In the dream, Bleda always screamed.
Screamed until he felt the air drain from his face, and his great tusked jaw contorted and stretched wide with unimaginable agony.
There was blood sometimes too. This time he tried to avoid looking at it. But the sight of blood always made him furious. Wild. Incandescent.
Yes, he knew the blood-rage would begin if he saw it. And all he would feel would be fear and fury. And he needed to be a warrior. He needed to control the berzerker rage inside him.
But the persistent drums, and the low hush of hidden, far away voices made his mind pulse. They sang the song they always did. WIth no particular tune, but in the old words that penetrated the darkness in guttural spurts and hisses. Low and slow. Intoxicatingly rhythmic.
But the shāgram's white bone blade would emerge from the dream-fog and hover in front of his face. Taunting him. Caressing his moss green, sweat drenched skin.
He did not like that.
Bleda felt a low, animalistic growl gather in his chest as the blade continued to tease him. He wanted to lash out. Grab the blade in his hand and feel it bite into his palm. Crush it. Kill it.
But, always, before he could, the blade would move with the haste of a startled deer, towards his groin. Slicing through the skin of his manhood. The burning fire of pain blooming instantly. Then the growl in his chest would turn into the scream. Bleeding in to everything.Turning his whole vision white. Blinded and lost in nothing but his pain.
And that is when Mòrag woke him.
He felt the urge within him to reach out and tear out her throat as he stumbled out of the haze of sleep. But her ragged panicked breath and her wide, white eyes formed in front of him as reality settled around him, and the carnal rage faded.
He realised he was panting too. Sitting in his family tent, in amongst sweat-drenched skins as she knelt beside him.
"Did I hit you again?" he silently asked, moving his hands and fingers in the hunter's language.
The fear had faded from her eyes, but Bleda saw her arms still trembled as she handed him a rag.
"No. Not this time."
She would not look at him. Bleda had thrashed out many times and struck her bloody as she had tried to wake him from his nightmares. He didn't want to. He hated himself for it. But sometimes the dreams followed him into the real world and he would see demons and blood and knives where there were loved ones.
Morag's child strength was dwarfed by his, and she could not hold him down for more than a moment before his fist would thump into her face.
But this night had been different, and she had seen it. She had seen the urge to kill in him, and she was frightened.
With her eyes cast to the ground, she stood, her little legs shaking. Bleda felt a fresh wave of shame crash through him. The last thing he wanted was for his own kin to be frightened of him.
"Sister..." he signed, fingers moving in the light of the faded tent-lamps. "What is the hour?"
Still unable to look him in the eye, she spoke into her pots and pans as she busied herself over their hearth. "The sun is not yet quite risen."
She abandoned the meal she'd bee pretending to tend to, picking up a small woven figurine she'd laid down by the fireside. Her shaking hands fiddled with the knots of willow. Threading them in and out, in and out, in and out of each other. Bleda couldn't see what she was making this time. She made them often. Dogs, horses, ferrets - anything that kept her fingers busy and her eyes cast down.
He threw the sweaty skins that covered his legs to one side, feeling the cool air hit his slimy skin. He did not shiver. The muscles in his arms bulged as he pushed himself off the ground to stand.
Perhaps a few hours alone in the forest would settle his mind.
Bleda dressed swiftly. The pelts were thick, stitched from various beasts that he had killed himself, and smelt of earth and sweat. His tusks glinted faintly in the dim light as he tightened a leather strap around his chest, securing a heavy cloak in place against the cold outside. His green skin contrasted with the dark, matted furs, while his thick hands, calloused from countless nicks from his skinning knives, fumbled with a crude bone clasp.
He fitted a small slingshot to his chest-strap, and hung a bag of small stones from his waist. Bleda wouldn't be allowed real weapons until after The Consecration had taken place and he'd been accepted into a warrior Brotherhood. But Greenfang as he was- the name given to underage Orcs before they had taken part in The Consecration- he was still the best hunter he knew of with a slingshot.
