Page 5 of The Outcast Orc (Claimed by the Red Hand #1)

5

QUINN

After days of being caged, spat on, painted, and displayed like merchandise, I thought I'd seen the worst.

Then I had an iron collar clamped around my neck and got paraded to an orcish wagon in chains.

The other leftovers were with me. I was in the middle, with Archie plodding along resolutely in front and Bess bringing up the rear as she quietly choked back tears. I wished I could offer her a word of encouragement, but I had none. At least I’d left her with her handkerchief.

The oxen were the biggest I’d ever seen, and the wagon where they were yoked must weigh a literal ton, from the tight-grained lumber of the bed to the massive iron wheels. The more gregarious orc was still chatting with the slaver, while the dour, pensive orc—the one who’d picked me—hauled us outside. He didn’t seem to be dragging us along on purpose, but his stride was huge. By the time we reached the wagon, Archie was taken by a coughing fit and Bess was openly sobbing. The big brute of an orc glared down at us, then hoisted up Archie effortlessly and set him in back with pragmatic finality.

Since we were chained together, I didn’t see much choice but to follow—but, damn it, I’d do so on my own terms. I dodged the orc as much as I could without collapsing my own windpipe, then swung up into the wagon of my own volition. At least from there I could offer Bess a hand up and spare her the groping of an orc…if only for the time being.

Chests and crates filled the wagon beneath its hide cover. There was nowhere to sit but the wooden floor, but Archie found a gap between the supplies where we could tuck ourselves away. The chains linking our collars were long enough to let us move around a bit—probably so we could work—but not long enough to forget they were there.

Bess dried her tears, sniffled, and said, “Where d’you suppose they’re taking us?”

Archie smiled with no humor whatsoever. “What difference does it make? You saw the size of them. By morning we’ll be split wide open from being pounded with their fat orcish dongs.”

“Speak for yourself,” I snapped.

Archie’s eyes crinkled. “Well, maybe not you, horseman. Maybe you already know your way around a freakish big dong….”

“Shut up, both of you,” Bess sobbed. “We can’t afford to fight. Once they take us back to wherever it is they live, then all we’ll have is each other.”

True enough.

Soon, the wagon creaked as an orc hauled himself into the driver’s seat and we all fell silent. The wheels shuddered the wagon bed as we rolled out of the slaver camp and left its stinking tents behind.

Exactly how long we traveled, I couldn’t quite say. I was accustomed to putting in long hours, both at work, and carousing afterward. My captivity seemed both painfully long and strangely bleary, with days of enforced inactivity blending together. This journey, at least, was something new. We traveled for a long while at a slow and steady plod, pausing only to water the oxen. The crumbling, pale soil of the Wasteland eventually gave way to tentative scrubland, and eventually, trees. Some, I recognized. But peppered among them were strange, spiny things the likes of which I’d never imagined.

The orcs spoke to each other with voices like stone, too low to make out much. Debating whether to stop, from what I could glean. Archie didn’t share any more premonitions about meeting his fate impaled on an orcish dick. But when he met my eyes, I knew that’s what he must be thinking.

Full darkness fell, and the chirp of insects joined the creaking wheels and occasional scraps of our captors’ conversation as our view out the back of the wagon faded. I’d been lulled into a fitful half-sleep when I jolted into awareness at the distant sound of a fiddle.

Playing a drinking song I knew all too well.

The wagon rolled to a stop. The darkness outside was painted orange by flickering torchlight, and in the distance, I heard the murmur of a crowd. A settlement, then. Not the Fortifications—an orc would never get past the gate—but some frontier town where our captors might pass unremarked.

If there was ever a perfect opportunity to run away, it was now. Even with the collars, we could slip away and find a blacksmith to strike the chains from our necks. I leaned in close, having no idea how good the orcs’ hearing might be, and said, “We’re getting out of here.”

Archie scoffed.

I ignored him. “I’ll take the lead. When I say run, fall in line behind me and don’t look back. We’ll lose ourselves among the other people and make our way back home.”

“Whose home?” Archie asked.

Did it matter, so long as we were with our own kind again—and none of us ended up as a monster’s plaything?

“I’ll make for the thickest part of the crowd,” I said. “And who knows? If we’re lucky, someone might help us.”

“There’s that word again,” Archie said…and he didn’t need to point out that if any of us were even remotely lucky, we wouldn’t have ended up here in the first place.

The wagon groaned as the orcs hopped down, and their shadows loomed large against the tarp. The one with the scar and the silver-tipped tusks appeared at the foot of the wagon bed, gesturing. “Out, and grab those bedrolls on the way. Relieve yourselves downwind and set up camp.”

The bedding was heavy, canvas stuffed with straw. I took one, while Archie and Bess struggled the other down between them. It was awkward work, made worse by the chains…which gave me an idea. “It would go a lot faster without the collars,” I suggested.

To which the orc barked a single laugh.

