On the morning of the third day, the door to my room opened without a preceding knock. General Korvak filled the space, his sheer size making the chamber feel like a coffin. He was not in his battle armor, but in a simpler tunic of dark leather and fur that did nothing to hide the mountains of muscle beneath.
“We ride for the Stronghold,” he said, his voice in the common tongue a low rumble that vibrated in my bones. “Now.”
There was no room for questions. There was no room for refusal. It was a statement of fact, absolute and unchangeable. I simply stood, my body moving on autopilot, and followed him out.
The main square was a hive of activity. A portion of the Orcish army—a garrison of several hundred warriors—was assembling to remain in the city, their new commander a hulking brute with a scarred eye who received his final orders from Korvak. The human prisoners, the ones who had refused his offer, were being led from the jail and put into caged wagons. They looked gaunt, their eyes filled with a bleak, hopeless terror. They were being sent south, to a kingdom that had already written them off as dead. I doubted they would survive the journey.
My own chariot was far more intimidating. It was a monstrous, tusked beast, larger than any warhorse I had ever seen, its hide like plates of scaled armor. Korvak swung himself into the heavy saddle with an easy grace that was terrifying in a creature his size. He then looked down at me. For a horrifying second, I thought he was going to reach down and haul me up like a sack of flour.
Instead, he gave a clipped order in Orcish. One of his warriors grabbed a wooden stool and slammed it down beside the beast. The message was clear.Get on.
Swallowing the bile of humiliation that rose in my throat, I climbed onto the stool and awkwardly hauledmyself up, settling onto the stretch of furred saddle behind him. There was no other place to go. My legs were pressed against the beast’s warm, impossibly broad back, and my entire front was just inches from the solid wall of Korvak’s own.
There was nowhere to hold on except for the high cantle of the saddle behind me, or… him. I chose the saddle, my hands gripping the cold iron until my knuckles were white.
The war party moved out, a column of two hundred Orc warriors, a river of dark iron and green skin flowing through the gates of the city I had once called home. The humans who had stayed watched us go, their faces impassive masks of fear. They saw me, the human soldier, riding with the Orc General.
As soon as we cleared the city walls, the landscape began to tell a story of its own, a story of two races. For the first day, we rode through human lands. The rolling hills were scarred with the ugly wounds of strip mines, great gashes of red clay bleeding into the earth. The forests were pathetic, thinned-out things, the ancient trees long since felled for timber, leaving only scraggly new growth. The rivers we crossed were sluggish and dark, the water bearing an unnatural,chemical sheen. The air itself tasted of dust and smoke from the distant charcoal kilns. It was a land that had been used, bled dry, and discarded. A land just like its people.
I rode in a tense, rigid silence. Korvak did not speak to me. He did not look at me. But I was aware of him with every fiber of my being. I could feel the heat radiating from his massive body, a constant, oppressive warmth against the chill of the mountain air. I could smell him—not the battlefield stench of blood and sweat, but something cleaner, more primal. The scent of worn leather, cold iron, and something else, something uniquely his. It smelled like stone after a lightning strike.
Every jostle of the beast’s gait threatened to throw me against his back. I spent the entire ride fighting it, my muscles locked and screaming in protest, refusing to allow any contact. He was a mountain, and I was determined to keep my own small foothill of space. I didn't know if he noticed my struggle, or if he simply didn't care.
On the second day, the world changed.
We crossed an old, crumbling stone demarcation wall, and it was like stepping from a dead world into aliving one. The air grew cleaner, sharper, scented with pine and damp earth. The pathetic forests gave way to a true woodland, a sprawling expanse of ancient trees whose canopy was so thick it turned the midday sun into a dappled twilight. The rivers ran clear and impossibly fast, so clean I could see the stones on the riverbed. Strange, vibrant flowers I had never seen before grew in patches on the forest floor. There was life everywhere—the flash of a deer in the undergrowth, the cry of a hawk circling high above.
This was Orc territory. The land the priests had told me was a blighted, savage wasteland.
It was the most beautiful place I had ever seen.