Any squirrel within fifty yards of him was a goner.
He moved to leave, but paused, one hand on the doorway of the tent, and turned to watch Morag's back for a few more moments. She was still hunched over her woven figurine, and in the orange bathe of the firelight, he could see the figure of a wolf forming underneath her fingertips.
The sight of it pulled at his guts.
He grunted to get her attention, and she spun around.
"I'm sorry." He signed to her.
"It's alright." She replied with a meek smile.
It wasn't. That much he knew for sure. The tribe forbade violence towards the womenfolk and the last person he wanted to hurt was Morag.
Poor, small, weak Morag.
"Is she awake yet?" He asked, inclining his head towards their mother's chamber.
"When was the last time she rose before high noon?" Morag replied sardonically.
She was right. Their mother slept a lot. And when she did rise, she was groggy and quiet. It hadn't always been like that. Bleda could just about remember a time when his mother had been quick to laugh and full of life. But then Morag had come along.
Tuskless, small, pale-skinned, half-breed Morag.
Bleda had been barely ten summers old when the tribe had last been attacked in a human raid. He remembered the tents burning and the sky on fire, he remembered his father telling him to hide in the forest, he remembered crying under the roots of a giant oak tree as he heard the screams of the womenfolk in the air. And he remembered when the human soldiers had gone, his father was dead, and left headless in the mud in the centre of their camp.
And his mother had been left pregnant.
"Make sure she eats something." His hand-movements were feeble as he signed the words.
"I'll try."
"I want you both there tonight. I don't care what the shāgram says."
Morag didn't reply, but her back straightened a little and she gave Bleda a choked look of love.
"You know…he was here last night. He wanted to see you." She said slowly. Morag was never normally one to trip over words. This was something she didn't want to say. "Maybe… if you asked for an audience with him-"
"No." Bleda signed quickly. A quick chopping motion that severed the conversation in two.
Morag swallowed hard, not sure what to do next.
"He won't…" Bleda began cautiously. "He won't want to discuss…"
He let out a long, exasperated sigh. Yes, the shāgram would see him if he asked, but it wouldn't be because he wanted to ease Bleda's worried mind.
Morag eyed him carefully, her little light eyes seeing everything. Too much. She knew that the shāgram wanted Bleda for something. Some unspoken reason. But Morag already carried too much on her young shoulders. He didn't want to give her his woes too.
With that, he turned and left.
The tent flap dropped back into place behind him and Bleda stood in the freshness of the morning for a few moments.
The sky was still pale blue with the earliness of the hour. The same colour as duck eggs.
The rest of the tribe were still abed. Everything around him was so still and quiet that Bleda almost turned around and went back inside himself. The crest of the wolf - his tribe's sigil - fluttered gently above the many tents and tipis in the clearing. The wind was only just stirring to life. A cold, exhaling whisper before the dawn roared to life. Even the most successful hunters waited until at least the sun had risen to journey into the forest. But Bleda could still feel the clammy cling of the sweat on his skin from his nightmare. He could still feel the uncomfortable patter of his irregular heartbeat beneath his chest.
Bleda knew that he needed the healing that only the forest could give him.
But as he made his way past the rows of tents, his steps faltered near one in particular. The large tent belonging to Shagar Othro loomed ahead, its leather pelts stretched taut, glowing faintly from the fire inside. Bleda slowed, feeling the hair on the back of his neck prickle with unease. The flap of the tent was shut tight, but the flicker of flames cast a shadow inside—an unmistakable outline of the Shāgram hunched over his early morning rituals.
The fire's glow flickered wildly, as if the air itself trembled, and Bleda felt it—a deep, unsettling pulse.
Something stirred within him, a faint hum beneath his skin. It started in his chest, spreading through his arms and into his hands. That strange, unwanted power.
He stopped, his breath catching in his throat as the warmth built inside him, like an ember growing brighter and hotter.
