it into the air.

Hoots and hollers go up from the group. Merka, though, stands and waves her arms.

“Let her choose!” she roars, utterly irate. “We will not whore out this poor woman just because her village gave her up! You’re better than this, Rulag.”

Rulag pauses, then glances around the room. Other orcs nod their heads in agreement.

“Let her decide,” someone else calls out.

“She’ll pick me,” says Dakar, beating his chest. “I’ll give her a good home... on my prick!”

A few other orcs laugh, and I head for the door, ready to leave this entire awful charade behind.

“Fine, fine,” says Rulag. He speaks to the human again to explain what he’s offered, and her mouth falls open. Then she crushes her eyes closed and her hands curl into fists, like she wants to fight and cry at the same time.

When she opens those eyes again, she scans the room, which has fallen eerily silent. Her gaze travels over face after face.

It’s time to take this opportunity and leave, so I open the side door to step out.

“She has chosen!” Rulag announces.

I freeze. I know before I turn around what I’m going to find.

The little human is pointing right at me.