(Please note: This is an unedited preview. Hope you enjoy!)

CHAPTER ONE

“The Patience of Orcs”

Even after more than a ten of turnings of the moon, the sight of the pinkskin city lying in ruins brought warmth to his heart.

He altered his pace to step over what had once been part of a pinkskin dwelling, kicking his boot through the ash. A scuff mark appeared in the dirty soil, and he smiled inwardly as he remembered the day early in the hot season that he had led his warriors through this city.

Oh, how the pinkskins ran! Woman, children, young men and old – all of them fell before our axes that day! It was a memory he would always treasure. For the first time in his life, it had been humans running from orcs, and not the other way around.

And it felt good.

So good, in fact, that he knew he never wanted the feeling to end. Yet now, the thought that it was starting to fade away was beginning to depress him. As things stood, he was beginning to doubt that they would ever leave this place, find more battles and more lands to return to The People. Grom was beginning to grow fat and drunk as he buried himself down in the bowls of his new “fortress,” reading prophecy after prophecy.

Prophecy! He scoffed at the thought. The People had never really been ones to believe in such things! Oh, for certain, some of the shamans and truth sayers had the gift of foretelling, but from the oldest tales of such things, even the greatest of the prophets had a saying: “Prophecy speaks only to itself.” As the prophets themselves said, you could only know the meaning of a prophecy after it had been fulfilled.

So what good was it then, really? And why was Grom suddenly putting so much faith in it? He admitted to himself that he didn’t know, and it scared him. He had staked his calling, his clan – his very life! – on following Grom Ten-Kill. Now, suddenly, Grom seemed uninterested in any of the things that had drawn his followers to him.

Slowly he rounded the corner of a fallen building, snorting in amusement at the fallen timbers that made up what had once been a doorway. Why the pink skins would want to live in houses made of stone, he didn’t know. So… permanent. So far from nature, and the sky, and the land… and the gods. Yet he couldn’t deny that the humans had taken much of the land The People had called theirs for millennia, and had lorded over them for uncounted turnings of the moon. Until now.

Walking up the street to one of the few buildings left standing gifted him with the reward of hearing the clanging of hammer against anvil. He cleared his throat as he stepped through the door, suppressing a chuckle as the pinkskin whelp that assisted the blacksmith scurried out of his way.

The pink skin was big – very big for a human, in fact, almost as big as an orc warrior. It was quickly evident that his spirit was still broken; which was why he was still alive and still allowed to run his own forge. That, and the fact that he was very, very good at what he did.

The burly smith turned around and faced him, offering a hasty bow. “My Lord Warg Smasher, I… I trust Lord Grummish finds you well on this day?”

Fhein chuckled. This man, he remembered, had bashed in the skulls of half a dozen warriors with his smith’s hammer before he’d been subdued. Even then, the only reason he had submitted was that he had been broken by the sight of several Steel Blade Clan warriors using his mate for sport. Their raid leader, an orc of some intelligence, had realized the pink skin was a skilled smith, and had then spared his life in exchange for his services. Fhein thought the human’s wench still lived, somewhere in the castle, living as a servant for one of the chiefs.

Then again, did it matter?

“I well enough, Master Smith,” Fhein replied haltingly in the human traders tongue. His accent, he thought, was improving – as was his grammar. But if I am wrong, who will tell me? “How come axe?”

“It’s coming along nicely, milord. I’m working on it right now. I’m using the finest Narvic steel, just as you instructed.”

“So stay sharp? I not have sharpen all time like blade made by The People?”

“Oh, no, milord. Narvic Steel stays sharp with only occasional sharpening. Narvic Steel is nearly perfect… Suitable for enchanting, should you desire.”

Fhein grunted in acknowledgement. “How long before finished?”

The pinkskin shrugged. “Two, perhaps three more days, milord. I’m doing the best I can under these conditions.” He turned away from Fhein and picked his forge hammer up from where he’d set it down. “Can I see my wife when I’m finished, as you promised? She’s still… I mean, she’s all right yet, isn’t she? She’s still…”

He found that he was growing weary of the man, and of pink skins in general, so he cut the smith off abruptly. “Stop sniveling! If you not best smith around, I kill you myself!” The pinkskin backed away, obviously cowering. Fhein grew even more disgusted with him. “I back in two turnings of moon. Be done with axe when I back here!”

Fhein turned his back on the man’s shop as he gave his order, and he would have sworn to Grummish that he could here the man whimpering behind him as he left. How these wretched abominations ever conquered us and stole our lands, I’ll never know.

* * *

The tee-pees of his warriors surrounded what had once been a set of shops, but were now little more than ruins. Some of the blood named warriors had claimed these buildings as places to lay out their bedrolls, but in truth, the orgy of destruction that had followed the taking of the city had left most of the buildings so badly destroyed that their was no point to the exercise. Roofs had fallen in, walls had been smashed into rubble, and what hadn’t been battered down had burned in the fires The People had set after they had finished looting.

The loot had indeed been plentiful. Even the tenth of a share that the warriors were allowed to keep guaranteed that all of them now had more wealth than they could hope to acquire in many seasons spent campaigning back home – perhaps more than in a lifetime for some of them.