The shāgram's outline moved within the tent, his form rising. Bleda's eyes narrowed as he saw the old orc's silhouette shift, the firelight outlining his figure, which seemed larger now. More imposing. The spiritual leader's head turned, as if sensing Bleda's presence just outside.
Bleda froze. His pulse quickened. He wasn't close enough for Shagar Othro to see him, but he knew the old orc could feel him—just as he had felt that power surge minutes ago.
From within the tent, the chanting stopped. The rhythmic hum of Shagar Othro's rituals faltered, replaced by a pause that seemed to stretch on forever. An invisible hand reaching out through the morning mist. Bleda could almost feel the shāgar's sharp, burning eyes peering through the tent wall, searching for him.
For a moment, the power in Bleda's blood roared. Desperate to be seen. Acknowledged. He clenched his fists, trying to quell the rising heat that threatened to spill over, to be seen. He hated this feeling—the pull toward something he didn't understand, something tied to the old orc who held far too much sway over him.
Bleda's breath hitched, and he took a step back. The fire inside the shāgar's tent flickered again, the shadows shifting unnaturally, and Bleda knew—Shagar Othro knew.
But Bleda didn't want this. He didn't want any part of it. The thought of it made his stomach churn. He turned on his heel and darted away, his feet silent against the earth, desperate to escape before Shagar Othro could emerge.
Behind him, the tent flap didn't open, but Bleda could feel the old orc's gaze following him, lingering on his retreating form. The heat in his blood dulled as he ran, his breath ragged as he tore through the camp.
Bleda made for the trees, weaving his way through the other tents with the quietest footfalls he could manage. The forest loomed large and tall around the small clearing where they had camped that spring. This was the farthest north that the tribe had camped within anyone's living memory. The farthest into the dark heart of the forest that even the oldest and most weathered Orcs could recall. And the Forest of Corvionii was a strange and ancient refuge. Full of beasts and animals almost as dangerous as the humans that had driven them there.
So many of his tribe felt skittish about settling this deep into the forest, uneasy about the danger that lurked between the twisted elm trees. But Bleda… Bleda found a rare peace in Corvionii's stillness.
The forest's whispers soothed him, the scent of damp earth and pine filling him with a calmness that an open sky never could. But as the tribe pushed further north, that peace grew thin. The beasts lurking in the deeper reaches were wild, feral creatures unlike any they had faced before. Each night, Bleda could feel their presence just beyond the firelight - stronger, fiercer with every step they took further into Corvionii's wild heart.
He knew the forest gave him peace, but it also promised new threats, ones that would soon test them all.
The towering trees darted into the sky, shrouded in the pale half-light of the predawn. Shadows stretched long, twisting between the trunks, while mist clung to the undergrowth. Bleda touched a hand to a great elm on the edge of the clearing. Bark, rough and moss-covered, slid against his palm. It felt natural. It felt like his soul's return.
He took off, breaking into a gentle jog, as he disappeared into the trees.
Who had been that violent and blood-crazed Orc who had woken up inside his family's tent? Who had been that vicious animal that had looked at his sister's throat with savage rage?
It felt terrifying to lose himself so entirely. The fear and the panic had stripped everything away from him until he was just base instinct and boiling fury.
But the blood-rage could be like that. Once upon a time, the Orcs had considered it a blessing. But now, it was looked upon as a curse. Blood-rage turned friend to foe, order to chaos, restraint to wildness…
He'd seen grown male Orcs grow dark-eyed and twitchy at even the slightest show of blood. It could be controlled, of course, after years of discipline and exposure, but even the most seasoned hunters in the tribe could only manage sighting a bloody nose or an arrow-shot before they had to turn away and fight down the blood-rage.
It was no great mystery why the shāgrams forbade the colour red within Orc society.
Yet as Bleda jogged through the forest, he found that his lingering feeling of fear and shame did not dissipate. He had hoped that the trees would soothe him with their gently swaying leaves. He'd hoped that the early morning mist would have leeched the last of the hot panic out of his skin.