The other orc, the quiet, serious one, grabbed hold of the chain and walked us over to a stand of trees. He crossed his arms, bored, as he waited for us to empty our bladders. If Bess was ever embarrassed about squatting in front of two men and an orc, she was numb to it now after so many days of availing herself of an old bucket, just like all the rest of the unfortunate captives.

“Cover it,” the orc said sharply as we turned to walk back to camp. We all paused, confused. “Cover your stink,” he said, like he was speaking to a bunch of simpletons.

Even if it weren’t dark, I can’t imagine we would have any chance of finding the exact spot where we’d pissed. But we made our best attempt and dutifully kicked around a bunch of dead leaves.

When we got back to the clearing, the scarred orc was rummaging through a chest of supplies. He handed a wineskin to the quiet one and said, “What’s it to be? Shopping or guard duty?”

“We have what we came for,” the quiet one said.

“Maybe so, Marok, but I smell venison—can you really pass that up?”

Marok? Was that a name? It sounded like one. Why was I so surprised the orcs had names? Hell, even the trained pigeons my old neighbor used to keep had names. I listened, and learned Marok was the stern, quiet orc and Borkul had the horrific scar.

They’d parked in a clearing that had obviously been used by many travelers before us, though not particularly well. A firepit with a spit was dug in the center, and the area all around it was littered with refuse. No Fortifications wall in sight, so we must have been at one of the more distant way station camps. And in the distance, people milled about a ragtag setup of tables and tents at a makeshift night market.

“Set up the camp,” Borkul told us. “Unless you like sleeping on a pile of trash in the cold.”

“Maybe they don’t know how to make a fire,” Marok said doubtfully.

“Of course I do,” Archie snapped. “I’m not an idiot.”

Working together, the three of us made a stack of twigs, lit it with orcish tinder, then fed the small flames with the shattered remains of a broken crate. There was plenty of fuel littering the campsite. But not all of the scraps were wood.

“Bones,” Archie said with a shudder as he tossed what looked like a calf’s femur toward the edge of the clearing. “So many bones.”

“What kind of bones?” Bess said, voice hushed.

“The bones of idle slaves,” Borkul called over. Damn. Their hearing was a lot better than I’d thought.

I located a rib, far too big to be any natural person’s. Although, maybe it was from an orc…. I glanced at our captors. No. The ribcage was shaped all wrong. More likely a boar. “They’re not human,” I told Bess. “The bones, I mean.”

She looked dubious.

“Think,” I said. “It’s a campfire. So this is just what’s left of someone’s dinner. Animals. Nothing worse.”

“Unless there were trolls here before us,” Borkul called over, then snorted derisively. “If so, who knows what the poor sods might’ve once been?”

We stopped talking after that. While I built up the fire, Archie chucked bones into the darkness, and Bess gathered twigs as she knuckled away silent tears.

I supposed wanting both orcs to go to the market and leave us a way out was too much to hope for. But if they at least separated, between the three of us, maybe we could overpower a single orc. Archie was just about to figure out how far he could pitch another rib, but seeing the shape of it, I stopped him. It was slimmer than the first we’d found, just shorter than his forearm, and it tapered dangerously toward the tip. Even unsharpened, it might do some damage. I felt around until my hand closed over another stray rib protruding from the sandy soil.

So many bones.

But that meant I was able to find another weapon.

My heart hammered in my chest as I realized what we were about to do. Wringing the neck of a stewing hen was one thing, but I’d never stabbed anyone. The orc that called himself Marok might not be a person, exactly, but he spoke words and thought thoughts. He had a name.

Desperate times. A life in chains would be bad enough. A life being plowed open by these great beasts, however short, was even worse.

I wouldn’t risk words, not with the orcs’ sharp hearing. But no matter how good their senses might be, they couldn’t see through my body. I put my back to them and gripped the pointy rib like a dagger to show the others what I meant to do. They both nodded their understanding.

By the time the scarred orc had gone off in the direction of the night market, I’d found a third good weapon, a sturdy leg bone broken to a vicious, sharp point. While I fussed over the fire, Archie watched Marok, the quiet one, indicating which way the orc had gone with a flick of the eyes. When Archie gave us the nod, we surged to our feet, aiming for the far side of the market, and broke into a run.

Most creatures who have size to their advantage are not particularly quick. Like the oxen now tethered beside the campsite, what they gained in size and strength, they lost in speed.

But apparently, not orcs.

One moment, Marok was squatting on the ground with his back to a wagon wheel, cleaning off a bit of tack. The next, he was on his feet and heading straight for us.

It was clear that no matter how fast we ran, we’d soon be overtaken. And so, instead of running away, I tightened my grip on the sharpened bone, adjusted my angle, and ran toward the orc.

The chains on my iron collar snapped taut as my fellow captives fought my change of course. But if we didn’t work together, we’d be dead—and after a brief resistance, they followed my lead. Together, the three of us charged the oncoming orc.