The propaganda I had been fed my entire life began to unravel in my mind. These were not savages who despoiled the land. They livedwithit, notonit. The contrast with the stripped, poisoned human territories was a physical blow. A deep, aching shame for my own species settled in my gut. We weren't the builders. We were the locusts.
Late that afternoon, we passed through a small outpost. It wasn’t a military camp, but a village, nestled in a valley by a river. The buildings were made of a sturdy combination of timber and living stone, as ifthey had grown from the earth itself. And it wasn’t just Orcs I saw. A human blacksmith, a massive man with a beard like a bushel of wires, was hammering a piece of iron, an Orc warrior watching him with a critical eye. A woman—human—was tending a garden patch, her two small, distinctly hybrid-looking children playing at her feet. They had the green tinge of their father’s skin but their mother’s human features. They didn’t look like monsters. They looked… happy.
My mind reeled. This wasn't the world I knew.
As dusk fell on the third day, we began to climb high into the mountains. The air grew thin and cold. And then I saw the stronghold. It was not a citadel carved from a single peak, but a sprawling town nestled in a high, protected valley, like a secret cradled in a stone hand. A massive timber palisade, built from whole trees, encircled it. Beyond the wall, I could see the angled roofs of dozens of longhouses and smaller huts, smoke curling from their chimneys. A single stone watchtower stood on the highest cliff, a silent gray sentinel. It was not a fortress built to dominate the landscape. It was a home, built to endure within it.
The great timber gates opened for us, and we rode into a world of timber, smoke, and clan. The streetswere wide and packed with hard earth. Orcs were everywhere—warriors, yes, but also artisans, fur-trappers, and females with children clinging to their legs. The sounds were of a living community: the ring of a hammer on steel, the shouting of children, the low murmur of the Orcish tongue.
We rode not to a military tower, but through the center of the stronghold, toward the largest of the longhouses. It was a massive structure of dark, ancient logs, the gable ends carved into the snarling visages of great beasts. This was the home of a chieftain. This was his home.
As we dismounted, the heavy door of the longhouse swung open. An Orcish woman emerged. She was old, her green skin wrinkled like tough leather, her tusks yellowed and worn with age. But she stood straight and tall, a matriarch, her presence as formidable as any warrior’s. Her grey-shot hair was braided with intricate bone beads, and she wore a tunic of soft, dark furs. There was an undeniable resemblance in the set of her proud, stubborn jaw. This was his mother.
Korvak dismounted and approached her. They began to speak in Orcish. His voice, which I had onlyever heard as a commander’s bark or a conqueror’s rumble, was different now. It was lower, softer. Respectful. He was a general who had just laid waste to a human city, but before this woman, he was a son.
Her eyes, dark chips of obsidian, left her son and settled on me. It was not a look of simple hatred or contempt. It was a slow, thorough appraisal, the way a farmer might inspect new livestock at market. She took in my filthy tunic, my human features, my defiant posture. I felt myself being weighed, measured, and undoubtedly found wanting. A cold knot of dread tightened in my stomach.
Korvak finished speaking. He gave his mother a curt nod, then turned. He gave me one last, long, unreadable look, then strode away without a backward glance, disappearing into the press of his warriors. He had brought me here. And now, he had left me.
I was alone with his mother.
She said nothing to me. Words were unnecessary. She simply took a step toward me, her expression unyielding, and gestured with her head toward the open door of the longhouse. It was an order as clear as any shouted on a battlefield.Inside.
I followed her into the warm, smoky interior. The longhouse was a vast single room, the ceiling held up by massive, carved pillars. A great fire pit glowed in the center, furs and woven tapestries covering the sleeping platforms that lined the walls. It was rustic, yes, but it was also the undeniable den of a predator at the top of the food chain.
She led me past the fire, toward a smaller, curtained-off alcove. She pulled the heavy fur curtain aside. Inside was a simple wooden tub, steam already rising from the hot water within it. On a stool beside the tub was a pile of folded cloth—a simple, clean tunic of soft brown wool.