He'd only dreamt of blood. And he'd wanted to kill Morag when she'd tried waking him up from the nightmare.
So how, by the will of the Great Raven Father, was he going to get through The Consecration?
He came to an abrupt stop in his tracks. Bleda could see no evidence of that nameless danger that had the old Orcs worried. No sign of any of the fanged, clawed, or monstrous creatures that apparently lurked this far north. The forest was still. The mist swirling at his feet.
He looked around at his surroundings, his heart still heavy with his preoccupying thoughts. Bleda's keen eyes tracked the small animals that darted between the undergrowth. Ferrets and voles and pheasants and mice… Yet his mind wandered, clouded with thoughts of blood and The Consecration. The usual thrill of the hunt eluded him as he gripped the hilt of his slingshot tight in his balled fist. Every rustle in the fog brought him back, but only for a moment, before his worries swallowed him once more.
What would happen if he couldn't control his blood-rage during The Consecration?
That thought had been plaguing him for months. Ever since the shāgram had first told him that he'd be in this summer's group of inductees. When he'd been a young Greenfang, he'd dreamt of the day that he could join a warrior Brotherhood. Perhaps The Fangborns, whose belts bristled with throwing knives and small daggers. Or The Moonclaws, who crafted tipped and poisoned arrows to fire from great longbows…
But then, he'd started to have the nightmares.
The blade. The fear. The blood. The panic. The rage.
It had surprised him initially; He had seen hundreds of Greenfangs blooded in The Consecration. He should be familiar with the scene. The shāgram was always as swift as possible and the inductees always stood with their chosen second by their side to quickly wrap the wound in linens.
But most of the time, a Greenfang's second was his father. A male who could manage his blood-rage more effectively than a younger Orc might. But Bleda had no father.
And the shāgram's moss-green skin had turned the colour of off milk when Bleda had suggested his alternative…
A small rustle made the air shiver to Bleda's right.
His eyes flicked over to the underbrush where the noise had come from and he dipped low into a crouch.
Bleda narrowed his eyes at a small hollybush and the handful of twitching leaves at ground level. He plucked a small hewn stone from the pouch at his waist and notched it into his slingshot.
He waited. The silence rang taut and tense in the air. Bleda felt that same tightening in his guts.
An alertness. A fierce sense of focus as the world narrowed down to just that bush, just that shiver, just that tiny movement…
The tiny grey squirrel poked its head out of the hollybush.
Bleda let loose a breath that he hadn't realised he'd been holding.
The squirrel jerked forwards again, flicking its bushy brush tail as it went. Bleda just watched as it paused, nibbling on a shiny red berry, oblivious to the orc's presence. He knew the squirrel would be quick, and his shot would have to be precise.
Quietly, Bleda moved into position, making sure his footing was secure on the soft earth. The forest's thick foliage made it hard to get a clear view, but Bleda had patience. He waited for the right moment, watching the squirrel's twitching movements, timing its pauses between nibbles. He turned his pebble in between his fingers, its smooth surface cool in his hand.
Bleda thought for a moment. Was it worth going after such a small creature? Something so tiny and insignificant? The meat would barely be enough for one mouthful of Morag's stew. But perhaps if he killed a few…
Came back with a brace of them…
It had been a long winter, and now that the harsh weather was letting up, the forest would soon start teeming with life again. And maybe if he came back with enough meat for Morag to make a decent meal, then his mother might rouse herself a little. She'd not been herself this winter.
Bleda scoffed at himself and softly shook his head. His mother hadn't been herself since his father had died.
The squirrel startled, hearing the tiny noise Bleda had made.
He went utterly still. Holding his breath again and letting his body melt into the forest around him.
The squirrel's little black nose twitched. It sniffed the air and found nothing, going back to the bloom of berries it had been munching on.