This only meant that when they finished drinking their share of pink skin ale, they were even more anxious to acquire still more loot. It also didn’t help matters any that Grom’s victory here was attracting more clansmen to come and join him, either; clansmen who had never been bloodied and hadn’t acquired any loot from this first campaign were showing up daily. They were pushing hard, causing strife between the “old hands” and the new, and the “old hands” were resentful of the newcomers trying to horn on what they felt was theirs. In short, they were bored, and bored orcs started fights. The warriors now offered blood challenges – or any other reason to fight – at the smallest opportunity.

All was quiet at the moment, but Fhein was not sure how much longer that would last. Eventually he found the tee-pee he’d been looking for, and pushed the door flap open. A strong, heavily scarred orc of middle years sat lounging inside, a bottle of what Fhein knew to be expensive pink skin ale held lightly in his left hand, and it was obvious that the orc had been drinking for a while, for soft snoring coming from the other warrior.

Clearing his throat to announce his presence, Fhein waited for the other orc to wake up and was gratified to see that it didn’t take as long as he’d feared. At least he’s mostly sober. For now.

The other warrior sat up, physically shaking himself in an effort to clear away the effects of the ale that he’d drunk. “Greetings, Chieftan!” The other orc’s greeting was just a tad too loud, Fhein noticed to himself. “What do you need of me this turning of the moon?”

“How is my clan faring?” Fhein asked, getting directly to the point.

“Your warriors are well, Chieftan! They are beginning to perform the training you have instructed me to have them do, although they do not like it. They like it little more than I do, in fact.” The speaker paused a moment as he proffered the bottle to Fhein. “Chieftan, tell me. What is the purpose of this training?”he asked, his tounge twisting around the human word.

Fhein did not answer for a moment as he accepted the bottle from his under chief, taking a long pull of the liquor. It burned as it went down, and Fhein belched loudly before he replied “By Grummish, that is good! You’ll have to save me some!”

The other orc nodded. “Aye, I have several bottles left. I don’t know what it is, seeing as how I can’t make heads nor tails of their tongue, but I’ll make sure you get a bottle.” He stood up gingerly from the pile of blankets he had been reclining on and sat down on a campstool with a flop. “Ale aside, Fhein. Why do you have us marching to and fro like a pack of stinking pink skins?”

“Discipline, Trog. Discipline.”

“Discipline? Why does Trog Gnoll-Killer need to march about like a pink skin to learn discipline?”

Fhein regarded his chief lieutenant with a bemused smile. “Trog, you’ve been with me almost as long as I’ve been with Grom. You know that it is his insistence on discipline that allowed us to do what no horde of The People has ever done before and take this place! And now, as the warriors grow fat and bored, they need something to do. Something to focus on besides pleasure and combat.”

“Bah! We need to march again, this is true. But that’s because we need to move on, to begin the next step of the Great Crusade-” Trog’s mouth twisted around those two words, which were spoken by necessity in the pink skin’s tongue – “and move this horde west before the pink skins can gather their forces!”

Fhein grabbed a stool of his own and sat down on it next to Trog, a heavy sigh exploding deep from within his chest. “I know, Trog. I’ve been trying to tell Grom that for turnings of the moon now. But he still bids me patience. Always patience.”

He directed a penetrating gaze directly at the under-chieftain as he continued. “Which is why I’ve come here today, Trog. I have been moving about the camps today, taking a count of the other chiefs and shamans. Those who grow restive, like us, and those who grow really restive, like Tanthe Wing Ripper and the other young hotheads. More side with young Wing Ripper each moon turning. I fear we must convince Grom to come out of that hole he is in and put his prophecies aside, and lead this horde west before someone like Keindar Mahlet and his Broken Shields do something… rash.”

“Rash?” Trog asked, his face deliberately free of any emotion.

“Don’t play games with me, Trog. I know you know what I mean. And I also know you that you know what a disaster it would be if Mahlet were to challenge Grom for leadership right now.”

“Yes, I do,” he growled. “But what do you want me to do about it?”

“You know that outside of Grom’s own Steel Blades clan, our clan is his most loyal support. If we go to him – you and I, perhaps some of the others, maybe he will listen.”

“And maybe he won’t, Fhein. Then what?”

“Then we – I – will know what has to be done. For the good of The People, I would challenge him for leadership myself. Better someone like me than a hot head like young Wing Ripper or and old idiot like Mahlet.”

Trog’s surprise bordered on shock, and it was evident in his expression. “You would do this?”

“If I must, Trog. If I must. We’ve come too far to let our victories be squandered over ‘prophecy.’ We orcs will Take Back What Is Ours, or we will die trying. If we continue like this, with the pink skins warring among themselves, we have a chance. If we wait…” He trailed off, his eyes boring holes in Trog’s head. Abruptly, he asked, “Are you with me or not?”

Trog hesitated for just a fraction of a second before answering. “Yes, Fhein. I’m with you. For the good of The People, I’ll go with you.” He smiled, barring his tusks. “But if he sends his Grummish-damned beast at me… well, then you’re on your own.”

Fhen laughed more heartily at Trog’s feeble attempt at humor than the jest deserved, for he felt only slightly less anxious than he had before their conversation had begun. I only hope I can pull Grom back to reality before it’s too late. I really don’t want to have to kill my best friend.