CHAPTER 1
GRAT
Even the hunting was shit this year. The bait in my trap was gone, again, but the trap was empty. I kicked the empty snare into the bushes, not even bothering to reset the trap. After spending the entire morning checking over two dozen traps, all I had to show for it were the two hares slung over my shoulder.
I’d been at the cabin for over a week now, and hadn’t gotten a single boar or a moose yet. Not that my clan was starving. We had plenty of crops harvested this fall, and the hunters had been providing everyone with a steady supply of meat. Even the human settlement had been doing nicely for the past two years, planting gardens and discovering new hunting grounds with the help of the orcs from our keep.
But I’d made a bet with Agor, our high chief, that I would bring enough meat to feed an orc family for an entire winter, and it would only take me four weeks to do so.
It was a stupid bet, but I was annoyed and angry with Agor when I made it.
The hunting trip to my grandfather’s cabin had been our tradition. Ever since Agor and I were little boys, my grandfather would bring us here every fall, after the harvest rush had ended but before the frost of the winter would start.
Grandpa had taught Agor and me almost everything we knew about hunting and fishing. He taught us how to set traps, braid the best rope for snares, make the lure for fish, and how to track a boar.
After Grandpa passed, Agor and I continued the tradition. We’d come here every fall to hunt and fish like before, but also to drink ale, train our hunting dogs, and talk about things we had no time to talk about in the busy keep.
We had to skip our trip last year. Agor was a newlywed then, and I was busy helping the humans get their settlement ready for winter. I’d been looking forward to resuming our tradition this year, but Agor told me we had to cancel it this year too.
“The keep needs me here,” he’d said.
Fuck that! The keep would’ve been just fine without its chief for a couple of weeks. Since Farod was defeated two years ago, we’d had no wars with anyone, just the usual occasional skirmishes here and there with escaped rogues from other keeps.
It wasn’t the keep that Agor didn’t want to leave for a few weeks, but his wife, Becca.
Almost since the day they met, Agor and Becca had been inseparable. They slept together, ate together, fucked and fought together. She wasn’t just his wife and lover, she had become his partner in everything, from running the keep to their sparring practices.
The capable woman that she was, Becca even won the challenge to become one of Agor’s generals last year. And I was happy for her, I really was. But I’d also realized that she had quickly become Agor’s best friend too. As his best friendfor three decades, I no longer felt like I had a place in his life anymore.
The day before I left the keep, there was a wrestling competition. I’d wrestled with Agor and kicked his ass. But I hadn’t stopped at that. The wrestling had heated both my blood and my anger. I yelled at Agor that I didn’t need him, that I could get more meat alone than we’d ever gotten together. Egged on by the other orcs, I made that stupid bet in the heat of the moment.
Of course, returning to the keep with no meat now would be like coming home with my tail tucked between my legs. The tribe would never let me live it down. If there was anything my people truly enjoyed, it was to beat the snot out of someone who bragged and didn’t deliver.
After a week of traipsing these woods by myself, my temper had cooled. If I was still annoyed with anyone, it was mostly with myself.
I should be happy that Agor had found a woman who suited him so fucking well, better than a perfect weapon or a pair of worn-in boots. Instead, I felt resentful. And then, I felt guilty because of the resentment. And now, I felt stupid and angry with myself for this self-imposed exile to the old cabin in the middle of nowhere, with not a soul to talk to.
I didn’t even have a dog to keep me company. The pup I had eyed for myself, Agor ended up giving to Becca as a courting gift. I didn’t mind, seeing that the pup surely helped him win her over. She loved that dog like her own kid. But now, I was stuck here, with nothing but my sour mood for company. Instead of sitting in my cozy house back in the keep with a willing woman or two in my bed, I was plodding for hours here, in this…
I stopped and looked around.
Where the fuck was I exactly?
Water sloshed under my boots.
Had I wandered into a swamp again?
Water was everywhere in the Wetlands. The folks of Helfallow didn’t call us “bog orcs” for nothing. But water came in many different forms. We had ponds, creeks, swamps, and bogs, among the rest, with some of these forms being more dangerous than others.
“Fuck,” I mattered under my breath, studying the nearby black ash trees to orientate myself.
I had clearly taken a wrong turn after checking the last trap. Being pissed off and distracted by my miserable thoughts proved unhelpful for navigating the woods.
I climbed up to drier ground, then turned around to gather my bearings. An imprint in the moss caught my attention, and I crouched to examine it closely.
Those were boar tracks! Fresh ones, too. And I had nearly trampled all over them without even noticing them.
My pissed off mood wasn’t just bad for navigation, it messed up my hunting too. Maybe the reason for so many empty traps this year hadn’t been the lack of prey, but my lack of care and concentration. My sloppy job when setting them up made it too easy for the animals to steal the bait and run away.