Bleda silently slid the pebble into the slingshot and pulled back, the tension of the leather bands tightening between his fingers.
His breathing slowed, his focus narrowing on the small grey creature as it scurried over the forest clearing to another berry bush, barely ten feet away.
The forest seemed to hold its breath. For a brief second, everything was still.
Bleda released.
The pebble shot forward with a quiet twang, slicing through the air with deadly accuracy.
It struck the squirrel on the side of its tiny skull with a soft thud. The little creature gave a startled twitch, falling onto its side with a gentle thump.
Bleda rushed forward, his heart pounding.
He knelt beside the small creature. It lay motionless, its eyes closed, and Bleda could see its chest lay still and unmoving. The pebble he had released lay embedded in the side of its head. So deep and so hard that there wasn't even a hint of blood yet.
He exhaled in relief. His aim had been true.
Gently, he scooped the squirrel into his large hands, cradling its tiny body. Each kill brought him a sense of pride. Each time he used the skills he'd honed for years to feed his sister and his mother, he felt a flush of warmth inside.
In those early days, he'd made a mess of his kills. Without his father to show him how to hunt properly, he'd been a sloppy hunter. And for Orcs, a sloppy hunter was a danger to the tribe.
Orc fathers taught their sons how to kill with the minimal spilling of blood. It was an art, in and of itself, to learn how to avoid the blood-rage. Lay poison in the right places. Set traps in just the right spots. Put the blade in just the right fold of skin. Crush the skull, don't bash it raw. Leave the arrow in, don't pull it out…
But Bleda had been forced to learn all of that on his own.
And his first kill had almost cost him his life.
It had been a rabbit. Almost the same shade of grey as the little squirrel in his arms right then. He'd taken the poor thing's leg off with his rock. And when he'd gotten close enough to see the blood seeping into its charcoal fur…
A neck-snap of a sound cracked off at his back.
Bleda caught it too late. Foolishly too lost in the past to keep track of his now.
A heavy snort. Bleda's dark eyes widened with fear.
That snort crackled down his spine with the intensity of a thunderclap. His veins sparked with panic. It was old and vicious and dark. A primal force of the forest.
Then, a thunderous rustling behind him.
He spun, eyes wide, as a hulking forest boar exploded from the underbrush, its massive body barreling straight for him.
With no time to think, he dropped the squirrel and dove sideways.
The boar's tusks tore through the earth where he'd stood. A slashing, knife-like duo of weapons honed into something deadly after years of survival in the darkness of Corvionii. It sprayed dirt into the air in a huge arc of muck and leaves, bellowing so loud that the sound made Bleda's eyes vibrate.
Bleda hit the ground hard, rolling to his feet in one fluid motion, eyes locked on the beast.
The boar snorted, nostrils flaring, wild eyes fixed on him. Its hulking frame was covered in coarse, matted fur streaked with mud and filth. Its eyes, red-rimmed and crazed, burned with primal rage. Jagged tusks, cracked and stained, jutted from its snarling mouth, dripping with foam and grime. It pawed the ground, muscles tense, ready to charge again.
It lunged, faster this time. Bleda sidestepped, his hand dipping to his belt for his hunting knife.
But his fingers met with empty air.
Bleda let out a grunt of fear and frustration. In his haste to leave Morag, the tent, his tribal camp, he'd not taken it with him.
The boar was furious when it missed him again. It bellowed up at the canopy. A cry thick with the promise of violence and rage.
Bleda's eyes flicked all around him. He could try and climb a tree, but he didn't trust that he'd make it up an elm on time before he felt one of those tusks stab him in the back. He could try running. Turning and high-tailing it as fast as he could manage back through the trees and the low brush. But somehow he knew that this beast would find him. Hunt him down, like he had hunted so many creatures in this forest, and stamp him out until he was blood and pulp under its hooves.
The only thing he could do was face it down.
The beast charged. Head dipped low. Hooves spraying up dirt behind it.
The only thing Bleda had to best this monster was his slingshot.
As the boar charged, time seemed to stretch. The thud of its hooves pounded in slow, deliberate beats. Bleda could see every ripple of muscle under the boar's bristling hide, the flare of its nostrils, and the gleam of its tusks slicing through the air.
His heartbeat echoed in his ears, each second feeling like an eternity as the beast closed the distance.
But his hands, so oddly calm and steady in this nightmarish situation, found the slingshot at his belt and another pebble from his pouch.
Bleda stood firm, focusing, his breathing steady despite the charging tempest that barreled ever closer towards him. He could see the bloodshot veins in its eyes now. Smell the rot and decay on its fur.
He loaded the stone into the slingshot with a practised hand.
Raised it to his eye. Drew the slip back tight.
And he waited. Waited for what felt like forever.
Waited for the great, lumbering monster to get closer.
Until he could feel his taut arm muscles shaking. Until he could feel the boar's hot breath on his cheek.
Until he felt the fear so strong and solid inside him that it formed a hard lump in his throat.
And he released his slingshot once more.
The stone flew through the air. Sailing through the stillness of Corvionii like a silent bird of prey.
And it struck the boar squarely in its right eye.
The beast howled in agony, stumbling off course as it lost its balance.
Bleda felt his bowels loosen as the boar's tusks glided past his right thigh. A hand's breadth away from his skin.
Blood poured from its ruined eye.
As red as maple leaves. As red as the embers of Morag's fire
And Bleda felt that animal inside him roar to life. Turning over in his chest.
The wildness of the blood-rage rose up inside his throat. A low, rumbling growl slipped out of his clamped jaws. His eyes darkened with violence.
He fought desperately to control it. To fight down the urge to rip, to tear, to bite, to lose himself to it entirely.
The growl leaked out of him. Louder and fiercer. And he bent his head low, scrunching his eyes tight against the rise of rage he felt inside him.
The boar's whimpers sounded off in his ears. Everything now too loud. Too intense. Too raucous.
You are Bleda of the Woodland Tribe. He told himself. Forming thoughts in the blood-rage was hard, but he heeded to bring himself back to himself. Your sister is waiting for your squirrels to make stew. Your mother is sleeping. You have hunted in the Forest of Corvionii since you were ten summers old. You are not a beast. You are not a monster..
The boar's thundering hooves retreated away as it ran from whatever had hurt it.
Bleda took a few deep, levelling breaths as he repeated his thoughts again.
You are Bleda of the Woodland Tribe. You are not a beast. You are not a monster.
He could hear sticks cracking and the rustle of leaves as the boar tore through the underbrush. Getting quieter. Further away.
His heartbeat began to slow.
You are Bleda of the Woodland Tribe…
The beast in his chest began to wither and return to sleep.
He could only hear the boar faintly now. It's pitiful cries getting further and further away from him as the forest swallowed it back up.
Bleda straightened his back. He stood up straight and opened his eyes, still breathing steadily through his nose.
The forest was quiet and still once more. Had it not been for the violent gashes in the ground where the boar had torn through the clearing, Bleda might have believed that the monster had never been here. The air, once heavy with fear, lightened. A soft breeze rustled the leaves, carrying the calming scent of pine and damp earth to his nose. Birds cautiously resumed their songs, their melodies weaving through the trees. Insects buzzed faintly in the undergrowth. Sunlight filtered through the canopy, dappling the forest floor. Peace settled over Bleda again, nature reclaiming him in its tranquil pulse.
Until he heard a scream.
His previously quieting heart lurched back into a hanmerbeat.
Another hunter, perhaps? One of his own?
The boar would have been incensed. Hurt. Even more dangerous than before.
And if it ran into another Orc out there in the darkness of the forest…
Without hesitation, Bleda sprinted toward the sound, weaving through the trees with the grace of a wood-deer. His mind racing. His breath ragged.
The scream came again. The sound sent a flock of birds scattering up into the now orange-streaked sky.
Dawn was coming, and in the growing, golden light Bleda could track the path that the fleeing boar had taken as it had charged through the forest. It had left a carved-out mess in its wake. Deep tusk-gashes in the bark of the trees, ugly welts in the ground from its hooves.
A third scream rang in Bleda's ears. But he was close enough now to hear the words in it.
"Help me! Please! Please!"
Perhaps he had heard the strange accent in it. Perhaps he had recognised that it was no voice that he should recognise.
But in the next moment he burst through the trees and into a small clearing by a small babbling brook. And it was too late to take warning from the voice he'd heard…
Bleda froze. Coming to an abrupt and stupefied halt.
Lying crumpled against the roots of a twisting willow tree was no Orc.
It was a human.
Bleda's first instinct was to run. Orc children were taught from a young age to run from these demons. But his wide eyes took in the dead horse at the human's side, his pale face, his gritted teeth, his panting cheeks, and his leg…
The human- a male, if he was correct- was clutching at his right leg. Bleda just had enough time to take in the crushed flesh and the protruding bone before he sharply turned away.
"Help me…" the human called out to him.
Bleda heaved and panted as the blood-rage bobbed up inside him again.
"There was a boar…It attacked my horse…"
Each breath was a growl. Each thought was fixated on what he could tear apart.
"I…I fought off the creature, but when I fell… my horse landed atop me."
Bleda's vision was red. He wanted to tear the human's throat out with his bare tusks.
"My leg is ruined. Please…Help me…"
Bleda breathed deep. No! You are Bleda of the Woodland Tribe. Your sister is waiting for your squirrels to make stew. Your mother is sleeping. You have hunted in the Forest of Corvionii since you were ten summers old. You are not a beast. You are not a monster.
"Oh, Crito's Codpiece..!" The human exclaimed. Bleda heard some strained noises and a tearing sound. "It's gone. I've covered it. The blood, I mean."
Bleda's mind began to reorder itself from the all-consuming violence of the blood-rage. But his thoughts were still unordered and panicked.
A human. A male human. The last time he'd seen a human, it had been the night his tribe had burned. The raid that had taken his father's life and his mother's spirit. He could just about remember the hellish outline of the soldiers on horseback. Black figures framed in the flames of his burning home.
Rumours of the growing number of raids on the Orcs to the south had driven Bleda's tribe deeper into Corvionii. When their courier crows returned to their rookeries with no return message from the tribes closer to the forest's edge, they knew that those rumours had been true.
"I know… I know Orcs cannot abide blood. It's gone now… Please… It's gone…"
Yet perhaps worse were the stories he'd heard of what became of the Orcs the humans took back with them. Warrior brotherhoods like The Moonclaws and The Fangborns made their initiates swear oaths of death before dishonour. Warriors pledged to die on their own swords before allowing a human battalion of raiders to take them alive. Bleda could only imagine what hells waited for the Orcs either too weak or too slow to fight back against a band of humans. What they did to them in those great human cities beyond the sanctuary of the Forest of Corvionii…
Bleda made himself turn around. He breathed hard through his nose and he kept his fists balled. But he made himself look.
The human had torn his dirty purple cloak from off his shoulders and it was now thrown demurely over his crushed leg.
He was small. All humans were small when compared to the stockiness of Orcs. But the man's puny little body, as he lay hunched and shivering against the trunk of the willow tree, shocked him somewhat. To Bleda, his limbs looked no bigger than the branches of a sapling. Easily snappable. Undeveloped. Embarrassingly small arms draped in a skin the same colour as sun-bleached hide.
His thin and sallow-cheeked face gave a similar impression of weakness. The hair on the human's head was a sandy blonde- very uncommon amongst Orc kind- but it was cropped short and stood up from his crown in a brush-like bristle. Bleda tried to guess at his age, and came up short. How did he know what a human looked like in their thirtieth summer of life? Their fiftieth? Their hundredth? But he studied the human's face carefully… He did not look as old as the shāgram in his tribe. He didn't have as many lines of weathering around his forehead or his eyes as old Shāgar Ostro. But the human did have some. One or two deep wrinkles of age at the corners of his pale mouth and in the space between his eyebrows.
The human looked at him fixedly. Those brows knotting together in pain and the lines of age between them deepening. "You want something? Hmm?" He asked hoarsely. "You help me and… and I'll give you anything. Food. Weapons. Furs…"
A plumed helmet lay at his side. It gleamed with polished bronze, and the pronounced crest of bright blue feathers ran from front to back. The human had clearly removed it from his head or it had fallen off in his tumble to the ground, but he wore other armour on his body too. In that same polished bronze. Bleda had never seen such wealth on one individual. Clearly he was a human of some importance.
"If you help me return to my men…" the human said weakly. "…I'll guarantee your safety. I'll order them to let you be."
Bleda raised an eyebrow at that. So there were more of them nearby. Probably in the area to rout them out. More raids. More fires. More stolen Orcs…
This human was a hunter, just like Bleda. But he hunted Orcs. And here he was having to beg his prey for help…
"And you can have anything you want from our camp. Anything you want!"
Bleda's expression soured. His wide-eyed shock mellowed into something deeper and contemptuous.
The human saw the change in his face too. He looked at Bleda as fear flashed in his grey eyes for the first time since he'd seen him. Slowly, he relinquished one of his hands from his ruined leg and grappled for something at his waist.
Bleda tracked his movements like a watching hawk. He saw the human feebly grip at the hilt of a sword. The same hewn bronze as his armour and studded with deep red garnets. But he paused. Not drawing it from its scabbard.
"You say nothing…" the human breathed, refusing to take his eyes off Bleda's face. He was a proper warrior. Tracking his enemy. Carefully watching his movements. If nothing else, Bleda respected that. He was waiting for Bleda to strike. "Why don't you say anything?"
Bleda did not respond. He couldn't. Not in a way the human would understand.
He just looked at this scared and weak little thing. Alone and frightened…of him.
His people had spent hundreds of years afraid of these snappable little things. Running to the farthest corners of this land to hide from them. And when they found them anyway, they'd bring with them fire and blood and death and rape…
Bleda shook his head sharply, pushing away those images of his headless father and his mother sobbing in their tent with her hands between her thighs.
He took a small step towards the man.
The human tensed up like a startled animal. The grip around his hilt made his knuckles turn white. But he still did not draw it. He still waited for Bleda to make the first attack.
Bleda scoffed at him. Yes. That was just like a human. Scream half the forest down, begging for help, and then put a knife in the belly of anything stupid enough to come near you.
And that's when Bleda made his decision.
He would leave him to rot.
Fuck him.
He turned from the human man with a pivot on his heels, putting the sound of the brook behind him.
"Wh… Where are you going?" The human called out to him.
Bleda's feet slowed. He could hear fear in his voice. A desperateness that finally made him put aside his suspicion. Bleda glanced over his shoulder and saw the human's spare hand reaching out towards him.
"Come back! I…I order you to come back!" His voice was a cry. A helpless caw.
Bleda scoffed and showed him his back again. The nerve of this broken, weak little thing. Giving him orders. Orders for mercy when he could not recall a time when a human had shown mercy to an Orc.
"Please!" He screamed, but it fell on deaf ears.
The dawn had fully broken when Bleda left the human by the banks of the brook. His pitiful cries chased him for almost a mile through the trees, but he played a game with himself as he walked, to distract himself from the ringing screams from the human that he could hear. He weaved and dove around the puddles of sun that were now streaming down through the canopy. The dappled floor lit up the forest floor in a mosaic of amber and brown and green leaves. And by the time he'd chased the paths back through the forest, back towards his tribe's camp, he couldn't hear a single thing.
Good. He thought. The only human being worth trusting is one that no longer draws breath.